Elizabeth kept staring at the blob of mana that had been ripped into two, then at the mana thread that she had used to attempt and guide it. She didn't see any evidence of why her mana had behaved that way.
So focusing into her eyes and activating once more her Dragon Eyes Elizabeth paid close attention to the mana thread that she had attempted to use and…
"Is that a dragon claw?" Elizabeth said as she took a closer look at how her mana thread looked, trying to grab another small part of the blob Elizabeth noticed how the mana thread took the form of a dragon claw to her senses.
And so, once more she ripped in two the mana blob.
"Why is it a dragon claw?" Elizabeth repeated herself once more as she attempted to do it again.
"The mana takes the form of the soul. You need to focus on who you are, what you want to be, and how you want to achieve it," Lily said once again, "For context, my mana now takes the form of a tweezer, and like that, I can do delicate work without having to brute force everything."
So brute-forcing was an option. Elizabeth wasn't that sure if she wanted to go that route; she had brute-forced many things across her time after coming to power. She brute-forced her skills, her shadows, her minions, her soul.
She had even brute-forced her love life to some degree.
But then Elizabeth needed to focus on who she was?
She was Elizabeth Starbright.
She was the daughter of Jack Brighton and Catherine Starlight.
She was The Elemental Weaver.
She was The Shadow Empress.
She was The Stardust Weaver.
She was The Dragon Empress.
She was The Shadow Weaver.
She was...She was...
The Debauchery Dragon.
Admitting that one hurt, but...Elizabeth couldn't help and look at herself once more. Not merely at her mana, but using her Dragon's Eyes and her Space sense she looked at her whole body.
She was sitting all proper with Rossie and Rena at her side, her eyes were closed, her forehead had a frown and Elizabeth couldn't help but admit she looked kind of cute thinking like that.
Looking around, she could see Rossie's mana behaving weirdly as it was attempting to move around her body; the girl had managed to do one revolution across her body, but even so, Elizabeth could see some straining in her mana channels.
Rena on the other hand was merely looking at both of them while eyeing Lily.
Jenna merely stood there looking all smug, and when no one else noticed it, Jenna's eyes turned up, a smirk on her face as the blue-haired girl winked straight at...the point from where Elizabeth was looking from.
That made Elizabeth frown, what was Jenna staring at?
"Jenna, that isn't good. Don't help her like that." Lily suddenly said and threw a mana bullet at Jenna.
How did she throw a Mana Bullet?
She shot it from behind her head, the bullet materializing from the nape of Lily and shooting straight at Jenna who merely took the attack without flinching. At all.
But Elizabeth didn't focus in that, instead she focused in what Lily said, Jenna had given her a hint? How? She merely...looked.
At what did Jenna look?
At her, they crossed sights...only Elizabeth's eyes weren't there, and she had her eyes closed. Jenna looked up at where Elizabeth was looking from, but...according to her space sense there wasn't there, and no matter how much Elizabeth turned around with her Dragon's Eyes, she couldn't see anything either.
...No matter...how much...Oh...She was having a bimbo moment.
Elizabeth was using her Dragon's Eyes, a skill, nay, a skill that channeled her inheritance of dragon properties into her eyes.
Into her eyes.
It only worked with her eyes, but...she was not looking from her physical eyes, then throught what eyes was she looking?
The space sense allowed her to channel her senses through other means, then where had her eyes manifested?
Did her space sense grow eyes? Impossible.
Had her mana sense grown eyes? Impossible, it was mana, not a body.
No, it was a body. She had learned that the strand of mana seh had attempted to use to manipulate her mana had the form of a dragon claw, it was as if she had been using a hand to attempt to manipulate and handle the mana.
Then...was she growing a pair of eyes too? But how to look into that?
"Okay...first, we look for the hand," Elizabeth said as she stopped attempting to manipulate the mana blob within her body. Instead, she focused on the strand of mana that had transformed into a dragon claw. "Then follow the hand into the arm, the shoulder..."
Elizabeth continued focusing and following the body that was growing slowly, first her hand, it was still a clawed hand, but unlike what she had expected it had her normal skin tone. The hand grew into her shoulder. From there she looked down and found her chest and unlike what she had expected, she was wearing a dress.
Following that she looked to the left and there it was another arm, a dragon-like claw. It was at the moment she focused on that other arm that the focus turned sharp and Elizabeth was able to feel that second arm.
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It was in that moment that her arm's image turned sharp and transformed from a dragon-like arm into one of her arms, her claw turning into more like a hand.
The same as her right arm.
Elizabeth didn't stop there and started looking at herself, she found her lower body slowly turn into focus as more of her body was manifesting, her dress was once again fully formed as her lower body finished manifesting.
And so Elizabeth found her body coming fully into focus.
"Open a rift into space, the light will come out of it as if the portal was a mirror." Elizabeth's voice came out haughty, as if it wasn't a phrase but a Command.
And sure enough, in the ceiling, a body-size rift opened.
"Hmm....using space magic to create a mirror?" Lily said below Elizabeth.
But Elizabeth had no time to think about that, instead she looked at herself, she was there floating her body coming more and more into focus.
She was gorgeous, her azure eyes looked down onto creation, her golden hair flowed true and beautiful like rays of the sun, her body was perfect all around, the perfect height, the perfect chest, the perfect skin, the perfect hourglass-like hips.
Legs long enough to be beautiful, but not long enough to make it long weird.
Mighty wings at her back that helped her fly as high as she desired. A mighty war dress made from her own essence, mighty dragon scales and mana gems adorned it all around. Her hands covered in elbow-long obsidian gloves.
Her feet were covered by knee-length black boots.
Her hair was adorned with her Crown made from her seven horns, each of them holding a pair of holes for her gems, even if right now she only had the Wraith & Fire / Pride & Lightning combination settled in place, and the rest of her gems were...
Wait.
Why was she wearing her Crown?
Elizabeth stopped looking at herself and looked down.
"Better keep true to yourself, Elizabeth...Or you may end up losing yourself..." Jenna whispered in a low voice, low enough that no one should have heard her, but why had Elizabeth?
Elizabeth instead focused down and...Her body was shining.
It seemed as if her mana wanted to cast a spell and change her, but something else was stopping it, what was her mana trying to cast?
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes down and examined the mana, it was...behaving weirdly, as if trying to move and behave like it would when she wanted to cast a spell, but she wasn't casting anything.
Even so, her body attempted to shine and fluctuate, as if wanting to change...to...shift.
Oh, her body wanted to shift. Elizabeth looked at her hand, the gala-type glove encasing her hand, the glove that gave it the appearance of a dragon claw.
The reason she was ripping apart the mana in two when she attempted to move it. Elizabeth sighed, this cursed (dragon)bloodline.
"Well...*ahem*. Well...time to get to work I guess..." Elizabeth sighed once again and flew down, she closed the rift with a casual movement of her hand and stood in front of her body.
She couldn't help but lick her lips at the sight of her own Human body, so... feeble, imperfect, weak...and yet... "That is who I want to be, so I can grow better, so I can be with Rossie and Rena..." She was aware, embracing her dragon heritage would give her so much power.
So much might, enough that most of her problems would be moot. But...it would change her too, it would change her values, her way to see the World, it would implant the dragon-like feelings and standards.
The ones that would no doubt discard Rossie and Rena should they fail to live up to Elizabeth's exponential growth, even while tied to Elizabeth, even though they would grow at Elizabeth's pace.
Elizabeth wasn't sure what would happen if she found someone else with might and power, if she embraced her dragon inheritance...would she discard Rossie and Rena?
Would she attempt to make a harem? Even if it hurt Rossie and Rena?
No.
"I'll not risk it, better let you rest as an Emergency Shift for now..." Elizabeth said as she sank her hand into her Human body. Her body shifted into mana and sank into the body.
Elizabeth soon enough found herself once again within her body, standing in front of the mana blob once again.
The pressure once more made itself present, the World wanted to take her mana and saturate her with the ambient mana.
"*Sigh* Let's begin then..." Elizabeth said stretching her wings and body, this body was getting stiff from not being used, and this...this would take some effort, even for someone as Gifted as her.
"Take but a strand and channel it into threads, each thread will be woven into a string, each string into a rope, each rope into a cable. Continue doing so till the mana is expended and channel it into the body." Elizabeth started raising her hand forward and instead of merely attempting to pluck the mana from the mana blob.
She did what felt right and she Commanded.
She was currently The Dragon Empress and her Will would be done.
The mana blob answered in kind and slowly a side of it transformed into strands of mana, threads, strings, ropes and eventually into thick cables, barely wide enough to fill her mana channels.
"Each one will traverse the body, each one will saturate the body, do not let any iota of mana escape unless allowed." Elizabeth continued her commands.
The newly made mana cable started traversing throught her mana channels, Elizabeth could feel the pressure slowly diminish as the mana went around her body.
She could feel the mana as if it was maping her body, at first it followed the well known mana channels that Elizabeth had used all this time but...
"Why is it so...bad?" Elizabeth couldn't help but say that, her real mouth moving.
"Oho...we already noticing it?" Lily answered, getting Elizabeth's attention, "Yeah, this [System] that we use changes the mana channels into ones more adjusted to the mechanical use of mana. The fault lies with the Mother of Magic; she never standardized the use of mana channels. So most magical girls and magical guardians ended up with mana channels that suited them. And came the System...well, all got the same blueprint."
Lily's answer was...terrifying.
Elizabeth had noticed, too, of course, the fact that in some instances, her mana was...mechanical; most of the time, it wasn't an issue since she could just tweak the end to make whatever she wanted to come to fruition.
But now? Now that she was trying to do this?
It was annoying her.
"Leave the well-traveled path," Elizabeth said without thinking too much. Her mana stopped moving and slowly retraced from the paths that made her feel bloated. "Open the door into the unknown...Be true to who we are....follow the path into the future and carve the way forward."
As Elizabeth finished speaking the mana cable that she had made once more started traversing, this time however, it went slowly.
It feelt the path forward within Elizabeth's body, slowly it started carving a new pathway and discarding the others that didn't felt adecuated. Some Elizabeth discarded because they were meaningless to her, mana pathways designed to regulate the output, mana pathways designed to limit the mana she could channel...Mana pathways designated to stabilize it and standarize the mana.
All meaningless to Elizabeth; she not only had no problem outputting high amounts of mana, but she also could survive them and had no need to only channel one type of mana.
Instead what she did was carve forward throught her body, when her mana arrived at her back Elizabeth carved a pathway in the air behind her, the spot where her dragon wings would be.
And as soon as she made those she felt as the bloating feeling slowly reduce, when the mana arrived at her head, she did the same for the spots where her horns would emerge from her head.
Only this time she made sure to increase the allotment of mana, making sure there would be enough to create the mana dense horns that would hold her gems...
And make sure there was enough mana to ward away any influence from the gems.
Even as this continued and her body experimented with multiple iterations of the mana circuits, Elizabeth couldn't help but notice how the bloating feeling never really faded.
Elizabeth's body was already mapped with the most optimal way to carry her mana... Perhaps it was how she saw herself?
"We will shed away the dragon form and leave behind the Human one," Elizabeth said as her metaphysical representation shone with motes of light and mimicked how her normal form looked.
She still had a body even though she was aware that this was a way to form her mana into a way that helped her channel better her mana. Even so...
"The bloated feeling does not go away huh." Elizabeth was unsure about what to do, so she decided to do what she always did when a problem didn't go away.
She sat to think about it.
"And now the mana comes here huh...go that way into the cable." As soon as Elizabeth sat down some of the mana started condensing around her, no matter how Elizabeth wanted it to follow the rest, more and more mana started condensing near her.
It wasn't till it arrived at a point that Elizabeth noticed two important things.
First...The bloated feeling started to go away the more mana was condensed around her...And secondly... "This is...a mana core?" The beginning of a mana core was being formed on her physical body.
Elizabeth stood up, and as soon as she did so, the mana that had started condensing stopped increasing in size. However, the mana that had already been condensed remained...
"Okay, so we need Cores huh...But to think that there could be a physical Mana core in a material body..." Elizabeth had never thought about making one of these, it was...honestly, stupid.
Everyone knew that the mana came from the Soulscape, that the mana core was there, one merely needed to channel it to the outside.
But...If she could make Mana Cores on her body and then use them to regulate her mana...
"Time to make more huh." Elizabeth couldn't help but smirk, "Heed my call lifeblood of magic."
Elizabeth's voice thrummed as the mana within her body stopped to listen to her commands.
"Condense first in the center of knowledge, the base of all magic casting and the place where the Idea flows from," Elizabeth first commanded her mana to make a mana core inside her head. The place where she always commanded her Will when using Idea.
"Secondly, condense within the Heart, the base of my feelings and love. The place where the Will to protect is born from." The second mana core she made formed behind her Heart, she would always fight for those that she wished to protect, and she wanted her mana to not only follow her intelligence and will, but also her emotions.
"Thirdly, condense within the craddle of life, the place where new life is born and where those that will follow within my footstep will be born." The third mana core was formed within her navel. And it would be what would protect the life that would be born from her union with Rossie or Rena.
"And you are done, congratulations." Lily's voice made Elizabeth snap out, and she opened her eyes.
The first feeling that hit her was dizziness as the World seemed to turn...sharper, as if she wasn't being blinded by fog.
"I thought the first one would be the psychopath, but she is still having trouble setting up the correct Mana Pathways for what she wants, she wants both life and death. That will be tricky...but as soon as you got the first iteration it was all easy for you huh..." The silver-haired girl said, eyeing Elizabeth up and down, "Congratulations on becoming a Sorceress... I thought you would be a Dragon Sorceress when that Mana Phantom materialized, but you ended up normal enough...I didn't think you would make a Dantian, though...Or three."
A what now?
"What kind of Magical Girl uses a Dantian?" Lily asked turning to Jenna.
"Don't look at me, you are the expert on those things. Not even Morganna or Merlin knows what you speak half the time," Jenna said shrugging.
A what now?