I tried asking Zaitenmodi about it too, but got a pretty similar answer.
'Finding out on my own isn't really a problem, but why are they acting so mysterious?'
They were behaving like it was a spoiler to something.
It seemed the answers I sought wouldn't come quickly.
'Well, whatever.'
Following his tutelage, when I meditated, I could feel the mana flowing through my body quite clearly.
It was a little bit suspicious, since nothing I'd read about mana suggested it flowed. It was an extradimensional energy... supposedly.
On the other hand, it wasn't like Terran science knew what Skills really were either, so... it could have just gotten mana wrong too.
Supposedly, the theories around it were updated every now and then as new dungeons were discovered, which suggested that even if their observations were correct, the underlying abstractions were not.
But it was also possible that whatever Skill Zaitenmodi used to teach me simply made it seem as though mana was flowing, as some sort of sensory shorthand.
If I managed to teach Lilac without using a Skill, it'd be useful for my understanding of things too.
Although, since I'd been teaching Narakan techniques to her, they'd implicitly become Lost techniques, and so Savi wanted to study them too, albeit in her own way.
But my clarity only grew with practice, whereas Lilac remained uncertain that she could feel anything at all.
'I wish I'd learned this properly.'
I couldn't really explain how I was able to do it, or even how Zaitenmodi had taught me. Rather than granting me a new skill, it was more like he'd opened up a new sense that I didn't have before.
At first, it had been so hazy that I naturally doubted it was real.
But after a week or so of practice, it had come to feel normal to me.
By the way, I also kept at trying to learn Scan. The gist of those endeavors was that it apparently helped to measure everything with exacting precision, so it was easy to just do that while gardening, making bricks, and just everything else I did.
But there were no real results, nor would there be until I gained the Skill properly, whereas with Narakan meditation, I really did feel like I'd improved a lot.
I could understand why they favored using it to learn Skills.
So I wanted to see what actually using mana felt like. I thought that might be the next natural step.
Theoretically, there were magic devices that drew from the user's mana. These even included Skill training tools, used by many to try to learn magical Skills equivalent to the magical formulae they contained.
In practice, these tools were prohibitively expensive. Magic schools shared them, and they tended to be passed along from owner to owner rather than sold in stores.
They were essentially bespoke devices made by the very best magical engineers throughout history.
Most people relied on similar devices that drew mana from cores.
Drawing it from a person who had no Skills was apparently the real challenge. It was allegedly like drawing water from a stone.
So unless you had a Skill, specifically one that used mana, it wasn't very easy actually tapping into your own mana.
I could always try to enroll into one of those schools.
They would, at the very least, probably let me in as a research subject who they allow to attend classes as payment, since I was an alien lifeform who had a rare Skill.
That was... not something I wanted to ever do, if I could avoid it.
Thankfully, as I just mentioned, I did have a Skill.
It was hard to imagine Beginner not using mana to function... unless it drew all of its power from my curse, anyway.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
But would my Skill activate in the Lost, or would the dungeon override it?
Empowered by a new way to analyze Beginner, I set out toward the portal to test it.
***
RedOwl: Strange.
Hero194: What's up?
RedOwl: Kid just died.
OutsiderFan71: ?!
RedOwl: She's fine. It happened in the Lost. She just appeared.
OutsiderFan71: Say that part first!!
Tiribi8: She did that a lot when she first showed up...
Tiribi8: The guild officers at the time stepped in after a bit to stop her.
OutsiderFan71: What, why?
Tiribi8: People got upset seeing her die over and over again.
OutsiderFan71: No, why'd she die over and over again?
Tiribi8: I'm not sure. I never asked.
***
Beginner definitely used mana to bring me back to life.
Although, if I had to be precise, it was more like it was preventing me from dying in the first place.
It was a little bit exhilarating, to be honest.
The mana flowing through my body flooded my injury, stitching it back together. More whirled its way around me until it covered me like a blanket made of imaginary water, and just like that, I was beside the portal.
It all happened extremely quickly.
'Isn't this Skill quite strong, though? Or do I just have a lot of mana?'
I barely felt drained at all.
Although, I figured that could just be because it had happened in the dungeon.
I wanted to immediately test what would happen if I'd done it outside instead, but people were looking at me the moment I appeared.
I figured if I walked through the portal and then reappeared right away, people would get very suspicious, very quickly.
If my Beginner wasn't common knowledge, it was best to keep it that way.
So I decided to go to Terra and kill some time. If I reappeared a few hours later, only the Azure Dragons would know for sure what happened.
Well... hopefully, anyway.
Although the convenience of the phone they'd given me made it seem like I had access to every book in the world through it, Van had given me one that contained knowledge that hadn't seemed publicly available.
Some things in it were, but it was like a faint shadow, as if filtered through hearsay and rumor.
'Perhaps that's why Terran science seems so shaky in some areas.'
So I hoped to see what the library had access to that my phone didn't.
***
The senior librarian once again found himself staring at a small, red-haired girl.
Well, she was dressed a lot differently than he remembered. She was wearing ordinary imperial street clothes, having come in with a heavy winter coat that she took off once she was inside the warm library.
It was surprisingly popular on these chilly winter days, since some people came up just to warm up.
Of course, most actually did use the library's services, whether they used its public computers or spent the time reading, since there wasn't much else to do.
But having worked there for decades, he knew they were driven to the building out of some form of necessity.
It wasn't like they'd be out in the cold once they closed up for the night. There were shelters if they were that desperate, and he'd even helped his share of people find them over the many years.
Sometimes it was just to save some money. Other times, they just came in because their usual hangouts were too cold.
He hoped whatever this girl's story was, she was here because she wanted to be...
'But is it really her? A dungeon boss now?'
Librarian that he was, he was used to having or finding answers for other people, not being perplexed himself.
Well, that happened too, but still.
He thought back to the last time he saw her.
'Ah... she might still not speak imperial...'
But the girl quickly proved him wrong, approaching him with a subtle expression of uncertainty.
"Hi. Thanks for the books, I can return them soon, but I'm using them to teach another girl."
'Books? ...Oh!'
"Goodness, you have a good memory! But those books were a gift. As long as you're using them, don't think anything of it!"
"A gift...?"
"Of course."
"Well... gifts shouldn't be one-sided..."
"It's more than fine. If you still feel compelled to give back, you could come by and volunteer when you're a bit older."
"Do I have to be older to volunteer?"
"Well... that's actually a bit complicated. It, um... depends on a lot of things, really..."
He found himself wondering...
'Do dungeon bosses have to be older? Ah... isn't she kind of like a foreign princess... or something?'
It was hard to rattle the old man, but even so, he suddenly felt an odd sort of anxiety.
He hoped that he hadn't somehow got out of his depths with this one...
***
I'd confirmed some of the public opinion that I'd found using my phone.
Libraries don't really have Skill books as such. Those were pretty much collector's items that could be found in magic academies and other such places.
Proper Skill books, anyway.
The one Van had given me was extremely dense, and yet all specifically focused toward the purpose of gaining a single skill: Scan.
The library did have a bunch of books on Skills in general, but while they had some advice, it seemed a lot more shallow, like the kind of tips I could easily find using my phone.
There were a couple of books on Naraka, but aside from a few fairytale-like books, they mostly described it in Terran terms. It seemed that few Terrans had ever actually been to Naraka.
None of the books explained where names came from.
That is, the names that were psychically broadcast when someone gained a Skill, or when someone was a dungeon boss.
'What if someone changes their name... or... are names just immutable here?'
That line of reasoning didn't make any sense to me, though.
Then again, if names were readable using Skills like Scan, then names were an objective truth in this world.
'But how are people named in the first place?'
I decided to ask the librarian.
Though I'd already asked Van and Zaitenmodi, it wasn't like they hadn't given me something akin to answers, so I couldn't really say doing so was a failure.
But I still hoped I'd get a straight answer this time.
There was no guarantee I'd ever be able to learn Scan, after all.
The Skill book Van gave me allegedly boasted a remarkably high success rate... of about 2%.
Well, it was remarkably high.
While the percentage of Skilled people was a bit under 5%, that included any Skill at all. The chance of getting a particular Skill was much, much lower.
Moreover, Skill books offered a forceful path to gaining a Skill, which is to say, most people who tried using one were those who would have never gained the Skill naturally.
So while I wasn't sure how successful the method Zaitenmodi showed me usually was, Van's answer had about a 98% chance of simply never coming to fruition.
Besides, this man was a bit familiar to me. It seemed like he was the one who lent me those books all those years ago.
"Excuse me, I have a question," I said after approaching his desk again.