Chapter 74: Transcendence?! The Quantum of Mana?! What Is Going On Here?!

While Freya was running through the dungeon, already far too excited to remember there was anything else left to deal with, the system belatedly reminded her by throwing a whole series of notifications up in front of her.

She slowed step by step before stopping entirely, stunned by what was being displayed, and not solely because of the notifications themselves.

[ Congratulations! Your existence rises alongside your dungeon, and you grow stronger! ]

[ Your existence, previously classified as a Mana Entity, transcends! ]

[ Congratulations! You now exist as a Mana Transcendent! ]

[ Congratulations! You have obtained the title "Mana Transcendent"! ]

[ You have acquired the skill: Quantimana Control! ]

[ You have acquired the skill: Rune Gacha! ]

Wow! Wow! Wow! WOW!

If Freya looked this stunned, it wasn’t because of the notifications at all, but because of what she could see right beside them, since she had always perceived mana as a fine mist drifting through the world, something she could make out by concentrating a little, whereas this was something else entirely.

She was seeing far more, and above all she was seeing infinities of shining particles inside that mist, entire currents of them, everything mana was made of and everything it must have been all along.

Quantimana.

A name that was admittedly unoriginal and far too on the nose, but which from now on changed Freya’s entire world, all the more so given that these particles weren’t a single color, each one carrying its own, which made for an absolutely magnificent display of thousands of different shades floating through the corridor.

She approached the nearest one step by step, slowly reached out toward it, then flinched back hard and landed on her backside when it attached itself to her palm before climbing onto her hand, then up her arm, then all around her.

It’s... it’s beautiful.

The mana kept traveling along her body as though it had been called by her, and it looked like thousands of fireflies, except these ones were quantum.

QUANTUM?!

Her brain began overheating the instant she formed that word in her mind.

How can I possibly see the quantum properties of mana, or Quantimana, or whatever this is? Is this my body evolving again?

She turned her head toward a wall, then looked over the rest of the dungeon, noticing nothing beyond a view that was simply better than before, smoother and more beautiful, as though she’d just jumped from 360p to 1080p all at once, without making out a single atom or anything remotely like one.

So why, then?

Then her gaze landed on her new classification as a Mana Transcendent along with the title that came with it, and her mouth spoke on its own while her eyes were already lost again in that multitude of Quantimana.

"System, what does this title give me?"

[ The title "Mana Transcendent" grants you favorability from mana, greater affinity with it, and visibility of Quantimana. ]

Wait... wait... wait...

That’s far too much information at once! Favorability? Affinity, fine, I’ll allow it, that’s a term you see all the time in fantasy novels. But favorability from mana toward me? Isn’t that something you use for spirits, normally? For something alive?

"System, is mana alive?"

[ ... ]

"System, is mana dead?"

[ ... ]

"System, what does favorability from mana mean?"

[ ... ]

"System, is mana intelligent?"

[ ... ]

"System... no, never mind, I suppose..."

She let out a breath as she said it, gradually resigning herself to the fact that she’d obviously get no information whatsoever on the subject, no matter how she went about phrasing the question.

She then thought straight away of Aria, before remembering that she was currently busy looking after the others and explaining things to Kaguya, so she decided she’d wait a bit for the demon to come find her on her own, so as not to ask too much of her.

What a considerate employer I am~!

In any case, she now knew why she could see these things inside mana, and all that remained was to work out how to use them, which, obviously, would have to wait for Aria as well.

So she got back up, dusted off her backside and headed for the throne, using the walk to try out her new body.

She rolled her shoulders, flexed her arms, jumped once on the spot and landed without a sound, then swept her hand through the air at a speed she could barely credit, before concluding that she had cleared another enormous threshold, rather as if she’d gone from a child’s body to an adult’s all over again.

It was insane how much raising the dungeon system by a single level gave her, and at this stage she knew perfectly well that she could kill an ordinary human, the sort she herself had been on arriving in this world, with a single flick of the finger, and that wasn’t even an exaggeration.

She finally reached the Heart chamber, and saw that the Heart had gained yet more density.

She stood looking at it for a while, and it was rather like looking at herself in a mirror, except that now she could see what the mass in front of her was truly made of, not millions or even billions of Quantimana like the rest of the world, but billions of billions of billions of billions, and even then she knew full well that still wasn’t the right figure, because what she had before her came close to being infinite.

She stayed there far longer than she should have, head tilted slightly, completely absorbed in those currents turning through one another without ever repeating themselves, following a single golden particle with her eyes until it vanished into a sheet of blue, then another, then another after that.

She eventually blinked and shook her head.

Right. At this rate I’ll be here all day.

She finally sat down on her throne, and Anubia immediately settled onto her arm to drive her stinger in and start pumping her mana, to which Freya said absolutely nothing since she was thoroughly used to it by now.

And before turning to the important business of the dungeon system, it was time to pull.

"My dose of dopamine~~!"

She exclaimed it out loud to herself at the mere thought, before starting with the normal Gacha, deliberately saving the best for last.

"System, pull the Gacha, please~~!"

[ Initiating Gacha! ]

As always, a sort of wheel materialized in the air before her and began spinning at a dizzying speed, flashing symbols she didn’t recognize, tangled with letters, G, B, S and others, in a blur that normally forced her to squint.

Except this time it wasn’t the same thing at all.

Because she could now see what the wheel itself was made of, and the motion dragged tens of thousands of Quantimana of every color along with it, stretching them into spirals around the axis, recombining them with each rotation and sending them back the other way, forming a luminous vortex that had absolutely nothing to do with anything she’d seen until now.

She completely forgot about the pull itself, simply enjoying the display, mouth half open.

Then the wheel slowed, and stopped.

"...F," she said, reading the letter.

Then the object appeared, drifting gently down into her hands, and it turned out to be a hair dryer, white and perfectly smooth, with a grille at the back, a sliding switch on the handle and a tapered nozzle at the front.

But... it doesn’t have a plug?

The notification appeared as though to underline exactly what she’d just been thinking.

[ Congratulations! You have summoned a Mana Hair Dryer, Rank F. ]

"Ooooh~~! Actually, this is genuinely great! The girls are going to love this! By the way, do you have a status window?"

And at those words, despite the fact that she was addressing a completely inanimate object, the window appeared in front of her.

[ Mana Hair Dryer — Status ]

[ Unique Skills: – ]

[ Skills: Mana Conversion ]

[ Titles: – ]

"Mana Conversion?"

[ Mana Conversion: Replaces the electricity required to operate the device with a small quantity of mana. ]

"Genuinely! Genuinely incredible! Which just goes to show, once again, that with the Gacha the rank means absolutely nothing~~!"

She hugged the hair dryer to her chest with one arm, the other still occupied by Anubia who was calmly carrying on with her pumping, thoroughly delighted with the day’s pull.

"Now for the serious business!"

She set the hair dryer down carefully across her lap before continuing.

"System, what exactly is the Rune Gacha?"

[ Rune Gacha: Allows you to summon a rune sheet which can be applied to any compatible medium, whether a being, an object, or otherwise. One pull every 24 hours. ]

"Magnificent!" she cried out into the Heart chamber. "Finally another pull that’s permanent, I honestly hated that whole twenty-four hours before it vanishes idea! It was far too random to be genuinely useful, well, even if it did save my life twice against the same monster..."

She waved her own remark away with a flick of the hand.

"Anyway... enough stalling... System, run the Rune Gacha, please!"

[ Initiating Gacha! ]

The wheel spun once more, and once more Freya couldn’t help marveling at that whirl of colors, right up until it came to a stop.

"...B."

A sheet fell into her hands this time, with a circle drawn on it, or rather several concentric circles nested inside one another, connected by triangles and by an entire array of geometric shapes, the whole thing covered in letters she didn’t recognize at all and which seemed to glow faintly the longer you stared at them.

[ Congratulations! You have summoned a permanent-type rune, mana regeneration, Rank B. ]

Freya thought immediately of Laïa given the rune’s name, and to check whether it would really suit her, she asked.

"What are the effects of this rune?"

[ Mana Regeneration Rune: Grants +50% natural mana regeneration. ]

"What the fuck?!"

"50%??? And only Rank B?!"

She set that down carefully across her lap as well, thinking that Laïa would probably be the best placed to make use of it, before immediately hesitating at the thought that Aria might get considerably more out of it, or Kaguya, or honestly even herself, so much so that she dropped the question on the spot and decided she’d bring it up with Aria along with everything else.

Now it was time to move on to the part that excited her most of all, namely discovering the new buildings that the level 4 dungeon system had granted her.