Chương 71: Mana Focused Student

[New Common Title → Mana Focused Student (Grade I)] [Mana Focused Student (Common, I-Grade): Achieved by focusing on guided study of a new topic for over three hours without a break. Equipping this title increases focus, concentration, and mental intensity while learning or studying new subjects.] A replay of the notification glowed softly in Kelly's vision, a message she'd received a while back. She'd played around with the Title, tested its limits.

It had even slowly upgraded to Grade 2 over the course of the first few hours of focused work. It didn't seem to help quite as much as she thought it would.

'Guided study' was the Title's key requirement. Considering most of her studying and research of new topics had occurred before she'd gotten mana, and alone, it made sense she had only just received the apparently common Title now. This time, Kelly hadn't had the benefit of stolen datachips or completely innocent and benevolent scamming.

"Mana Focused Student," Kelly read the words and started laughing. A real, ugly sound in the peaceful lab.

"Let me get this straight," she said, not to anyone.

"My head gets clearer and quicker. But only when it's actually empty." She grabbed the staff off the table. It felt wrong in a good way.

"The second I figure the thing out, the benefits stop. No more clarity. That's the deal." Rowena sighed from her terminal.

"Do you have a malfunction?"

"It gets better," Kelly said, the effect starting—she felt clear-headed. Focused. It was a soft effect, a mental static turned to a low hum, as if she'd mainlined a double-shot of NeuroClear from the lab's emergency stash.

"You. You make it stronger. A teacher. A live one. You're my new favorite person." She walked over, staff in hand.

"It doesn't work with Data chips," the title wanted organic, guided learning—it wanted a teacher.

"But they're for rich kids and creative borrowers—thieves. I've been one. Years back. A creative, I mean." Rowena looked up, her expression the standard corporate blend of annoyance and exhaustion.

"Is there a point to this, or are you just talking to yourself again?" If not for the lenses that let her see mana, and her knowledge and experience with portal monsters and ridiculous magic, which made Kelly look like some young prodigy science god to normal people, Kelly doubted they'd be as patient with teaching her or take her seriously. But being able to casually do the botanical GMO stuff everyone else pretended they understood made her a valuable commodity that boosted their work by a ridiculous amount.

The perk spiked with a teacher. Rowena was that teacher. That meant Kelly had to execute Rowena's instructions exactly as the interim lead pictured them, which usually meant decoding notes written like Rowena assumed everyone had the exact same number of neurons she did.

She also had to work alongside the other synthetic humans and interns, plus Rowena, who kept everyone studying the extradimensional magical staffs and wood samples that occasionally whispered insults at people, and a crystal that kept trying to freeze anyone who looked at it wrong.

"I'm saying I follow your lead," Kelly said, the clarity sharpening Rowena's words." Exactly. No freestyling." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Rowena raised a single brow.

Kelly leaned against a lab table, surrounded by the faint hum of growth tanks and the sharp, clean smell of chlorophyll.

"So just to confirm," she said, tapping a glittering crystal shard on the counter.

"These crystals… there's no way to make them alive? Like, give them a little spark? A will to live?" Rowena didn't look up from her microscope.

"No. Once they're fully formed, they're just solid structures. They don't eat, grow on their own, react to their surroundings. They certainly don't reproduce."

"But they come from plants," Kelly pressed, picking up the crystal and holding it to the light.

"Doesn't that mean there's, I dunno, a blueprint of life in there somewhere? We can't… reboot it?"

"The plants guide the crystals as they form—their properties, their behavior—but once the crystal is finished, it's completely non-living."

"I thought so." Kelly dropped the crystal back onto the table with a dull clink.

"Dang it. So if we want a crystal that does something fun—like, say, explode on command or glow when I'm annoyed—the only way is to mess with the plants first? Twist their little green arms?"

"Exactly. The crystals can't change themselves. Any feature you want has to come from the plant that produces them." Kelly let out a long, dramatic sigh that seemed to release all her frustrated speculation. Then she rolled up her sleeves and got to work. There were five main ways people made genetically modified things. Adding a gene trait from another species. Copying a gene trait so many times that it worked stronger. Turning off a gene trait. Tweaking a gene trait. Mixing gene traits.

Like giving a tomato squirrel‑level acrobatics, tweaking a carrot to taste like candy, mixing traits into a genetic smoothie, or copying a strength trait so much an ant could bench‑press a human. The plants were from another dimension, built from materials that ignored every rule she'd ever learned, but the old ideas still worked—Kelly could still do all five. The world, or rather, the dimension, was different, but once you cracked the building blocks, the ways to push life in a new direction didn't really change.

Using the machines, Kelly twisted the living fibers with precise movements, guiding the shifting strands the way Rowena had shown her, and earned a short grunt of approval from the older woman.

"Finally. We'll need more material before this can take shape, so get the next section ready, Dr. Voss. And keep your head in it. Don't make me remind you how smart you're supposed to be."

"Whoa, hold up—I've been at this less than a day—to you, anyway." It was Kelly's fourth loop trying this.

"By that standard, I'm making Oppenheimer look like he's playing with Lego." Despite her protest, the immortal-assistant followed her new teacher's instructions and began preparing the next block of flora. What would have been simple with ordinary plants—just adjusting growth or small features—was far more complicated here. The material responded unpredictably, demanding precision in every motion. It was brutal.

People spent decades, sometimes centuries, learning how new things reacted when pressed, pulled, or coaxed. Kelly had Rowena's instructions, and the medical AI translated the pieces that made no sense, but turning that knowledge into movement took everything she had. It felt like taking apart a machine that refused to stay open—bolts slipping back into place the moment she touched them. The wood fought her in the same way every time.

First, she had to suppress one of the wood's natural behaviors—its tendency to move along certain standard default shapes—so it would be ready to stick to any structure she intended. Next came forcing the grain to follow a path it didn't accept, calming some sections while urging others awake, reshaping its natural urges with nothing but her hands and stubbornness. Every adjustment required patience and careful attention.

And finally she had to hold everything steady, keeping the restless fibers from snapping back into the form they wanted, forcing the material to follow the design she intended. It worked, if barely. It wasn't perfect. But it was as close as she could get it. [New Rare Title → Magic Tinkerer (Grade I)]