I've Got A Mana Processor In A Magic World-Chapter 85: Kathelyn

The next time Kathelyn opened her eyes, she found herself on a bed, wrapped in thick covers made from a fiber she couldn’t discern. She was in a room. An ice room with a single lantern glowing right above her.

She sat up stiffly, moving subconsciously to massage her hand that hurt, but she found that there was no pain to be felt there at all. The hand was fully healed. She stared at it, thinking about the fox-elf woman and the healing spell she had cast earlier. She was the one who had healed her...

Kathelyn put the thought aside and shrugged the covers off, climbing off the bed and looking at the clothes they had worn her in. It was a size larger than she was, but usable. She scanned the rest of the room she was in—it looked like some sort of igloo, likely underground too, as she noticed the stairs that sloped up the single doorway to the room.

Just as she made to walk towards the open doorway, she heard the soft patter of footsteps coming down the steps. The fox-elf that she had crashed into, came into view, nodding at her in greeting.

"Thraiellir yrlaeii jaefquitis?" she spoke in her own language, which Kathelyn failed to understand.

The fox-elf repeated her statement, pointing at Kathelyn, and then at herself, trying to pass across her meaning with gestures, but Kathelyn simply stared at her unblinkingly.

That was a month ago.

Since then, Kathelyn had picked up bits and pieces of their language she needed to survive in their small village.

"The warriors are back." Lira—the fox-elf woman, said to Kathelyn in her language as they neared the village enclosure.

It was a small, cozy collection of igloos with thick ice walls that insulated against the extreme cold on the outside. Even for the natives that had natural furs, this place was still cold. Though there were some of them, particularly some male fox-elves, that walked around bare-chested.

Kathelyn hadn’t gotten used to the extreme cold though, the most cold she’d ever experienced in her life was multiple degrees higher than what she was enduring here. And still, Lira had told her this was not even the coldest part of their tribe. Many more of her people were situated deeper into the lands further back. Where there were no traces of light. The cold there was what Lira classified as extreme in her own books.

Here, they were closer to the middle line of the planet, where temperatures were on the warmer side. The Orcs of Crag dominated the middle region, so the fox-elves could only stay in the frigid cold expanse on the dark side of the planet.

These were all the three races on this planet. The demons on the hot side facing the host star, the orcs at the temperate middle line, and the elves on the cold dark side of the planet.

The warriors Lira had just spoken of were people of her tribe who maintained peace at their border with Crag, preventing the Orcs from invading into their land—not that they could if they wanted to anyway. The Orcs hated the cold with a frigid intensity, preferring to invade the lands of the demons more often than they did the elves.

This was Kathelyn’s daily life. The people had taken her in despite her weird appearance, and she had in turn been as compliant as she could, keeping to herself most of the time. She rarely spoke, or interacted with anyone. The natives didn’t even know she could cast magic. She had made sure to never expose herself.

For the whole month, she hadn’t cast magic even once, simply biding her time and watching, giving them the impression like she was slow on the uptake. She didn’t know when her hidden card could come in handy, so for now she was content to keep silent... and watch.

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Freehold. Zephyr’s quarters...

Zephyr woke up groggily from a long and deep sleep, fully rested. He had been pulled into his mana core space again, but immediately left the place as quickly as he could to rest his mind.

He needed to figure out how to prevent the pull from triggering every time he fell into deep sleep.

He sat up, feeling lighter already. His head was clear. "That was fast," he stood up, double checking how he felt. "His body had basically recovered to near-peak state within the short span of a night. Master Gregory had estimated a recovery time of four days, yet he’d done it in one night. That was more than fast. It was superhuman.

But he couldn’t expose the fact that he had nearly recovered fully to anyone, not even his new Teacher— Jon. So he decided to stay indoors for the meantime and try comprehending new words.

Transistor was the next thing on his list, and he knew it was sure to be different. This time it was a concrete and physical component, rather than an understanding like the Bit. So he took his time to carefully sort out any inconsistencies in his knowledge of transistors with Aegis, using a whole day to build even deeper knowledge about them, and by the end of the day, he was relatively prepared to have a go at it.

It almost seemed like he was cheating. Other Exalted and Half-Exalted with inheritances had to spend time studying the concept of what they wanted to master. Learn and relearn for days, weeks, months, or even years if the concept was complex and technical enough. But he simply had Aegis who could communicate directly with his brain, increasing the speed of his comprehension exponentially.

Zephyr could have even sped through the whole thing with Aegis in less time, but he simply wanted to be thorough.

Now he was ready, and his only fear was triggering an origin feedback response of the scale which he did earlier, drawing the attention of the higher-ups again.

So this time, as he sat down, cross-legged, he relaxed his body till the point where he slowly fell into deep slumber.

He was going to try comprehending Transistors in his mana core space.