That was one revelation that Elizabeth was not ready to take in, the fact that she could probably do away with her skills and instead take others, others skills of things that she wasn't good at.

  “So…your skillset…” Elizabeth said, turning to Lily, "It's made of skills with things you aren't good at?"

  That… wasn't quite what Elizabeth expected if she was being honest. That one of the top powers in this world was using the [Advent] in such a way…

  "Not really, some of them are things I can do well enough on my own, most of my skills are things that I don't want to deal with." Lily answered with a shrug, "For example this thing!"

  And then she sank one of her arms into her chest and pulled a crystal from within.

  Elizabeth winced at the scene and shuddered once again when one of the skills disappeared from Lily's status screen.

  "This lets me strip field my rifle in seconds. I don't need it, and I can do the same easily enough, sorcery or not." Lily said, dropping the crystal.

  Elizabeth was half sure that she was going to see it fall into the ground and break into a thousand shards, but instead the thing flew straight back into Lily's chest, and after a second or two the Skill returned to its spot as if nothing had happened.

  "But now, with this Skill set up, I can just touch any weapon, and they get disassembled. It doesn't matter if I know the weapon or if I ever saw them before, I can even disassemble bladed weapons too!" Lily said smiling and puffing out her chest, while also hitting it with one of her fists as if to prove to the world how flat she was.

  That was some confidence in her own bodily image.

  "And the…sorcery?" Elizabeth asked in a small tone, not sure what to make of it.

  "Well, that I just do it, I just move the mana into the spell or magic I want," Lily shrugged as she summoned an orb made of Mana.

  "Hah!" Elizabeth said, pointing with her finger at the mana orb, "You said it was magic!"

  Was Elizabeth being childish? Perhaps.

  Did she care? Of course not!

  She had won!

  "I mean, it was kind of obvious all of it was a bait to get you interested," Lily said looking at Elizabeth as if she was being dumb, "If it moves like magic, behaves like magic, acts like magic. Then what is it?"

  "...Magic?" Rena said raising her hand.

  "Exactly," Lily nodded at Rena, "Precisely, but…how does it look when to your senses no Mana is being used?"

  That…that made Elizabeth stop the complaint she was about to file against [The Nine Stars]. It looked…magical…

  "Like Skills?" Rena chimed once again.

  "No, even when using skills we move Mana. The difference is that most of the time, skills can do things that normal Spells can't. And that more often than not skills are unique to their holders, even two skills named the same can have different outcomes." Elizabeth answered before Lily answered.

  She knew this to be true, even her own skills were like that. She hadn't seen anyone else using the [Shadow Manipulation] Skill like her, no one else used it to summon Shadow Dragons either.

  Granted, now she was aware that was partially because of her heritage, the fact that her Skill allowed to summon shadow dragons…and that the limit of it wasn't…

  "...My Shadow Minion summoning skill isn't limited by the skill level." Elizabeth said aloud as she came to that realization.

  "What do you mean Eli-Eli?" Rossie asked from the side, "Didn't you stop summoning because it was straining at you?"

  "It strained at my Soul, not at my Skill. Every time I summoned more Minions, the Skill updated to the level that would let me hold those numbers, even if barely." Elizabeth said, remembering each time the Skill leveled up.

  Looking back at it, the Skill never actually helped her at all. She couldn't summon other entities, or better yet, it was meaningless for her to do so.

  "Exactly," Lily said in front of her, smiling as the cat that ate the canary, "To people like you, or like Jenna and myself, to true Genius, the skill level are meaningless. Half the things they are there are things we can do on our own. To you the [Mana Manipulation] skills is closer to a shackle than a helping hand."

  A…shackle?

  "What do you mean? How could it be a shackle? Even if it doesn't help me, it shouldn't be like that." Elizabeth said back, the mere idea of a skill being detrimental…it just couldn't be real.

  The system was being manned by Papa and Mother. Both of them were at the helm…how could…

  No…wait. They weren't the ones truly behind it. Not really…

  The one behind it…The one that made it…The one that installed that goddamned thing on her…

  "That Motherfucking asshole…" Elizabeth spat the name as if it were ash, "...Yeah, I can see it. The asshole probably made it as training wheels that he intended to remove, looking back at it, among the things that he left behind were some skills that could very well be used to do so…"

  Elizabeth remembered the skills that she got offered before, the ones filled with programing-like names and effects, the ones that she could have taken if shes wanted to follow into the footsteps of Alexanders.

  A thing that she very much didn't like to do.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "...I have no idea who this person you speak is, but you are to blame for this." Lily said looking at Elizabeth weirdly, "You should have noticed it, you have the mana sensitivity and mastery over it already."

  She had a what?

  Elizabeth tried to weave her Mana into one of her favorite spells, then feed it into her shadows as usual but felt nothing different or special.

  "Not if you try it like that, now try to prevent the mana from leaving your body." Lily said, raising her finger, "Like this."

  And…did absolutely nothing, at least to her senses. Not even using her Dragon Eyes returned anything. To Elizabeth's senses, Lily wasn't moving her Mana at all. But even so, after a few seconds, a blob of Mana emerged from her finger. Before the blob emerged, Elizabeth hadn't felt anything.

  So Elizabeth tried to do the same; she first felt her Mana coursing through her body, how it permeated her, and how the Mana danced around her body. Barely two centimeters outside her body, as if it was an Aura of some kind.

  After getting a sense from her Mana Aura Elizabeth got to work and started pulling at the Mana.

  First, she attempted to slow down the mana generation…. And hit a wall, the Mana didn't want to behave. Or more like a reflex from Elizabeth's mana Manipulation stopped her Mana from sinking within her body.

  It was not quite a reflex movement from her, and it was more like her Mana suddenly stopped and behaved in a way that allowed her Mana to permeate into the air. As if sinking within her body was impossible.

  Elizabeth would think it was normal behavior and leave it at that, something within her didn't want it to behave like that, so surely that meant that it had a reason to be like that.

  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and focused on that feeling, once again she tried to focus her senses into the Mana, how it moved, how it flowed... She could control it, direct it into anywhere she wanted and it would react as usual, it moved at her whims, but as soon as she attempted to retract the aura made up of Mana into her body...

  "See?" Lily said smirking at Elizabeth.

  "The skills don't let us move the mana how we want, they help us most of the time, but when we want to do as you asked us they stop us from doing so." Rossie said from the side, "Nothing on my scans says that doing what you ask is dangerous or will hurt us, but the skills don't let us. Why?"

  Why indeed...

  "As far as I can tell, [The World] doesn't want it because it feeds in our Mana to increase the density of the ambient Mana. See this?" Lily answered raising her finger, the one that had the blob of Mana, "If I let this go what happens?"

  And as soon as Lily said that, she let the control of her Mana go and the blob of Mana started dispersing..

  No, looking closely it was more like the blob of Mana turned into ambient Mana. It was slowly turned into more ambient Mana.

  Looking closer into her own mana aura, Elizabeth noted how small motes of Mana got transformed into ambient Mana, whenever one fragment of her Mana was released into the air, it was turned into ambient Mana...

  The same could be said about her shadow mana even.

  So...Elizabeth was feeding the ambient Mana?

  And if one took into consideration how dense and rich her Mana was...

  "I'm the goose that lays golden eggs...and so, [The World] doesn't want to let go huh?" Elizabeth said looking to the side and summoning her status screen.

  There is sat, unmoving...staring at her...

  [Mana Manipulation]

  "Can we get it back if we drop this? Elizabeth asked, focusing on the Skill.

  "Probably? I haven't attempted to get it back, but it should be easy enough since you will get help from [The World] if you ever want to get the Skill back." Lily answered hazardly, that wasn't encouraging. At all.

  "Fine..." Elizabeth sighed and turned to look at the silver-haired woman, then to Rossie, "I'll do it first this time, I have the best Mana Manipulation of us all after all."

  If it really worked like that, Elizabeth would reexamine her skills and change them accordingly.

  Perhaps she could take some of the skills that she hadn't taken before, and if this was true, then she wouldn't need some of these skills. Shadow Minion would be the first to go away, but she didn't need them to summon her Shadow Dragons, after all.

  And perhaps this way, they would earn more individuality, like the thunderbirds and fire salamanders. If not...well, she could attempt to bridge her Shadow Minions with one of her [Sins].

  "Discard [Mana Manipulation]," Elizabeth intoned to her blue screen.

  Well that was...bullshit.

  "What build?" Elizabeth said narrowing her eyes at the blue screen, "Identify."

  "Discard Magic Circle Manipulation, Spell Crafting, Minion Summoning, Shadow Step and Shadow Doppelganger." Elizabeth then intoned afterwards, these skills seemed like the ones that would be directly affected by Mana Manipulation.

  Shadow Puppeteer was too complex to even consider removing, Shift was too vital to experiment, and the same could be said of Crown of Sin and Soulscape.

  This time the skill showed a response and those skills got removed, the next thing Elizabeth did was move Soulscape and Crown of Sin into the banked space of her skills, that left three skills on the list, "Remove Mana Manipulation," Elizabeth intoned. She felt some resistance as if the skill still refused to want to leave, but Elizabeth was not having anything of this, "Remove Mana Manipulation."

  This time she suffused her will into the skill, she would not be denied, her will was going to come to reality and rewrite the world if it needed to be done.

  And as if it was the first time that Elizabeth had breathed, she started choking. Not from missing air, or because she was suddenly thrown into a deep sea. No, well, yes. But not in that sense.

  "Breath, take in the mana, move it through your mana channels, into your core, suffuse the core, then start again." Lily's presence suddenly came bearing into Elizabeth.

  She almost stumbled for a second, but her mana kept the waterfall of ambient mana from crushing her, giving her a respite.

  "Then and only then, exhale the mana that you don't need, the one that is anathema to you. The mana that it isn't worth to replace, keep a steady rythm." Lily said slowly, as if explaining to a child how to walk, "Or close your mana pathways, subsist using only your own mana. This will prevent you from being overwhelmed, but also means your mana regeneration will be that much slower."

  ...Was that the reason why Lily didn't allow her mana to leak?

  "Yes," Lily nodded as if hearing Elizabeth's question. "If you don't think yourself capable of that, then take up once more Mana Manipulation."

  Take the thing again?

  Was that even...

  Okay, it was possible, it was more than possible.

  "I'll attempt to do it." Elizabeth answered, "You can stop doing that."

  And bracing herself for the flood, Elizabeth's senses were open to the maximum. She focused first into her Shadows, even witouth most of her skills she still could get the feeling for her shadows.

  The shadows helped her, they intercepted most of the ambient mana that came into her way, the shadows took this mana into them and turned into Shadow Mana.

  They exhaled as much mana as they took, but they did so far away from Elizabeth, helping her.

  The second sense she focused on was her eyes, she could see the mana sinking into her body, going into the pores within her skin, it was almost as if her whole body was breathing in the mana.

  But Elizabeth noticed that a small amount of mana was being exhaled, as if her body was attempting to do what Lily told her, Elizabeth couldn't help but smile at that, her body already wanted to adapt and was telling her how to do so.

  So she followed her Instincts.

  "Take in the mana, breathe it in," Elizabeth said and opened her mouth; taking a deep breath she Gulped in the mana, she had started her current path (Even if by accident and against her wishes) by eating mana.

  She had started this path with Gluttony.

  "Now that we have the mana..." Elizabeth said as she turned to her next senses.

  Space.

  Using the new sense of space she had, she could monitor how the mana was behaving within her body, not only using her own mana sense, right now how it sat within her stomach as a blob of energy.

  So plucking at one side with her mana she attempted to syphon it. Only to rip it into two as a claw made of her mana attempted to grab it.

  This...this may take some time.