Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Nati - Ch. 107

"So it's gone? And the Cerberus and the Nightmares..."

"No no no, it's not gone, it's just sealed." Emi shook her head, grabbing my empty plate and holding it up for me. "Like, we entered a cave system and followed the traces of mana, but we ended up going around in a huge circle with no actual entrance to the thing. Then we realized, that it's just earth, someone from the inside probably filled up all the routes that led there, to keep these snail things out."

I struggled to understand what she meant, drawing a circle around the plate, but then she knocked on it confidently.

"The dungeon is still there, we just have to dig a new entrance, but it should be easy enough." She claimed, putting down the plate. "We didn't want to rush in without you... But you don't seem to be ready."

"Oh, uh, I need to refill my mana." I nodded, trying to recall that method the Goddess told me about. "I gained a lot of weight but Alexandra said I could convert that directly into magicules if I'm ever low."

"Wow, that's just cheating!" Emi yelled, then burst into laughing. "Not like I need to lose weight, but people back in our world would be very jealous. Turn your fat into magic, huh? I wonder if I could gain some weight doing the opposite..."

She pulled up her uniform to flash her thin midriff, and even though she was sitting, her skin did not fold over her skinny belly. She was always a scrawny kid, but it looked like she lost even more weight since I died in that other world. I felt pity for her, thinking I must have caused this, but the longer I stared at her midriff, the more embarrassing the situation turned out to be. I slapped her hand away and fixed her shirt with a blush.

"I don't think it's possible to remain that thin if you eat Lambert's cooking all the time, and don't know any magic tricks..." I claimed, laughing nervously. Now my mind was filled with so many conflicting thoughts that I had no chance to remember that method. "The Goddess said she didn't want to rely on her followers, but she still needed a lot of mana, so she just converted the food she ate directly. The crystal doesn't know the method though, and I can't remember what she said..."

"Well, maybe just imagine how the fat evaporates and turns into a cloud of mana or something?" She laughed, patting my round belly, embarrassing me even more. I worked a lot on it last month, but it was still far from the shape I inherited from Alex.

Emi's idea seemed good enough to try though. Even if she meant it as a joke, magic worked similarly. If I could visualize something, it would become reality with the mana I controlled. But now I had to attempt the opposite and gain mana with this method, and I had a rowdy tomboy next to me, that didn't let me focus on anything...

My concentration chances dropped below zero once the other two girls appeared at my door. They brought their spiky and flame-looking magic staff with them but entered carefully as if treading on eggshells. This reminded me of how my attempt at levitating small rocks turned into a literal black hole before I passed out, and it explained their strangely careful behavior. I let out a nervous giggle.

"Oh, you're up, how're you feeling?" Omerta asked, leaning against the doorframe. Ember stopped only a step away from her, almost as if she tried to hide behind that staff, the usual confident stance nowhere to be found. "How much did Emi tell you about our scouting mission?"

"Um, just that you found no entrance to the dungeon, and you will open one... I'm, uh... Sorry about that... Thing." I struggled to put it into words without embarrassing myself even further. While I barely remembered the details, things would have been ugly if they looked at me like this. "And that I held back the entire expedition..."

"Nuh-uh, it's all right. If anything, now we know that you can deal some serious damage if it comes to that." The orc witch responded with a laugh, but it felt forced on me. Ember seemed reluctant to add her part, but Omerta nudged her shoulders and made her speak.

"I bet you are out of mana and feeling tired... When I depleted my magicules, I used these crystals to drain some from them, but it's quite risky if you don't know what you are doing." She explained, a bit discursive. Gitaut said something about their purple crystals still containing the mana from their previous functions, but mine never emitted a significant amount. "Ah, otherwise, you could just meditate a bit and refill that way, we are not in a hurry or anything..."

Now it was clear as a day, that they came to urge me a bit. Unsurprisingly, if I was passed out for an entire day and was about to experiment with turning my excess weight and energy into magicules anyway. But I got more and more distracted instead.

"Ah, the thing is, the Goddess taught me a method, but I never tried and it's a bit hard to concentrate like this..." I tried my best to tell them politely, they were a bother, without scaring or offending them. Interacting with people, especially when I wanted to make them do something was tiring for me even more than training or using magic...

Fortunately, I had my little sister with me who seemed to understand my meaning without explaining it further. She opened her arms and launched herself off my bed, herding the witches out of my room.

"Take your time, Nati, I'll handle things out here." She claimed, turning back for a mischievous wink, and reminded me why I loved her so much. I couldn't believe I lasted this long without her in this ruthless and strange world. She slammed the door behind her, and I was finally left with the empty plate and my staff in the dwarven smith's room.

"Right, let's not disappoint her..." I mumbled to myself, attempting to clear my mind from all the whirling thoughts inside it.

I cooked bacon before, and sometimes I felt like a pig for eating this much, so it wasn't hard to think of the parallels. The thin slice of bacon would sizzle and shrink as it touched the heated pan, and release the fat, gathering on the bottom. I imagined the same thing happening to my shame, the belly fat I packed on this godly body in the last months, and how that fat would then serve as the ingredients for another dish.

The very essence from which I could cast my spells. I had to turn that substance into magicules, without instructions. Alexandra never explained her method in detail, but if I found some parallels, I could turn matter directly into energy.

E = mc^2. I learned this back in school. Well, at the very least, I heard about it. Energy or mana, it shouldn't matter, I started the transformation...