The Crazy Daughter of the Duke's Family - Book One: Pandora

Chapter 3: Time Waits for No One

A sigh escaped her rosy lips as she got up with a growling stomach and stretched her slightly stiff limbs. A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was now ten in the morning. "Time for a snack?"

She looked down at her hands, feeling the strength in them, and was in awe. She hadn't expected anything, but the body she traveled into had a better mana path than her original body. As if it was meant to use magic.

There wasn't much for her to do except clean out the impurities. 'It's like doing a spring cleaning in your dorm after the holidays left everything covered in candy wrappers and tacky decorative trash.'

Rebuilding one's body with Mana had its ups and downs. On the one hand, of course, you would be able to use magic. You could use Mana to turn yourself into a weapon if necessary, strengthen your skin, muscles and bones, become faster and more agile. You would also start to appear healthier, with clear skin, a brighter complexion, full hair, and a good set of nails and teeth. Getting sick was also quite difficult.

At the same time, the moment you had Mana flowing through your veins, your body would use it. The fact that a magician would live many years longer than a non-magician was a telltale sign of this.

Since Mana was essentially a byproduct of the Life Force that Visitors consumed, only thicker in the ether when there were more Visitors around, it meant that it carried a form of Life Force itself.

The Visitors didn't like it because it could be bent and shaped out of proportion, making things possible that could not be done by human hands - turning it into a blessing that would actively repel them, for example.

But using that kind of energy meant that the body had to constantly feed it energy in reverse. That was why Rowena had made a new schedule for herself over the past week.

After getting up at seven, she ate a large breakfast, then a nutritious snack around ten, lunch around twelve, tea time with another nutritious snack two or three hours later, and dinner around five or six in the evening. Sometimes she would have a late night snack as well, but that depended on how desperate she was.

Of course, she wouldn't have to go that far if her body wasn't in such bad shape to begin with. So just getting her weight up to a viable level was going to be a chore, but now, while Mana was helping her get there faster, it was making her consume a ridiculous amount of calories every day.

'Well, it's no big deal, since I get to eat delicious stuff here.' Unlike before, when she got enough calories, but they were all empty to her. VAULT usually traded quality for quantity to keep her going.

But that wasn't all. In the mornings, after breakfast, she would excuse herself and run laps around the underground facilities. She would use the flow of her mana to stretch her limbs, making her tendons and ligaments more flexible and durable.

A skilled Enforcer would be able to use her agility and dexterity without any warm-up, as her body was in a constant state of "readiness", so to speak. While a Spellkeeper was mostly in a static position, providing buffs, debuffs, healing, and possible area of effect spells, they could still run if they had to. Most of them looked scrawny and thin because they didn't train physically, and their Mana consumed a lot of calories.

When Rowena lived as Celia, she was an Executor. You could say it's like a cross between the two professions mentioned above. She had to be on call at all times, something she didn't want to miss in the situation she was in now.

It's not like she was trying to become a pawn of the Empire's army or anything like that, she was just trying to get a last resort for herself and also secure a way to escape if it was ever necessary.