[center][img]https://see.fontimg.com/api/renderfont4/RRdW/eyJyIjoiZnMiLCJoIjo4NywidyI6MTUwMCwiZnMiOjU4LCJmZ2MiOiIjOTI5NEZGIiwiYmdjIjoiIzM2MjM2QiIsInQiOjF9/UGV0cmE/grime.png[/img][h3]Neir Slums — Dilapidated Shack[/h3][@Zeroth][@ERode][@PKMNB0Y][hr][/center]Petra felt a little frustrated as she lay as a puddle on the floor of the shack. Not that there was much else she could have been doing, but doing nothing when there was so much she needed to ‘see’ and discover, didn’t exactly feel great. In hindsight, she probably should have been a little more conservative with her mana – or whatever it was this world's magic ran off – as without it, she was more or less immobile. 

Hmm… Perhaps she could set up a program to move herself more effectively, rather than modifying her preexisting one every time she wanted to move or stop moving? Except, so far as she’d been able to manage thus far, her programs were restricted to responding to her senses or else constantly doing their thing without outside input. What she needed were programs that could respond dynamically to her thoughts, except how was she supposed to set something like that up, when, at least as far as she could tell, her thought processes and physical brain were now entirely separate things?

On that note, Petra also knew she’d have to figure out what the limitations to her ‘mana’ were, which was a whole other challenge in its own right. Was there some threshold she would cripple herself or die if she went past? It wasn’t like there was an easy way to test it, and it wasn’t like she could just look up the answer. Maybe she could ask someone – or more likely get one of her companions to ask for her – but how common were spell casters? They were usually pretty rare in fantasy stories, right? Would a layman be able to answer her questions? 

And that wasn’t even covering the physical side effects of using magic – though that topic at least would probably be a lot easier for Petra to test herself. Down had said they’d gotten a nosebleed after they’d used magic themselves, so unless they’d banged their head or something, there was almost certainly some kind of physical side effect, the question was what? Was the damage to specific parts of the body or more spread out? Did using magic cause the body to start heating up? Was it ionising? Did it cause cell lyse? 

Petra hadn’t noticed any cellular damage to her own body while she was messing with the insect’s photoreceptors, but at the same time, she had been fully focused on the task at the time, and from what she’d observed of her biology, any cells that were damaged would likely have been consumed soon afterwards. 

If the side effects of spell casting was something like generating heat, that would probably be manageable, but if it were more along the lines of random cellular damage, then that might be more of an issue. Maybe not for Petra herself – she was pretty sure her current body would fare pretty well against that kind of damage and, perhaps somewhat ironically, her magic could likely deal with any biological side effects it produced – but for any human spell casters it might be an issue.

Petra was just about to send Down a message warning them to avoid casting magic until they could figure out whether it caused cancer or something when everything went to chaos. Well, ‘chaos’ might’ve been putting it a bit strongly – whatever happened only lasted a couple of seconds – but still, it was enough for Petra to realise something was up, even with her limited senses. One moment, she’d felt Down stomping across the shack, and the next there had been a loud noise that wasn’t words and what Petra though might be some kind of scuffle, followed shortly by a new voice – at least Petra assumed it was someone new speaking. 

“Oi, you… shack. One… <Name: Up> acquaintances? Could you bring… bastard… at gate? … <Name: Newcomer>… bring him in for questioning… ask.”

Wait, was Down being asked to bring Up to the gate or was it the ‘bastard’ someone else? Had Up done something to get themself in trouble? Petra thought about it for a second, then gave up on the matter; trying to piece together what was going one when she’d probably only heard half the words said at best, would be a waste of her time, especially when she couldn’t see what was going on. 

More importantly, Petra had observed another interesting phenomena; the translation function struggled with names. Sure Petra could understand exactly who was being talked about when she heard the name, in fact, she was pretty sure as long as it was being translated she’d know exactly who was being talked about even if two people shared the same name, but the fact remained that despite having understood the names meanings, she still didn’t know the names. Was that a clue as to how the translation function worked? 

Realising she was getting distracted, Petra mentally made a mental note to think about the phenomena further later, along with all the other crazy things she’d need to contemplate. 

[quote][b][code]Contacts: "Down"[/code][/b][/quote][quote= Me][code]What happened? Is everything okay? Did Up do something?[/code][/quote]
… Well, it wasn’t really important, but, compared to all the other things she needed to test it would be pretty trivial, and more importantly, wouldn’t require any magic, so…

[quote][b][code]Contacts: "Down"[/code][/b][/quote][quote= Me][code]Also, assuming you can read the language, if you see any signs for shops or things like that could you read them to me aloud and then send me their names? Trying to figure out the translation function. I need both things with names that have other meanings and those that don’t.[/code][/quote]