After being dropped off by her older sister, Cassandra took some time to lay out her plans for the near future. Like Diven, she had been pressured into picking the Facet of the Hoplite over her more esoteric Facet of the Mind Mage. The difference was that she didn’t seem to have the same repulsion he had toward Facet of the Rot Mage.
It was understandable. Mind magic was less disgusting than rot magic. Diven could see how people would be afraid of being subjected to both. However, from the caster's perspective, things were different.
Thus, Cassandra had stated in her journal she planned to select Facet of the Mind Mage once she was done with Facet of the Hoplite.
She was efficient. More than Diven had been. She already knew how to fish, how to track monsters, and how to best set up her camp so she wouldn’t be ambushed. She explained that her sister had taught her some of it on the way there.
Uncle Basil hadn’t been nearly as thorough.
In a few days, she had already fought several beasts and leveled up her Spear and Shield skills. Then, with the help of the martial manual she had wisely brought with her into exile, she completed her first facet.
Mind magic was fantastic.
This was the theme of the first volume of Cassandra’s journal. She had thrown herself into it as soon as she selected the facet and received the skill.
She didn’t have a teacher so she had to discover everything by herself. But Cassandra was a bright mind; reading her journal gave the impression that she already knew a lot about mind magic.
Mind magic was divided into two branches. Improve your own mind or mess with the minds of others. Naturally, Cassandra studied both applications of her skill.
Magic skills were all similar: they gave their user the ability to manipulate mana attuned to their specific branch of magic. Fire Magic lets you manipulate fire mana, Water Magic water mana, and so on.
Mind Magic was no exception, so Cassandra was working with mind-attuned mana. Fortunately, her own thoughts naturally produced mind mana.
Mana-type availability was always a concern for mages. Diven often heard his mother complain about her own sunset attunement. Her mana type was only present at dusk. Although there were workarounds at the higher levels, it remained a major weakness. Even the clan’s notorious sun attunement meant their power suffered a lot during the night.
With this solved for her, Cassandra didn’t have this problem. At least, not in the same way the Leios clan did. Her issue was that her own mind wasn’t producing enough attuned mana for her to use.
At least, that’s what she wrote in her journal.
Based on the pages upon pages of experimental logs Diven was reading, she certainly had mana to perform a lot of tests. It may not be enough to do it all day long, but still.
And so Cassandra practiced her magic, each spell she came up with making her facet progress and her power grow. From her account, it took her a month of trial and error before she developed a working formula for a thought-acceleration spell.
Diven found it very impressive. Thinking faster could only be useful, it would have repercussions on all of her skills.
Then, she turned her attention to the offensive applications of her magic. Her stated goal was to create the opposite version of her thought speed-boosting spell that would slow the minds of her enemies.
It sounded like a good idea, widening the gap in thought speed between her and her opponents would give her a greater advantage. However, it didn’t pan out how she was hoping it would.
Creating the reversed spell didn’t require a lot of effort from her, but it didn’t have the expected effects. Monsters weren’t thinking as much as they were acting on instinct. An iron boar charging at her wouldn’t simply stop if its mind was muddled.
Instead, it would continue its charge.
She needed something better. Something more shocking.
Good thing for her, she had plenty of subjects she could experiment on. Namely, the fish that made up most of her diet.
The thing that made them such excellent targets to practice on was that their mind was already very weak.
This time, it took Cassandra a while to devise an effective spell. But after weeks of trying different ideas, she managed to create one that would stun her target for a brief moment.
The idea was to disconnect the target’s mind from their body. It never lasted more than an instant, sometimes less for creatures with a stronger mind. But it turned out to be very useful in combat.
Fights were usually decided in just a few moments. If her target couldn’t dodge or counterattack, a nicely placed spear would do the job.
After a few months in the wilderness, Cassandra complained that her Facet of the Mind Mage wasn’t progressing fast enough. Diven couldn’t help but agree, she was spending all her time studying magic.Even basic chores like maintaining her camp and food stocks had become mind magic exercises.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The only limiting factor was the lack of mind-attuned mana. And even then, between her own production and what every living being in the forest made, there was a lot to go around.
As far as Diven was concerned, either magical facets simply required more to complete, or mind magic in particular was an advanced attunement, making it more difficult.
It didn’t really concern him since he still had no desire to ever learn rot magic.
He knew it could be powerful, But it simply wasn’t for him. What good would it do him? For all the power mind magic was giving Cassandra, hadn’t he found her body in this very cavern?
What was the point of dying a pariah?
The journal continued listing the countless mind magic experiments Cassandra conducted during her first year of exile.
The first volume ended with her reaching level 5 in her Mind Magic skill and finally completing her Facet of the Mind Mage.
Putting the book down, Diven carefully put it back in place with the others and took out the second volume. He wasn’t sure what to make of what he had read. He felt bad about himself. The girl who had written those lines was the same whose bones he had buried earlier.
It was weird.
She was in the same situation as he was, and yet they were so different. He didn’t have the strength to dive into the very magic that got him exiled. Compared to her, he felt like he was just stumbling around, surviving on luck more than anything.
He had learned a lot about mind magic from the first volume, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.
What he wanted was the account of her time in the rift.
Still, he was interested in what facet she would choose next. She had noted the presence of both Facet of the Survivor and Facet of the Exile on her previous selection. If she picked one of the two, he may get some interesting data on his own skills.
As if listening to his wish, the second journal started with a list of Cassandra’s available choices.
Available facets:

Facet of the Survivor
Facet of the Exile
Facet of the Hunter
Facet of the Mind Manipulator

Then came an explanation of why Cassandra chose Facet of the Mind Manipulator. Diven was disappointed, but he still continued to read.
Cassandra started by acknowledging that the risk of her learning mind manipulation was the reason why she had been exiled in the first place.
But so what? Unlike Diven, she didn’t want to return. If her clan didn’t want her, she didn’t want them either. Facet of the Mind Manipulator was obviously a step toward improving her mind magic. In her year of loneliness, it had been her complete focus on that magic that had kept her occupied.
She needed to continue.
So she picked Facet of the Mind Manipulator and received the Mind Manipulation skill. Unsurprisingly, the idea behind it was to let her control the minds of others.
But it was easier said than done. The process of entering a beast’s mind and controlling it was intense. The required focus was so intense that even when she succeeded in controlling her target, her own body was left unattended.
It was during her training in Mind Manipulation that she discovered the rift portal. She was practicing her control on a random fish. The sensation was strange, almost alien. Living underwater, breathing was completely different and she had trouble getting used to it.
She experienced a similar discomfort with most creatures she took control of. After all, she was putting her mind in a body that didn’t belong to her. She theorized that even when used on another human, there would be some discomfort for her.
While she was trying to figure out how to control the fish’s body when she noticed the glowing portal underwater. Startled, the connection to her target’s mind cut off.
She wanted to enter the rift.
As much as she wanted to master mind magic, training alone in the same place for so long was getting dull and repetitive. The journal entry turned into a list of arguments in favor of entering the rift. Key among them, it may help her develop her skills.
Even across time and medium, Diven could see she was making excuses to escape her boring reality. He understood her. It was easy for an outsider to judge her for making a bad decision. Especially since he knew she would never leave the rift.
However, had Diven been given a choice, he may have decided to enter the rift of his own volition.
So Cassandra convinced herself that the rift was right for her and she entered it.
The first entry after she entered the rift came soon after she met with the guardians. Diven couldn’t be sure they were the same as the ones he met, since they were wearing masks. But her description matched Feline, Dog, and Bird.
Her experience so far had been similar to his own. Walking in the mist until she found footprints to follow. Meeting the three guardians near the stone. But Cassandra was extremely suspicious of the guardians.
In her journal, she was adamant: rifts didn’t have guardians. Everything in a rift wasn’t necessarily hostile, but the only rule was to find the exit. There was no strange quest to complete facets or whatnot.
Diven kept in mind that Cassandra was the same age he was. He wasn’t sure she had the authority to speak on Evolved Rank rifts.
Still, according to her, the only requirement to leave a rift was to find the exit.
The guardians were asking them to complete facets for a reason. Cassandra suspected they wanted data on rarer facets. It was something the clans of Kheiron were doing. Recording their members' choices and skills to better advise the next generations.
Ultimately, it didn’t interfere with her goal of developing her magic.
She didn’t mind.
What she minded was the magic affecting her senses. Specifically, the mist that obscured her view of the rift. As a mind mage, she had already identified that something was messing with her perception.
With the safe zone around the black stone, it only took her a few hours to identify the source of the issue and earn The Fifth Direction skill. She didn’t comment on it. She didn’t care, she was here for mind magic.
Diven was jealous. Very jealous. When he thought back to his struggles and the pain he endured to get the same skill…
Cassandra was so much more talented.
Still, he kept analyzing her words. As talented as she was, Cassandra was dead. It wasn’t a competition between them.
All he wanted was to survive the rift.
He needed to pay attention to the details on Cassandra’s account of her time here. Read between the lines, there was no way she had written everything in her journal.
He needed to get all the data he could.