"Oh! That's fair, but also, Dragon Fairy Elf Witch makes sure I don't get any downsides, so it's fine."

"So you can't eat people's mana now."

"...Okay, I prooooobably could eat someone's mana if I killed them, but I don't know for sure, and also I didn't get that one from a mal, I got it from Orion Lake."

"...he can eat people's mana??"

"Well, technically anybody can do that. Orion can apparently take mals' mana. And get it qua mana."

"...that explains so much."

"And now I can do it too! I'm still trying to figure out if it has any unexpected downsides but if it doesn't I am going to use More Magic to hand it out like candy."

"We will overhunt all the mals to extinction and be short certain materials. Which to be clear would be a good problem to have."

"I will simply duplicate the materials. But also, yes, I would like to take the current food chain and smelt it down into a decorative trophy."

"Okay! Vivat!"

"Anyway, I did get some neat stuff, and if it's not too philosophically disquieting I was wondering if you wanted any." 

"Whaddaya got?"

"Heat resistance and cold resistance, separately. Improved sense of smell. Improved night vision, improved particulate-penetrating vision, improved movement tracking. Boost to strength. Resistance to various toxins and corrosives. Improved ability to hold my breath, or possibly even outright water breathing, I'm not sure, that divination spell was a little imprecise. Improved flexibility. I can stick things to my skin now, no prizes guessing what I got that from."

"Have you got previous guinea pigs?"

“No, but the sensory stuff at least seems as though it would be hard to have a hidden downside.”

"Does it? Maybe you're architected to process more information than a normal person, just off the top of my head."

“…That’s…fair. The night vision and fog vision ones are probably safe? They don’t raise the ceiling on informational input, just deal with obstacles.”

"Does night vision work in shadowed parts of a lit room?"

She looks under the agglo tank. “…Yes.”

"I probably shouldnnnnn't but I do want it."

“But where am I going to find a guinea pig for this stuff? I’m keeping the mal-copying on the downlow for most—my parents, I could give them to my parents. Although I’m not sure to what extent that addresses your concerns; if I’m architecturally altered for greater information processing, then they definitely are.”

"They are! But they have perhaps fewer and definitely different other possible factors that could affect how it is for them, so if there's a problem other than my exact guess - if they're fine I'd be at least more confident."

"There's a kid who was half-blinded in an alchemical explosion last Monday and he's still holding on, he might take it."

"I didn't hear about that."

"You weren't there, he isn't advertising."