Eldrian woke in the middle of the night. Looking at the all to familiar tent, Eldrian quickly used Floga for some light and found his chair. A small short bar stool he had made for himself through a mix of some spells, having formed nails through an earth spell and pushed them in through wind magic, and a handy rock. He had carved the wood with one of the shortswords in his inventory.

It was not well made, but it did the job. Offering him something comfortable to sit on as he read through the notes he managed to find. Or when he was eating, or simply when he was trying different ways of casting the same spell.

This time he quickly sat on it and focused on the interface. So you are magic, that actually makes sense. And I had to really learn how to use you, it is easy now, but in the start it was quite hard. Eldrian mumbled as he called up the different parts of the system interface.

Right, inventory. That was the hardest thing to actually use. Wait, it felt similar to when I tried to form a spell module inside the magic abyss at first. Dammit, I want to enter that place even more now! Eldrian would have actually shouted this if not for it being midnight and him being surrounded by rough soldiers who would certainly beat him up if he did.

Holding it in, he thought back to when he first use the inventory. At the same time accessing it to play with the feeling. So this... This pulling thought. This invisible repulsion. This, feeling... It isn't really possible to describe the feeling through words, the closest would be to explain it as similar to the repulsion between magnets of the same pole. Except that this repulsion was all imaginary and only felt in the consciousness.

Is this magic? Eldrian asked after giving up trying to put it into words, simply focusing on what he felt. Is this the link? But what does it even matter if I know this? He started wondering, quickly surprised that he had no idea why he had searched for this.

Wait, this is similar to when I control mana. At least this feeling is the same. So... Eldrian started playing with this feeling, without including mana. He tried to stretch it in his mind, to cover his hands, his arms. To reach out to one of the books lying on the ground in a corner of his tent.

Nothing came of this, other than a stronger feeling and a massive headache. It was so bad that Eldrian had to lie on the ground in pain, cursing the system for not blocking the pain. The fuck, this feels like when the Magic Cr-...

Is that it? Maybe, fuck go away headache! I want to think! Shouting and cursing did not help, in fact it seemed to make things worse. The pain intensifying to a level where Eldrian was no longer able to even keep his thoughts together.

What felt like an eternity later, but was only ten minutes, passed. Eldrian slowly and shakily stood up from the floor drenched in sweat. God, that was just like my first time with the Magic Crystal. Eldrian complained, casting Anthizo and even Thera on himself to recover his energy.

The rejuvenating and healing spells did wonder to his body, but not his mind. It was still tired and unable to think clearly, adding the pressure of casting some spells, he quickly fell asleep. Unable to even complete the logout process.

...

"What the hell happened? I thought he was safe and sound!" Joren shouted as he rushed into the room where they monitored certain players, and naturally the game testers' data. He had only been notified that Eldrian's data had suddenly flared up like crazy for no reason.

"We have no idea. He suddenly logged in in the middle of the day, then after a few minutes of simply sitting on his chair he doubled over in pain. We know he interacted a bit with the system interface, but not much more than that."

"Dammit! Do we have any idea what he tried to accomplish?" Joren asked, wanting to head over to Eldrian's room and interrogate him, even though the readings indicated that he was fast asleep now. Joren really did not like such surprises, especially when there was no indication of it coming. The lack of Eldrian using and relying on the system also made it harder for them to know what he did, if he did not do anything physical.

"No idea. We just need to figure out why he rushed to log in at such a strange time and we will know though." Offered one of those responsible for tracking Eldrian's movements in-game.

"Then figure it out!"

...

Eldrian woke a few hours later with a bunch of tubes going into him again. Sighing he moved his arm slowly to press the button to call for help.

Gengxin arrived soon after, "What the hell happened? You gave us a really large fright."

"I tried something, and I think I overdid it," Eldrian replied, thinking back to how he was so suddenly attacked. It is likely overuse... Of what though, magic? What is that even? I need to ask if mana poisoning is a thing, this might be the next level. The system also has nothing to keep track of it. Eldrian realized that this last point was going to make getting used to using it really hard. It certainly isn't something new to him though, so he felt it should be fine.

Still after realizing this he decided to only practice this small amount each day. Maybe just get the feeling and then force it once. As simple as that.

"You need to be more careful. What did you try?" Gengxin reprimanded at first, but then quickly became curious about what Eldrian tried to do.

"I am not too sure myself," Eldrian replied as he tried to figure out what was going on, what had actually happened. His thoughts a mess as the logout had not gone smoothly; resulting in him feeling really tired.

After talking a bit more with Gengxin he took a nap to rest and try and sort his thoughts. Entering the game upon waking as night had come and he did not wish to lose his 'normal' gaming time. As soon as he did he could feel that his avatar was still tired, but not enough to actually bother him. Having rested well IRL.

Moving out of his tent he headed over to Vivian to practice, also asking her in what ways someone could hurt themselves while practicing magic. There were quite a few ways, as he had thought. The closest to what he had experienced was called magic overuse. Normally it would lead to a lack of mana, which would assault a person mentally and often cause them to lose consciousness.

After his physical training Eldrian returned to his tent, this time more careful when focusing on this feeling. Instead of pushing it outwards, he pushed it into himself to the mana pathways he had flowing inside of him.

Let's see if I can multiply you know. Eldrian said, his mana had increased quite a bit since gaining his hidden class. He currently had a total of 164, thus he believed there should be some free room to try and change their flow. The last time he had tried it had felt like an immovable wall, as if there was nothing that could possibly change.

Eldrian found that he could actually change the pathways with ease now. Not even needing to split a part of it off, he managed to change the flow of the entire pathway. This was not his goal, but being able to do this gave him hope.

Make more pathways is one of the requirements for Tier 2, so let's double them so there can be one to send mana and another to receive mana. Eldrian thought not knowing what was actually required and as such trying to imitate veins and arteries for now. It took him a couple of tries to succeed with the first pathways, doing the same with the others was far easier once he understood how it worked.

Now what? Eldrian wondered as he had to keep some of his focus on not letting the pathways return to their original positions, similar to how before his mana would retreat back into his mana pool.

Normally High Elves focus on increasing the purity, but how the hell do you do that? What is purity even? Not knowing this kept Eldrian from moving any further, soon unable to keep his focus on them the entire time, the pathways returned to how they were before.

I wonder if this will work with spells too?

Eldrian found that focusing on this feeling before casting spells did not change much, as he was already using it subconsciously before. Now he was just aware of his usage of it. He did find that he could learn new spells far quicker now. Having learned this when trying to cast one of the hybrid spells he did not know.

Normally, with the method he approached learning, he would need to imagine the spell module and then will the correct amount of mana, including the proportions of different elements for hybrid spells, into it. The first step was still the same, on sending the mana in Eldrian could feel a vague repulsion from the spell module.

Not forcing the mana any further, he changed the composition. Constantly focusing on this vague feeling, quickly managing to cause it to become even weaker. Not much later he succeeded in casting the spell. A hybrid of earth and wind, where the earth would form dirt into a hardened cone, the wind propelling it forward. It was basically Frost Needle, but with earth and wind instead of water and darkness. The spell shot right into the floor until the entire cone was inside of it.

What!? Just twenty minutes? Looking at the time Eldrian was left without words, even the easier spells normally took him half an hour to a full one to learn. Depending on their spell module's complexity.