Row came over the next day to teach me about fighting monsters. That was especially good since Mom was being extremely paranoid about me getting hurt; such that any attempt to get her to teach me anything had her being so careful and slow about her movements that even my horrible reflexes weren’t getting a workout. I wanted to spar with him, even knowing I would be outclassed, but he refused until I had learned my ‘basics’. These basics turned out to be more ‘techniques’, like the minor magic that my Mom had taught me and which allowed me to move the couch. Others can call it what they want, the things he was teaching break the normal laws of physics so it is ‘magic’ to me. Unlike how I had been taught before, where I was given basic instructions on how to do it and left to my own devices, Row told me what the effects should be and how it was useful.

As in: the very first thing he taught me was to just open the gates to my magic and let it flow through my arms. It did nothing that I could tell and cost me magic/mana/essence (whatever name you want to call it) to use. He explained that this ability let me use my offensive stats to attack without using any specific sort of spell. Considering that my offensive stats (my strength, intelligence, and charisma) were about equal to my defensive stats (constitution, dexterity, and wisdom), I wouldn’t expect to see any difference. Attacking with the weight of my fist, using mostly constitution, would have about the same effect as focusing the ‘strength’ of my magic through an attack. Still, it was an important skill to learn for later when I did start to specialize and I was glad for the explanation.

You know, when I really think about it, my parents are horrible teachers. Sure, I may love them, but they definitely have their faults. Like the whole ‘they think I am crazy for not being more freaked out by stuff’ thing. Sure, I’m feeling more than a little culture shock, but this place is literally a dream come true for me! I’m sure that the shock of never seeing my old friends and family again will hit me eventually but, for now, the somewhat simplistic mindset forced on me by being a child is good enough to ignore all that. I have magic now! There is no reason to worry about how my parents and everyone I have met just accept the game-like nature of this world as normal and barely considers the idea of gaming the system or becoming a force of real meaning in this world. I absolutely should not think about how they act like shop keepers, background NPCs, and skill-trainers. Instead I should focus on the magic that Row (short for Roman), who was definitely ‘not a skill trainer’ but actually a ‘family friend’ of my new family, was teaching me. No mounting existential crisis here, just lots of new skills/magic for me to learn and practice on. Yep, the skills are what I should be focusing on.

The skill that I had already learned required me to push my mana into my hands and arms or whatever and have it stay there as I did whatever I was going to do. What Row showed me is that it gave my arms momentum so that, to a small degree, they became the unstoppable force and immovable object at once. I didn’t move the couch because I got slightly stronger but because, for a brief moment, the couch was less affixed in time and space than my arm was. The ‘less affixed’ explanation came from my Father when I asked, in case that wasn’t clear, but the knowledge to even ask about it came from Row. I quickly figured out that it could be used defensively, since doing something like knocking away a blade would be less likely to cut as long as this magic was working. When I mentioned this to Row he just rolled his eyes and told me that I was right but there were better ways to defend myself, ways that I didn’t have the control to learn yet but that I could learn eventually. Learning what exactly it was that I was supposed to be doing and how to use it and what I needed to do to progress really changed my view of these ‘minor’ magics.

It really is good to have a teacher who knows how to teach. I thanked him several times for his help.

Apparently it isn’t just about pushing the mana into the right place and then letting it do its thing, there is so much more to it then that. You can push or pull at the magic, let it sit or stir it into a frenzy, push it outward or pull it inward, and apparently that was all without any need for a specific ‘shape’ to the magic.

Shaping the magic was apparently really hard and was less effective than letting the magic act more organically, so that at least explained why my father’s explanations never worked out for me. My Father wouldn’t explain about the cutting thing but he did talk about how to do another weird thing where he opens the door from across the room. His explanation about trying to direct the magic yielded no fruit and I couldn’t even tell what I was doing wrong. According to Row the fine manipulation skills are based on the Wisdom/Senses/Volatility stat, whatever you want to call it, since it allows you to sense and adjust the magic in real time. My stats were just too low and my experience with magic was too basic to have any hope of making it work. Knowing why we were avoiding shaping made it easier to focus on other things.

There were also other things he mentioned that I couldn’t do yet. Directing the magic inward was also supposedly hard because you have to have a clear understanding of the difference between your body and the spirit ‘beneath’ everything. It sounds like Plato’s ‘realm of the forms’ rubbish (because really, is there supposedly a ‘perfect’ rubber ducky or a ‘perfect’ pile of horse manure floating somewhere in that realm?) but somehow it was important for learning those skills. I would have to revisit those things later.

No, it was the push/pull and the steady/frenetic qualities of the magic that were important at this stage. A steady push was what caused the momentum increase in my arms but a steady pull had a somewhat opposite effect in that the object I hit was weakened and my body felt strengthen in return. Apparently this would allow me to heal, though I’ve been careful to not get hurt so I couldn’t really try this out. The target’s weakened state made the object more brittle even as the attack itself beat into that weakened spot, although the impact was still what you might expect from a weak little child. I am still 4 after all, or at least my body is. The only difficult part about it was wrapping my head around pulling something from behind where I wanted the energy/magic to go. Once I did, though, everything just fell into place.

Making the magic churn in constant motion to create a more active quality to it was pretty easy once I got the concept through my head. It meant that directing the energy was less like holding it in place and more like pointing in a general direction you hoped for it to go, closing off other directions it might flow, and then letting it do its thing. Row had me ‘point in a direction’ by pushing it and the target I hit was visibly blown back, in excess of my weak attack, and it even started to dissolve. On a hunch I tried directing it by ‘pulling’ but the effects were much less spectacular. I couldn’t see anything but the target felt somehow ‘wrong’ after it had been hit. I couldn’t even guess at what had happened to it, all I could tell was that some part of my new magic senses seemed to tell me that the object had been twisted in a non-physical way.

Row got a complicated look when he saw me do that and admitted that he hadn’t intended to teach me this particular skill, but it wasn’t exactly a bad thing that I had learned it. He did warn me that I shouldn’t use it on other people, though, because of the effects. When I asked if the results were particularly dangerous he just shook his head and replied, “Only dangerously annoying. Use any other attack and people might be willing to back off after taking a good hit, or at least they’ll beat you to unconsciousness before leaving you in the dirt. Use that and your target will either try to kill you dead or back off for the moment and then try to get revenge later.”

So… I guess it would work as a taunt skill? Except that he only said that it was bad to use on people for those reasons, so it might not enrage monsters at all. Also I never really liked playing a tank type character as it required too much standing around as an intentionally easy target. When I asked what type of effects it had he told me that, at this point, it was entirely random so he couldn’t say. When I pressed him for what ‘random’ meant it turned out to be just that; unpredictably random. It would mess with the persons stats, skills, senses, or even something as trivial as making them smell in a distinctive but not necessarily unpleasant way.

I tried beating on a target with that magic when he wasn’t around and eventually, true to Row’s words, the thing started smelling like fragrant lilacs. Super weird.

The hardest skill to learn was one where I was supposed to balance both the push/pull and the steady/frenetic qualities all at once. I will admit, the worst part was figuring out what that even meant. What did it meant to be both pushing and pulling at once? How was that supposed to work? This alone took several days to get right.

It turns out that it isn’t about making the magic do both at once but balancing it on the edge so that the energy can do either at a moment’s notice. The power would sit ready in my fist but at the slightest whim it would amplify my action in a way that honestly took some getting used to, either amplifying the movement or the steady lack of it. But not only were my movements exaggerated but the effect was as well. As I gathered it in my arm the energy sat ready but seemed to ‘pull’ forward at contact, jumping to my target, and then pushed it along. The results seemed guided by my intention in a way that didn’t make much sense other than ‘magic’. After all, how else could it know what my intentions were when my actions were exactly the same? A punch is a punch, but punching a punching-bag left a dent while punching a wall or anything else that I didn’t intend to damage didn’t do anything. This held true even if I ended up hitting the other thing on accident, like when I missed. How did that work? Why does that work? An enquiring mind (mine) wants to know!

Row’s explanation of why it worked like that was less than helpful. “It just is.” He said. “Sometimes you want to push through, other times you want to hold your ground; but there are times when it really just depends. What it depends on can change, and the force of it is underwhelming compared to a more dedicated approach, but being able to make a choice rather than being a slave to our tools is what makes us human.” He said it like it was something profound, but all I got out of it was profoundly confused. Of course tools can be used in different ways, that wasn’t something new.

But what did that have to do with that weird skill/spell/magic where everything about it seemed to sit just off balance? I could agonize over it, push it to the side and focus on something else, or I could just ask. “Yeah, I get that the different magic you taught me are good for different things, but what does that have to do with why this weird magic flips between both?”

His answer: “You will understand when you are older. For now, it just is.” He said it with a shrug that told me he didn’t put much stock into whatever the answer might have been.

That wasn’t good enough for me. “Come on, that isn’t an answer! I just want to know why it works like that! I get that it isn’t important to you, but I really want to know how come the magic just sits there between the different states so easily. Once I figured out what I was supposed to be doing it was so easy, it just worked. Trying to hold things in any other state was like trying to grab an eel. Like, I tried to hold the energy halfway between stable and that halfway state, like at a quarter of the way along the scale, and it just wouldn’t stay!” I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and continued. “Is this one of those questions I should be asking my Dad about?”

He got a complicated look on his face before answering. “Your father might not be the right person to ask. He can definitely tell you how it works but is less likely to know about why. For that you would need to talk with a philosopher of some sort.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t the ‘how’ and ‘why’ basically the same? Like, things work one way because this is ‘how’ everything comes together, and that how is the ‘why’ of it?” My explanation sounded confusing, even to my own ears, but hopefully he undederstood.

He frowned a bit. “No, not unless you expect that the world is like this because it can’t be any different and still exist. The ‘why’ leads to the ‘how’, they aren’t the same thing.” Thankfully he did understand.

Still, I frowned back. His explanation didn’t make sense. “But ‘why’ requires a reason, if the ‘how’ isn’t that reason then it means that something else is. Something that can make decisions for ‘why’ that can lead to a different type of ‘how’. Are you talking about some sort of god?” How was he talking about some Random Omnipotent Being (or ROB for short) that was somehow in control of everything? Was I reborn in that sort of a world?

“Yes.” He answered with a nod, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “There are likely some limitations on how the world can work, but your parents and I and a lot of others believe that the consistency between the worlds is more about some big why that guides all universes than a limitation on how those universes are able to successfully appear and survive.”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I replied. “How do you know that everything isn’t just one big cosmic accident?”

He shrugged again. “Because you and I am talking and can understand each other. Everyone who is born here on Paradise comes from some other universe; and all of us have a soul that can meaningfully interact with each other and is compatible with our new bodies. People come from millions, maybe even billions of other universes. That seems too much of a coincidence to be nothing but random chance.”

“Yeah, but if there are infinite universes then it has to happen sometimes. Infinite is a really, really big number. Out of that a million or even a billion universes are less than a drop in the ocean. So you don’t really know for sure that everything isn’t just because of random chance, not just from that at least.”

He tilted his head in a bit of a nod of acceptance. “And that is what the Earth and Sky people say; though they are less likely to even ask the question of why or how. Beyond what is necessary to make things useful they don’t tend to care, because if random chance caused everything to be then there is no reason to expect that the rules will not just ‘random chance’ away into nothingness at some point.”

The idea of that boggled the mind. “But… That isn’t how science and the scientific method works. You observe, you see the patterns of how things work, and you make predictions from that.”

He nodded. “That sounds like a core ideal of the Heights of Man. They start with human capability and go from there. Humans are relatively consistent, so reality must be. Humans are sometimes logical and at other times driven by emotions and instincts, so the universe must be the same. And, since humans learn and grow over time, society and our body of knowledge must be the same. It is an attractive philosophy but it has its flaws.”

“Really, what’s wrong with trying to grow and get better?”

Row shrugged. “I don’t know all the arguments but I do know what was important to me. I’ve been around enough to know that people aren’t naturally good. Leave a child without discipline and, even if they have everything they need to survive, and there is a better than even chance they will turn into a hellion. Groups of people are the same. That is part of why I’m a hunter and not a fighter; I just don’t want to deal with the evil shit that people can do to each other. Monsters, elementals, chimera, and stranger things; they act on instinct and barely anything more. I’d rather deal with a monster tearing me to shreds any day before confronting what people will do to each other.” He gave a bit of a shudder and looked away.

While I know that people can be awful sometimes, I'm pretty certain that is just the minority. Back before crimes of all types were only on the rise when not compared to the population. When that was kept in mind the crime rates were at an all time low throughout all of history. It’s just that, if there is a one in a million chance that someone will be a mass murderer or something, then the difference between the middle ages and now is the difference between a handful of truly horrible people and thousands or tens of thousands of them. Still, even if they were rare and getting rarer, I wasn’t going to argue that there weren’t horrible people out there.

Still, this seemed important; even if all it did was answer my earlier question about why this world was so gamelike. “So who do I talk to if I did want to find out more? I mean this mysterious ‘why’ seems to be pretty important.” I stated, trying to refocus on my original question.

He shrugged. “Probably one of the bigwigs or someone who focuses on that sort of thing. I’m more of a simple man myself, or at least I try to be. That sort of thing is likely to give me a headache that I just don’t want to deal with. Your father can certainly get you in contact with the right people, but try not to go with him when you ask your questions. He can get argumentative sometimes.”

I nodded in understanding. ‘Unpredictably argumentative about strange topics’ was an honest description of him.

“But enough of all of that.” He called out, “We’ve had enough theory. Time to see if what you have learned can be used in practice.” He held out his hard and a creature appeared in a cloud of smoke that solidified into a mountain lion with overly large claws. It was ash grey with spider vein markings that made it resemble a rocky outcropping or a leopard with smaller but less well defined spots.

He said something about fighting it and how it would fight like an animal, but all I could think was ‘cool! Monster summoning powers!’ I've gotten better, but distractions are still a thing. The creature was bigger than I was, by a lot, but only half the size of its owner; kinda like an average sized dog with twice the normal amount of muscle. It regarded me with a passive glance, much like a well-trained dog despite the creature looking more like a cat. I mean, it had a cat’s tail curled around it and catlike eyes with the vertical slit, but strangely had no visible ears. Maybe big cats act more like dogs? The closest I had ever come to touching a ‘big cat’ was a chonker of a lap cat that loved stealing food and had ballooned unreasonable proportions. It was also likely that this wasn’t a cat at all, but just looked like one. I wonder what he used it for? Perhaps fetching his kills like a lot of hunting dogs were trained to do; after all, Row was a hunter.

“Are you done staring at it?” he spoke with some amusement in his voice. I tried to hide my embarrassment. “So like I was saying; try to treat this like a real fight. Sheela here will come at you like a real monster or chimera would and you try to fight back. We’ll only go to first hit, though, and I’ll try to hold her back from doing anything too lethal. I’m here to heal, whatever happens. Time to put what you’ve learned into practice. Are you ready?”

I nodded and pulled out my orb with my left hand. I had prepared for this! I was ready! As soon as he called start I created a blast mine and grabbed it with my dominant hand while it was still forming. The cat/dog creature rushed forward just as I tossed the explosive right at its feet in front of us. The explosion was just far enough away that it didn’t knock me over but it did completely stop the creature’s advance. It probably stopped out of surprise, but still. I was happy to note that I still had some energy/mana/essence left, which means I must have managed to train up my maximum at some point!

“Wha... stop!” Row called out, fumbling over his words. The creature, Sheela, immediately halted and trotted back over to be healed. A ball of energy flew from his hand and seemed to spread over the creature. “That was a pretty dangerous gambit you just tried. If you hadn’t let go of it in time it would have blown up in your hand, knocking you over and making you an easy target.”

I shook my head. “Not really. It always takes the same amount of time to form so I just had to get my timing right on when it was about to be armed.”

“Right, and I assume that you figured out the timing by creating dozens of those things and then poking them till you figured out exactly when they would be ready to explode…”

I shrugged in halfhearted agreement. Close enough, though it didn’t exactly take dozens to figure it out.

“Alright, rest up till your back to full and lets try this again. Remember to focus on the sensation of the recovery.”

I nodded and did as he said. I wasn’t ‘meditating’ to increase my recovery, because he had earlier said that it was basically just focused resting, but my quiet focus might as well have been the video-game standard to increase speed recovery. I decided I would call it ‘meditating’ anyways. I’m not sure if it really helped, but I did it anyway.

The next round went even faster. I tried creating the mine and then pushing it forward, not by throwing it or a normal punch, but with a that new attack that used a churning/push (I really need to find a better name for it). It seemed to deal the most direct damage and so I figured that it would knock the orb away the most dramatically. I was right, far more than my expectations. The projectile flew forward, hitting Sheela in the chin and interrupting her charge. Then the explosion happened directly beneath her, nearly flipping Sheela over as Row called the match.

I looked over to see him rubbing his head. “They are proximity mines, not projectiles. You do know that? Right?” He seemed skeptical, though I’m certain that wasn’t due to any fault of mine.

“Yeah, so? What do normal people do, just set it up all over the place and hope that their enemies will just walk into it?”

He gave me a look. “Yes.”

“Well that’s dumb and the people who fall for it are dumb. Sure, battle can get confusing; but, unless you have a dozen of those things lying around, it is pretty easy to keep track of where they are.” It was actually pretty fun. Smash Brothers with maximum proximity mines and high damage scaling was great!

He looked unconvinced. “Right… Lets try the next battle without the mines. Ok?”

“Sure,” I said, and started ‘meditating’ to recover.

This time Sheela moved forward more cautiously. She tried to circle around me with a slow crouching motion, as I continually faced toward her and started backing away slowly. Part of me remembered something from a nature program about not backing away and showing fear toward a wild predator, but another part of me knew that she wouldn’t be bluffed into retreat. Besides the fact that she was twice my size, she also had no reason to fear whatever damage I might inflict. Afterall, I had hit her several times and it barely moved her around a bit.

And so I waited, inching away as she inched closer, waiting for the eventual lunge.

When she suddenly shot forward I almost didn’t react in time. I had been waiting for any abrupt forward movement and, had it been a feint, I would have been screwed. Instead I threw myself back, barely keeping to my feet, while blasting forward a cone of cold that caught her front legs and her face. She didn’t fly backwards, but it did arrest her movement and coat the big cat in frost. Again, she likely stopped more out of surprise and confusion than any actual injury. Regardless, it counted as a hit, winning me the match as her master called a stop.

Row nodded. “Your dodging needs work but your timing is excellent. How come you didn’t attack earlier when Sheela was hesitating before her attack. She was definitely in range.”

“I only have enough essence for a couple shots, one if I use the mines, so I have to be careful about not wasting my chance. She looked like she was ready to dodge if I attacked so I needed to bait her out.”

He nodded. “I forget how much earlier you are getting started then most people. Most people are able to do that five or six times before they run out of juice, even the ones who get started right away.” He shook his head and continued. “Right, so try it this next time without the orb. Do you need to recover again?” he asked.

“Yes, please.” I replied, and got to the job of meditating. This meditating thing was taking a lot of time and was a bit boring, but it was something I would have to endure unless I wanted to start out drained.

This time Sheela was even more cautious than before inching closer as I kept my ground. My only options were mele attacks enhanced by the magic that I had recently been taught, so she didn’t need to be worried, but she didn’t know that. Timing would be key here. I felt like an awkward teenager, and I hadn’t even been the most agile person as an adult. If I tried to jump at her I would likely unbalance myself and accomplish nothing but having her back off for a few seconds while giving her an opening. I also didn’t know enough to catch her off guard. I’d played a few games that tried to realistically incorporate enemies being off guard, but most of them pit you against humanoid models or had the monsters doing outlandishly desperate attacks that I just couldn’t see the currently cautious Sheela attempting.

No, the closest thing to an opening I would likely get was when she attacked me. Knowing this I prepared to use the momentum granting attack, the one that my parents had originally taught me, with the hopes of hitting her claw as she swiped for me. Or, I guess, it could be that she would try to bite me and I would have to go for her muzzle. Something about how she was moving made me think it would be a claw; she was less hunched forward for a charge and more balanced with her claws out, so she looked like a cat cautiously approaching its prey rather than a dog baring its fangs. I was hoping that my attack would knock her back, arresting the claw’s motion or batting away the bite, respectively. It wasn’t a great plan but it was the best one I had.

We starred each other down, neither of us moving in toward the other. I bided my time while she grew more impatient. Finally she reached out her claw, like a housecat cautiously batting at the unfamiliar item in its territory and took a swing at me. Her cautiousness did me a favor as her halfhearted swing made it clear that she was fast enough that I couldn’t react to her full speed.

She batted at me with her right paw while I swung with my empowered right fist. I counted myself lucky that her attack was just short of me, such that it looked like she would miss even if I didn’t move away. Instead I moved closer so that I could strike her paw with my empowered attack, trusting its supernatural properties to protect my hand as I did so.

Unexpectedly both our attacks struck true, despite the claw passing short and my inexperience with real fighting. There was a distinct ripple of air and my left arm went limp as I was suddenly gasping for breath. It was as though her claws had lengthened into a set of magic blades that sliced into me. My attack also hit, the effect did as much to knock me to the side as it did to slow the swipe; both effects combined were enough to protect my right side from the attack. Row immediately called the match and started healing me, hitting me with an orb of light that quickly reversed the damage that had been done. I took a few moments to blink away the tears before deciding to focus on what had happened.

Suddenly the excitement hit me as I charged ahead ever faster. “That attack, it had some sort of magic extendo-claws to it! I thought that it was going to miss but I was right in the middle of the attack! How does it work? I couldn’t watch her use it before attacking because she was so fast and was a lot smarter than the elementals so I didn’t think she would just swing at nothing, but when she did attack it should have missed completely except that it had that magic to it and it…”

“Calm down,” Row interrupted. “Didn’t that hurt?”

“Well yeah, of course it hurt. But it doesn’t hurt anymore and you have a magic mountain-lion creature with magic! How could I not be excited about that!?!” I didn’t mention how much it hurt because I really didn’t want to think about it. Maybe there was some sort of ‘pain resistance’ skill I could pick up? These sorts of games always had that sort of thing.

“Right.” He answered skeptically before shaking his head to himself and moving on. “Sheela is a crusher type, so her attacks are more likely to maim than kill but are more reliable than, say, a hunter type’s attacks. That swipe you got hit by is pretty basic but is hard to avoid. Any beast type will use those attacks from its front paws. Why didn’t you wait her out to see what she could do?”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t. She was fast enough that backing off wasn’t an option. At least, not one I could expect to work.”

He gave me a skeptical look before answering. “You are the weirdest mix between having combat experience and complete inexperience that I have ever seen. You saw that the thing was too fast to cleanly dodge so why didn’t you block instead?”

I felt dumb. “Um, because I didn’t think of it…” I answered truthfully. “Though I doubt it would really work. Sheela is a lot bigger than me.”

“That is where your inexperience shows through. Blocking the right way isn’t about stopping the attack, though it is nice if you can. All it means is that you don’t take any damage from it. If you are knocked back, but stay whole through the experience, then your block did its job. Any hit you can walk away from, preferably without injury, is a hit well taken.”

“So, those blocks that Mom showed me?” I asked. “Even so, isn’t something like Sheela a bit out of my league?”

“Kid, you are four. Everything is out of your league.” He answered seriously. “You wanted to go hunting for real? Well the first step is making sure you won’t be a liability, even if you aren’t an asset. That means being able to survive. And Sheela, I use her for tracking. She isn’t even a combatant. The fact that you managed to tag her more than once is pretty unbelievable. But if someone with your stats could take on the real monsters out there, no matter their skill, then I would be out of a job.”

“So the purpose of this exercise isn’t to win?”

He gave a good natured smile at me. “Nope. Survive as long as you can. Get in a clean hit if you can. Show me you can handle Sheela consistently and you’ll get to fight me.” His smile seemed far less friendly after that speech. "Only after you put up a good showing against a smart opponent will you be ready to see a real hunt."

Really, if I had to categorize him, I would say he was like a drill instructor or the laidback mentor character who gets the player started but completely disappears by act two or three. I tried to hide my cringe at the thought. Tropes are tools: real people fall into certain categories that are useful to writers because they do things that would also be useful in real life. A ‘teacher character’ is just as much a ‘teacher’ as a ‘teacher person’; something that has nothing to do with game mechanics and such.

But for now I had to listen to his instructions and learn what I could. I could worry about why later.