It was just after noon when John logged back in. He’d taken the time to think, eat, and see to his bodily needs. After some careful consideration he decided to clear about an acre of land, plant it, and then work on clearing the next section. With that in mind he looked around, considering his options. He could cut the grass with his sword, but that would take more than a little while and would likely dull the blade. He had a shovel he could use to dig up the grass, but that would take forever. He could… he could use magic. Surely the Move Earth spell could be used to till and then flatten the ground, ripping up all the grass in the process. He quickly pulled up his stats and opened the Move Earth spell.

[Name: Move Earth]

[Description: A simple spell used to move dirt or stone.]

[Current Rank: Novice]

[Amount: Small]

[Mana Cost: 10/second]

Okay, he thought to himself, so I just channel the spell and I can move a ‘small’ amount of earth at a time. How deep do grass roots go? I need Google!

[Would you like to purchase the In Game Web Browser option for 50 USD or 50 Gold?]

John looked at the prompt and sighed. He had the money, after purchasing the head set and a year-long subscription he had approximately 200 dollars left, but he hated to spend more money when he wasn’t even sure he’d have an income any time soon. He wavered for a moment, but then decided the benefits outweighed the cost.

“Yes, please purchase the In Game Web Browser for 50 USD.”

[Verifying Purchase]

[Purchase Approved]

Okay, Let’s see. He pulled up the browser with an effort of will. Ugh, roots can go as deep as two feet. And I need to…. Huh, what if I do the opposite…

With a thought he closed the browser and looked to the ground below him. He considered his idea for a moment and then shrugged. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he murmured.

He focused on the Move Earth spell, on the desire to cast it, and he felt a tingle as energy moved through him, terminating in his now outstretched hand. Suddenly he felt a connection to the earth beneath his feet, and he began shifting it minutely with his thoughts. With care he began to loosen the soil around his feet, pushing his power down into the soil and simply breaking it up, making it loose.

After a few moments he started to feel a bit tired, so he stopped, and then reached down to test his theory. Grabbing a handful of grass he pulled, and to his surprise it moved readily. Though he found to his disgruntlement that the roots were matted with all the other nearby grasses, making it impossible to pull it fully free. Still, this was better than digging it out. He looked out across the grassland. It was going to be a long day.

He spent the better part of three days working on grass removal. He had to loosen the soil, cut the roots with the shovel, and then pull up the grass. Despite the grueling task he was pleased with the results. While he had cleared only an eighth of the plot, he gained some surprising notifications.

[Due to strenuous physical exertion you have gained +1 Strength]

[Due to pushing your body past its limits you have gained +1 Constitution]

[Due to constant use of mana you have gained +1 Intelligence]

[Due to continuous regeneration of mana you have gained +1 Wisdom]

[Move Earth has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

[125 Leveling Points Banked.]

The first four notices had happened six times already. With each point he could feel himself get just that bit stronger, and his body that much heartier, and he could see his mana and regeneration increase. The final two messages had only just appeared, but he was most excited about that, bringing the description up so he could look for changes.

[Name: Move Earth]

[Description: A simple spell used to move dirt or stone.]

[Current Rank: Apprentice]

[Amount: Moderate]

[Mana Cost: 10/second]

He dropped his shovel and did a little dance in the bare earth. It wasn’t much to be excited about, but it should make the work go quicker. Which was good, because he’d run out of Trail Rations and was going to have to find something else to eat. He was also curious about the points he’d gained.

“System? Why did I gain leveling points when my rank advanced?”

[It looks like you’re trying to use the Help Module, would you like to purchase the Help Module for 20 USD or 20 Gold Coins?]

“No, I’ll just ask someone in town,” John muttered as he waved away the prompt.

He picked up his shovel and trudged over to where he’d set up his tent. Most people, from what he read on the forums, were just logging their character out entirely at night. He, however, had decided that if there were buffs for eating, there must be buffs for resting as well. So, for the last three days, his character had been left logged in and sleeping when he left the game; and each morning he’d been greeted by a prompt.

[Rested: You have slept for at least 8 hours, +1 to Physical Attributes for 8 hours.]

He was curious to see if a better bed would give a better bonus, but he didn’t have the money for that. Or for much of anything, for that matter, all he had at the moment was a partially cleared vacant lot. He sighed and packed away his items and stopped dead as he looked around. “Oh crap. Which way was town?”

[Would you like to install the Player Map Module for 20 USD or 20 gold?]

He sighed. “Yes.” He said wearily, already certain that he’d also be spending real money for food today.

[Verifying Purchase]

[Purchase Approved]

With a thought he pulled up the Map, which showed a fairly accurate rendering of the area out to about the distance he could clearly see. Much of the map was dark fog, however a portion of it, leading to the west, was merely greyed out. Orienting himself in the right direction John began walking west, even as he minimized the map and willed it into the upper left of his vision.

The walk back, unsurprisingly, took an hour, just like the walk out had, and he found himself walking into town in the late afternoon. To his surprise there were people everywhere, wandering around the town, exiting and entering the stores and inn. He stopped and gawked for a moment.

“Dude, you’re blocking the road.” Came a voice behind him. It had an odd, echoey quality to it. He quickly sidestepped and then turned to look. A large person in heavy plate breezed past him, followed by three others; one in robes with a stave, one with leathers and a bow, and finally one in leathers with a pair of obvious daggers at his hips. A classic adventuring party. The mage gave him a polite nod as she went by, as did the ranger.

Blinking away his confusion John walked further into town, heading for the General Store while doing his best not to hit anyone on the crowded street. Once more the bell above the door tinkled, but this time the store was crowded. Not so much that one couldn’t move, but enough to make getting inside uncomfortable. John, who was never one for much human interaction, steeled himself and made his way through the crowd toward the shelves, looking for foodstuffs. To his dismay, most of the shelves were entirely bare.

Near the back however he found flat bricks of individually wrapped… something. They looked like dense, brown bricks and didn’t have any kind of particular smell. The label was just ‘Meal Cake’. Shrugging he picked up a couple stacks and slowly made his way toward the counter. He had almost reached the line when someone shoved in front of him, obviously in a hurry to get there first. John sighed but let it pass. Honestly it was less rudeness than he expected from other players.

It took several minutes but eventually he made it to the counter where he put down his purchases and flashed a smile that immediately died on his lips. Theodore did not look happy, not in the least.

“Everything okay?” John asked without thinking.

“No,” the Ursine man replied succinctly as he began waving his hand over the piles of Meal Cake.

“Uh… is there anything I can help with?” John asked taken aback.

“Yeah, you can get out of the freaking way!” Someone behind him called out to a chorus of grumbled assent.

Theodore snorted. “No, you cannot. Please stop asking if I have quests for you.”

“S-sorry, I was just… never mind.” John said, taken aback.

Theodore nodded, and then spoke again. “It’s two meal cakes to the copper, you have 28 here, that’s 14 coppers.”

John sighed, and then mentally ordered a currency transfer. 10 USD (the smallest transfer available) became 10 silver coins in his wallet.

“Can you break a silver?” He asked tentatively.

Theodore sighed and then nodded, pulling money out of a locked box behind him. The rest of the line groaned. Carefully the big man counted out 86 copper onto the counter, and pushed the neat stacks over to John, who passed the man a silver coin. He then scooped up the coppers and willed them into his inventory along with the bars of meal cake.

“Final freaking-lee.” The same person from earlier muttered near the end of the line. John made his way quickly out the front door and into the crowded square. He looked around and saw Grandma Loren sitting in her spot next to the megalith in the town center. Seeing she was alone he walked over toward her, dodging around the other people milling about. As he approached, he heard some snickers behind him and turned to look.

There were a few players watching him and whispering to each other. He looked down at himself, to find nothing amiss and then looked curiously at the others, who just smirked back at him. He frowned and turned back to Grandma Loren.

“Grandma Loren-” he began, only to be cut off.

“I SAID ENOUGH!” The old woman shouted, striking her cane against the ground. A wave of visible force pushed outward from the strike, and pushed out in a full circle about her. John felt himself blown off his feet as he went tumbling across the hard packed dirt. The snickers became full laughs.

John pushed himself to his feet with a mumbled “Sorry.”

Loren looked at him with a glare, that quickly softened into a look of contrition. “Oh. Well now I feel like a right heel. I’m sorry John, these nut jobs have been pestering me all day for my ‘Secret Quest’. Which they are certain I have because I am old and sit next to a rune covered rock.” She harrumphed after explaining. “Come, sit by me and I’ll make it up to you.”

“Ooo granny’s gonna make it up to you!” One of the onlookers said aloud, which garnered a few laughs.

John looked at the players around him. He then looked back to Loren and hesitantly moved to take a seat next to her.

“There’s a good lad.” She said, and then struck her cane against the ground again. A wavering wall of thick air encircled them, and sounds from the rest of the square abruptly cut off, even as the haze made it difficult to see what was happening outside. “A privacy ward,” she explained to him.

John nodded and looked at the ward with interest.

Loren smiled. “I suppose I could teach that to you if you want. Though I had something more useful in mind. Your choice though.”

John looked back at her and hesitated for a moment before saying, “Whatever you think is going to help me the most.”

She nodded. “Knew you were a smart one. Now, I’m going to teach you a Skill, and this one is important so you’d better pay attention.” She looked at him to see if she had his interest, which she of course did. “It’s called Mana Manipulation, and it’s the basis for learning Mana Sight, which lets you see the flow of mana around you, which in turn lets you make, and learn, new spells.”

John frowned “I thought I could already learn spells?”

Loren grinned. “You can, sort of. Have you used any spells?”

“Yes, Move Earth and Create Water,” John admitted.

She nodded. “Good choices for a farmer. Now, explain to me how they work.”

“Well they…” John started, and then stopped. He’d used the spells, he knew what it felt like to use them, but he didn’t actually know what he’d done to make it happen.

“They just worked, right?”

John nodded in response.

“That’s the short way of doing magic. Simple, easy, effective. Completely impossible to explain. If you can’t see Mana,” she explained. “Each spell is composed of three things. Will, Gesture, and Pattern. Spells are interwoven threads of mana in a specific pattern, when properly constructed and then utilized as a filter, they produce a desired effect.”

“So when I cast spells, I’m actually drawing a pattern?” He asked, curious.

“Yes and no. When you cast a system assisted spell the system draws the pattern for you, but it’s impacted by your spell rank. If you have a low rank in the spell, it will produce a low rank pattern, full of holes and riddled with errors, leading to a reduced effect. If you’re high ranked, on the other hand, it can produce a flawless pattern. This is why your low rank spells can’t do as much as the high rank spells, some of the power is being lost to a poorly formed pattern.” She explained.

“Wait,” John said excited, “doesn’t that mean that if I draw the patterns manually they can come out more or less perfect than system created patterns?”

“See? Smart. That’s exactly what it means. That said, it’s not always the best choice, drawing a pattern yourself takes time, especially if you’re trying to avoid mistakes. It’s far from the instant casting that the system provides. What’s more, it doesn’t give you any experience toward ranking up a spell you know.”

“So, I shouldn’t use pattern casting for everything, because eventually that will hinder me.”

“Exactly. Now, are you ready to learn?” Loren asked him.

John nodded.

“To begin, you need to find your core. That is to say the place where your mana is centered. That’s almost always in the chest, about where your heart is. You’ve likely already felt it while casting spells. It’s that slight warmth in your chest that seems to trickle down to your hands,” She began. “Close your eyes and focus on that memory of warmth, I’m going to cast a spell to help you, don’t fight it.”

As John closed his eyes and tried to imagine the warmth she spoke of, the elderly woman raised her hand and lightly touched his forehead.

[Buff: Still Mind]

[Description: Achieve Serenity]

[Duration: 10 minutes]

Suddenly John’s mind was calm, there were no intrusive thoughts, no outside distractions. Just him and the remembered warmth. For a long moment nothing happened, and then he felt it, a pulsing, glowing warmth in his center.

“I can feel it.” His voice was soft and calm.

“Good, now imagine pinching the tiniest bit between two fingers and pulling it up to your eyes. Don’t worry if it takes you a few tries, that’s normal,” Loren guided.

John imagined pinching the edge of the warmth, and for a moment he felt a brief pressure on the edge of it, but then his ‘mental fingers’ slipped, and he lost it. With a frown he tried again, this time pinching harder, only to meet with the same results. He tried a third time, now trying to grab a bigger piece, hoping that’d give better traction. His fingers began to slip and he increased his hold, yanking all at once. He felt a thick strand of power spool outward from his center, and before he could lose it he guided it up and into his eyes.

“No, I can see your eyes glowing through your lids, you’ve pulled too much, let it go and try again or you’ll get a terrible headache when you open your eyes,” she admonished him.

Reluctantly letting go of the Mana he tried again, once more going for a little pinch. This time seemed easier and he managed to hold a thin strand which he brought up to his eyes.

“Much better,” Loren said even as two notifications appeared.

[Skill Gained: Mana Manipulation]

[Skill Gained: Mana Sight]

“Ah, I got the skills!” he exclaimed.

“Good! Now be sure to practice them, and don’t be afraid to spend your points on them at later levels, just not now,” Grandma Loren advised.

John opened his eyes and blinked, the world around him was suddenly entirely different, with flows and whorls of multicolored light moving all around him. It’s like someone animated a Van Gogh, he thought to himself. He looked at the privacy ward around them, and there, at the base of it he could make out hazy strands of interlocking mana. They were indistinct and hard to see, as if they were blurred out.

“It’s really blurry, like trying to look at something through warped glass,” he explained.

“That’s normal, clarity will come with ranks. By Journeyman you’ll be able to make out most patterns. At expert it’ll be clear as words on a page. Masters can start to see the natural patterns made by free floating mana, and Grandmasters can read them clearly.”

“Thanks… uh.. Grandma,” John said, the word feeling awkward on his tongue.

“It’s no trouble, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to. Do you know you’re the only player who actually sat and let me explain things to them? The rest were quite dismissive, wanted to be gone as fast as possible.” She gave a heavy sigh. “Still, I suppose it is what it is.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I thought it was a very useful and helpful introduction. Oh! Before I forget I had a question if you’ve got another moment?” John said.

“Thank you. And I suppose I’ve got some time.” She looked around at the empty privacy bubble, as if to accentuate her lack of things to do.

“Well, when I ranked up Move Earth it gave me 125 leveling points. Is that normal?”

“Yes, that’s normal, it’s how you get enough points for feats and advancing your skills at the same time,” She nodded.

“What do you mean by that? What’s a feat, those were mentioned at character creation but I didn’t think much of it,” John confessed.

“Feats are a special brand of magic or skill that elevates your abilities above the norm, or gives you access to special abilities, skills, or spells. You can purchase them at every fifth level, but they’re terribly expensive. A base feat costs one thousand points, without saving most of your points for the first five levels you’d be unable to purchase even one. And if you want two you have to save all your points and level skills the hard way in order to make up the difference.”

John stared at her for a moment. “Five levels worth of points?” He asked, unsure of himself. “That’s… how am I supposed to advance if I’m saving everything for feats?”

Loren tisked. “Listen, I said you’d need to level your skills the hard way, it takes about 24 hours of work to raise a skill or spell from novice to apprentice and will give you 125 skill points. You’re already a fourth of the way there, so long as you don’t spend any points. Then you just need to find new skills or spells to level. Like Mana Manipulation, or Mana Sight. The more skills you level, and the further you level them, the more points you’ll bank for later. Trust me, you want feats, they change everything.”

John frowned as he considered what she’d said. “I’m going to need to learn new spells and skills. Any suggestions?”

“As a matter of fact, I have several. The measuring skill, for instance is great for eyeballing areas, though imprecise at low ranks. The Mana Imprint skill will allow you to directly aspect your own mana, which saves on mana stones. The Meditation skill will give you the ability to better access your mana, as well as let you better learn skills like Mana Imprint and Mana Drawing. There are dozens that are useful, as for spells, the basic movement and creation spells are easy enough to pick up, fairly low complexity makes mimicking the weaves easier.” Loren took out another candy.

“All of that sounds great! I don’t suppose I could convince you to teach them to me?” John asked, hopefully.

“Ha, greedy child!” Loren said with no little mirth. “Think I have nothing better to do than sit about teaching young people skills? I could be taking a nap right now, or a brisk walk around the village. Brooding some more is also an option I haven’t ruled out.” She popped the candy into her mouth and seemed to consider.

John hesitated. “I could pay you?” he asked finally.

“Payment? There’s a thought, it’s been a long time since I’ve sold services. Truth be told though, I have no need for money. Hmmm what to do, what to do,” She murmured to herself as she looked at John speculatively. “Alright John, I’ll teach you. But not today. You need to show some dedication first. Thus, homework. You need to obtain meditation and measuring on your own and bring them up to apprentice rank along with Mana Manipulation and Mana Sight. All without using points, of course.”

John nodded. “I can do that!”

Loren nodded back at him. “I’m sure you can, now, run along, I think I’m going to go take that nap I mentioned. Be sure to visit when you’re in town next though, and I expect to hear progress!”

“Will do!”

With that Loren stood up and made a gesture, the privacy ward popped like a soap bubble and the sounds of the square came rushing back. The hecklers had moved on, and a few people gave the John a curious look as he stood up. Looking about he decided he was done with town, and headed back towards his farm.