John logged back in an hour later, feeling refreshed after a leisurely lunch and a bathroom break. He looked around at his new plot of land and found it just as he left it. Empty and covered in waist high grass. “Alright,” he said to no one, “what do I do now?” This had all seemed much easier when he was considering plots of land in a tamed and known location. Never once had it occurred to him that he might have to start with a large grassy field.

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]

[Current Amount: V = (1*L)3 ft3]

[Mana Cost: 10/CF/second]

Okay, he thought to himself, so I just channel the spell and I can move a cubic foot 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 prescription 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 feat, 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 pushing your Mana to its limits you have gained +1 Intelligence]

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

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

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 message 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]

[Current Amount: V = (2*L)3 ft3]

[Mana Cost: 10/CF/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 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 Font,” 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 Rune. Most spells are nothing more than a series of runes strung together to form a sentence. Take Move Earth for instance. It’s just two Runes. Movement, and Earth. Though Earth is actually a Compound Rune made up of two smaller runes, Stone and Dirt. Create Font is very similar, it’s Evoke and Water.”

“So when I cast a spell, I’m actually drawing runes?” John asked.

“Yes and no, there are runes involved, but they’re System Crafted. That is to say the system does all the heavy lifting and the runes are always perfect for your level of spell. That is to say if your Create Font is novice ranked, it draws the runes as if a novice had made them, clumsily and riddled with errors. However if you are a Grandmaster of the spell the runes would be perfectly flawless,” she explained.

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

“See? Smart. That’s exactly what it means. That said, it’s not always the best choice, drawing a rune 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 rune 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.

[Still Mind Buff: Achieve Serenity]

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 when you hit the wall don’t be afraid to spend your points on them,” 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 several hazy little runes. 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 runes. At expert it’ll be clear as words on a page. Masters can start to see the natural runes made by free floating mana, and Grandmasters can read them clearly. Now look at the rock dear.” Loren gestured behind them.

John turned his head and then cried out as he was overwhelmed by the magic swirling around the megalith. He instantly shut his eyes, and then to his surprise he was greeted with another prompt.

[Mana Sight has Ranked Up due to continued use. Novice à Apprentice]

Turning his head away from the rock he opened his eyes again to see the old woman grinning. “There are two ways to rank up Mana Sight. Use it constantly to rack up experience over time, or look at more complex spell work. This rock is some of the most complex spellwork I’ve ever seen. I’ve been over it a dozen times and still have no idea what it does.”

“What about the other one I found?” John asked.

“The one about an hour outside of town? Or the one two days away? There are five of them that I know about, all dotted across the plains. I’ve only studied this one though. Too old to be tromping around the fields.”

“I set up my claim around the one about an hour away,” he admitted. “It said something about unknown buffs being applied.”

“Aye, it would. Said the same thing when the village was set up. We’ve still no idea what it’s influencing. Unfortunately land doesn’t come with a character sheet you can check.”

“So how do you figure out what it’s doing?” John asked, puzzled.

“Well, you either identify the magic it’s using, or you do it the hard way and look for things that are different than they should be,” Loren replied.

John considered and then nodded. “So if my crops start growing funny, it’s probably the big magic rock.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a few moments, and then Loren patted his leg. “Well, I’m going to get some rest, and get away from these blasted players. Good luck with your farming. Give me another visit when you come back to town.”

John nodded. “I’ll be sure to!”

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.