I am heading to the military place, actually flying, as in not just staying off the ground for a longer period, in my new half-duck form. Yes, half-duck. There is a limited amount of birds that would let me get close enough to learn their aspect.

Specifically, my options were pigeons, which while easy… No thanks. I could go down to the harbor to find seagull, but they’re the pigeons of the sea. There are a few small birds, but they tend to flee rather quickly. I could probably learn their aspect, but I’m not sure I have the patience for that.

A stealth spell would be nice. I tried camouflaging myself with the Mist aspect, but they fled whenever I started forming the mist. All of that left me with one easily accessible option, so I bought a cheap loaf of bread and headed to a spot by one of the lakes, where people often feed the ducks.

Since my wings are attached to the side of my upper body, I had to remove my shirt. I put it in my new bag, which I’ve attached around my waist, rather than over my shoulder, thanks to the aforementioned wings.

The bag is a pretty simple design, about the size and shape of a laptop bag. It’s made from a long piece of cloth forming both the front, back and flap, with the sides filled in. It’s made from robust, prussian blue, with white string in a spiral around the joints.

Said string is made from the web I found in the insect cave. After some experimentation I managed to split it into separate strands, instead of the rope thickness I found it in. I also found a way to make webs via the Aspect of the Spider, though I haven’t been able to weave it into a cloth. Aside from that, the less spoken about it, the better.

I found through experimentation that I can conjure materials of different properties, though not with great precision. I have been able to make it solid like a metal-crystal thing, stiff, but bendable, like leather, and like cloth. I also found that if I conjure around a mana crystal ‘seed’, keeping the conjured material together seems to cost almost no mana.

Using that knowledge, the entire bag is stiffened by a half-flexible plate sewn into the entire length of the long cloth, as well as one for each of the two sides. This not only stiffens the bag, but makes it hold its shape, too. Near each corner of the flap is a small loop of string to hook around one of two short rod-shaped mana crystals on the front of the bag.

I made two straps of my selfmade string, imbued and interwoven with conjured fabric. I found this combination, which I call Spellweave, incredibly easy to manipulate. I can not only easily move them around, but also shorten or lengthen them.

I made the second when I realized that would not only let me stop the bag from shaking when running in my humanoid forms, but I could attach it to other forms, like the pretty large form I get when I do a full wolf transformation. The Direwolf form, if you will.

I gave the bag a few magical upgrades as well. One is a pretty simple enchantment to make it water resistant and keep fluids out, which I doubt will do much good underwater. The other is a space expansion enchantment which roughly doubles the bag’s internal size. It doesn’t reduce the weight, though.

Back to the Direwolf form, I found that I could apply ‘elemental’ aspects to myself in my other forms. Elemental aspects being the ones like Mist, Water, the recently acquired Fire, and interestingly, the plant aspects.

As cool as a burning wolf is, I should get a bird form that is slightly more majestic than a Duck. And I have just the plan for getting that, and many other animal aspects. I’ve been on vacation in Denmark quite a few times, and there’s a bunch of places with lots of animals. I did some Google-fu based on that and ended up with four locations I can visit over three days.

I might be able to cut down the time to two days, but on the other hand it might take four days. I need to time it with ferries and/or trains, and the ferry for one, only does twice a day(each way). Well, it’s in the EU so I can easily go there without bothering with things such as visas.

I am considering just flying there on my own, but I would need to be able to navigate as well as continuously fly pretty high up, and quite fast for several hours, for it to be a serious option.

I reckon I can solve the navigation problem with some reading on the topic and a GPS for insurance, but I’m not sure my duckman form can do fast or prolonged flight. I could land on the water thanks to my selection of magic, but even then it would likely be a tiring trip.

I could take the detour along the swedish coast to minimize the time I am out of sight from land and consider crossing Skagerrak after hopefully getting the aspect for one or more birds of prey… Come to think of it, that might work. Worst case scenario I could just spend some money on the ferry and/or a room for the night.

Return to the now, I do a shallow dive to drop my altitude, pulling up with before I get too close to the ground. With my body in an upright position, my wing no longer provide any lift, and gravity takes over. However, being only a few meters off the ground, I use levitation magic to control my descent, landing softly on the ground, across the street from the visitor’s building.

As much as I want to be able to do a perfect glide-into landing, I was unable to do so when practicing. And then I had a spot with no trees in the way and quite a distance from any human buildings and roads. Now, to be fair I didn’t practice the landing all that much, instead coming up with different way to handle emergencies.

Emergencies like running out of mana in flight (solution: controlled descent and try to not fail the landing too hard), somehow returning to human form in flight (do anything I can to control my falling speed, use the mist form for landing if possible), to losing or injuring one wing in flight (combination of the two above).

This time I remember to revert to human form, as well as putting on my T-shirt. I then tighten the wraps around my feet to fit my now human feet. All of that takes only a second, maybe two, as I do it with my steadily improving magic.

Good. I do a somewhat half-assed wave to the four soldier-looking guys(and one gal) and turn to the entrance to the building. Before I can get anywhere, though, the less-soldier-looking man accompanying them, or perhaps being accompanied by them, speaks up.

“Are you Lars Eikeli?”

He introduces himself as Thomas. He’ll be my main contact in the military. When I ask ‘what about the guy from last time?’ I am told that guy, whose name I fail to remember, is now the boss of this guy, whose name is Thomas. I should remember the name of Thomas so that I don’t embarrass myself. I’ll probably talk to him quite a few times, after all. Thomas, that is.

Right That should be enough. Where are we going? Oh, a track. The ‘track and field’ kind. He explains that he’s part of a division looking on magic and the [System]. Apparently almost every single soldier have unlocked the [System], thanks to getting a [Soldier] class from the [Marching], [Gun Shooting] and [Gun Maintenance] abilities.

The remaining two abilities required for the five to fully unlock the [System] has been anything from more military obtained abilities like [Artillery Operation] and [Vehicle Maintenance] to [Driving] and [Cooking] or magic-related ones.

Isn’t [Gun Shooting] the one that lets you make bullet curve towards a target? While no one has tested that, apparently, I see something like the light of realization down on the face of more than one of the escorting soldiers.

“Why are they here, anyway?”

“Last time, there was talks about you acting as a consultant on magic and train a few people in it. They were brought here today so you could check if they can learn magic.”

Wait, do the military think only some people can learn magic? I mean, that’s how it is in many, many series, but I’m pretty sure anyone can real it in real life though? Waitwaitwait! Heh. Hehehehe. I am glad I have learnt not to laugh out loud in public, my laughter sounding pretty stereotypically ‘evil laughter’.

“Does that mean they’re my guin-” Whoops, didn’t mean to say that out loud. I turn to them. “Can I test something on you? It should be harmless.”

Alright, guinea pigs obtained! I deploy the wings I made yesterday. Each consist of two flat diamond shapes (the card color one) connected with a band of sorts. Both the diamonds and the band have the purple blue color what I conjure naturally takes, although the band is darker and semitransparent.

With one floating above and behind each shoulder, they look kinda like wings. They are actually foci for magic, mostly absorbing it. Their surface area can also be used to improve my flight abilities, but that was a lucky side effect.

They are made from pretty large mana crystal seeds, which also turned out to make them naturally absorb mana. As far as I can tell, excess mana is used to crystallize the conjured material, which give them a grainy crystalline pattern here and there.

Enough about the wings, I brought them out because I want to control massive amounts of mana, and I want to draw it from the ether because I would rather not find out what happens if all the things I’ve done to my body runs out of mana. Of course, for all I know, running out of mana in itself can be lethal.

I have a hypothesis. Two actually. For the first one, I concentrate all the mana around the nearest unwitting victim, pressing against him with no real force. I see his larynx move as he swallows. He’s breathing pretty quickly. Was he sweating before? I let off the pressure, noting that he lets out a breath as I move to the next person, the woman.

This time, instead of applying pressure, I form the mana into strands, poking and prodding her. This, I’ve more or less succeeded doing to myself, and you wouldn’t notice it if you can’t sense mana. She seems to be around level 40, plus/minus twenty. But probably around level 40.

I don’t have enough experience with the mutated ability, [Mana Inspect] to say for sure. It’s essentially [Inspect], but a touch of mana lets me learn a little bit more about the target. Well, I’ve tested what I wanted to test. But since I have five perfectly willing targets, I might as well go all out.

I cover the group in evenly distributed mana, forming a sort of cloud of mana around them. I then start tightening the mana around each of them. The wings start making a deep humming sound, vibrating from all the mana coursing through them.

I increase the pressure even more and see that one of them pales, pupils contracting. His breath is rapid and heart is pounding like a rabbit with only moments to live. He adopts a martial stance, possibly unconsciously, and I let up the pressure around him.

While he is spared from further abuse, the other do not have it as easy, the mana spent on him now shared among the remaining four. Wait, the woman is completely unfazed, even completely stopping my mana probes before they can even get through her skin. Instead, she seems to be looking around. She’s got the perception and manipulation ability, then.

I move the heaviest of the mana away from her, but keep a three tendrils there to try to bypass her defences. “Stop them if you can.”

Three more, now with quite a lot of mana pressuring them. No wait, those two have definitely learned at least the perception ability. I change the thin strands into thicker tendrils, jabbing at them like I do with the woman. Oh, that guy just flinched, his hands moving backwards.

I should just get this over with, in fact I should probably have stopped right after testing what I wanted to. Teehee~ I mentally stick my tongue out and hit my head with my knuckles. Since this guy is the only who has shown no reaction, ALL ON HIM!

Wow, this guy is a mountain. Or rather, mana goes right through him. No resistance, no nothing. I give up. I doubt this guy can learn magic, should I refer him to the mountaintop Elder instead?

“Okay. You,” I point my hand at the man in question. “Don’t seem to be affected by mana at all. That’s interesting, and I would like to see if that still applies if I actually do something with the mana. The others, I think you already have at least one of the two basic magic abilities.”