The first thing I tried to do was make a spell that could heal damage.

I didn’t want to die because a snake bit me or I fell over and broke my leg or something else stupid. So I sat down on the sand, plopped my hands in my lap, and tried to use my mana. I certainly hadn’t had anything like this before, and the feeling was obvious when I tried to find it. I found it surprisingly easy to use, it moved where I wanted it to move, although it did feel sluggish. It seemingly originated from the center of my chest. After a brief moment, I managed to push some of it down my arm to rest in my hand. I could feel it roiling beneath my skin, but I couldn’t see any hint of it visually. I tried to push it out of my fingers, and a few bluish-white sparks appeared at my fingertips.

I grinned, I’m a god damned wizard.

I played around with it for a long while, trying to get it to visually appear but I mostly just got more of the sparks. There was no spell creation menu where I could choose the effects as I had seen in some RPG’s, and no real intrinsic understanding of how to do it. Things like this were usually intent-based? Perhaps I needed to give the mana some kind of direction on what to do. I didn’t have a grasp on how to change any properties about the energy itself, so I was only left with trying to actively tell it what to do.

“Heal,” I said calmly while trying to push the mana out of my hand.

I felt, something?

The mana twisted slightly beneath my skin, so I repeated the word and tried to pulse my mana in time with it, it twisted slightly more with every iteration seemingly working towards something over the course of a few very long minutes. I focused all of my attention on the mana and let the world fall away, like when you stare at something for so long that your vision tunnels and everything blacked out around it. I focused entirely on the feeling of the mana and what I wanted to do.

Mana has been increased by 1.

“Heal,” I said intently.

The mana twisted into an impossibly complicated shape, my hand suddenly glowed with a bright translucent green light and I felt my mana start to drop quickly. The spell abruptly faded after a moment and I stared at the little notice that had appeared.

You have unlocked a new skill, Heal.

You have unlocked a new skill, Casting Speed.

I felt a flash of triumph cut through me, I had managed to do this, me. I’d even unlocked another passive and got another stat point out of it, I felt elated as I opened the skill menu back up to read the description.

Heal (Level 1) – Use mana to heal injuries.

Type – Cast.

Cast time – 4.75(5) second charge.

Target – Self, Other.

Cost – 1 Mana.

Exchange 1 point of Mana to Heal 0.25(+0.25 per level) point of HP on target. Can exchange up to the maximum available Mana. Casting Heal grants EXP towards this skill.

It was almost exactly what I wanted, but why was it so weak? Most ‘Heal’ spells in video games healed anywhere from twenty to one-hundred HP at level one and cost anywhere from one to one-hundred MP. Even if I dumped all of my mana into a single Heal, the most I could do was heal twenty-five HP, at the massive cost of one-hundred MP. That kind of sucked, but I had a way of fixing myself up if I got hurt now though, that’s all that mattered, weak magic was still magic.

The ‘Casting Speed’ passive was about what you would expect from the name.

Casting Speed (Level 1) – Reduces the casting time of skills.

Decreases the time taken to cast a spell by 0.25 (+0.25 per level.) seconds. Spells that are reduced to 0 seconds become instant. Casting spells with reduced cast times grants EXP towards this skill.

I was beginning to notice a trend with all of the skills, they all started extraordinarily weak. They might end up strong at much higher levels, but right now they all sucked incredibly. I thought about it for a while, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it right now I had other priorities. The next thing I wanted to do was eat something, I wanted to know if I could recover health or mana with consumables like in most systems like this and hopefully, it was another way to heal myself if I ran out of mana while injured.

Safety first kids.

I had two ideas on that front, try and catch a fish of some sort, or try and steal something from the city. One of those ideas might get me jailed or killed, so I was going to try fishing first, which was incredibly unfortunate. I hated fishing, I’d spent hours with others nearby, watched them reel in multitudes of fish while I caught nothing, far too many times for me to ever enjoy it. I didn’t have a rod here either, which would make things almost impossible. There were maybe two hours of light left before it was dark, judging by the position of the sun, so I wasted no time. I turned towards the tree line and searched around for a long stick, it took a while to find something the right length, but I eventually just fought with a thin green tree branch until I managed to tear it off. I managed to find a few stones that had a kind of edge on one side to use at a tool.

Me caveman now, me hit the stick with stone, Ooga Booga.

It took a little while to shape the end of the stick into a very rough point, and I had to strip off a couple of layers of bark but in the end, I had what was probably the worst fishing spear in the history of mankind, my caveman ancestors must have been looking down at me with disappointment.

You have unlocked a new skill, Crafting.

I glanced at the notice, but didn’t bother opening up the menu again, I didn’t exactly have much time to waste with the sun still going down, I could read it later. I headed back down to the beach before kicking off my shoes and socks in the sand. I tested the water and found it still rather warm, before wading in up to my knees. I stared around at the water for a while before I spotted some small dark shape moving. I fought back the urge to run away from it, before holding my spear up and getting ready, but the thing vanished a moment later.

Huh.

I searched around again and the next time I saw movement I stabbed the stick at it straight away. I missed entirely, and ripples spread over the water from the failed attempt. I stabbed at another dark shape and missed again.

You have unlocked a new skill, Fishing.

You have unlocked a new skill, Weapon Mastery.

You have unlocked a new skill, Spear Mastery.

Nice, but I was a bit busy here dammit.

I kept stabbing at the moving dark spots for over an hour, and the sun was starting to dip pretty low. I had received four levels of Fishing, five levels of Spear Mastery, three levels of Weapon Mastery and two Strength points but not a single fucking fish, my terrible luck at fishing apparently holding on strong, but every little notification worked like a little burst of recognition for my efforts and fuelled me ever onwards, despite the many, many failed attempts. I couldn’t help but noticed that more shapes were appearing in the water the longer I kept at it. I took another stab at a shape before I pulled the spear out of the water very slowly and watched as the small silver fish wriggled about on the end of it.

I was a god-damned fisherman.

I celebrated like an idiot for a moment, shouting and waving my stick before I started making my way back up the beach and belatedly remembered to collect my shoes along the way, there I didn’t have much light left now, so I hurried back into the edge of the forest and leaned my spear up against a tree, the fish still impaled on the end. I searched out a bunch of sticks, branches, and even a small section of a fallen tree that had broken off with the decay. I dragged it all back to the small clearing with some effort and stacked it all together. I put the little twigs and the thinnest dry bark at the bottom before making a little tepee of sticks above it.

I was almost certain this fire would fail, but I was hoping my power would pick up the slack. I grabbed some of the rocks from early and started striking them together next to the bark. Almost an entire minute of failed attempts finally led to some recognition of my actions.

You have unlocked a new skill, Firemaking.

If the system saw my attempt at making a fire as valid surely it would end up lit eventually. It took at least an hour, three levels of Firemaking, many frustrated noises, and one bleeding finger before I was finally sitting in front of a glorious fire. When it had first become dark, about an hour ago I had considered trying to make a fireball spell, but I was far too invested in Firemaking at that point, the nefarious sunk cost fallacy at work. I carefully moved more of the branches into the fire until it was properly burning, took my fishing spear in hand, and poked it into the fire.

I finally relaxed a little to enjoy the warmth of the fire that I had managed to create through the sheer power of smacking rocks together and just stared into the fire thoughtfully. I needed more information about the island and to remember where I had heard of the ‘Land of the Moon’ before, It was on the tip of my tongue but I needed something, anything to jog my memory that tiny amount. I needed more information about the people here, and find out if they were actually going to be hostile, and I needed to get strong enough to protect myself in case they were. I needed to get my hands on some clothing that looked normal enough for me to blend into this place, so I didn’t stand quite so much.

I had no money so I would have to steal what I needed, which was dangerous for obvious reasons, I would have to be careful about how much I stole though because being seen carrying a handful of goods while dressed in strange clothing would make anyone suspicious of me. Did I have an inventory? I did have an inventory, that was one problem solved, I could just put whatever I stole in there, I pulled the fish out to have a look at it, before poking it back in.

You have unlocked a new skill, Cooking.

There was going to be a lot of these, wasn’t there?

I spent the rest of the night watching the fire and using up the rest of my firewood, the temperature on the island remained surprisingly tolerable even after the fire had dwindled down to coals. I kept expecting to suddenly feel tired, or fall asleep, but it never happened. I busied myself with casting Heal on myself until my mana emptied and then waited for it to slowly recover again. Heal was increasingly incredibly slowly, probably because I wasn’t actually fixing anything, but it did use up my mana.

It took roughly seven minutes for it to refill, math was never my strong point, so take it with a grain of salt. I wasn’t being very efficient about it either, lapsing into long periods of musing and trying to remember the names of people with no success. I never ended up eating my fish, either. It was sitting in my inventory after I observed it, +1hp from a badly cooked fish wasn’t too bad. I considered it another test to see if I would get hungry enough to eat it or not.

The sun eventually returned, the dark started to recede, and I had already decided on what I was going to do today. I would spend the morning grinding out Stealth and Observe near the city. See if I couldn’t find out more information about this ‘Land of the Moon’. If I ended up getting restless I would return to camp and try some more spearfishing, as much as I hated it, the more I failed now, the easy it would be to catch the stupid things in the future.

I might even be able to sell them for money in the city if I ever made it that far.

When the light was finally bright enough to see, I headed back to the edge of the city. I found my bush untouched and quietly toggled Stealth back on. There were a surprising amount of people already up and walking around, which was strange, but it made it easier for me to gather information so I couldn’t complain. I watched them all go about their business from afar, reading about there lives and comparing their stats. There were a lot of people near the docks, and even more, were appearing there by the minute.

Stealth has increased by 1.

I was distracted by the massive metal ship heading slowly lumbering out of the docks, and I tracked its progress until it finally vanished from my sight, and only later realized that I hadn’t Observed it while I had the chance, I hadn’t actually Observed anything other than the people. I felt abruptly stupid and started Observing all of the buildings to see if anything showed up and found some interesting but otherwise unnoteworthy things.

Observe has increased by 1.

There were a lot of fishermen in this city, and I meant a lot. I was guessing that they exported a lot of seafood, probably on that big ship that had left earlier. The next most common job was laborer, then quite a few people who worked in inns, bars, and taverns. There was also a lot of woman with the job ‘Working Girl’, they were openly talking to people on the streets, and occasionally leading men into buildings or alleyways. I guess that kind of thing was legal here, that was pretty cool.

Stealth has increased by 1.

I ended up staying for a couple of hours but eventually grew restless enough to head back to camp. I was slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea of going into the city, I hadn’t seen a single bad thing happen throughout my entire time watching them. No weird things that lead me to believe they were cannibals or something else horrifying, they were seemingly just normal, average people. I would give it another couple of days first just to be safe, but if it still seemed alright I might try entering the city. I picked my spear up when I got back to camp and gave it a once over. It was looking pretty beat up, and the end was severely burnt because I stuck it in the fire last night like an idiot.

I observed it out of curiosity.

Sharp Stick – Common.

Durability - 12/100

Well, shit, my spear was almost dead.

On a whim, I tried to cast Heal on it, but it didn’t even activate, unable to target a stick. I sat down before I tried to push some mana into the stick, maybe I could fix it or reinforce it or something, the stick didn’t really take the mana, it kind of just washed over it. I focused more mana into my hand as I had with the Heal spell, but this time I focused on healing the durability instead. I started a mantra in my head about fixing and durability, repeating the words with single-minded focus.

Repair, Durability, Fix, Durability.

I repeated it for almost ten minutes before the mana twisted into another complicated shape, strangely similar to the Heal spell, in a sense. My hand lit up with a blue glow and the stick shuddered once in my hand before the spell ended.

You have unlocked a new skill, Repair.

I pulled it up after a moment to see what it did.

Repair (Level 1) – Use mana to repair items durability.

Type – Spell.

Cast time – 4.75(5) second charge.

Target – Object.

Cost – 1 Mana Point.

Exchange 1 point of Mana to repair 0.25(+0.25 per level) Durability. Can exchange up to the maximum available Mana. Casting Repair grants EXP towards this skill.

I was getting really sick of this 0.25 nonsense.

Mana Core has increased by 1.

I cast the spell and watched as the stick was magically pulled back into better condition, the burnt end that had partially fallen off became rough wood again, and the missing material returned.

Repair has increased by 1.

It took four casts of Repair to fix the stick, and seven minutes of waiting to recover mana in between each cast, which was a really long time, I could have probably just made another spear by the time I had finished. I did get a level of Mana Recovery which sped it up a tiny bit, but it was still a problem. How did the guy deal with his mana issues in the source? Didn’t he just put all his points into a mage build? I was still only level one though, I didn’t have any points. I vaguely remembered that he had some skill he got from a book about breathing or something.

Mana Recovery has increased by 1.

No, it was meditation. I could probably recreate that without too much issue, I was already almost completely certain that it was going to only increase my recovery rate by 0.25 though. It seemed to be an ongoing theme. A complicated mantra and almost thirty minutes of my time later I was proven correct.

You have unlocked a new skill, Meditation.

I studied the description.

Meditate (Level 1)

Type – Toggle.

Target – Self.

Cast time – Instant.

Cost – N/A.

Meditate to increase Health and Mana Recovery by 0.25 per second (+0.25 per level). Increases stamina recovery speed by 0.25 per second (+0.25 per level). Unable to move more than 1m while in use. Meditating grants EXP towards this skill.

I bit back my annoyance at being correct and tried to look on the bright side, eventually, I would be able to regenerate quicker. The not being able to move limitation was kind of expected but still disappointing. I toggled it on and immediately felt my mind clear. It was a strange feeling like my thoughts had both sharpened and broadened at the same time. I almost felt more focused as well somehow. I’m glad it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, because I could already tell that I would be using this a lot. I finally made my way back to the beach and spent the rest of the day fishing and splashing around in the shallows, while waving my spear around like a maniac. I had a great deal more luck while fishing today, and everything I caught immediately went into my inventory. The higher the skill grew the easier I found it to locate and spear the fish, it was actually bizarre how much more successful I was today than yesterday.

I earned myself several levels from my efforts, three more fishing, one more weapon mastery, four more spear mastery, and another two strength levels. The second strength point was what got me to stop fishing, curious as to what it was actually from. Swinging the stick around maybe? It wasn’t exactly heavy, but I was technically carrying something. I set up my camp for the night when it grew dark, it only took me half the time to make a fire this time and I spent the night coming up with a training plan.

Push-ups would probably be enough for Strength grinding, at least for now. Running would probably be how you got Speed points, but I wasn’t sure about Vitality. Perception said it increased accuracy, so maybe throwing things at a target of some kind would work. I didn’t think I could train Intelligence on the beach, not unless I could get a hold of a pack of cards or something, maybe I could play memory? Mana seemed to be easy enough, whenever I cast spells or played with my mana it seemed to increase.

I set my first goal to reach the equivalent stats of a laborer in the city, they seemed to generally be around level fifteen to twenty, with an average stat distribution of twenty-five points across the board, although most of them tended did have slightly lower mental stats while the physicals were approaching thirty. The guards were entirely out of reach, for now, each of them sitting between level thirty to fifty or even higher. They averaged stats in the high fifties, with some much higher outliers. I was putting off my trip into the city until I could at least handle an angry laborer, as it was I was weaker than even the tavern girls. I had a plan now, Stealth, Observation, Meditate in the morning, physical training during the day, Mana training at night.

I toggled Meditate on.