My eyes are closed. I take a deep breath.

In, for three seconds. Out, for three seconds.

I open my eyes and look over the little forest clearing I had found. The Tutorial Village is not that large in general, and so the forest inside of it was small as well. But there are still little hidden places, like this clearing, inside of it. It’s a circle of grass and sturdy flowers, surrounded by a ring of trees on all sides, leaving just enough of an opening for a single beam of light to fall over the space. From the center of the clearing I can sometimes see the occasional small animal scurry about, like rabbits and foxes. Though I still haven’t seen any birds from here, during midday, the forest is always covered in bird song.

I bounce on the balls of my feet to get my body as loose as possible. I stare down the four targets I had set up. Nailed to the trunk of the trees, at about chest height, are boards with crudely painted targets on them. Eventually I want to get good enough to hit targets in front of and behind me at the same time, but for now I’m just focusing on the four I am facing. I set my eyes on them and settle into my stance.

Let's see how quickly I can do it this time.

Aiming for the target on my right I pull my mana out, through my fire point as quickly as I can, and push it towards the palm of my right hand in a clockwise spiral motion. I try to link up the image of a gas expanding and agitating to the sensation of twisting and pushing my hand out. As my arm fully extends, the fire mana pushes out of the palm of my hand and forms the rough shape of a ball, shooting off towards the target.

I don't wait to see if it actually hits. I immediately turn to the left-most tree and— pulling mana out of my water point — I push it in a counter clockwise motion to form a mimicked Waterball. As soon as I can see the mana take the right shape and shoot off, I switch back to my right hand; pulling the mana down through the lightning point and letting it expand as it goes out as a Lightning Arrow. I’m still really slow with that spell, but I hope I can make up any lost time with the next one.

I decide to use my physicality to perform this spell even faster; I raise my left hand to my chest and then swing it up in the air to help with the mental image of pulling my wind mana out and up to my arm. I swing my arm down while agitating the mana, and I’m able to push out a Wind Blade properly.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

I let myself relax again and look at all of the targets. The aim of my Waterball was a bit off, sadly. Looks like I’m still hesitating in my movement while switching between my right and left arm. I rub my chin as I walk up to the targets, getting a better idea of how my voiceless magic went.

Ever since I pulled it off for the first time in the Attack building, I've been pouring all of my energy into testing the limits of voiceless incantations. While the Raise Fighting Spirit and Mana Expulsion skills were what allowed me to make use of my mana like this, I’ve found the real trick to it is in the same way I was able to unlock shortened incantations.

This is still the starting village, so there is no real character progression. Even though your stats may improve according to what you do here, it seems like there’s an upper limit of ten points gained, but even that can’t compare to the improved system assistance that real advancement in-game provides. So then how was I able to pull off shortened incantations after practicing by myself? It’s that even without the game’s assistance, what I was doing was still practice.

From what I’ve heard from the various class instructors, class progression is like the game naturally assisting you in gaining real world experience, which it then assigns a point value to. But just like how Vandar had mentioned, there is still a difference between experience and experience.

Shortening your incantations is just a natural part of learning how to use that spell more efficiently. It's not some special unlock, it's just getting better at the spell itself.

When I had asked Arinn about this viewpoint, and if that meant full incantations were just something you naturally get rid of as you level, he had responded that, ‘In some cases yes. But performing a long incantation is still the best way to get the most power out of a spell. While a shortened incantation will perform the spell when you're proficient enough at it, a long incantation will give you the most power possible for that level of spell. So a good mage is judged by their ability to know when to use shortened incantations and when to use long incantations.’

Walking up to my target board, I examine the damage left behind from each of the spells. Unlike the burn marks left behind by the Fireball or the Lightning Arrow, or the cut marks from the Wind Blade, the Waterball spell leaves a cracked dent in the wood where it hit. While my Waterball spell technically hit the target, it was mostly on the edge. It’s still easier for me to do a Fireball spell with my right hand and a Waterball spell with my left hand, but making the mental transitions between hands with voiceless magic is pretty hard.

Making the shift from a full incantation to a short incantation is all about slowly becoming proficient enough in the spell. But performing voiceless incantations demands absolute proficiency from the get go. If I'm off in the way the mana moves for a specific spell, by even a little bit, the spell’s form won’t even manifest. For example, if I messed up in the counter-clockwise spiral needed for a Waterball spell, all that would happen would be a splash of water flying out of my hand. That might be useful as a distraction, but if you can’t pull the voiceless incantation off correctly every single time, it’s not worth it. It’s much easier to just say the words required and let the game handle the rest.

Still, I really believe there is a lot of potential in voiceless incantations. For one, if I'm fighting against another player they won't be able to tell what spell I'm casting until it's already flying at them. And while it might just be my imagination, it feels like there is no cool down period between spells. It's all a matter of how fast I can move the mana by myself.

I'm still too slow with my spells to really prove if that theory is right or not though. So I can’t tell if the poor aim of my Waterball spell is a problem with the technique itself or simply my lack of experience.

Looking back over the targets, the boards are pretty beat up at this point. I go to take them down. I’ll just have to replace them with some spare ones I had prepared; I think I only have one more set though. They’re over with the rest of the used up boards — scrap wood at this point — propped between some trees behind me. I’ve been at this practice long enough that I had to take my shirt off from sweating through it.

I go to pull out the iron nail holding the target in place, but remember that I left my hammer back with the pile of boards. Somehow the thought of having to walk even one extra lap feels like way too much work. I let out a breath and reach into the little remaining mana I have left at the moment. I pull it out through the metal mana point and pool it down into my fingers. I wrap my fingers around the head of the nail. For the sake of my laziness, I really hope this works… I expand the metal mana out, to just under my skin, leaving it in a barely agitated state. The nail pops out and I catch the board before it falls. I let out a sigh of relief. The walk of shame has been avoided.

I continue on with my task, putting the removed nails in my pocket.

For whatever reason, the only mana that will come out as a normal spell through voiceless incantations are wind mana, fire mana, water mana, and lightning mana. When I had tried it for the other four types of mana, they still released out like a mist with no form or power.

Something tells me that this is more of a mental problem than a game problem though. It might be in part because I have a much harder time imagining earth or metal spontaneously appearing when you cast a spell. Even with the Earth bullet and metal needle spell, I remember thinking it looked really unnatural at first.

I had originally planned on experimenting in the Magic building to see if I could get over that mental block. But while sparring with Riyu for the second time I noticed that trying to use expanded elemental mana in place of expanded neutral mana led to very different results.

The other four elements seem to give buffs or status affects when they are left in an expanded state. For light mana you get a passive healing buff. Dark mana gives poison or curses. Earth mana ups defensive qualities. And Metal mana ups attack damage and strength.

My little experiment seems to have been a success as I pocket the last nail and slowly walk across the clearing with the used up target boards. I feel the metal mana still floating in my fingers and relax the mental grip I have on it, letting it naturally flow back into my core. It looks like the metal strength buff even work for mundane tasks like this. My mind starts to race with new ideas and possible experiments to see just how flexible these status effects are.

Though I guess there's nothing I can do about having to wait for my mana to recharge at the moment. I wonder if —

“What are you still doing here?! “

I jump in response to the shout coming from behind me. When I turn around I see Arinn, the magic instructor, standing at the edge of the forest. His arms are held out and his mouth is gaping open. No idea why he yelled to get my attention but I still turn to smile and wave. Before I can do that though he yells again.

“Why are you in the tutorial village? It's been a week!”

“Oh wow, it has, hasn't it? I’ve just been having a lot of fun messing around with this new magic skill I figured out. I figured I might as well work it out here while I still have people I can ask for help.”

Aaron stares at me, not moving. It goes on long enough that I start to worry, but he straightens his back and walks towards a nearby tree. He rests his head against it and just start to groan.

“Arinn? Are you okay? Buddy?

Since the tutorial village is surrounded by a cloud dome, the light from the sky is diffused throughout the whole cloud. During the day, it gives everything a very diluted, light blue color. What’s interesting is that at night, the devs decided to make the cloud more see through. It's still shrouded, but you can actually make out the shape of the moon pretty clearly and even some of the brighter stars.

We had set up a small table outside of the Metal Crafting building, just to the side of the front door. I was sitting there with the rest of the crafting instructors.

The current instructors are Vandar Forgemaster (who told me last week to just call him Van), the Metal Crafting instructor. Gistane, a teenage girl who is acting as the Material Crafting instructor; she’s a woodworker by trade. And the current Fabric Crafting instructor is a tailor by the name of Jazz916. We just call him Jazz.

We are all gathered around the table, each fiddling with our own projects. A combination of moonlight and some candles spread around the table gives us enough light to work by.

I have a mortar and pestle, some herbs used for healing potions (I had identified them in the forest using a book I checked out from the library), and some big leaves that almost tasted like basil. I had used the herbs to make a couple of basic healing potions. I then took those healing potions and transformed them in two ways. The first way was to cook it in enough sugar to make a syrup, let that syrup harden, and then crush it into a powder; the second method was just to mix the potion with some gelatin and make it thick enough that it could hold it’s shape while still being easy to swallow.

I originally wanted to find some ratio of herbs that allowed me to get the same healing effect without having to make a liquid potion as the base, but no luck. There was something inherent to the cooking process that allowed the herbs to heal.

I was currently taking both types of “potions” and wrapping them into a tight ball, with the basil like plants as the wrapper; it was still unclear if they would fall apart over time or if I would need to make some form of edible glue to hold it all together. Granted the taste might be a little odd in the end, but I figure the ease of popping the whole thing in your mouth would make up for it — there is no way opening and drinking from a glass bottle in the middle of a fight is easy.

Van is sitting to my left, with a sheet of metal in front of him that he poured a layer of wax over. He is currently waiting for it to cool, so that he can carve a design into the wax with a metal scribe. Apparently he plans to etch that design into the metal with a simple acid he had prepared. He is also the one who had provided a bottle of gin from his stash of homemade alcohol for us to share.

Jazz has a handkerchief in an embroidery hoop. When I had asked him what his design was, he got technical enough that I couldn't really understand what he was saying, but apparently it’s some sort of abstract design that would allow the handkerchief to look like a real flower when it is folded correctly.

Gistane, sitting on my right, has a bunch of blank wands she had carved and hollowed out. Apparently she was trying to find a way to make a magical core that could give an adequate boost to your spells even while using cheap wood, without pushing the manufacturing cost up too high. As the only one of us who was still underaged, she had pouted when the game didn’t allow her to drink the gin Van had brought.

We had all been tinkering for the past two hours. Laughing under the moonlight with a drink in hand, surrounded by like-minded friends was as soothing in the virtual world as it is in the real.

“All right, let's see if I got it this time.” Gistane says. She gives one final tap to the base of the gold core she had filed down to fit into the hollow of the wand. She picks it up and, with an added twirl, said the words, “Fireball.”

From the tip of the wand, fire gathered, formed a tiny ball, and shot off into the night. Unfortunately the fire gathering at the tip had set the wood on fire. Gistane groaned while staring at what was now a burning stick in her hand. “Ugh! There's got to be a way to make this work.”

“You've already done an impressive job, getting that cheap piece of tinder to cast magic without exploding.” says Van.

“Why don't you just push the core all the way through and out the end? You can still have the wooden wand design as a kind of sleeve to the real core.” says Jazz.

“I’ve tried that already. But everyone complains about it, saying that it doesn't look like a real wand that way. No matter how many times I explain to them that there needs to be a magical focal point at the tip, nooooooo, everybody wants it to look like a traditional wand. Only made of wood. And if I make this gold any thinner it won't adequately carry the mana from the hand to the tip. As it is, this thing’s useless.”

“Now don't say that. Here, I have a use for it.” says Van. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pipe that is intricately carved. He stuffs tobacco in the end, and then takes the still burning wand from Gistane’s hand and uses it to light his pipe. “There you go. You could sell it as a nice handy lighter.”

Gistane looks like she wants to complain about the joke but gets too caught up staring at the wand, like she’s seriously considering it.

All of us laugh.

I look at the pipe that Van is smoking from, appreciating the relief carvings of tree branches and leaves all across the wood. “Who made that?” I ask.

“I did,” he says after taking a long drag off the pipe. “Took a little bit of time whenever I had to let metal cool off, and just kept added more detail as I went.”

“The distinctions the devs made with the different types of crafting is ridiculous.” says Jazz while stitching.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Technically, making the pipe he's using should've falling under my job category.” says Gistane, her head on the table and still staring at the now charred wand.

“Oh yes, because surely it doesn't matter how much intricate design work I've cut into metal,” Van says, picking up his scribe to draw into the wax covered plate, “because surely if I so much as look at wood I won't have the foggiest idea what I'm doing anymore.”

All of the crafters snort.

“Why isn't it all just labeled under a ‘Crafting’ category then?” I ask.

“Who knows.” Says Jazz. “It must be some internal management thing. But the end result is infuriating. Yes, there will always be people that specialize, but it's impossible to make anything of value without some sort of crossover.”

“It's not like there's anything to stop you.” Says Van.

“Easy for you to say, you’re naturally skilled in crafting to begin with. I would kill to be able to easily make my own sewing needles. But the work required for that is so delicate, that without the games help in leveling my smithing up I'd have to practice forever to get good enough at it. And even then, by the time I have to make another custom needle, I’ll probably forget most of what I learned without the class assist features.”

“Excuses.” Says Gistane.

Van gives a full belly laugh as Jazz throws a spool of thread at her head. I lean back and enjoy the night breeze, comforted by the sense of community here.

A high kick is tearing through the air right toward my head. It's all I can do to throw my upper body back to dodge. Trying to make some distance I follow through on the movement and roll into a backwards handspring. As soon as I land on my feet, Riyu’s already bearing down on me.

He raises his right leg straight up into an axe kick. I pull earth mana out, flood it into both arms, expand it under my skin, and activate it. The side affect of earth mana when activated like this causes my forearms to lock up, and my hands to forcibly clench into fists. But in this case that will only help. I cross both my arms above my head, barely making it in time.

Riyu’s axe kick slams down onto my cross-armed block. It nearly brings me to my knees, but I keep my footing. From my already crouched position I push forward with my legs and shove Riyu back.

Thanks to the awkward angle he was in from the kick, Riyu is left off-balance. So even though I still have earth mana in my arms, I rush forward to throw a flurry of punches.

I'm only able to get two hits in before Riyu can get his guard up, but I don't want to let my advantage slip away that easily. While not stopping my punches — doing my best to not lose concentration — I pull the earth mana back into my core. As soon as it's gone I replace it with metal mana, expand it, and activate it, granting me an attack buff. Now I can see the punches are starting to do damage, even through his guard.

I do two quick jabs with my right hand and link them into a strong left straight.

However, instead of a distracted block, I’m met with Riyu’s parry technique. My arm flies up, completely exposing my chest and throwing me off balance. Riyu grins wickedly and shouts, “Fire fist.”

His fist ignites into flames as he squats for a straight karate punch. I've been hit by that before and no amount of earth mana can cut the damage enough.

I've only got one shot at this.

I feel the mental connection to my metal mana, still in my arms. With the visualization of snipping a thread, I cut that connection. The metal mana is still in my hands but it’s separate, like it's not even mine.

As fast as possible I pull a little bit of water mana out of the water point, into my chest and simply push it out. I don’t give it a form to take, so the mana just splashes out of my chest as regular water. I was able to push it out in time to douse Riyu’s fire punch, but the regular punch behind it is still following through.

His fist slams into my chest, launching me back. Somehow I’m able to dig my heels into the ground and not fall. The throbbing pain dulls down quickly, but that attack still did plenty of damage.

“Ohoho! Now that was a unique way to defend against my Fire Fist.” Riyu says, wiping the water off of his hand on his gi. “You're getting more and more unpredictable with your movements you know. That skill should've ended this match.”

“I may have put out the fire, but that didn't stop your punch from hurting like hell.”

We grin at each other. We're both breathing deep from our fight, but it’s clear that I’m far worse off than he is.

I look at my health bar, in the right hand corner of my vision. There's only a fifth of it left. He's right, any hit by a skill will take me out at this point. Worse, cutting off the metal mana in my arms took out most of my mana reserves with it; my blue mana bar is only a third full.

I can feel the metal mana still sitting there but it’s slowly starting to diffuse and escape out. It'll still be good for a few more punches but I can't manually control it anymore. Plus it's blocking the path for other spells to flow towards my hands. I'm not just in a bad way over here, I'm pretty much screwed.

Oh well, might as well go all out with what I have then.

I take this small lull in the fight to square up my stance and activate the Raise Fighting Spirit skill. But as I do, I specifically imagine the sensation of blocking up my lightning mana point. So this time, as all of my mana expands out and fills up my body, all of the elements get neutralized — except for the wind mana. The wind element spreads through the neutral mana, so that all throughout my body I can feel a breeze running just under my skin.

I imagine the mana along the entire span of my back. I feel the mana pressed against my skin, agitate it, and push it out in a technique I call: Wind Burst.

The force of the wind mana exploding out of my back is so strong it launches me clear off my feet, rocketing me towards Riyu. I strain my arms to stop them from flying back and position my arm into a right angle. I'm in front of Riyu in a second, quick enough that he doesn't have his guard up. Aiming my fist in the rough direction of his head I burst the wind mana out of the back of my right elbow, launching my punch forward and into his face. It hit’s hard enough to shove Riyu clear out of the way.

The momentum of the two Wind Bursts leaves me tumbling towards the far wall with a row of spears on it. I give myself over to the image in my head. I twist my body in the air, flipping around until my chest is facing the ground and stick my legs into the dirt, sliding backwards in a half crouch.

Thanks to the combined force of the Wind Bursts and the leftover metal mana in my fist, I can see that my attack did some real damage to Riyu. His knees have buckled and he's stuck in a squat, no longer able to stand up straight. This is the best chance I've had all day and I won't let it go to waste.

I imagine the wind mana at the soles of my feet, agitate and expand it out. I jump forward at the same time and use the Wind Burst from my feet to launch me right back at Riyu.

In mid-air I pull my right leg back, and — taking advantage of the sensation of the wind mana flooding back into the empty space in my leg — I yell out “Wind Blade!” I swing my foot upward into a soccer kick, casting the spell out of my foot.

It hits!

Since I used my entire leg, the wind blade was bigger than normal. It cuts a line clean through the ground and across Riyu’s chest. Blood sprays out behind him from the cut. I tense my arms for another fly by punch. I have to end this now.

But I misread one thing.

Riyu wasn't in a squat because he was off-balance. It was because he was readying himself. He pulls his right arm back one more time, with his left arm up in a stance I've seen before. I've never been able to block it, and I'm flying right into range.

I take all of the mana in my chest and legs and perform a Wind Burst, to try to push me back out of range. But I barely had any mana left to begin with. Worse yet, there was just enough force in the Wind Burst to stop my momentum, so I’m left floating right in front of Riyu.

“Crap — !”

“Tri-punch!”

Riyu’s thrust turns into a blur, and I am simultaneously hit in the chest, face, and stomach. The attack sends me back, crashing into the wall. The rows of spears and staffs tumble over me as I slide lifelessly onto the ground.

I'm taking deep breaths on the ground, but I can’t move. And since I landed face first, all I can see is the ground. The holographic status bars are only my perception, so they still clearly show that both my mana and my health have hit zero.

Since the tutorial village counts as a safe zone, you can't die here. Instead you enter a state known as “Passed Out.” For a short amount of time you are completely immobile, and only registered friends are allowed to move your character.

At least the numb feeling means I don’t have to feel the pain from getting hit with that skill. Again.

I have no sensation in my body but I can see my vision turning over until the ceiling is above me. I assume Riyu turned me over. My head keeps flopping around, but since I can see my legs stretched out on the ground in front of me, it looks like he also sat me up against the wall. Again.

“You okay?” I hear Riyu say, though it sounds like I'm hearing it through a bad phone connection. It means Riyu is talking to me through the friend chat function. If that's the case, I can respond.

“Yeah, I'm just pissed I keep getting caught by that attack.”

“Hey, give yourself some credit. I've never seen a new player move like you do. There's not a single mob in the beginner area that’ll be able to touch you, D0n.”

“Still hasn’t helped me stop you from punching the shit out of me.”

I can hear Riyu laughing. The sound of it is doubled, which means he's doing it both inside the chat and out loud. The prick.

“So, once you're back on your feet, do you want to go for another round?”

“Sadist.”

“Is that a no?”

“… I didn't say that.”