It turned out better than he expected. Sean was managing to climb up quite well. Each successful stab of the sharp rocks took him twenty centimeters or so higher, and it took some effort. Interestingly, he could hold himself up with one hand good enough. Perks of being somewhat light while packing some muscles. His father always had him work out in case he got into a fight. He couldn’t believe that it came in useful —certainly not something that would have been all that useful in the peaceful world he used to live in. Now that the System was here, Sean could almost predict what everyone would do. The world would turn into a straight-out Lord of the Flies scenario. Humans couldn’t be trusted with power.

But when he was around eight meters above ground, his hand slipped. He was oh-so-close too, and he fell back down, the weight of his backpack dragging his chest down and making him fall back-first rather than legs-first. It was all over. If he didn’t die, his computer was gone —he’d worked throughout the entire summer vacation to buy that! And he hadn’t bothered to back up his assignments, so that meant it was bye-bye to anything he had on his computer. Hopefully, the professors would understand that he lost his computer because he died in that mandatory combat stage.

The long-awaited fall came within seconds, but it definitely seemed longer to him. As expected, his back hit the ground first. It was painful. There was an audible crack from within his backpack, and the water bottle he had inside it rubbed against his back, inciting a groan the moment he felt it. And then, not even a moment after that, an even nastier sounding crack sounded out. Was that his back?

He grit his teeth and breathed hastily as if it was the last thing he would do. Then he tried to breathe harder, rather than faster. The gravel hadn’t budged from his fall and uncomfortably rubbed against his back as he laid on his back. There wasn’t all that much pain. If anyone saw him, they’d think of him as a man that had finished a marathon and had collapsed rather than someone who’d just fallen from up above.

Sean rolled over to his side and noticed that his body wasn’t obeying. Ceaselessly, he struggled to pull himself up, but that was when he winced. His spine. It hurt. If one could describe the pain, it was akin to waking up in the morning after sleeping on something hard; amplified by a hundred. That was it. Underwhelming, but still painful.

“Status,” said Sean and he looked at his HP. It was low, at the low fifties. Was one fall enough to make him tumble over and just about die? If he was fighting right now, then he would undoubtedly get killed off by some fodder. Hell, would he even be able to beat a fodder? Then he looked at the HP Regeneration rate. It was 10 per minute. Then it only stood to reason that he’d be up and running in ten minutes, right?

Probably, but he was far too weary. His father always told him that he should never sleep when freezing, for that would mean he would die. But this wasn’t freezing. It was uncomfortable, but far from that. And even if he would die, why did he care? It wasn’t like he’d die for real in the Calibration Stage. Soon after his eyes closed, his breath started to stabilize and his consciousness faded, now entering the world of dreams.

***

The warm blankets protected Sean from the cold and he embraced the thick blanket as if it was a long-lost love. He rolled around the bed and covered his head, now half-conscious. He’d trained himself to get up the moment he was at least half-conscious, as otherwise, he’d be late for his classes —waking up before 9 had become troublesome for him after he graduated high school. It was a habit to not even hear his alarm clock. He opened his eyes and stared up at the wooden ceiling. He knew everything was a dream. Oh well, he couldn’t enjoy it all that much. Then again, it wasn’t as if the situation was all that enjoyable. Not very great ‘dream’ material, if he could say so.

So he got up and walked up to his bookshelf to grab a jack-… Wait, this wasn’t his house. Hell, he lived in an apartment, so there was no business for there to be a wooden ceiling! Sean’s head turned and darted back to the bed. It was a humble one, with metal headboards he’d only seen in Russian serials and a thick blanket that seemed to be full of lint balls. How’d he even sleep in that?

The room wasn’t large by any means, around 5x5 in terms of meters, but the lack of furniture made it seem far more spacious than it was —only a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf filling the room. It was clearly a single room of a house. And then he noticed light coming from the window and looked out. He seemed to be in some sort of medieval village. The mountain range he’d seen in the picture before entering the Stage was evidently visible out in the distance, but how had he gotten here.

The architecture was exactly what he’d expect from a cold mountainous area, resembling a typical Viking village that was shown in movies with a roof that was just a tad bit too long, reaching down —most of the buildings were made of wood, but there were a few that had stone parts. There weren’t many fences between the buildings, and to someone who was used to the grid-esque pattern of the city, the cul-de-sac pattern was disorienting. None were painted, so everything was plain wood, some of the wood clearly rotting from the constant moisture. It looked real.

Sean then turned his head toward the bookshelf, wondering about who lived in this place. Looking at their books explained a lot about a person.

These books were definitely not in English. The letters were weird, as if they were a sort of Arabic but cluttered, then there were other languages as well. But when he focused, a screen popped out. Several of them, in fact, supposedly showing the names of the books. He looked through them, and found the contents to be quite interesting: Raishur’s Guide to Holy Scriptures, Magic 101, Soul Forgery Basics, How to Raise Your First Skeleton, and such. All of them seemed useful.

He ran his hands across the book labeled ‘Magic 101’ and felt the leather cover. The texture felt nice to the touch, soft and somewhat smooth with some grainy exterior; and most importantly, uneven —natural. It was nice to touch it. He pulled the book out and caught a deep whiff of it. It smelled sweet and almost like wood. He whiffed it once, then again, and then again. There was something so utterly relaxing about the smell of old books. After filling his lungs, Sean stared at the cover.

It was plain and simple, just the way he liked it. The name was written in bold near the center and the author’s name somewhat near the bottom, both of them perfectly centered. You came to appreciate the little things in formatting when you tried to write your name straight on a paper with no lines on it and failed. A whole book? That was paramount to impossible.

The door snapped open and an old man that seemed to be in his early sixties opened the door. He looked every part the fantasy farmer that Sean expected him to be —wearing a plain, yellowish-white tunic that seemed to be made of rough material and loose pants. The set was complete with a straw that stuck out from in-between his lips and a ragged straw hat on top of his head.

“Awake, eh?” asked the old man as he looked at Sean, and put a big grin on his face. At first glance, Sean could tell that the old man was one of those cool grandpas in the village that got along with kids, “You shouldn’t fall asleep in the middle of nowhere, yenno. Especially out in the mountains. There are giants up there. I’d bet a dozen gold coins that you’d be their food by now if I hadn’t dragged you with me on my way down.”

“So that’s why I’m here,” said Sean as he looked at the old man, and then back at the book in his hands. The old man didn’t seem like the type to have these books lying around, so it clearly belonged to someone else. He didn’t care who, but he did wonder about how the System was doing these things. It had first managed to fully show his statistics via the attributes, and now it had seemingly created an all-new world for some sort of challenge exclusive to him.

“Not even a thank you? Well, I’ll be damned. That’s what I get for risking the wrath of the giants,” said the old man with a wry grin and stared at the book in Sean’s hand. For a moment, he froze and the glimmer in his eyes disappeared. The expression disappeared as fast as it appeared and the light came back to his eyes, “Magic, eh? You understand that gibberish? Keep it if you want. No one bothers with them nowadays.”

“What is this place?” asked Sean as he put the thick book on the desk. It had a quill lying near an empty bottle, undoubtedly once used for ink. The thick layer of dust told him that the room hadn’t been inhabited for a good while. But alas, the information came first. He had to figure out what this place was, and why he was here. And more importantly, he had to know whether or not this was a mandatory stage or a sub-stage that he’d stumbled upon due to sheer luck, “And what’s that about the giants?”

“You surely know more about it than me, Outlander. No one around these parts would be wearing clothes like that. He’s called Helthur, a giant even among giants. Brought his merry gang here to the reaches and is ruling the villages. When I was a young’un, some fellers tried to take him down —failed. And that’s why the System’s sent you, no? To save us, ha,” said the old man, and after finishing his speech, he nodded understandingly, “Name’s Fillmore, the transport ‘round these parts. I’m tasked with delivering the tithes to the big boy. Found you on my way down.”

“Sean. Sean Morris,” he said and extended his hand. From the awkward silence and the questioning stare with a raised eyebrow, Sean surmised that handshakes weren’t something normal here. Right, another world, “That was a greeting. Now then, how… big are we talking?”

“Dozen at least, if you’re talking about big boy. His goons are bout as tall as those small houses out there. Their skin is too thick for swords to cut and arrows to pierce. Don’t think a scrawny kid like you is gonna take care of ‘em when the ones before you didn’t. Might as well make it easy for yourself, eh,” asked Fillmore and pulled out a dagger from seemingly out of nowhere, and put it on the desk, “Take it or leave it, your choice.”

“How many Outlanders come here?” asked Sean as he looked at the dagger. It had a brown handle with a small silver pommel and glimmered viciously in the sunlight. Both sides had been sharpened quite a bit, and Sean brought it near one of his fingertips and touched it. Unexpectedly, it cut clean through. No matter how much he sharpened a kitchen knife, the strength with which he tapped on it wouldn’t have cut into his flesh. Perhaps being made for combat really did matter. It did feel a bit awkward to hold it, as he was used to kitchen knives and their convenient designs for cutting things on a board than up in the air.

“Once every five years, I’d say. Some die early, some die later, but they end up dying nonetheless. Some of them I run into after they’ve died. Climbing up there every day lets you keep track of things, often things that you could go without,” said Fillmore and pat Sean on the shoulder, “Well, good luck. You got fight in your eyes, kid. At least take care of one of his goons, will ya? One less menace to torture us.”

Side Quest: Prove Yourself

Fillmore sees something in you and has passed on to you his worn dagger. Will you prove yourself and bring to him the head of a giant, or will you end your life and take the easy way out? Become the first Outlander to defeat a giant.

Current Progress: 0 / 1 Giants Slain

Rewards: Giant Slayer (Title), Mentorship

Sean had already started to focus on the screen before Fillmore left, and the old man walked out shaking his head with a grin. Sean, on the other hand, was giddy with excitement. This was just like a game —an adventure. Before he even noticed, a grin had appeared on his face, but it gave off the image of baring his fangs rather than an expression of delight. This was his first real quest. The other one was streamlined, one that he had to accept, but this one was his own choice.

Accept?

A) Yes

B) No

Without a moment’s doubt, he pressed on ‘Yes’. He was supposed to take down their boss, and he’d most likely end up fighting one of his goons in the first place. But there was one issue —how would he climb up? That aside, did the Calibration even have a time limit? If it did, then he had to learn as much as he could. Now then, magic. His eyes turned back to the book on the table.

But when he tried to open it, he was met with a notification that he didn’t expect.

You will only be able to choose a single Spellbook to learn from in the Calibration Stage. Will you choose ‘Magic 101’?

A) Yes

B) No

So he could only use one Spellbook? Well, that made sense, since he assumed that learning about everything in the equivalent of the Tutorial level wouldn’t make sense. But that meant he had to think about his decision more. He didn’t want to just learn the basics, and he needed some magic that would be useful when fighting a creature far larger and stronger than him. His eyes once again wandered toward the bookshelf. There was just too much of it.

After looking at them for a while, he separated all the Spellbooks on the bookshelf into 4 types: Circle, Runic, Scripture and Elemental. Of the four types, the latter seemed to be the most practical. If his understanding was correct, then Elemental Magic hinged on using the elements by having his mana course into them and even create the element from nothing in the later stages —practically bending. However, the only reason it was practical was that the element of Earth was everywhere, meaning he could bend it as he wished and throw the giants off the road. And maybe air. Fire and Water were far more limited. Of course, it was only a limited understanding based on the descriptions of the books.

Circle and Runic were similar and different at the same time. Both depended on symbols, but Runic was more about imbuing objects with effects while Circle was based on manifesting magical phenomena straight out. Scriptures were religious nonsense about praying for strength. Anyone would understand why that was the first type he crossed off. There was something he hated about relying on others for everything —maybe it was his hate of the kids in class that didn’t study and only copied from others to pass their classes in high school, or maybe it was something different. He didn’t care and wanted none of that.

Necromancy piqued his interest, but he realized that it was practically useless if he couldn’t kill anything in the first place —and he doubted a few skeletons would be able to take down a giant. They had practically no weight. And he ended up choosing three books that seemed promising and useful.

Beginner’s Guide to Elementalism

Learn of the basics of Elementalism, the Magic of the Elements. Create hurricanes of flame, conjure thunderstorms, bend the very earth to itself open up to swallow your enemies. The options are endless. The question is not whether you can or cannot, but are you willing to put in the effort?

Enchantment Encyclopedia

Learn the Magic of the Runes and the various methods used by the various cultures across the Wide World. Become a painter of the greatest caliber and turn the world into your canvas.

The Elsworth Configuration Theorem

Learn the inner workings of Magic and the ability to go against the laws of the world by using the laws themselves to achieve it. Unarguably the most tedious and difficult to learn branch, but all the more rewarding.

All three seemed useful, and the Enchantment Encyclopedia seemed to be by far the most useful one. It indirectly implied that he would be able to make artifacts, and TI-O had told him that artifacts could be used to bring someone back to life. Of the three, though, the last one caught his attention more. It seemed like it was something similar to mathematics, or physics, which he liked. Not to the point of pursuing a career with, but to the point of reading useless facts about it for hours on end.

You will only be able to choose a single Spellbook to learn from in the Calibration Stage. Will you choose ‘The Elsworth Configuration Theorem’?

A) Yes

B) No

He tapped on the ‘Yes’ button and the book popped open.

Sean almost jumped back, but that was halted at the earlier stages and he only stepped back, letting the book fall down. That’s what should have happened, but it didn’t. The book somehow floated in the air, and blue light beamed from the book. The light then slithered around much like a snake. It moved closer to Sean, bit by bit; and with each movement, Sean stepped back.

What was that?

After the third step, Sean’s legs pushed against the bed. He was pushed back to the edge, literally, and as if noticing that, the light lunged toward him. It slammed into the middle of his forehead, forcing him to fall backward from the impact. Searing pain filled his head in the shape of a circlet, encircling his forehead, temples, and the back of his head with a ring that felt like it was constricting all the while burning him —a brief taste of the life of a disobedient Sun Wukong.

On the outside, Sean’s head was visibly glowing a golden color near the forehead, at the point of impact. His eyes were wide-open, glowing as well as he absent-mindedly stared up, lying on the bed. The process took a painful minute as the pages of the book flipped themselves with excessive speed. If one paid attention, they’d see the very contents of the book —the words, pictures, the ink that made them all up being turned into the light that was drilling into his skull.

The light eased down, and so did the glow on his forehead, dimming by the second before it finally disappeared. And a gasp was heard as Sean came back to reality. He thought he’d gone blind when the light filled his eyes and exited through it. For the lack of a better word, he looked like a human flashlight with the light coming out of both his eyes for that period —and his pupils took in all that information.

He half-expected a Game Over screen to appear, but instead, something else appeared.

System Update

‘Library’ Section added. Please say the word Library out loud and summon the screen. All your Spellbooks and System-supported data will be stored within the Library Section.

It was peculiar how the screens were there, even despite the fact that there was just an endless darkness beyond that. He hoped the blindness was temporary and not some sort of ‘You gazed at something you should not have, and thus have lost your sight’ nonsense. Then he might as well just commit suicide instead of trying to complete this. There was no obligation to other than goodwill. For the lack of a better word, he was a volunteer with nothing to lose.

Then his sight came back and he let out a sigh of relief. He visibly relaxed and said the word out loud, summoning the Library window. At least that’s what he expected. Sean was once again dragged into some sort of void, but this time, it was different. The white wasn’t overwhelming, but a gentle yellowish hue. Then objects started to appear out of nowhere. The only explanation for how they appeared would be to simply ‘pop’ into existence, with no prior warning rather than any sort of aesthetically smooth transition.

The void was gone now, replaced by what seemed to be the same room as he was in before, but everything was grayscale now; and somewhat blurred. Then he noticed two windows, the smaller one stacked atop the larger one —which he assumed to be the Library one. The smaller one was a notification panel that he’d long since gotten used to.

Skill ‘Research’ has been activated!

Time is being sped up by 13% for Player. Sound from outside is blocked off. Skill may be turned off at any time with no time delay.

Sean widened his eyes. The Skill was far more… dramatic than he’d assumed. He’d thought that he’d just scan through things faster, but this was different. It felt like time itself had slowed down. But when he tried to focus on the outside world, the grayscale and blur effects faded, the world returning back to normal. But when he looked at the status screen and ‘focused’ on it, which was merely starting to read it, the world once again gained that gray hue —this time without the void step.

It was nice. Finally some peace and quiet. Not that he wasn’t in a quiet environment before, but all background noises were filtered out and he finally looked at the Library window. It was quite simple, really. It resembled a folder on a computer in terms of appearance, with only a singular document within it.

Library

Name

Type

Date

The Elsworth Configuration Theorem

Spellbook

04 / 06 / 2021

And Sean did the only logical thing —he clicked on the Spellbook’s name, and another screen appeared on top of the Library one, more or less covering it, but Sean could feel that the screen was still there. He didn’t know whether his mind interpreted the System in this manner or it was simply structured like a computer so for convenience’s sake, but he was liking what he was seeing. It was perfect, just what he was used to.

Thus, he started to study. While Sean didn’t like studying subjects he didn’t like when he didn’t want to, Magic was a whole another deal. It was like Programming. If he could figure it out, he’d get a passion for it, and that’s all the motivation he’d need to try and master it. Loving challenges came with its advantages and drawbacks —the drawback was that he loved nigh-impossible tasks if they were at least doable.

It was convenient how the book was simply converted into eBook format. Funny how technology progressed. At least he assumed that was why the System converted that into something system-integrated the moment he opened it. But that pain and feeling of being so utterly and completely violated… He wouldn’t be reading another Spellbook for a long while if he could help it.

Foreword

So many years ago, I too, was a beginner that knew nothing much like you are if you are reading this book. It is my honor to have devised a formula of magic that may be understood by any and all who wish to pursue the path, which is known to have been an issue for a long time. There were many that wished to become Practitioners of the Mystical Arts, but the tools did not exist then. Now, they do. Many of them. If you have chosen this path, then be warned. It will not be easy, far from it. Many a scholars ended their own lives due to the complexity of the Formulas that Theoretical Magic entails, but I hope from the bottom of my heart that you carry on the torch of Theoretical Magic…

A contradiction… he didn’t like that. Usually, when someone said that it could be understood by anyone and then proceeded to say it was complex, then it meant that there were two options. The first option was clearly the author lying about how easy it is. The second, and far more terrifying option, was that it managed to be complex even despite being easily understood —those sorts of things weren’t Sean’s cup of tea. He liked his easily understood sciences, like Computer Science, or Geography to a degree. Then again, they weren’t all that easy.

He started to look through the table of contents. It was surreal how casually words like ‘Magic Circulation’ and ‘Mana Circuits’ were used. But he didn’t need them at the moment —he was fully focused on the Introduction part. It was where most of the important things were. The pages seemed to flip themselves whenever he wanted them to turn, which was an amazing addition to his effectiveness when studying. It reminded him of back when he was just learning to code, reading books and tutorials for half a day sometimes. Summer vacation lets you assign your time more freely.

“Magic is the act of manifesting physical phenomena by using Mana as the energy to balance out the expenditure. Controlling the energy to be used to have it follow your orders and to achieve various effects results in a variety of schools and branches. At its heart, Magic is a science, much like any other —simply the things we do not understand rather the things that we do. If it is understood, it will then be able to be created by Technology and it will be classified as Magi-Tech, but that is not the purpose of our story,” read out loud Sean and he nodded his head. That made sense. So apparently, science somewhat applied for magic. The analog about how deprecated magic became technology was also helpful. Whatever this Magi-Tech was, he would have to find out a bit.

Interesting topics let one get lost in it and lose track of time altogether —and even despite the accelerated time, it would have taken a while. And before he even realized, he’d gotten to the point of the first spell to cast —the equivalent of a Hello World program, but for Magic. It was the simple spell of ‘Mana Ball’, which could then change to become Mana Blast, Mana Arrow, Mana Explosion, and numerous other variations.

All he had to do to cast it was to close his eyes and imagine a Magic Circle in his head. It was quite a simple one. It had two full circles and a triangle that reached the outer circle, meaning it overlapped with the inner and smaller circle —this was what was known as the Mana Base, the circle in charge of basic Mana Release. Every spell that used Pure Mana had this circle in some manner, allegedly. Anyone that had been bestowed by the System would be able to cast it if they had the affinity to, as it was explained.

It was absurdly simple…

First, a dim gray outline had to be imagined. After that, one had to imagine the circle slowly gaining a blue glow, which indicated the Mana flowing to empower the circle. And as he imagined so, he had to point a finger, a palm or something he felt comfortable casting the spell through, and then he had to release the Mana from there —that was the hardest step, more or less.

It was difficult to force the Mana out, like trying to let a stubborn turd out without even knowing that you had a stomach. Through sheer luck, he did it as he exhaled, and the Mana was let out. It was written so that if you failed, a somewhat gaseous blue substance would leave your body —and if you succeeded, the magical circle would appear.

He’d succeeded.

But he had to act fast. The circle wouldn’t last for long, and he had to ‘activate’ it with a keyword —something that he associated with the concept of activation. To some it was saying a phrase, to some it was making a gesture and to some, it was simply focusing on it. Sean chose the middle option. He tapped on the circle, thinking about how he’d dramatically press ‘Enter’ on his computer after finishing a particular line of code that he assumed was perfect.

A baseball-sized ball of blue appeared from the circle as it dissipated. But instead of the motes of Mana fading off, they were all absorbed into the wall. He hadn’t put much Mana into it, as he couldn’t destroy his benefactor’s house. As his spellcasting succeeded, the grayscale disappeared and he was back to regular time.

It was fun, just like coding-

Wait… where was his backpack? Was his laptop alright? He hoped so. And yeah. Screw all the 'God will protect you nonsense'. He ended up falling.