Day 3 Report:

designation:ZLTDB0K9HUV continues to exceed growth rate projections [PL+3].

STAT gain: N/A

SKL acquisition: N/A

Variable isolation successful: no further incursions from stat.eff (EXCLUDED).

Foreign entity detected.

Interaction of foreign entity with [excluded.SKL] detected.

Initiating analysis of interaction.

Analysis of temp.servercomplete. Confirming upper SKL limit of [5]. temp.server unable to accommodate higher levels.

Communication with Admin restricted.

harvest.directive at risk of noncompletion.

Initiating analysis of problem.

Resuming special protocol with exclusionary status.

Albek’s goal for today was to get one of his spells to level 1. He was tired of Embryo flashing a bunch of zeros at him like it was some great achievement. When he wasn’t busy getting frostbite in an attempt to show off yesterday, he experimented with learning the Level 0 spell, Voice Projection. He didn’t make much progress. He had thought of using it to send his voice across large distances to talk with Liyne and pretend that their radios still worked, but it had been a stupid idea. Besides, he didn’t get that strange mind-splitting hallucination like he had when he learned Cold Snap. Without seeing others cast the spell, it was more difficult for him to figure out how to manipulate the mana.

Instead of continuing his failed efforts with Voice Projection, Albek decided instead to improve the most powerful spell in his arsenal: Cold Snap. Thus, while the grass was still heavy with dew, Albek went outside. Dune was with him, the dog seeming to have recovered completely from her ordeal at the Robinsons. She sniffed around her new surroundings happily, and every time she wandered too far, Albek let out a whistle and she came trotting back.

After a quick perimeter check, he sat down with Dune and scratched her behind the ears as he reviewed some information he’d discovered after digging around in Embryo the previous night.

Order of Magic

Every object or event that occurs in the natural world can, at its root, be described in the terms of a mana phenomenon, and nearly all mana phenomenon can be categorized under one of the ten Orders of Magic. If mages could master all ten orders, then they would be able to accomplish almost anything that lies within the bounds of imagination.

The use of ten simultaneous Orders of Magic is only made possible through the Nurellium Standard (Embryo’s method of magical progression), though affinities also have an effect on mages abilities with any given order. Affinity

For mages, the level of response from an Order of Magic is called their affinity for that type of mana.

Displayed affinities for the different orders are extrapolated from already known or attempted spells.

Average ranges are 30%-70%. Affinity calculations are all inferred and will become more accurate with time as further spells are mastered. Affinity Values

Water: 74%

Space: 41%

Light: 46%

The highest affinity he possessed that he knew about so far was in the Order of Water, thanks to Cold Snap. Likewise, Shimmer was a light spell that acted through light-aligned mana. Albek wasn’t sure why this screen showed his space affinity.

‘Maybe it’s from when I tried to cast Voice Projection. God, that spell was impossible. Why is space mana so easy to sense yet so hard to control?’

There were other spells he was interested in learning, such as one that let him see in the dark and another that let him create illusions and so on, but those would have to wait. He wanted stopping power, ideally in the form of a big ice blast to the face.

The first problem was figuring out how to level up his spells. If his proficiency increased just by casting them repeatedly, then all he had to do was fire off spells all day and with time he’d be some sort of mage-god. It seemed unlikely that was how it worked, though.

…However, if it did work like that, then he would be training like that anyway since he was planning on casting the spell a lot. He couldn’t lose!

Albek’s first plan of action was to see how much he could alter his spells, and then to see whether or not he could make them more powerful.

It was time to get practicing.

He reached for Cold Snap. This time, he targeted the area in front of him, planning on using it at a distance: the way the spell was supposed to be cast. Yesterday, he targeted the water in the glass he was holding, which had backfired massively. He was fortunate that he didn’t end up losing his good hand.

He closed his eyes, sensing the mana. He could feel the coldness all around him, and that same vague, undefined distance that water seemed to emanate. He drew in the mana from his surroundings, letting it cycle through him as he concentrated.

Rather than letting the spell run its course as before, he held off on the incantation. He visualized the effect it would have when he released it and saw a cone of frost extending from his hand out to a distance of about five feet, diminishing into nothing shortly afterwards. He wondered if he could change that.

Albek focused on narrowing the area-of-effect of the cone. He wanted it to thin out and elongate, becoming a needle of frost rather than a wide blast. The instant he started, however, the mana in his body became unruly and difficult to control. It felt like he was forcing it into an unnatural shape, and the mana, with its strange almost-sentience, fought back.

He was only able to hold on for a few seconds after this struggle began before he was forced to gasp out the incantation, expelling the mana. The thing that flew out of his hand felt wild and unpredictable: a completely different beast than the spells before it. It split down the middle, freezing the ground to the left and right of Albek, leaving the place he was aiming for completely untouched.

He shivered.

‘That definitely wasn’t the plan. If I hadn’t released it when I did, things could have gotten messy.’

Misfire

A misfire, or failed spell, occurs when mages lose control of the mana they are trying to process. There are two ways this generally occurs: mana strain and mana riot.

Mana strain, the less severe form of misfire, occurs when mages attempt to force the mana for a spell into a state that the spell cannot accommodate, and they lose control of it. At the least, this will overburden their thauma, which comes with various physical repercussions. These are usually limited to tiredness, dizziness, and nausea, but in the most extreme cases, it can result in death. A mana strain will also occur when mages overdraft their thauma by casting too many spells in short order (see: thauma resilience).

Mana riot is the second and more destructive case of misfire. Mana riots occur when mages attempt to cast a spell that is beyond their thauma threshold. The mana will run rampant inside them, attacking them from the inside-out. This often results in death.

A misfire is harmful. It will always result in some form of injury, and often (for mana riots) it results in death. The more mana that goes into the spell that misfires, the more hazardous it becomes to the mages and those around them. With a higher thauma value, mages can resist some aftereffects of misfires.

Luckily, Albek released the spell before he completely lost control, or he would have experienced mana strain just now.

He was fairly sure that he experienced mana strain at the Robinsons when he tried to cast Cold Snap multiple times on the cat-monster. He remembered feeling abruptly sick and dizzy. After his reading last night, he wasn’t sure whether his skeletal state was a result of his aegis or if it was mana strain, instead.

‘Honestly, this should be the first thing Embryo makes any of us read before teaching us spells. They’re handing out ticking bombs to a load of monkeys.’

What he’d just done probably didn’t count as an “extreme case” that would have resulted in death, but he wasn’t about to misfire on purpose and test that.

As for that second type of misfire, he wasn’t ever risking that. Cold Snap didn’t exceed his thauma threshold, and though he wasn’t sure where exactly his threshold lay, he was only altering the state of the mana right now, not adding more mana to the spell, so mana riot shouldn’t be a concern.

The spell description for Cold Snap mentioned that the strength of effect was “contingent on the amount of mana supplied,” so he could certainly try making it stronger. He’d never tried it before, though, and he planned on being very careful when he did.

Thauma threshold

The absolute limit of mana that mages can control while casting a spell. This value increases linearly with their thauma stat.

Note: Embryo only shows users spells that users can physically cast based on their thauma threshold. The number and breadth of spells available to users will increase as their thauma stat increases.

Embryo discourages the learning of spells from other mages, since they may unknowingly teach spells that surpass the threshold of their students.

This told Albek why Chelsea couldn’t see many of the spells yesterday. Apparently, her thauma was low enough that Embryo decided she couldn’t cast any other spell but Shimmer safely.

Thauma resilience

Also called soul resilience, this determines how often a spell or spells can be cast in a short period before the mage needs time to recuperate.

Note: The rule for thauma resilience is as follows: if the spell uses mana that is equal to or less than one-fourth of the mage’s thauma threshold, the mage can theoretically cast the spell endlessly (contingent on other factors). If the spell requires mana that equals one-fourth to one-third of the mage’s thauma threshold, the spell can be cast six times before exhaustion sets in. At over one-third to one-half of the threshold, a spell can be cast twice. If the spell uses more mana than one-half of the mage’s threshold, it can only be cast once before needing to rest.

Overdrafting: Continuing to cast spells once these limits are reached is a difficult endeavor, and if achieved, will cause a mana strain, delaying the mage’s natural thauma resilience recovery.

At first glance, these ideas made his head spin, but he worked it out with some thinking. It was simple math. His thauma threshold was ten, so he could cast a spell that cost ten mana once. He could also cast a spell which cost six mana once. However, he could cast a spell which cost five mana twice. A three-mana spell could be cast six times.

‘Now, if I only had any idea what the mana costs for any of my spells were, I’d be set!’

For now, he suppressed the uncertainty that crept up on him after his own close shave with misfiring, resolving to continue practicing. Carefully.

He went inside for a plastic cup which he filled with water, similarly to yesterday. Then, Albek located a tree stump and placed the cup on it, walking ten feet away—double the normal range of his spell—and scrutinized it.

‘Here’s my target.’

He made sure Dune was a fair distance away, and that there wasn’t anything he wanted broken or frozen nearby.

Albek recovered from his single use of the spell rather quickly, despite almost losing control earlier. He focused on the image in his head each time he cast it: a long, thin, spear of frost. After each time he cast the spell, he would need to wait a minute or two to recover, and then he’d repeat the process.

For the next hour, he made little ground on forming a spear, but as he grew more accustomed to manipulating the mana, he noticed something else—the spell grew less exhausting for him each time. As he repeatedly took in and expelled mana, it became like a sort of muscle memory, and he could begin to discern the exact amount of mana Cold Snap needed. He was taking in less mana each time he cast it, and after a couple dozen cycles of casting the spell followed by rest, he was using about eighty percent of the mana he’d been using before, all while still achieving the same result.

He stopped to catch his breath, marveling at his progress in this unexpected direction. It hadn’t become a spear yet, but he was casting the spell more quickly and easily than ever before.

‘This is because I’m focusing on improving. If I had just kept casting without thinking, I’d never have noticed I was using more mana than I needed to. Practice is important!’

By now, the sun had crept over the treetops and people were moving in and out of the house. He felt bad for neglecting chores, but no one interrupted him, so he kept doing what he was doing. He was getting absorbed in the process now that he had a visible sign of progress.

He was almost confident that he could begin casting Cold Snap twice in a row without exhausting himself thanks to the reduced cost, but for a few minutes, Albek decided to switch things up and change to Shimmer temporarily.

‘I can cast this several times in a row, so maybe I can improve it even more quickly.’

It was the quantity equals quality argument, in a manner of speaking. He didn’t have to take huge breaks for Shimmer like he did for Cold Snap.

When he reached for the light-aligned mana, however, he was surprised to find that it didn’t respond to him in the way he remembered. He frowned, closing his eyes in an attempt to feel around for mana he could use for his spell, but it eluded him.

‘Huh? Was it this hard before?’

He used a trick Liyne had shown him when they were just learning the spell. Cupping his hands into a bowl, he pretended that he was gathering the rays of light from the sun.

After a moment, he sensed a tiny speck of the energetic mana in his hands and was able to initiate the spell. He inhaled that spark, giving it a slight push to destabilize it. He aimed at the same glass of water and uttered the incantation. There was a small flash as the spell went off on the stump.

It was fairly underwhelming.

‘That was… even dimmer than before.’

Even his unimpressive Shimmers from two days ago had been better than that. In case of a fluke, he kept going, casting it twice more, but each time, the spell was disappointingly dull.

He was still providing the same amount of mana for the spell, but it had clearly gotten fainter. That shouldn’t have happened.

‘Why am I getting worse? It was never this hard before.’

An Embryo notification popped up.

ANNOUNCEMENT

User,

Your affinities have changed. Please review your affinities page.

Affinity Values

Water: 74%

Space: 41%

Light: 19% (▼27%)

‘Wasn’t my light affinity in the forties before? The hell?’

Albek scratched his head.

‘Is that a thing that just happens? Could I wake up with my affinities at 0% one day?’

Sighing, he flicked the screen away.

‘It said earlier that affinity calculations are inferred… if these percentages are based off of me actually using magic, then it probably updated after I tried to cast Shimmer just now. The last time before now that I used it was… what, two days ago? That long?’

After the church meeting, he remembered casting Shimmer to wipe a smug grin off Chelsea’s face… or something like that. It hadn’t been as difficult as it was now. At that time, his affinity was 46%, so something changed between then and now.

What had changed in the last two days?

Well, everything. Maybe becoming a skeleton had something to do with it.

Albek’s stomach was starting to bother him, reminding him that he’d skipped breakfast.

He’d make up for the missed meal later. This new development bothered him.

He kept casting Shimmer, despite the increased difficulty. One, two, three, four times… to his surprise, as long as he wasn’t overdoing it with his attempts to control or strengthen the spell, he was able to cast it more times in a row than he could two days ago, when he could only cast it four times. He eventually gave up on his seventh try, as he was no longer able to sense the mana.

The drop in his light affinity had made it more tedious for him to cast Shimmer, but he’d become a better mage since then and was apparently able to make up for the increased difficulty with sheer tenacity. And a healthy dose of Sight.

Mage’s Sight

The ability of mages to delve into the world of mana and see things for what they are.

The Mage’s Sight is the extrasensory faculty of mages that allows them to perceive mana phenomena. When mages reach their limit in the mental control of mana, they may not be able to call upon their Sight any longer. When this happens, the only thing to do is to wait until the Sight recovers.

Learning about the Sight explained a lot of things in regard to Albek’s magical abilities, but specifically, his limitations in the number of times he could cast Shimmer. A couple of days ago, his Sight let him see the mana for Shimmer for up to four consecutive casts. Since then, he’d utilized this sense a lot and become more adept at using it, so now he was better at using it for an extended period of time, despite light mana being more problematic than before.

It was bizarre that he could both become better and worse at Shimmer, but a lot of different factors went into being a mage. It seemed that becoming more adept at using the Sight made up some for his drop in affinity.

Cold Snap wasn’t really affected. It was a type of spell that didn’t wear out his Sight, but rather his thauma resilience. Albek guessed that this was because it took a lot more mana to cast. However, he had noticed how he became more adept at sensing water mana over the course of the day.

After a minute, his Sight returned, but he needed a break. He went inside for some food. Afterwards, he was conscripted to help haul water from the pond into a big pot in the back yard, where a fire pit was set up. The water was then boiled and used to refill the washing basins inside.

Job done, he immediately returned to magic. By now, he was able to launch two salvos of Cold Snap. This result confirmed that he’d improved his mana usage with the spell, but when he followed it up with more Shimmers, he found that he was still able to cast five rounds of the spell before having to stop again because of his Sight.

‘So, what, two Cold Snaps tire out my Sight as much as a single Shimmer? That’s hardly anything! Is it because of my high water affinity?’

Each new magical discovery he made only generated more questions. It was time to gather data and confirm a few things. Albek first needed some way to keep track of time, so he went inside to ask for Jameson’s watch and some scraps of paper to write on.

“Something happen?” Jameson asked as the boy pressed him for his timepiece.

“Maybe,” he replied. “I’ll let you know when I’m sure.”

The two most important things for mages seemed to be their thauma and their Sight. Those were the resources they drew on to cast magic. Everything else—like affinities—was important, but ultimately extraneous.

‘Thauma is accounted for. It has a little number by it on my status screen. Well, it’s actually kind of complicated thanks to resilience and thresholds and all that, but I at least know about how much I have. On the other hand, Embryo doesn’t even give me a quantity for Sight. So let’s work with what I do know, first.’

He could cast Cold Snap twice in a row now. From this, he inferred that the spell sat at around one-half of his thauma threshold in terms of mana cost. If the spell instead used more mana, like it had earlier that morning, he wouldn’t be able to cast it twice without first waiting for a while between casts.

If a spell was one-third of his threshold, he could cast it up to six times. Albek wasn’t sure if there were any extra rules for the fractions between one-third and one-half, but it didn’t sound like there were.

‘What a pain. Why can’t Embryo just give us a mana pool like in most games and call it there?’

Despite his misgivings, Albek was determined to find out how these arbitrary rules worked.

His first task involved defining the difference between thauma and mana. After several days of using magic and his recent information windfall, he thought he finally had it straight, he just needed it down in writing.

Embryo claimed that mana was responsible for “everything that exists,” and that all types of mana had a corresponding Order. Mana, therefore, was both the force that defined the natural world and the energy that powered spells. This was confirmed by Embryo.

‘Finding out where ‘thauma’ fit in was the difficult part.’

For a start, Albek didn’t have a mana stat, but a thauma stat. Therefore, thauma must be something intrinsic to people, whereas mana itself evidently wasn’t, despite its prevalence everywhere else. There was a chance that they were just the same thing, given different names, but everything he’d read hinted at thauma being somehow different from mana.

‘The question to ask is this: how are mages able to manipulate mana?’

Though Embryo never gave the answer outright, it was clear that thauma was involved. Thauma, then, must be how mana was manipulated. A mage never used up their own thauma: that’s why it was called “thauma resilience” rather than “thauma pool” or something similar. They retained it even after casting spells, which only used the mana in the world around them. The spells Albek learned taught him that mana was a willful substance that defied control, but through an act of concentration and willpower, he could force it into the shape he wanted. That willpower was the way he interacted with his thauma, which in turn interacted with mana. Thauma was the intermediary: his imagination made manifest.

All the terms Embryo had been throwing out like “thauma threshold” and “thauma resilience” were referring to the amount of mana a mage’s thauma could handle all at once or over multiple casts. If a mage had more thauma, they should be able to manipulate greater quantities of mana.

Also, everything he’d read implied that a mage’s thauma could take damage and that it needed time to recover.

‘So thauma is really a sort-of muscle. A super buff wizardly mind muscle.’

Albek extrapolated further, scribbling rapidly on his paper. Now, he needed a value for mana. Casting spells used mana, but the amount of mana that could be used by a mage depended on their thauma. In a bid to understand relative costs, he assigned values to everything. One thauma would equal one mana. He had ten thauma, so he could manipulate up to ten units of mana at a time. Simple enough. Ten units of mana was his “thauma threshold,” the maximum amount of mana he could put into a spell before exhausting his thauma.

If two Cold Snaps was his limit, then the easiest answer was that a single cast cost him five mana—but that wasn’t quite right.

In his goal to put a mana value next to all his spells, he was already running into problems because he could adjust the level of mana that went into the spell. He had no way of knowing exactly how much he was pumping into it each time he cast it, but at least it felt like it was the same amount each time.

‘So if Cold Snap cost five mana this morning, it could easily cost four now that I’ve increased my efficiency with it. It could even be any fraction around there.’

Then he remembered that he could cast the spell twice when he had nine thauma, but it exhausted him. At the Robinsons, he’d used the spell twice and nearly passed out.

‘Was that me using up exactly nine thauma, or did I overdraft? If you can overdraft your resilience without passing out, then that means Cold Snap might have cost even more than five. Maybe as high as six or seven mana…’

He shook his head. This wasn’t productive. Its old cost didn’t matter.

‘Let’s see… for now, let’s assume that I’m not overdrafting. It could cost as little as just over three mana if we’re willing to go into fractions. 3.3 at a minimum, since my thauma value is ten, and Embryo said you can cast spells twice in a row if they’re at one-third to one-half your threshold. Meaning Cold Snap could also cost as much as five mana.’

He wrote down the ranges the spell could exist in.

As well as mana costs for spells, Albek also needed to know how fast he could recover his thauma and Sight. Not knowing these pieces of information could prove disastrous in a combat scenario. After measuring the time with Jameson’s watch, he found that he fully recovered from two casts of Cold Snap in about eighty seconds. He also recovered from two casts of Cold Snap and five casts of Shimmer in that same time, which told him that casting Shimmer didn’t affect his thauma resilience whatsoever, just his Sight. This confirmed that even when he maxed out his resilience, he was still able to cast spells that cost under a fourth of his threshold. His thauma was still there, still laboring away, even when he was unable to use it for the bigger spells for a time.

After gathering multiple sets of data, compiling the evidence, laboring over the math, and double checking everything with Embryo, Albek’s sheet of paper read:

Shimmer cost ≤ 2.25 mana (it feels like ¼ as much mana as Cold Snap, but that’s just a guess. Plus it doesn’t deplete my resilience so it’s harder to judge.)

Cold Snap cost = 3.3–5 mana

Thauma regeneration = 0.9–1.125 per 10 sec (1 per 10 sec maybe? is magic really that convenient?)

Sight = 6 points (tentative). (Shimmer can be cast 6 times, so 6 points of Sight-power. After casting Cold Snap twice, I can cast Shimmer five times, so I guess Cold Snap uses 0.5 units of Sight, and Shimmer uses 1. Except all this might mean nothing because affinities probably mess with this. Unsure if a value can be put on Sight.)

Sight regeneration = anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to recover completely? Seems to take longer each time I max it out by casting Shimmers. Like my brain getting overworked, I guess? Thauma doesn’t get overworked like that, the time it takes to recover is always consistent. Also, it’s harder to tell when my brain is fully recovered like with my thauma.

A lot of things were still too hypothetical for Albek’s tastes, but by now he at least had an idea of where all his abilities lay.

By the time he was finishing up, everyone had left the house and come outside to either work or practice on their own. Hemash was by the door as usual, gun within easy reach and Liyne close by. His father’s eyes were more distant than usual. They looked glazed as he slowly scanned the distance.

‘Has he been getting sleep?’

Jameson, who’d come to glance over the notes scattered around Albek, spoke.

“Math homework?”

Albek said, “No, just trying to streamline my performance. Oh, here’s your watch back.”

Jameson accepted the item.

“What’s this here—” he said, squinting at Albek’s scribbled writing. “‘Thauma-mana con—conversion hypothesis?’ ‘Format for optimized… resilience depletion?’ This is all for learning magic? Chel isn’t doing this too, is she? What happened to just flingin’ your magic around and calling it a day?”

‘‘Flingin’ your magic,’ he calls it.’

“That’s what I’ve been doing so far,” Albek replied. “And it’s nearly killed me once and backfired at least twice—that’s every time I’ve ever tried using spells in combat. There are rules to magic, but Embryo doesn’t tell them to us. I’ve got to figure this out.”

Jameson scratched his chin, “If you say so. Hey, if it’s really that dangerous, give Chel a few tips too, will ya? I don’t want my daughter explodin’ into magical goo or nothing.”

Albek laughed. “You got it.”

Fortunately, that wasn’t a concern for Chelsea at the moment. The only spell she had access to was Shimmer. He’d be sure to talk to both of the girls soon, though. Liyne was a natural talent with an instinctive feel for magic, so he highly doubted she’d do anything stupid like misfire, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Albek folded his notes, put them away, and resumed training. He’d taken a bit of a detour, but he was still determined to accomplish his original goal: leveling up Cold Snap.

The portion of the yard he’d been using had grown too crowded with all the new arrivals, and because of the threat of his spell reacting oddly and going where he didn’t intend, he decided to move further out into the neighboring yard. Taking the glass of water with him, he set himself up similarly to before, placing it ten feet away.

He began by casting the spell twice, where he would then pause for eighty seconds to let his thauma recover, counting the time by tapping his finger, then resuming the cycle.

After a while of this, Albek decided to move on to the next step. He wanted to empower his spell. Normally, when casting Cold Snap or Shimmer, he would automatically draw in a certain amount of mana and then stop. Deciding when he stopped wasn’t a conscious decision: it felt more like something the spell had decided on its own. But with the amount of control he’d begun applying to his spellcasting efforts, he finally noticed this limitation that he’d been laboring under. He knew with a little push, he might be able to override that function and pump more mana into it.

Thanks to his sheet of paper, he knew Cold Snap would be able to handle up to twice the amount of mana he used currently before risking mana riot. It could handle even more than that if its cost was towards the lower end of his predictions, but Albek wasn’t going to even consider that.

The next time he started Cold Snap, he forced himself to continue drawing in mana when the spell normally would have stopped. He was planning to go just a tiny bit over for his first attempt at this, but what happened next caught him by surprise.

As soon as he pressed against that restriction, something switched in its formula and the spell started sucking up the mana automatically, without him even having to apply pressure. It kept going even when he tried to slow it down. He panicked for a moment, but soon realized that he could release it at any point. He couldn’t stop the mana from flowing into him, but he could stop the spell.

This helped to calm him down. Instead of releasing the spell, he decided to wait until it began to infringe too closely to his thauma threshold. Albek had a strong sense that his threshold was a bit over double the mana of a single cast of Cold Snap. This wasn’t only his notes speaking, but his senses as a mage.

Just as the spell reached exactly double the amount of mana it originally cost, it stopped sucking up energy. Albek quickly cast the spell, not daring to hold onto the mana for too long. He’d never held that much within him at once.

The cone didn’t stop at five feet this time, instead continuing forward until it reached about the seven or eight-foot mark, and it spread out wider at the end as well.

This single shot drained him as if he’d cast the spell twice, and he sagged down onto the grass, marveling at the huge cone of ice he’d just made.

‘That felt exactly like two normal casts of Cold Snap. That can’t be a coincidence. The spell must have a function that lets you do that.’

He tried Shimmer out immediately. He was able to cast it five times before his Sight reached the limit, the same amount of times he was able to after two normal Cold Snaps.

‘Okay… so this stronger version of the spell increases my burden mana-wise, but it doesn’t really tax my Sight any more than normal. If it does, it’s so slight that it doesn’t matter.’

For the rest of the morning, Albek continued his cycles of training and resting. He tried a few more strengthened Cold Snaps, but ultimately he was most interested in making a spear. It was interesting, seeing how his imagination reacted with the end result of the spell.

He talked to Liyne and Chelsea during one of his breaks, making sure they knew about misfires.

‘I still don’t get why Embryo doesn’t make that the very first thing every mage learns.’

By the time he’d been outside for another three hours, a few things had changed. There was visible progress in his efforts to reshape Cold Snap: it had grown thinner and longer, and soon it was taking the shape he’d intended. Now, it extended further than before, and he was consistently hitting his target. Afraid he’d damage Jameson’s cup, he switched his target for a rock.

The downside was that his Sight had been increasingly burdened as he trained with Cold Snap, and by the time he finally succeeded in shaping a spear, Cold Snap had begun to cost more of his Sight than Shimmer did, using up as many as two or three Sight-points (which he still wasn’t sure were a thing).

He officially exhausted both of his mage resources by altering the spell: thauma and Sight alike. This wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that his Sight took even longer to recover than his thauma, forcing him to wait increasingly longer amounts of time between each casting.

‘Alright, so there are two ways for me to cast Cold Snap now. The first is the “buffed” version of the spell which sucks up double the mana and becomes twice as powerful. I can only use it once before my thauma is maxed out, but I can still cast Shimmer afterwards.

‘The second way to change Cold Snap is the “spear” version, which is longer range than the original and buffed versions. I do this by altering the release of the normal version while using the same amount of mana. I can cast this twice, the same as the normal version, but this time my Sight gets maxed out and I can’t even cast Shimmer afterwards.’

A sly smile slowly spread over his face.

‘Shouldn’t there be a third version, then?’

He sat on the grass for several minutes, deciding to recover so he could give this one last hurrah. When he’d first maxed out his Sight with Shimmer today, it had taken less than a minute to recover his Sight. Now it was taking him nearly five minutes.

‘I guess you really can’t keep overworking your Sight like you can with thauma. I may need a nap afterwards.’

To make sure he was in tip-top form, he waited nearly ten minutes, occupying himself with watching Liyne and the dogs.

Once he felt fully revived, he stood, brushing the grass off his jeans. Eyeing the still-cold rock, he double-checked his distance, making sure he was ten feet away. Then, he began gathering mana for Cold Snap, but when he reached the point where the mana wanted to naturally stop flowing into him, he overcharged it, doubling the amount. Once all that mana was roiling around inside him, he frowned, focusing inward on the effect that he wanted.

Nearly as soon as he’d begun, he regretted his decision. The mana fought him like before, but this time it was far more difficult to control than either of the two versions he’d tried earlier. It railed against him, smashing the borders of its prison. He grunted, almost falling over as he focused all his energies on quelling the mana—but it was too strong.

On the verge of failure, he swelled with defiance. A hot fury raced through him as his belly warmed, and he stomped a foot on the ground, taking a wide stance to keep from falling as the forces inside him seemed about to knock him over. The physical act of rebellion helped, and he felt that he’d regained a modicum of control. He maintained the burning anger, and used it to exercise his will on the rampaging energy.

As that hot energy met with the freezing mana of the water, it was like an ocean had stilled—the mana immediately quieted as if it were placed under an immense pressure, allowing Albek to ply it freely.

This state didn’t last long, because a competing energy—an opposite of the angry fire in his belly—suddenly appeared, triggered by the heat. It was a cool sensation that came from his chest, and it sent ripples throughout his body. Where it met with the fiery ardor burning through his veins, everything calmed. Unfortunately for Albek, he was relying on that warmth to maintain his control.

The mana began to stir once more as his grasp slipped, confused by the two competing feelings. Before the energy slipped too far, he refocused on his goal, imagining a glacial spear shooting out from his hand and striking his target. He opened his eyes, glaring at the innocuous rock ten feet away.

He imagined Finlay’s face sitting there instead. The extra motivation allowed him to hold onto his angry fire a little longer.

“Tsivuk,” he said, and the spell launched from his hand with an audible hiss.

Almost instantly, the air turned white in a line from Albek’s hand to the target. The frost carried on through the rock, continuing for a further five feet, striking the plants behind it and freezing everything it touched, making a perfect little cylinder of death, fifteen feet long and a foot wide.

Despite the apparent force behind the spear, nothing moved an inch when the spell struck. The cup of water and the blades of grass didn’t even sway when the spell landed, but turned to ice without the tiniest whisper of struggle.

Albek realized he’d been holding his breath, and he let it out, concentration collapsing. He fell to the grass, panting like he’d run a marathon. The strain of commanding so much mana in a strange way had made him feel stretched thin, but his exhaustion didn’t stop him from laughing aloud when he saw the notifications from Embryo.

Milestone Reached!

Skill advancement: Tier 0 High-Rank Spell: Cold Snap [Lv0] -> Cold Snap [Lv1]

Special authorization granted.

Auxiliary Stat Unlocked: Mental Strength

“What are you laughing like a psycho for?” came Chelsea’s voice from behind.

Albek turned and saw Chelsea. She must have come over to share something with him, but found Albek rolling around in the grass like a lunatic. The girl eyed the frozen greenery, but she’d already seen him freezing things before.

He was happy enough that he didn’t even have it in him to be sarcastic to the girl.

“Nothing. What’s up?”

“Look at this,” she said, pointing at Albek. “Shine.”

A flash of light went off in front of his eyes, temporarily blinding him. He gasped, shutting them tight, but the afterglow of Chelsea’s spell remained burned on his retinas.

“How’s that?” she said.

“How’s that? How’s that? How’s blinding me, you nimwit! Don’t aim that at people’s eyes!”

“Don’t aim it at…? Is this coming from the guy who literally did exactly that to ME two days ago?!”

A brief argument ensued that had to be broken up by Liyne, who walked in between the two, casting Shimmer on them both.

Now, they were all taking a break in the lawn. He grumbled, but Albek did have to recognize Chelsea’s success with Shimmer.

“You know… Shimmer might not be that worthless, actually,” he said. “That thing actually blinded me. I bet you could use it to ambush people. Or maybe as a distraction.”

“You think? Seems pretty useless to me,” said Chelsea.

“Yeah. A flashlight to the eyes would probably be more effective. But seriously, shine? That’s your incantation?” Albek asked.

“Hey, it’s better than natter-like or whatever you call it.”

“It’s natarlak. Which sounds way cooler than shine.”

“Whatever. It’s still a long freaking word. I bet it takes you way longer to cast. Not with mine! I’ll take every advantage I can get.”

Albek was taken aback. He hadn’t considered the time-lag that longer incantations introduced, but he had a feeling that changing the words he used for his spells wouldn’t work great now that he’d committed to them. His incantation even showed up in Embryo when he pulled up his spell list. Still, he’d try it the next time he was practicing.

“How many times can you cast that spell, anyway?” he asked her.

“Twice. Why?”

“What makes you stop after two times? Do you feel drained, or can you just not sense the mana anymore?”

“Uhh, I guess it’s more like I’m drained? I can still sense the mana just fine,” she said.

‘Her thauma is her limiting factor, then, instead of her Sight.’

He continued, “What’s your thauma stat?”

“Three. Why? What’s yours?”

“Ten.”

“What?! That’s over three times higher than mine! How is that fair?”

The back of Albek’s neck broke out in a cold sweat.

‘I’d better not tell her what Liyne’s thauma is.’

He considered Chelsea’s limits. After two casts of Shimmer she felt drained, which meant she’d hit her thauma resilience limit of two. That all but confirmed the cost of Shimmer to be one mana or less.

‘Well, at least for her. Mine might cost more because of affinities…’

For now, Albek was through training. He’d succeeded in his goal of leveling a skill and even unlocked a new stat.

‘If mental strength is what I think it is, and is related to mana manipulation—or my Sight—then that means I can train it. For now, though, I’m completely drained.’

The last round of mental recovery took him at least five minutes, possibly up to ten. This time it felt like it would take longer, and only increase from there if he continued to reach his limit. It was time to take a break before he overtaxed himself.

He stood up, speaking over his shoulder as he turned towards the house, “I’m heading in for some R&R. I’ll catch you later.”

He’d almost made it to the door when a hand as big as a plate dropped on his shoulder, rooting him in place. A voice even larger than the hand spoke next.

“Already done? Long as you’re out here, why don’t you move around a little? Some light exercise?”

“Umm…” said Albek.

“See, I’ve got a set of calithen—calisht—cast—”

“Calisthenics?” interjected Chelsea.

“—I’ve been working on,” continued Jameson. “How about testing them out for me?”

It was phrased as a question, but the man was already steering Albek away from the house and over to a section of the yard where exercise mats and weights were laid out.

‘When did he even set this up?’

Jameson laughed. “Nothing better than a few dozen squat curls for making you feel alive! Hey, don’t look like that. If you’re planning on going out with me tomorrow, I’d best make sure you’ve got some bite to that bark.”

Albek, deer in headlights, looked around for help. Chelsea, clearly delighted with the prospect of his imminent suffering, was settling in to watch. Hemash was intent on some distant object on the horizon, still slightly glassy-eyed. Liyne was currently hustling to get as much space between her and Jameson as possible.

CHAT LOG

Albek [whisper]: traitor!

Liyne [whisper]: (￣ ɜ￣)～♪

What felt like hours later, Albek stumbled inside and flopped on the couch. He decided that he’d probably never get up again.

‘Ugh. I don’t want to ever see a dumbbell for as long as I live. This must be Mr. Bray’s plan… incapacitate me so he doesn’t have to bring me with him tomorrow. But I won’t go down that easy!’

With a grunt, he rolled over on his back to find a better position to sleep, but something caught his attention. His mother’s locket had slipped out of his shirt.

He lifted it. The metal was still cool, refusing to warm up even after it had rested against his skin for hours.

Feeling it now reminded him of that sensation from when he cast his spell earlier: the icy feeling that swept through his body, cooling the fires of his anger and almost making him lose control of the mana. The longer he looked at it, the more certain he became that the locket was somehow behind that sensation.

‘Why’d you sabotage me like that, Mom? What if the spell had blown me up?’

No response was forthcoming from the necklace.

‘So this really is some sort of magic locket, huh? Are you gonna open up and tell me your secrets, or do I have to speak the magic word? Or maybe, like, bleed on you or something?’

Sweating on it obviously didn’t qualify. Despite the rigorous workout regimen, the locket hadn’t been sullied in the slightest—not that it was easy to tell with its black exterior. Still, Albek felt a little guilty, and decided to take better care of it from then on.

‘For now… nap time.’

In minutes he’d fallen asleep, and while he slept, he dreamed an odd dream.

- - -

He was standing in the courtyard of the Shokarov’s old manor in Kalk. Stones artfully paved the front courtyard, around a fountain that had run dry long ago. It was night—no, that wasn’t quite right. It was dark, but the sky wasn’t black. It was gray; colorless, like a blanket of clouds were shrouding the sun. But there weren’t any clouds, just a great big... nothing.

He walked to the front door, a sturdy thing hewn of oak and framed in ornate iron patterns.

Albek could almost hear his grandmother’s voice.

“They’re hundreds of years old, those doors. A gift from Duke Nasos of Terin to your four-times great grandfather.”

The doors opened at a touch from Albek, and he went inside. He paused for a moment in the foyer, eyes lingering on the dead plants in their vases, brown and brittle, as if they’d been neglected for years.

He started up the stairs, passing by portrait after portrait of various heads of house from practically the dawn of time; rows upon rows of solemn men and women, all standing before the same—same… wait.

Albek stopped to inspect one of the portraits. There was something in the background of each painting that he hadn’t noticed before. He could have sworn that all of his ancestors had stood before a red curtain: the same curtain that adorned a wall in the master suite where his parents slept, but in this portrait the curtain had been pulled back a little, revealing a sliver of… darkness. Nothing, really. It could be attributed to an artistic whim of the painter, a twitch of the wrist, but Albek had never noticed it before.

And something about it drew the eye. There was a hint of something else there. Something that had nothing to do with what he could physically see.

He took a few steps and observed the next portrait. The red curtain was still there, but it had been pulled back further, revealing a little bit more of that mysterious darkness.

He continued up. The next curtain had been drawn back even further. By now, it looked like something was drawing the curtain back. It didn’t look natural.

Albek started taking the steps two at a time. With each image, the curtain had been opened further and whatever lay behind it felt a little more there. A bit more established in the world of the painting. He reached the top of the flight of stairs and took a right down the hall, following the paintings as the people within them began to wear more recognizably modern outfits.

At the end of the hall, before a sharp turn, he reached a portrait of the family head dated at 688 FE, over ninety years ago. By now, the darkness behind the curtain took up more of the background than the curtain did, and he took a long look at it.

It was black: blacker than black had a right to be, and he could have sworn that there was something there. No, wait.

Albek shuddered, taking a step back. Though he hadn’t noticed before, there at the periphery of the painting, emerging from the pool of darkness—there were four impossibly long fingers drawing the curtain back.

Compelled forward like a puppet on strings, he rounded the corner, where he knew there were only a few pictures left.

The four remaining portraits down the hall had fallen to the ground, rotted off the wall. There were marks on them, scratches and small holes. The final portrait, which he knew was of his father, had been completely destroyed, blasted open at its center.

Something stood over it. It was tall and gaunt, clothed entirely in black. It had long, dark hair that covered its face. It wasn’t quite human, more a part of the shadows that Albek saw lurking by its feet, extending into the corners of the room.

Paradoxically, once he saw the figure, he calmed down. The spindly form didn’t frighten him. All he felt was a distant sense of unease, but it almost seemed as if it came from somewhere else. Still, that sensation alone was enough to stop him from approaching.

Just then it looked up at him, and he saw the outline of a jaw moving, like this creature was trying to tell him something.

The strange compulsion that brought him this far forced him to move forward once more, but as he attempted the next step, the distance between them didn’t shorten. The living shadow continued trying to communicate, but if there were any words, they weren’t reaching him.

Wondering why he wasn’t moving, he looked down, only to see things by his feet that weren’t there before: several thin gray tendrils wound up his legs, squirming and alive. Where the slender coils met the floor, they joined together, extending behind him and fusing into an amorphous gray mass that seemed to seep up from the floorboards as a bubbling, gooey mass, turning everything around it that same gray color. The gray had painted the floor, and even seeped up the walls and onto the ceiling. Where the color of the house changed, the gray mass seemed to assimilate it, morphing the building into more of itself. The further back he looked, the stranger the shape of the room became. The hallway seemed to twist onto its side, then took a sharp turn up. The figures in the portraits distorted and elongated, rugs became confused windows, and chandeliers turned to jelly, dripping their crystals onto the floor, where they sunk below the surface like it was tar.

The mansion had become something out of an artist’s fever dream.

Before him was the shadow creature. Behind him, the contorting, colorless entity that had a grip on him and even now inched closer.

He tried to run. He knew he had to move.

He could now hear something, barely a whisper in the back of his mind. It was the shadow. It was speaking to him again, and the faint sounds immediately captured his attention, tearing his focus from the monstrosity behind.

—sten, divided infant…

The nebulous mass behind him swelled, forming distended lumps on the walls and floor, cracking the paint and narrowing the corridor until it resembled a giant throat. In response, a wave of black surged outwards from the shadows in front of him. The gray, fleshy matter rose to meet the darkness, and the two forces collided.

…two bodies. Bury these words…

The colors raged, and the house shuddered. Gray lumps began to peel off the wall, slopping to the floor and bursting like viscous, fluid-filled sacks. Albek continued to struggle against his bindings, but his motions were those of a skiff caught in a hurricane.

…marrow-deep… which was severed… made whole.

The agitated masses mixed together in pandemonium, forming patterns that made his eyes hurt. He took a deep breath just before a rising tide of gray swept over Albek. The voice should have been muffled under the liquid, for some reason, it wasn’t.

—kening, assemble the three:

The endless gray fought to drown him, pouring into his ears, nose, and mouth even as he choked and spat, but it couldn’t completely stop the words.

…Band of Des… the Spike… gian Stone.

A vast roaring sound erupted as the current began to carry him backwards, down the way he came, into the great gray sea.

Don… gifts… not the third.

The ocean finally won, and Albek only caught a few of those final words.

…rebirth. Sleep now, o...

Long after the voice had fallen silent, those words reverberated in his mind as Albek fell deeper, deeper, into the colorless abyss.

BASIC INFORMATION Name Albek Shokarov Titles N/A Race Human (Low) Age 16 STATISTICS Strength 11 Vitality 11 Stamina 10 Agility 11 Dexterity 13 Thauma 10 Ki 0 Mental Strength (NEW!)

10 DETAILS Skills Shimmer [Lv0], Cold Snap [Lv1] (▲1), [EXCLUDED.SKL] Class Neophyte [Tier 0] Status Effects [EXCLUDED] Mental Strength: 10 [10.07]. (NEW!)

Determines ability to manipulate mana and perform complex inscriptions and arrays. It shares a close relationship with Sight and thauma.

Mental strength is the power of the imagination.

Once the user’s mental strength is exhausted, the ability to use the Mage’s Sight is greatly reduced. Despite this, mental strength plays only a small role in the detection of mana. Its main role lies in controlling thauma and thereby manipulating mana.

Embryo will not maintain this stat. Upkeep is delegated to the user.