Post 5

Uncle Max’s van pulled into the long gravel driveway, waking Jessica and the others up from the bumpy and uneven ride. “Where are we?” Jessica asked as she stretched and looked out the foggy windows. It was cold, not winter cold, but colder than she had expected for anywhere in Michigan at the tail end of summer.

“We’re here. Just down this road and we’ll be at your grandpa’s farm.” Uncle Max said as the sounds of crunching stones under the van’s tires filled the vehicle. “Your mom is just behind us Jessica in the Jeep with your uncle.”

“Oh, okay” Jessica fought another bout of stretching as she looked at her phone’s clock. It was nearly dark, late in the afternoon. The van pulled up in front of a large barn where three other vehicles were already parked. As Jessica and the rest of them got out and started unpacking, the Jeep that had been following them parked and more of her family got out.

“Glad we got here before it got dark.” Max said as he started pulling luggage down off the rack. As the adults all greeted each other, Grandpa and half a dozen other family members came out to help.

“We must be the last ones to arrive,” Jessica said as she counted the cars and family members who were pouring out of the main house to greet and help them. As the family started unloading the food and other stuff, Jessica hugged her mom, grabbed her bags, and followed her inside. Jessica’s grandma showed them where they would stay, in the back cabin area. Which was actually just a converted barn building turned into a bunch of bedrooms surrounding a central living room that her family used every year for reunions and summer outings.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t bring more. Just the food in our pantry.” Her mamma said and grandma laughed as she held the door for both of them into the room that had been set aside for them.

“You know our motto around here. Doesn’t matter how poor one of us gets. There’s always a place here at the farm for everyone. Particularly now days. Now, the sun is setting, and it’s late. You two, get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll tackle whatever the world has to throw at us together. Or, you can come out to the living room and say hi to everyone before bed. Your choice. If you haven’t had dinner yet, we can make some sandwiches for you.”

They unpacked their suitcases and boxes before heading out to the main living area. The family chatted, talked about the future as nebulous as it was, listened to a bit of radio news, and then someone pulled out an aux cord and started playing music from their phone. The family talked well into the night. Uncle Jethro, as always, picked a few fights. So did Grandpa. The two were a lot alike, as far as Jessica could tell. Loyal, hardworking, and overly opinionated. But neither of them let their opinions get out of hand.

Family was still family, after all. She thought it was more of a stress relief tactic. If they could ground themselves in old disagreements, then perhaps the massive changes and scary scenes from the cities and towns they had passed through to get here could be kept at bay a little longer. At least, that’s how she saw it.

When Jessica yawned, nearly everyone in the room joined her. The family took that as a collective signal that it was time for bed, and everyone shuffled off to sleep. Jessica and her mamma crawled into their cot beds, and Jessica drifted off in seconds.

---

The next morning after breakfast, Jessica scrolled through the Magic Skill Store one more time. “You’re sure about this, Uncle Max?” she asked again, for the third time.

“No. But from what you and Rony have told me, it sounds like this ‘system’ is trying to give you the option of becoming a magic user. From their descriptions, it also sounds like those tier 0 skills are the needed fundamentals for using magic.” He had already gone over all of this with her. “I have a bunch of other people I need to help Jess. Your grandpa says he got some kind of skill quest tree thing related to farming I need to help him understand. So if you’re not ready we can come back tonight and—”

“Okay, okay. I’ll do it.” She purchased each of the magic skills.

Congratulations! You have purchased Mana Generation 1: Current Skill Level: 1. Mana generation increased from 0.01 per minute (life-sustaining) to 0.1 per minute (mana-producing).

Congratulations! You have purchased Magical Manipulation 1: Current Skill Level: 1. You can now express mana outside of yourself.

Congratulations! You have purchased Magical Lore 1: Current Skill Level: 1. The Spell Book is now open to you. Current spell slots available: 3. Used: 0/3 (1 for Skill, 2 for Mental Acuity).

Congratulations! You have purchased Mana Pool 1: Current Skill Level 1. Max mana pool: 100. Current mana pool: 1/100

In total, it cost her 36 skill points to get level 1 in all the skills. Her mind flooded with vague impressions of ideas that might one day be useful. But as it was, the new skills felt more like hunches she would need to try out some time then actual new abilities she had. She watched Tier 1 open up, but she closed the screen to focus on what Max had told her too. She read the descriptions of each of the notifications before she moved on to the next part of their experiment.

“Alright, I’m going to upgrade one of them. But, which one?” Jessica asked, looking at the list of five magical skills she had. Max only smiled and shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to choose for her. Jessica frowned slightly as she looked over them again. She upgraded the one she had started with, and put 4 points into Innate Sense.

Her mind flooded with knowledge devoid of experience. When she was finished, she felt like she had just read a college-level textbook on magical aura reading. Which she now knew was a part of Innate Sense. Everyone had an ‘aura’ they produced where their body created a small magical field around them. It gave them some protection to harmful spells, but also kept them tethered to the system. If a person didn’t have an aura, they would lose contact with the system.

“I know a lot more now. I don’t know how. . .” She sat back down in the chair opposite Max, and her uncle smiled.

“Good, so it works the way I thought it would. How many points did you put in?” She told him. “Interesting. We’ll know if the early skill points in a given skill have a stronger effect on people because it’s new once we have some more experience with the system. As it is, it sounds like mid-fight or mid-crafting upgrades would be a bad idea. Too distracting.” He looked up from the notepad and smiled at her. “Your mind and body might need time to adjust so just take it easy for a bit.”

She did as instructed and leaned back in the chair while he wrote down some of his thoughts on another legal pad. Uncle Max was a lawyer by day, gamer by night, and a prepper over the weekends, or Kaline said. Something about his time in the marines had caused him to earn a legal degree. The fact he was a lawyer was why he had brought so many legal pads from his home office. He was also one of the few white people on the farm.

The night before, Jessica had asked Max why he came to grandpa’s farm instead of heading back west where his family was. He had told her that his family would be fine. It was the Brown family that needed the extra hand. Uncle Jethro had said something about white saviors, and the fight between him and Aunt Kaline had been on.

This morning, everyone seemed to have a much better attitude about Max being there, and about receiving help from him. Literally everyone was scheduled to sit down with Max or Rony to go over their stats and upgrades and stuff during the day. Jessica was just the first. As he explained it, she probably had the most to work with and so they could experiment a bit. Which would allow him and Rony to learn more about how the system worked, which would help everyone else later on.

Max and Rony were the only two real gamers in the family, and they were pretty resourceful besides. Not that Grandpa and the other members of the family weren’t able to take care of themselves, but it was nice to have someone around who knew about this stuff. Or, at least, knew enough about other stuff to make a go of pretending.

“Well, I think it’s best that you practice manipulating the mana that one prompt talked about. How much do you have in your pool now?” Max asked, and she told him. “Okay not much. Well, maybe wait a bit and try when you have at least ten or so mana. Take Rony and go practice after lunch. For now, you look exhausted. It might be good to take a nap or something.” She agreed and left, hugging her grandpa on his way into the small dining room where Max had set up his temporary office.

“Did he help?” Her grandpa asked, looking nervous as he kept her in a light hug.

“Oh yeah, Uncle Max is great. If you’re confused about something I’m sure he can help you figure it out.” Her grandfather gave Jessica a winning smile, patted her on the back and walked past her into the dinning room. “Good luck, you two!” she called back as she left. Max was right. She was tired, but not in the way that a nap would help with, at least she didn’t think so.

It was more mental exhaustion than physical. What she needed was to unplug her brain. Maybe she would try that dragon game Rony had tried to get her to play.