There were lots of rubble scattered around. They were great for building target towers though.

Myke was pretty excited. He remembered this feeling from his childhood. For his 10th birthday, he got an air gun.

His dad put some cans for target practice in the backyard. He shot at them till late that day until it was too dark to see them.

Myke thought about this and laughed. Now he can see in the dark.

He created five towers and got around ten meters away from them. This was a good distance for the first tests.

It was time now to start shooting. He trembled from excitement. This would be his first spell casting. He dreamed about this many times, reading fantasy novels and playing RPG games. As a scientist, he never thought it possible, but here he was now, ready to play with magic for real.

It was certainly true for him, this old saying "the anticipation is the greatest joy".

‘Akira, what should I do?’

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Myke put his hand in front of him pointing at the first tower and activated the firebolt magic.

Immediately a glowing crimson circle with unknown symbols appeared in the air a couple of centimeters away from his hand.

He moved his hand around and the magic circle followed as if it was part of his hand.

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Myke felt the mana within his body and instinctively he knew how to control it with precision.

‘Can I fire multiple shots with this circle?’

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This was enough information for now. Myke was impatient to finally test the firebolt spell. He pointed his hand at the first tower that was around 10 meters away and started infusing the magic circle with mana. The magic circle started immediately to glow brightly in crimson red color and to rotate.

It was very beautiful.

For the first experiment, Myke wanted to use as little mana as possible. Putting mana into the circle he was able to feel when it was enough to activate the spell. As the minimum required mana amount was reached, he stopped the mana flow.

In an instant, the circle transformed into a ball of fire little bigger than a fist and flew in the direction his hand was pointing. From the acceleration, the ball got longer in the direction of the shot and now looked and sounded like a blaster shot from a science fiction movie.

Myke couldn’t believe his eyes. The spell was much more spectacular and impressive than he has expected.

The firebolt flew with high speed leaving a crimson trail and exploded on hit leaving a small crater.

Myke was surprised by the power of the explosion. No living thing should be able to survive a single hit. And this was the weakest firebolt possible.

Checking the mana bar, he saw that It was almost full. The text beside it showed:

97/100 MP

He imagined how it would have been if he knew this magic spell a little bit earlier when he encountered the zombies.

Besides the whole excitement, there was one big problem. The firebolt didn’t hit the target.

It wasn’t even close. It was more than a meter off.

Myke created another magic circle, aimed as good as he can and shoot again.

This time the shot was even further away from the target.

Next try. Shoot and miss again.

After three more tries, the target was still untouched.

Myke thought for a second. He could create rapidly magic circles and shoot, but what if he had to chant the magic?

‘Can all spells be used only once?’

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Chanting spells takes time. The firebolt spell has over 20 runes. Without the instant chant skill, it would take over 20 seconds for a skilled magician to create the magic circle.

If there are more sophisticated spells with stable magic circles, then after the circle is created, they could be used rapidly without chanting.

But with this accuracy, it would make sense only when firing in a melee (He was still thinking about the zombies). That can’t be the case. There should be another way.

A little bit frustrated Myke decided to change the strategy. He pointed his hand again in the direction of the first tower and started shooting in a rapid-fire. The instant magic skill was amazing, and he could shoot one shot per second.

He shot rapidly 10 shots one after another hoping to be able to adjust the aim after every shot and finally hit the target.

But this was also in vain. He had used almost half of his mana and still haven’t hit a target.

This was very disappointing. Aiming with a hand wasn’t very effective. It was even more ineffective when trying to aim with a vibrating high energy plasma ball.

There should be a better way!

Myke wasn’t a guy who gives easily up. In his line of work, there were hard problems all the time and he always found a solution.

Now there was no internet or other way to do research, but there was Akira.

‘Akira, I can’t hit anything. Is there a way to control the aiming better?’

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‘Is there a way to control better the shooting vector?’

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‘Can you add an aiming mark in the HUD? Just like in a videogame, and synchronize it with my eye and head movement?’ – Myke said this with excitement. Slowly he was able to understand the complications of what Akira just said.

Instead of an answer, aiming cross appeared and Myke could move it freely with precision.

He aimed again at the target. This time also the target was enclosed in a box and additional information appeared:

Target: concrete rubble tower

Distance: 10.3 meters

Height: 0.48 meters

Hit probability: 100%

Myke smiled and shoot at the target.

This time the firebolt hit the target at the same place where the aiming cross was.

The tower exploded as if it was never there.

‘What about multiple targets?’

He looked at the next three towers and all of them were marked with an aiming cross and enclosed in target boxes.

Myke shot three firebolts as fast as he could, and the three towers disappeared.

Only just above 40% mana has left. Myke was very satisfied with the targeting system and decided to go to the next test.

He chose a big concrete block for this and selected it as his next target:

Target: concrete block

Distance: 24.3 meters

Height: 2.32 meters

Hit probability: 100%

Myke started to infuse mana into the magic circle, but this time he didn’t stop.

Puttin more and more mana into the magic circle made it unstable. The circle started to rotate faster and vibrate. A buzzing sound came out of it.

The target hit probability started to fall. First to 99% then to 95% and finally to 89%.

At this point, the circle collapsed to a fireball the size of a football and shoot with a loud buzzing sound in the direction of the concrete block.

The firebolt hit the target at the predicted impact point and exploded.

After the dust settled down, he saw a hole around half a meter deep in the concrete block at the impact location. The walls of the hole were melted and still glowing from the heat, but the block didn’t break.

This shot consumed over 30 MP, but the effect wasn’t as huge as expected. Even though the explosion was spectacular the power wasn’t 10 times bigger than the weak firebolt.

It looked like the mana consumption increases exponentially with the energy put into the spell.

This may also be only the case with the firebolt, but Myke didn’t have any other spells to test this theory.

His mana dropped under 10 percent and he felt very tired. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to use so much of his mana, but it was so much fun. Even tired Myke was grinning with satisfaction.

This was the perfect combination to make a nerd like him excited. Powerful magic and special skills for rapid-fire and precise advance targeting.

He thought about the zombies again and what damage he could do now and his grin got even bigger.

No more helplessly running away.

Tired, but cheered from this thought Myke walked slowly back to the treehouse.

Having the detection skill, he felt pretty safe now.

When he reached the treehouse, his mana was up to 15/100MP. He was pleased that the mana restored automatically with time.

As he got into the treehouse he was starving again. He got 2 cans from the backpack and opened them.

Beans again.

He ate them thinking about his next steps.

Now he was perfectly prepared to search for survivors. He has the detection skill to search for the survivors and the powerful firebolt to secure his safety from the zombies.

He will search tomorrow for survivors.

If he can’t find anyone, he will secure some more food the next day and leave the city.

He finished the cans and got down to sleep.

‘WARNING’

‘WARNING’

‘WAKE UP MYKE’

A pleasant female voice resounded in his head with urgency.

Myke jumped on his feet again.

In the HUD a big red blinking “WARNING” message was visible.