“Are you sure you want to leave this place?” Nameless child asked walking towards the tall hills making up the rim of the crater they stood in.

“It’s not like I can stay here forever…” Otto replied dismissively.

He stole a pair of shoes off one of the bandits opting not to touch the blood-stained shirt or jackets.

“I’m sure you could figure something out; the world out there isn’t that great either… I’d say a four out of ten as far as worlds go…” Nameless child said trying to persuade Otto to stay in his crater.

“You won’t be allowed to stay in any city or town for more than a day at a time without paying for one-hundred gold for citizenship, not to mention your citizenship is gone if you leave the town for over a day…”

“This place doesn’t show up on any other map, so you’ll probably be safe,”

Otto shook his head.

“Nah, what’s the point of life if I just sit around in a grassy field forever…”

“I might start talking to inanimate objects again!” he laughed.

“Right…” Nameless child squinted.

Soon, they reached the edge of the crater, a vast expanse of scorched, desert-like rock and sand stretched endlessly into the horizon, the occasional ruin standing like a sad monument of the long-dead inhabitants of these lands.

Nameless child pulled out one of the masks and handed it to Otto.

“Put it on…” he instructed.

“Huh? Why? I thought it’s there wasn’t any mana here, you never mentioned gas!” Otto exclaimed taking a few step back.

Nameless child shook his head.

“It’s the mana-deficient matter, it’s like a vacuum, it’ll drain anything it touches of mana, getting the mana-dry air or sand into your lungs, an organ designed to have a big surface area, would kill you in minutes,”

Otto covered his mouth and nose with his hands for a second before putting the mask on.

“As long as the sand and air only touch your skin, you’ll be able to make it back to the safety of the continent with mana to spare…”

“Inside of the mask is an air-flow-powered mana generator, it’ll bathe the air in mana as you breathe air in,” he explained.

Otto nodded.

“Got it!” He replied, his voice only slightly muffled by the mask.

The mask had big, glass eye-holes and went as far as to cover his ears, the air came in through a small, circulate mesh sticking out of the bottom of the bird-beaked mask.

“The journey will take a few hours… it’ll probably be dark by the time we get back…” Nameless child remarked.

“Ok…” Otto nodded.

They travelled in the blistering heat of the sun, due to the lack of plant life and water, the rain let along clouds were very rare.

The wind howled loudly, unobstructed by trees or bushes.

As expected, the suns began to set after the first two hours of travelling.

Otto looked up, seeing the waves of sparkling colours in the sky.

“Are those stars?” he asked not taking his eyes off the sky.

“No,” Nameless child replied.

“When mana-filled matter like clouds or gusts of wind get drained in massive quantities a bit of light is generated, the same is true in reverse…”

“Travellers call these deadman’s lights since y’know… they’re here…”

“I see…” Otto replied.

“Does that mean we’re close? Since mana-filled stuff is being blown in here?”

“They mean we’re close…” Nameless child replied.

As promised a vibrant forest came into view, the transition between desert and forest was almost non-existent as the two existed side by side.

As soon as Otto stepped onto the grass in the forest, he felt his entire body relax.

Nameless child removed his mask, placing it in his bag again.

“Phew…” he took a few deep breaths of the cool forest air.

“Alright… I’ll be heading west to FarmingVillage… you’re free to tag along if you want…” Nameless child offered.

Otto scratched his head.

“I think I’ll be alright on my own, after all, you said I need citizenship to stay in a town, not to mention money,” Otto laughed.

“Well, no matter where you go, you’ll probably need money…” Nameless child remarked with the faintest smile.

He reached into his pocket pulling out a handful of silver coins.

“Here, consider it a parting gift,” Nameless child said extending his hand towards Otto.

“Really? Thanks, but you don’t have to!” he exclaimed holding both of his hands at shoulder height.

“Don’t worry about it, I had a friend a few worlds back who was in a similar situation… well, more like in reverse, it’s only right I help out people in the same situation I was in…” he said still holding out he coins.

“I see… thanks, I’ll definitely pay you back next time we see each other!” Otto said placing the money in his pocket.

“Sure,” the boy nodded before turning to leave.

“I’ll see you around…” he said waving Otto a goodbye.

As soon as Nameless child left Otto’s field of view, Otto sat down on the grass, placing the book before him.

“What the fuck was that about?!” he demanded.

The book began to speak again.

“What?” it asked innocently.

“YOU KNOW WHAT!” Otto exclaimed pointing an accusatory finger at the book.

“Why was Santa clause on steroids in the book?!” he demanded.

“Mmm…”

“It’s for your safety, if reading somebody’s magic book would be possible, people would stop at nothing to take yours!”

“Heck, you could be killed for it!”

Otto crossed his arms.

“At least I could die with dignity!” he replied visibly blushing.

He was remembering the expression Nameless child gave him when he looked at the pictures in the book.

Otto placed both of his hands on his head.

“DAMN IT!”

“Hey, now, quit over-reacting!” the book exclaimed.

“If you have time to regret, you have time to study some magic!” the book remarked.

Otto nodded.

“Mm, mm, you have a point!” he agreed.

He grabbed the book and tossed it against a tree.

“LIKE HELL YOU DO!”

“Ow!” the book exclaimed.

“What was that for?!”

“Promise me you’ll stop showing that weird muscly guy to people!” Otto demanded, he sounded desparate.

“Can’t, I was commanded by Murlin to show that picture to anybody unworthy of the spells within…” the book replied.

Otto grinned wryly as he looked at the book and in a sarcastic voice replied: “Quite the elaborate backstory for a figment of my imagination!”

“If you really thought I’m a figment of your imagination you wouldn’t be talking to me right now…” the book replied.

“…”

Defeated, Otto walked over to the book and opened it.

“Now, you learned how to make fire and pick where it goes, I bet you’d like to know how to fire the spell!” read the book.

Otto nodded as if he expected the book to continued reading itself.

“In order to do that, you need to set one thing, velocity!”

“However, in order to do that, you need to use two modifiers,”

“The first is Norfhum, this is the first modifier that requires two bits of information!”

“Basically, you select point one and then point two somewhere else, the direction of the spell will reflect the direction point one needs to face to reach point two!”

“So, if you select point one at the base of your hand and point two forwards by even a tiny bit, the direction of the spell will always be where your hand points!” the book explained.

“Here is how you would use it, assuming you already recorded two coordinates with the ‘here’ keyword beforehand!”

“Norfhum PointOne PointTwo «”

“The other modifier is simple, Welohum, just think of it as speed, of course, measured in µ per second!”

“Keep in mind, if an object is already moving in some direction, the ‘Welohum’ modifier will work just fine without the ‘Norfhum’ modifier!”

Otto opened up his book of variables.

“ƒ SetDirection norfhum”

“ƒ SetSpeed welohum”

He flipped forward a few pages and in large letters wrote the title on the top of the page.

“My Spells!”

Below he wrote his first recorded spell; before he was able to do that he had to set two points, “PalmPointOne” and “PalmPointOne”, both placed along his middle of the back of his palm.

“ƒ WaterBolt « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 10β « Name BatteryWaterBolt « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace SpellWaterBolt « SetManaOutputAmount 1β… SetElement ElementWater « Name SpellWaterBolt « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 10µ«”

“Alright! Let’s give it a shot!”

He extended his hand forwards and simply exclaimed “WaterBolt!”

The magic circle appeared but nothing else happened.

“…”

“…”

“I wonder if there is such a thing as a wizard stack overflow…” he thought joking, his mind was filled with dread for his first experience with magic bug fixing.

He used “BattryDestroy BatteryWaterBolt”

He looked at the spell again.

“…”

“The battery appears and spins like it should… did I make a spelling mistake?” he thought looking at the spell code again.

“…”

“I’ll try increasing the battery size…” he thought.

“CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 20β « Name BatteryWaterBolt « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace SpellWaterBolt « SetManaOutputAmount 1β… SetElement ElementWater « Name SpellWaterBolt « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 10µ«”

This time the circle that appeared in his hand was blue.

“What the hell…”

He breathed a sigh.

“BattryDestroy BatteryWaterBolt”

He looked through his list of variables.

“Maybe it’s the mana output?” he wondered.

“CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 10β « Name BatteryWaterBolt « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace SpellWaterBolt « SetManaOutputAmount 2β «… SetElement ElementWater « Name SpellWaterBolt « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 10µ«”

This time the spell worked out almost as expected, a magic circle appeared in his hand and from it flew out a constant jet of water that flung his arm around as if it was an over-cooked noodle.

“I FORGOT TO SET A LIFESPAN!” he cried.

“BATTRYDESTROY BATTERYWATERBOLT” he cried as his arm limply hung at his side next to the torn-up grass and dirt the water so cruelly ravaged only moments earlier.

“ƒ WaterBolt « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 10β « Name BatteryWaterBolt « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace SpellWaterBolt « SetManaOutputAmount 2β « SetLifespan 1«… SetElement ElementWater « Name SpellWaterBolt « SetShape Orb « SetSize 2µ « SetPlace Palm « SetDirection PalmPointOne PalmPointTwo « SetSpeed 10µ « SetLifespan 20 «”

He recorded the improved spell in the notebook after the crossed out the original version.

“Note to self, test spells before writing them down… either that or find an eraser…”

Otto pointed his hand at a nearby tree, the battery existed for only a second, though the water lasted longer, as a result, it was launched as a ball or rather an oval instead of a stream!

When the water hit the tree, its bark wasn’t even scratched, though Otto knew it would be a decent non-lethal way of defending himself if he was to run into some bandits like Nameless child did.