With Zachery finished, he left and Erasmus took his place and started to speak.

"Hello children, my name is Erasmus, and today I will be teaching the magic skill Flame of Kyburad to those who would like to learn it. So first I would like you to stand up, and I want you to hold your left hand out in front of you- no away from your face. Since this is a guidance version of the skill, you can't hurt anybody with it. But it is a good idea for you to get used to thinking about the position of your hand before you use the skill, so you don't have an accident when you become an adult. Alright now watch me first."

He held out his hand as he had told the others, and a flame appeared there, similar to the one Dad had shown to Daniel.

"This is the magic skill named Flame of Kyburad. Now, this might sound a bit strange, but I want you to clearly think the name of the skill in your-"

Flame of Kyburad.

"-mind, and when you do you should experience a gap in your mind, underneath the words. I want you to push your senses into that gap, to fill it entirely until you understand its dimensions. You should pay special attention to the bottom of the gap, as that is normally the most complex part."

Daniel was already standing with a small flame in his hand, having skipped to the end as soon as he saw where things were going. Was it that easy, did you just need the name? What were some common spell names he could try out? He started to raise his free hand to point toward his teacher but stopped himself halfway. He really was growing up if he could resist fireballing the nearest priest in the face.

He inspected the flame in his hand. It was nothing much, the sort of size you would get from a lighter, and it gave off no heat. He found he could move it with his mind, similar to how he had been flicking between screens with his tablet. He could also move it somewhat just by turning his hand back and forth. It would always point straight upwards like a normal flame, and if he flipped his hand upside down the flame would slide around it, moving to the top side. However he moved it, it was always attached to his skin, flowing through his clothes and ignoring their existence. And it had a travel time, even flicking with his mind it would take a second to move from one finger to the other.

"Good, Anne," the teacher told him as he passed, apparently checking individually how people were getting on "Very good."

There had been more talking that he had mostly missed while distracted. Something about spending time practicing once you could summon the thing.

Flame of Kyburad.

The flame disappeared from his palm.

Flame of Kyburad.

It reappeared on the tip of a finger on his left hand where he had been focusing. He held out his right hand.

Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad.

It reappeared on a fingertip of his right hand. No movement but that wasn't noticeably quicker. He mentally dismissed the flame, imagining himself pressing an X button like the one on his tablet but connected to the flame. It disappeared, but if there was a similar shortcut to resummon it he could not think of one.

He sat back down. The class seemed to have turned into individual practice while he was distracted. He smirked and summoned his flame on the tip of his nose. Blinking rapidly, Daniel let out a quiet laugh under his breath. The flame there was insanely hard to ignore, but he felt like giving it a try.

He tried to consider the proper way to practice this skill. Practice, when they know about improving skills but won't tell you till another day. He figured that was actually a good thing. He shouldn't get too comfortable just taking other people's word for the best way to do something. After all, he did spend a lot of time either despairing over his own idiocy or convinced that other people were stupid. Could that be the point of this hands-off setup? To encourage people to come up with their own approach?

Eventually, he settled on working on the summoning portion. Mapping out that weird gap in his mind each time wasn't slow, but there was room for improvement. And it was a common element in both of the things he could do.

Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad.

Flickering the thing on and off at the end of his nose was impressively even more distracting. Improvement already!

The sides to the mind gap were sheer, but he noticed they weren't completely uniform. There were thin vertical strips there, which gave an impression of shininess. Something that spoke to being metallic, or akin to a conductor. Conductor of what? who knows? The interpretation felt right to him. But at the same time, the impressions were of bizarre sensations, and guesses built on them felt inherently nonsensical. Somehow while wrapping his brain in knots, his speed at summoning the flame had slightly increased.

Having enough of the flickering flame making him crosseyed, he stopped with the summon spam.

Status.

He intended to check his list of skills for Flame of Kyburad, but on the character sheet was something that distracted him.

Anne Laston Human(child) Age 5 Health 150 Strength 33(11) Agility 74(25) Dexterity 61(20) Intelligence 72 Wit 67 Wisdom 52

He looked around again at the other kids apparently diligently practicing as well. He was the only one sitting down, something he probably should have noticed earlier. Also, he couldn't remember any fidgeting since they had come into the classroom. For that matter, he didn't think any of the kids had even spoken apart from him.

But the real stand-out problem screaming in his face was his wisdom of 52 with no brackets. Daniel couldn't remember a sensation he could attribute to the change, but that didn't really matter. He thought he had a good idea of what was going on here.

Come down into the church basement, boys and girls. Don't worry we promise not to do anything you don't agree to. Just sit there and let me use my mind magic on you for a bit.

To be fair it wasn't that bad so far. Some sort of mental buff effect to help with learning wasn't the most immoral thing that could happen. He didn't feel like being fair. If it wasn't a problem, then ask before you did it. Why was his blessing not stopping this? Because it was a positive effect? He had no way of telling if he had resisted part of whatever was going on. He might have been raising a huge red flag just by speaking.

He closed his eyes, trying to contain his frustration. His leg started vibrating to burn off nervous energy.

Are you really just going to sit here and accept this?

His eyes snapped open. He got to his feet and walked across the room towards Erasmus who was back at the table. His body felt loose as he walked, boneless with nerves and frustration. His stomach wanted to join in and started making him feel nauseous.

Why is my wisdom buff not fixing this? And why is it not stopping me from doing something stupid? Hello, wisdom are you there do you know what a low profile is?

"Yes?"

"I want to leave now. If my father comes later to pick me up, can you have someone tell him I already went home?"

"Leave?" Erasmus asked, shocked "...why would you leave? I can't just let you go"

"Zachery said the church would fight to protect my freedom. And now you want to lock me in a basement and not let me go?"

"Zachery? well, he's right but.." Erasmus devolved into mumbling, clearly unsure what to say or do.

"Where is Zachery?" Daniel asked, his anger raging at him for coming to talk instead of just walking out the door.

"His office is just in front when you go back up the stairs, but I don't think-"

"I see," Daniel interrupted, already leaving.

Outside the room, Daniel went straight for the stairs, resisting the urge to glance around for someone coming to tell him to get back to class. He ignored Zachery's office, obviously, and picked a direction mostly at random, well aware that he was lost already. Thankfully the main corridors were easy enough to tell apart, and he found a second set of stairs up without running into any dead ends. The exit he left was different from the one he had entered, but the market square was visible, and moving through it let him reorient himself so he started back up the hill.

He laughed out loud, basking in both relief and being out in the sunshine. He had been trying to maintain a facade of confidence while walking around inside but had been coming apart with internal jitters. Once out of the class things had started to go steadily downhill. He hadn't thought to check at the time but assumed that was his wisdom returning to normal.

I'm such an idiot. What am I going to do about this?

He laughed again. The rest of the day was a looming maw of uncertainty. Was he overreacting? He imagined telling his parents and suddenly feeling very foolish. But the idea he was underreacting held about the same amount of weight. Who knows how many children he had left behind in there. The idea of himself having just stayed in there turned his stomach, he knew that much.

He made it home safely, if people were giving him second glances he hadn't noticed. The front gate and the front door were both unlocked. He doubted they ever were locked apart from possibly at night. He could hear people downstairs as usual at this time of day, but none were in the hallway and he hurried up the stairs. Entering the sitting room, he found it empty and went to sit down.

An hour later and he was still waiting for anyone to show up. He suspected Erasmus had stayed with the class without notifying anyone, assuming Daniel was with Zachery. Daniel had gotten bored waiting and had eventually remembered to check his status. His stats had returned to normal as expected, and when he went looking for his new skill instead in the Domain tab he found what looked like space for a list. It had one entry, Dubious Disciple of Kyburad. That wouldn't have been how Daniel would have described himself, and he interacted with it in the hope of learning more. Instead, a second near-empty list popped out to the side, again with a single entry.

> Flame of Kyburad: Channels belief into flame.

Daniel sighed at the description. Over the course of his second childhood, his overactive imagination had come up with several ways that fantasy magic might work. Some sort of magical programming language had been his favorite. It was logical, it fit his talents, and he had a prior understanding of programming to gain a leg up on medieval thinkers. Faith-based magic was the worst option. He was a skeptic, not a believer. Even if Kyburad existed, why would you care? And if you really, really had to worship the twat for some reason, why would you ever need to get other people involved? He had strong suspicions that organised religion was a disgusting concept, but the appeal of it was so alien to him that he knew he couldn't fairly judge it.

Daniel sighed again. It had been obvious to him with no good reason that he would excel at magic. This was not magic he could excel at.

> Individualist: Unique Status interface. Reduced benefits and restrictions from Domains.

He pulled up the description again. Domains, plural. It seemed that there were racial skills, job skills, general skills, and now religious skills? More gods for him not to care about. Would reduced restrictions from domains help him escape the church basement? If he could show it to the priests, perhaps they would take it as a divine message to not restrict him. They would pick up on the reduced benefit part as well. You get halfway out of the basement but you also only get half a crusade on your behalf.

Flame of Kyburad.

Still the same flame. He played with it, returning to the practice he had been doing at the church. Coming home to do the same work made ditching school feel less like a failure. His mind returned to his escape from the school. He thought leaving was right, but his brain kept rerunning events anyway.

As he sat there waiting, occasionally he rolled his eyes, occasionally he shook his head and called himself a moron, and occasionally he laughed.