Immediately after finishing with preparing the rabbit, and burying the blood and viscera that escaped the battered body of Sam’s first kill, placing the body into his inventory, he once again took out his steel sword, took up his stance, now a little more familiar, and waited for the next rabbit to come closer to the bait laid out.

While the memories of the other Sam were useful, they sadly didn’t come with any organization, and most importantly with any muscle memory. So Sam had to make the memories and experience his own over time. He couldn’t get top-grade skills after swinging his sword for the first time.

At least, while in real life he was rather lazy and took a serious mental effort to maintain his exercise routine, in games, Sam never shied away from practicing until he bored himself to death. And now with virtual reality, the experience would many times better than sitting in front of the computer screen and watching the numbers go up.

He raised his sword and slashed once again, as a new rabbit jumped at him after getting spooked by stepping towards them.

This time, the fur of the rabbit was in a marginally better state after Sam beheaded the poor rabbit after a small fight. He adjusted his stance once again, grabbed the handle of the sword a little differently, and waited for the next rabbit.

Sam watched as the life left the eyes of the tenth rabbit, and he couldn’t help but let out a shaky and exhausted breath. But then he immediately perked up as a long-awaited screen tsunami appeared in front of him.

[Congratulations! You’ve leveled up!]

[You’re now level 1!]

[Gained 2 unassigned attribute points!]

[Gained 1 END point, thanks to your perseverance!]

[Congratulations, thanks to your persistence with the sword you’ve learned the Basic Sword Mastery skill!]

[Basic Sword Mastery: Level 0/10 (0%) (Passive) Shows that you are capable of wielding a sword. Mastering the basics will allow you to start learning advanced moves. Slightly increases the damage you do with a sword.]

“Yes!” whooping, Sam danced a little, and quickly assigned his two new unassigned points, as he firmly believe that holding onto those points was the height of foolishness, especially at the beginning of the game where their worth was incalculable. One went to Perception and the other to Magic. He could make things work with his relatively low physical stats, but higher magic stats were important for his plans and it was simply a necessity for making use of mana.

And just to make sure, Sam closed his eyes, and reached out to his new phantom limb, trying to sense his own mana. And to his surprise, even this one point increase allowed him a much clearer view of his own mana.

Experimentally, he tried to move it around, mimicking the old magician back in the mage tower, and to his surprise, he actually could play with it a little. It was like taking sand into his hand and trying to move it in some kind of exotic pattern that he himself didn’t really grasp while the sand kept slipping from his hand, only to end with an empty fist when he finished the pattern.

It was confusing, but at the same time exhilarating. To Sam, this new sensation, the feedback from ‘touching’ the mana, was alone worth trying the game…

‘Poor rabbits, but I’m not giving this up…’ he thought, then tried once again. He managed to reach three repetitions of the weird movement when his status screen reminded him with a harsh alarm that he had run out of mana.

Sam shook his head, then ignoring his empty mana, he checked his latest victim, and after he saw that it was empty of blood, he put the rabbit corpse into his inventory (the hide in a much better state) and refocused on the hunt once again.

Observing the bait and the area, Sam decided he needed to move, as the constant fighting has already disturbed the local wildlife, and the field itself was in tatters.

So he simply began wandering in a random direction, still keeping the town walls in sight, while picking up the rabbits’ favorite flower when he came across one to make a new bait while thinking about mana.

Strictly speaking, a player didn’t need to do all of what Sam had done. Most players could play the game without learning how to really control their mana. They would simply unlock their mana, get some skill or spell, and go on an adventure. Granted, they would have to yell the name of the skill or spell or make a specific movement to activate it, but even that way they could bring out 100% power of the skill.

The problem was that by learning to control his mana, Sam would be able to activate skills without speaking, and would bring out more than 100% of the power of the skill. Admittedly, it wasn’t so easy that anyone could do it, but the few who managed to reach the level where they could squeeze more power out of their skills than possible were the best of the best.

So, Sam, if he wanted to be one of the best, had to buckle down, and practice until his eyes bled, and he was numb with boredom because with everything else, learning to control mana was reliant on talent. Some could learn it just as easily as breathing and some would struggle for years just to achieve the basics. In this regard, the other Sam had a middling talent, capable of a lot, but never reaching the top of the mountain.

Unfortunately, there was no universal test that would determine a person’s talent, so Sam had to go in blind to see what he could achieve.

Arriving in another clearing, Sam found another flat-ish rock, placed the mass of crushed flowers, took a step back, raised his sword, and once again, waited.

Sam swiped the sweat off his forehead and looked at the giant rabbit carcasses laid out in front of him.

After arriving at the second location, he kept at the ‘hunting’ until he bagged his 25th rabbit, then he sat down to rest for a while, exhausted, and now he was surveying his collection. Sadly, he didn’t level up again, as while the first level only needed 100 experience points, the second level up already required 300 experience points. And it got worse from there…

The first few were in tatters and he even could see a few bones poking out of the low-quality fur. Those wouldn’t be the ones he would hand over to complete the quest. But the last dozen or so were of much better quality.

Thanks to his new skill and practice, he managed to defeat them with one swipe. Mostly at the neck, but sometimes he managed to cut them in half on his first strike.

Sam, hoping that the butcher would accept them, collected the rabbits back to his inventory, organized them into two piles, tried to clean the detritus off his low-quality clothing, with little success, and began heading back to the town.

On the way, he continued his practice with the mana, feeling as if he was on a verge of discovering something. It was an elusive feeling, and it annoyed Sam greatly that he couldn’t really figure it out. Even looking into his inherited memories didn’t help, as according to them, everybody had a different reaction to the mana, and felt it differently.

Arriving at the gate, he greeted the guard, who was once again almost napping, received a grunt in response, then headed for the butcher.

Sam stepped into the butcher’s shop, the bell ringing as he shut the door behind him, only to be met with the scowling face of the butcher, who was still standing behind the counter, aggressively cleaning it. Though Sam could spot that some products were gone, or moved around.

“Back are ye?” asked the butcher without any greeting. “Did ye get it?”

“I sure did, sir!” replied Sam, keeping his tone even. The butcher didn’t seem like a person who would appreciate Sam sucking up to him. “Where should I put them?”

“The counter,” came the dry answer as the butcher motioned towards it.

Sam nodded, and one by one, he began retrieving the rabbit carcasses from his inventory, placing them in front of the butcher, who was already scrutinizing the first one with sharp eyes.

He watched as the man hemmed and poked the carcasses for a few minutes, even going as far as to sniff them, probably for freshness. Then, after the butcher was finished with the last one, coincidentally the one in the best condition, he looked up from his work at Sam.

“I knew ye were halfway competent, as these are halfway decent,” he said in a gruff voice, but Sam managed to spot the light of satisfaction in his eyes. “With this, I can make the order.”

No thank you followed it as the butcher began hauling the carcasses to the backroom for processing, but Sam didn’t really care as he was more preoccupied with the screen that appeared after the last sentence of the butcher.

[You’ve completed the quest: Help a butcher out!]

[Your reward is free processing of any animal carcass you give to the butcher on this day!]

Sam nodded, happy with the reward, then patiently waited until the other man returned.

The burly professional reached out with his meaty hand and gestured towards Sam. “Now, gimme the remaining and I’ll do ‘em quick.”

So Sam, with a slight smile, quickly dumped the rest of the rabbits on the counter.

“When should I get back?”

The other man, without looking up, just grunted again.

“An hour,” there was a moment of silence, then he continued. “These are shit quality. Ye need to practice, kid.”

“Yes, sir. I do.” was Sam’s only reply. And with that, he turned around and left the shop, confident that the person behind the counter didn’t much care for small talk.

Knowing that in an hour he couldn’t really achieve anything of importance, Sam simply decided to enjoy the scenery. He walked back to the town square, where a very stereotypical fountain was surrounded by a little greenery and a few benches for the people of Greenwood to rest during their shopping trips or just for travelers to take in the view of the town.

Taking a seat on one of these, Sam continued to practice his mana control, until he once again ran out of mana, while participating in the age-old tradition of people watching.

He saw workers heading to have a meal, women with giant baskets full of produce heading home, old ladies gossiping while slowly heading somewhere, peddlers walking around, a few pickpockets, stern-faced guards patrolling, and, of course, players.

Compared to the locals, they were much more excited, rushing to and fro, eagerly showing each other different pieces of equipment, or breathlessly describing some amazing skill.

The game didn’t really have an official rarity system, so it was really hard for beginners to really determine the worth of items at first look. For example, when buying a sword, you just can’t look at the color of the name. You have to check the material it was made from the crafter and take it into your hand and do a few practice swings.

Sam even spotted a person walking around, gesticulating at the town, while seemingly talking to himself.

A streamer.

Like always, a new game was always good for streamers, and Magic Unbound wasn’t any different. Though initially not a lot of streamers tried to showcase the game, but even with those few who took the leap, it was enough to entice the population to participate in the game.

According to his memories, if everything happens the same way, it would take around a month or so for the game to be picked up by the populace at large. Which would give him around four months of in-game time to achieve his goals.

Watching as the streamer walked around for a while, talking to NPCs and players alike, he returned his attention to his mana, closed his eyes, and focused.

Sam could feel that he was close. To what, he didn’t know, but he was close.

He once again took hold of the mana and began to move it in the same pattern the old mage did when he unlocked Sam’s mana. But this time, he made sure to clench his metaphorical fist extra hard, and as he moved the mana, he could feel himself shake a little, a sweet flowing down his forehead, but he kept his hold on the mana that was in his phantom appendage.

The mana still fled from his control as he moved along the mysterious path. The mana, like granules of sand, slipped from his fingers, but with a herculean effort, he managed to keep a hold on a few of them.

And then the path ended; mana successfully moved in a circle, and for a moment Sam was surprised, but then he was distracted by what was happening in his body.

The mana, previously sluggish, just hovering around, doing nothing, changed. It was now, still somewhat slowly, following along the route that flowed inside him. It was extremely slow. At Sam’s estimation, it would take minutes for one ‘grain’ of mana to move in a full circle. Even if it wasn’t a circle, but some kind of esoteric pattern that was hard to describe with any of the languages he spoke.

Scarcely believing that he managed to achieve this, Sam opened his eyes and checked out the patiently waiting screens in front of him.

[Congratulations! You’ve managed to learn the Basic Mana Control skill!]

[Basic Mana Control: Level 0/10 (0%) (Passive) You managed to gain basic control over your own mana. Mastering this skill will allow you to learn more advanced techniques. This skill also increases the amount of mana regenerated at a time.

+1 Mana Regeneration per Second]

[Congratulations! You’ve managed to learn Basic Mana Control without any instruction or help!]

[You’ve gained +1 PER +1 MAG!]

Whooping in happiness, Sam jumped up and did a little dance, ignoring as people looked weirdly at him (or as the players stared at him with speculation) then did a quick check of his status screen.

[Name: Sam ‘Solar’

Level: 1 (50%)

Title: -

HP: 100/100

MP: 42/80

STR: 5

DEX: 5

AGI: 5

VIT: 5

END: 6

MAG: 8

PER: 7

WIS: 5

LUCK: 8]

[Skills:

Mana Shield: Level 0 (13%) Using mana, you can form a simple shell around yourself, which decreases the damage you take. Damage decrease depends on the amount of mana invested. Basic Sword Mastery: Level 2/10 (6%) (Passive) Shows that the person is capable of wielding a sword. Mastering the basics will allow the user to start learning advanced moves. Slightly increases the damage you do with a sword. Basic Mana Control: Level 0/10 (0%) (Passive) You managed to gain basic control over your own mana. Mastering this skill will allow you to learn more advanced techniques. This skill also increases the amount of mana regenerated at a time.

+1 Mana Regeneration per Second]

Sam stared at it for a few seconds with satisfaction, then looked up at the sun, saw that it was to head back to the butcher, stopped celebrating, closed the status screen, and began walking with a little pep in his steps, while his mind was still marveling at the feeling of mana moving around inside of him.

The process of receiving the meat and tattered hides of the giant rabbits was smooth, and Sam could see that the butcher was already much happier. So, he simply put the meat and hides away, said his goodbyes to the grouchy man, and left the shop.

Outside of the shop, he did a simple check of his equipment, making sure that there weren’t any cracks on his sword (thankfully the beginner clothing was self-cleaning to a level, so there weren’t any remnants of rabbit or his blood on it), and once again headed for the outside.

But this time, he wasn’t going to hunt.