The first thing he would have liked to do was to go and ask her to teach him. The simplest and most straight forward solution. But he pushed that thought away. From a week or so of pursuing them, he learned that mages were vain and self-motivated creatures. Even right now, away from the comforts of the city and in the stark Borders, she was wearing armour of brilliant violet and white. 10% practicality and 90% show.

‘It might be that mages themselves have no choice. They might have to behave that way to survive,’ pondered Corn. ‘But it doesn’t change the plan, observe and learn how she uses Magic.’

The mage was talking to their captain and others he didn’t recognise. Looking around, he realised the original company had joined up with the recruits while they slept. He walked up to some of the veteran warriors. After a few jests and sharing a flask of rum (that strictly speaking wasn’t his), he managed to collect information about the mage’s routine.

She came when she pleased but when she did come the company pursued mainly larger game. She provided the firepower, while the warriors helped pursue and corner the monster; and harvesters worked on the monster. She never spoke with the ordinary company members (surprise, surprise) and mainly interacted with squad leaders.

Now that she had arrived, the recruits’ training had been scrapped and it was business as usual.

Corn was elated, but their squad leader was in a dour mood. The harvester recruits met their veteran counterparts and after the customary ‘his’ and ‘hellos’ they proceeded to ignore each other. All in all, they were a motley collection of nobodies.

With everyone’s assistance the camp was dismantled within half an hour and the entire company (of about 50 people by Corn’s count) set off towards the forest. Before they could reach the trees, the warriors in the front encountered a group of slimes.

Wilt took the opportunity to teach them, “All the monsters you’ve seen so far used Strength, with monsters of Speed you need to maintain the proper dis-”

She was interrupted as a stream of fire burned the slimes before their very eyes.

“-tance,” finished their squad leader and proceeded to glumly collect the Life shards with the rest of the harvesters.

This was the new status quo. Any monsters they encountered were quickly burned away by the mage. Corn began observing her. She rode behind the group on some kind of wolf Beast. On her hand she clutched a twisted wooden wand, whenever she pointed, a stream of fire would burst forth.

It took him a few tries to see the red spell circle. It flickered, away from the wand, a stream of flames shot forth from its centre and then it flickered off.

Corn tried to recall all the mages he had seen. The angel had cast spell circles from her body while the necromancer priest cast a spell circle onto an object. In this case the mage had to point the wand to create the spell circle. Is it the wand that creates the spell circle?

Immediately another thought entered his head, ‘How do I steal the wand?’

As they headed inside the forest, they encountered a surprise. A line of thin, blue monkeys sat perched on the branches.

“Beasts! They shouldn’t be here,” hissed their squad leader.

More of the blue monkeys followed from behind and around them. It was an ambush. A monkey charged at Corn and by instinct he thrust his short sword at it. The monkey, instead, nimbly jumped on his sword and launched three consecutive kicks at Corn’s chest, sending him flying away.

The monkey raised its hands in the air and laughed at Corn. He spat blood.

He stood up, removed the spear fixed to his rucksack and pointed it at the monkey. It used Speed so it would be faster than him but not stronger than him. He stepped back trying to maintain distance.

The monkey laughed and launched itself at Corn. But while it jumped, a red spell circle flickered next to it and it exploded into blood and ash.

Corn tried opening his eyes but they were seared red by the explosion. Strangely enough, with his eyes closed he could visualise the spell circle clearly. The entire spell circle was the colour of flames and consisted of two concentric circles. The inner circle was thinner than the outer circle and sandwiched between the two circles were a string of 15 runic letters. Inside the inner circle were two larger runes written horizontally.

He kept staring into the left over image, but in minutes the image faded. Not allowing himself to forget the image he opened his eyes and, without looking at the tumultuous situation he was in, started inscribing spell circles into the grey soil of the forest. It took him five circles till he was confident he wouldn’t forget the runes.

He got up and looked around. All around, people had been attacked by blue monkeys and generally looked unharmed. Corn found himself cut of the main group so he hurriedly scooped up the Life shard of the monkey (much larger than the thin sliver from a goblin) and joined them.

The formation had been changed now, instead of standing at the back, the mage was now in the centre and the warriors and harvesters were circled around her. Corn found himself in the flanks and as far as he could be from the mage.

And on they continued. It was the same old routine except with a lot more fire power. Corn did his best to try reading the fire stream spell circle, but to no avail. He did find out that their squad leader was wearing a frown so heavy it pulled her cheeks down.

‘Does she hate the mage?’ he wondered.

So he approached her during one of their breaks.

“How are you?” he asked with all the concern he could muster.

She glared back at him.

“If you hate the mage so much, I could stand there for you.”

“Who say I hate the mage?” she retorted, but immediately bit her lip thoughtfully. “Would you do that, darling?”

Corn gave her a beaming smile. So after the break they swapped positions. At the pace they were going in, the harvesters could only pick up Life shards anyway and so the swap made no difference.

Once again, the company encountered a group of purple slimes. Corn stood only 6 feet away from the mage’s mount and tensed up in anticipation to see the spell circle properly. Before she even waved the wand, however, Corn felt something run up his spine and into his head. It felt vaguely hot and uncomfortable. The sensation went as quickly as it came.

The mage cast her spell and a stream of fire burnt the slimes into ashes. Corn didn’t even look at the spell circle because he remembered that sensation. It was Magic. The same Magic he felt when he solved that hidden quest. But how? But why?

The mage shot another stream of fire and he felt the same sensation again. Two more times the mage cast her spell and two more times he felt the same sensation through his spine. Greater exposure made the sensation less uncomfortable and the heat felt more like a characteristic feature than something that would burn his spine.

It was time to manipulate it. The fifth time she cast the spell he mentally willed the sensation to stop. And it did. He stopped the burning sensation at his mid- back.

That was easy!

Pain flared through his mid-back. It hurt.

No, it would be wrong to call it pain. At this point Corn was more than immune to any physical pain. In the same way someone who had never opened their eyes (or any other sensory organ) would scream and cry even at seeing dim light for the first time, it hurt. Now, imagine you took that same person struggling to process vision and shone laser beams right into their eyes.

It hurt and Corn squealed like a pig and rolled on the ground trying to make the burning stop.

It wouldn’t stop so he slipped his hand into the armor and like magic the pain transferred into his right hand. What the Abyss! He tried rubbing his right hand with his left and once again the pain divided. It now smoldered into a manageable throbbing sensation that told him that it wasn’t an immediate threat.

He stood up and dusted himself only to find the mage’s crew looking at him. Even the mage’s Beast was glaring.

He smiled, teeth chattering, “My back is killing me.”

The mage muttered, “Nut job,” and turned back.

One of the warrior squad leaders, a rock nymph, slapped his back, right on the sore spot, and said, “Cheer up.”

Corn followed behind them wincing in pain. When the mage cast her usual spell again, the sensation ran up his spine and hands. It throbbed weirdly when the sensation (or what he assumed to be mana) passed through the burned areas. Pain that felt it was coming from both outside and in. He made no further attempt to manipulate the mana that day.

Once the day ended, Wilt examined his back and hands. The skin was new and there seemed to be nothing wrong with the flesh. The pain was still there, hanging around in the periphery but with Wilt’s help he managed to ignore it completely.

In four hours, he was rudely awoken with a prod on his back (of course right on the wound) and told to join the night watch. So he patrolled the camp under the canopy of the Great Titan and blue green trees. The scenery was beautiful to someone who had only seen three white moons his entire life.

The watch passed by uneventfully but their third day was a disappointment to Corn. The mage was eager to continue their excursion but the captain refused because of the recruits. And so the panda kin and high elf argued for half an hour until it was decided they would be heading back and start the next excursion sooner instead of the usual break.

He was honestly impressed that the captain won against a mage (of all people). There must be rules that constricted the mage.

Thus, they headed back to the city. Once again there were no surprises. Any spells the mage casted helped Corn recover until only the memory of pain was left.

The warriors left immediately, only the harvesters were left to offload monster parts and a few sacks of Life shards.

“They take the individual Life shards and process it to form a complete Life counter that can be used as a life,” explained the tree nymph.

“Woah, all these lives belong to us.”

They couldn’t help it, all the veterans burst out laughing.

“That’s cute!” sighed Wilt. “I wish we had that much. 90% goes to the city, another 5% to the mage and the remaining 5% has to be shared amongst the entire company. Mind you there is a tiered system.”

“But it’s a shot at immortality,” said one of the others and they all murmured their assents.

Corn spent the rest of his break scouring through System search engines. After all the search combinations he could think of, he had to concede that any information related to Stats was locked behind a wall of astronomical credits.

That’s a bust, what next? He began to ponder. If he couldn’t ask questions, was there a way to see Stats in action? Yes there was! Among citizens there were entire sub cultures focused on Players. Tournaments, guild wars, PvP battles and not to mention all the drama series.

He sat on the streets and began to scour through System entertainment. A paywall again? Since, it was only 5 credits for an entire season of tournaments, he started watching. As a minotaur mage charged into his enemy, he started waving his hands to cast a spell, but the scene cut to him casting a purple spell circle.

The spell circle had no runes, but instead had an icon in the centre of the circle. Interesting. Could this produce those purple flames the mage was spewing from his staff? Using his mini screen, he copied the icon. Whenever a mage cast a spell, Corn would pause the video and studiously inscribe the icon into his mini screen. The eighth icon he inscribed did feel familiar though, where had he seen it before?

He lifted his head up to look at a huge white screen displaying an advertisement of a sea fragrance. A bewitching mermaid swam across the screen and held a perfume bottle. The screen faded and a blue square icon appeared with waves drawn inside. Hold on, that was the eight icon?

He flipped through all the spell circles he inscribed. The icons represented food guilds, pharmacy guilds and even weapon guilds.

They weren’t spell circles, they were advertisements!

What bullshit!

Except for equipment (wands and staffs) used, any other scenes of mages casting spells was immediately cut off. But to Corn this proved other methods beyond mana made equipment did exist.

He scoured through replays, snippets of entire wars, drama series and novels of worlds he knew were made up, until he was broke. False, false, false and false. Most of the information on Magic he found was clearly made up (or elaborate advertisements) and any truths hidden in the lies were more problematic because he couldn’t tell them apart.

Any and all information about Stats was hidden behind a sturdy framework of misinformation and an ascending tier of pay walls.

At this point Corn had to give up. His one consolation was the 2 points he earned for Magic. There was still one way left.

Time Remaining: 1 month 8 days

Stats: 5/20