I went back to the same magic academy that I’d taken the Beginner’s Class at, to express interest in enrolling. However, my real objective was just to access their facilities for training and leveling up spells. That couldn’t be done in the virtual space—I could practice my technique, sure, but no matter how much I cast a spell in there, it’d be no closer to leveling up. The same went, I assumed, for my Power of Imagination ability, which was still at Level 2 and not likely to change very soon, I felt.

However, in my talk with an advisor, they managed to convince me that there were other benefits to properly enrolling—I'd be able to learn about more than how to cast spells, and as a student or alumnus, I’d have access to the institution’s library of spells.

That last point was what sold me. Even though I had few Intuition points, from the examples of spells they gave me, I got the impression my luck had seriously shorted me on which three spells I’d obtained from the Tutorial. In particular, Heat Object was regarded as a very situational spell at best, and a total joke at worst. So I went ahead and paid a 50 Wasnacht fee for initial enrollment and supplies (might as well start stocking up on potions and whatnot now) and another 50W for the first semester’s tuition with a single Small Smekker coin.

I started training there, as well as learning more not just about magic, but about the Tower, how to climb it, fighting in general, and the Federation. One of the most important things I learned was that the Mana cost for many spells was highly modular. As I leveled a spell up, it would get more expensive to cast, but I could still cast that spell at the lower levels if I wanted to.

By the time the Constant Competition was to come to an end, I had leveled up all three of my spells—yes, even Heat Object—to Level 4. I had also decided on what spell I would aim to learn next, from what was available in their library. It was known as Burning Hands, so named because it enabled the caster to deal much better damage than Lesser Fireball through melee attacks like a punch or slap, for a duration of one second per level of the spell. However, it had an Intuition requirement of 26. The greater complexity than the spells I already had, according to the staff in charge of their fire spell books, was because the spell had to be formed in such a way that the caster didn’t burn themselves with their own fire. So, I couldn’t learn it yet and declined to purchase the access rights to it for now.

But in terms of pure training, my time was up. The only time that the planet the Constant Competition was held was open to anyone but the contestants was the week after it finished, when a massive celebration would be held. And if I was going to get there to find Mewi as soon as possible, I had to leave today.

Well, technically, I could just teleport, but even warping one way for THAT distance would cost me roughly 300 Smekkers. Taking a spaceship there, on the other hand, was less than 100 even with several add-ons for 1) picking me up from a relatively obscure planet as Area 1 went 2) booking a ship that included a substantial security escort from the Federation (the Kinetice had been getting reckless and restless, lately) 3) traveling in the First Class section of the ship.

After three days of anxious luxury, the ship arrived at my destination, the planet Marital, without incident.

This is how the Constant Competition worked: millions of contestants would first undergo a qualifying series of evaluations of skill, and based on those results they would be sorted into ten different Rank divisions, from Rank 1 to Rank 10. From then on, every day for two months, they’d face a series of one-on-one matches, with as little downtime as possible between them (this was the “constant” part of the Constant Competition) and consisting of a minimum of 10 fights, pairing off randomly against those in the same Rank. After 10 fights, contestants could choose to stop or keep going as long as they wanted, but once they stopped, they would be ineligible to fight for the rest of the day.

After all fights for a day were concluded, contestants were moved up or down in overall position in their Rank, including being promoted or relegated to different Ranks, according to their results. And if a contestant won 10 fights in a row in a single day, whether or not it was their first ten, they would automatically be promoted, and their fights for the day would end. If they were promoted to a Rank they had not yet before reached in the competition, a special bonus prize would be added to their winnings from the contest.

Those prizes took the form of AP and money. AP was awarded based on wins—a certain number of wins in a certain Rank would award 1 AP, with more victories being required for a single point the lower the Rank. In the top Rank 10, contestants even won two AP for a single victory, while those struggling at the bottom Rank 1 needed 50 wins for a single point.

Money, on the other hand, was based on placement, your finishing Rank and position. If you finished in Rank 3 or below, you got nothing, you lost, good day sir—except of course for whatever paltry AP you’d managed to gain. Finishing in Rank 4 or above got you a purse that increased slightly depending on your in-rank placement, and greatly with ranking up from there.

Mewi, to my pleasant slight surprise, had done excellently. They’d been placed in Rank 5, but had ended in the upper echelons of Rank 7, and they also claimed a special prize money bonus for having a perfect day of 10 wins in a row without any losses that had promoted him to Rank 6 in the second week of the contest. From there, they’d even reached Rank 8 for a short time, but had been relegated back to 7 and promoted back up to 8 again several times, ultimately ending near the top of Rank 7. At that rank, he only needed 3 wins per AP (AN: Wins per AP = 50, 30, 15, 10, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, ½) and he’d managed quite a few of them. His prize money too, from where he finished, wasn’t quite as much as I’d gotten from the Tutorial, but he would be far from destitute. If he really needed or wanted to spend Smekkers on something, he would be able to.

I couldn’t contain myself as I reached a sort of central square in Marital’s arrival city. I rushed around, heedless of anything but finally finding my Mewi. There were teleporters nearby—had he used some of his prize money to leave that way, already?

If I had been whatsoever watching where I was going, my experience in the would have been a very, very different one. I didn’t know it then, but the next moment was the one where everything, everything, changed. For me...for Mewi...

For everyone in the , in the end. Even for the itself.

“Owwwww...oh my gosh, I’m SO sorry...”

The person I’d accidentally bumped into was hardly 3 inches taller than me, but they hadn’t budged a bit even though I’d ran into them with enough force that I was splayed on the ground. They looked young enough to be in high school, too, so they were probably still growing. I was too disoriented to clearly make out their face as they “helped me up”—by grabbing me by the scruff of the neck.

Before letting go of me, he put his face less than an inch away from mine, and said, very quietly, “That’s one big secret you’re hiding, in your status. If you don’t want me to reveal it, you’ll do exactly as I say. Not right now, but I’ll be in touch soon. Understand?”

My heart stopped. He knew? He knew. He had discovered my Power of Imagination trait, just like that?! “Y—yes.”

“Good.” He released me and entered the teleporter behind me as though nothing had happened.