Luca DR
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14 – Events develop (2/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-12 10:16:51 +0000 UTC“I have this idea for a spell,” Albert told Lloyd. His grandpa had been briefed on everything that happened to Albert ever since the arrival of the system and was now adamantly asking to be kept in the loop, even going as far as getting a smartphone so he could text his grandson more often. “I think I will call it [Analysis Mode]. The idea is to create a spell that lets me record everything I see, hear, smell, or feel. If I can remember things perfectly then I can learn things at an incredible speed!”
“That’s a strange spell to come up with. Very useful, especially when coupled with your uh… Bullet Time. But tell me, how did you even think of creating it in the first place and not, say, shooting lightning from your fingertips?” Lloyd asked with a smirk.
“You know why! Lightning is fun and all, but I thought about what the best use of my time could be! The earlier I make a skill like this, the more things I can learn. I’ve already understood so much about magic.”
The old man shook his head. “Youngsters these days. Always obsessed with time. I was the same at your age, though, so perhaps I shouldn’t be one to speak. But you have these ‘daily quests’ to complete, and you severely lack an offensive arsenal. Are you sure you won’t get overwhelmed by the system’s challenges? They have ramped up in difficulty quite quickly over just four days.”
Albert mulled over it for a moment. Time was becoming a recurring element in his quest to discover magic, it seemed. After last night, an event that he did not disclose to his grandpa in full just yet, he thought that he was over his obsession with time. Once it was clear to him, at least intellectually, that time is an illusion he was supposed to be free of it. But no. It became even worse now. Its oppressiveness was unbearable.
Thus, developing offensive skills rather than being preoccupied with time, was not something he was willing to do. It was the sensible thing to do, but he didn’t want to do it yet. What he wanted more than anything was [Analysis Mode]. Once he had it, he could do anything he wanted!
The how he even came up with a spell like this, he explained, was that he was thinking about Appraisal. He realized that if he followed the pattern of magic from wherever it was that the system was pulling information from, all the way to his brain, he could more or less tell what parts of his cortex were being hit with the magic of the skill. Therefore it followed that he could make a simple and crude skill that did something similar: activate those parts of the brain near the hippocampus and his language centers so that he could put them in a state of increased receptiveness. This was all theoretical, but fortunately the system came to his rescue.
[New quest: Eidetic Memory]
- Quest: Isolate the parts of the brain involved with magically storing information.
- Reward: Analysis Mode skill video.
“I need to build safeguards or the spell will not come out right. I have two in mind: one is that the amount of data I can store depends on how much mana I spend on it, and the other will be that in order to activate the skill I need to enter a state of negative capability. Like a trance state of no thoughts. Luckily I found a book about conditioning the mind to enter such states on the internet, and I am training to do so whenever I say ‘Analysis Mode’ out loud. You know, for when I actually manage to form the spell into a usable skill. Then, the only thing I need to do while in a trance is to focus on what it is that I want to remember, and it should happen.”
Lloyd was skeptical, but he listened with interest.
The two chatted on, the conversation moving from ways to make the magic feasible, to the structure of the brain, and then drifted onto random topics. The matter of the club did eventually surface, for Albert found that it was too hard to keep it all bottled up, and that he preferred to face the inevitable jokes from his grandpa if that meant in turn gaining some insight on how to avoid such a situation next time. However, despite his fears, his grandpa was very supportive and understanding. He reassured Albert that what happened to him was quite normal and to be expected, considering that he had just gained access to a whole new world of things when he discovered that magic was real.
“I know that you think nothing much has changed, except that you now have a few more toys to play with.” He said. Albert tried to interrupt him, but he was quicker. “I know you disagree with this assessment now, on a rational level, but it doesn’t matter. I can tell from how you talk about it that you were aware of the deeper ramifications already when you went to the club, but you were still actively trying to ignore them. This is what happens when you do. They all come back to bite you in the ass, kiddo, and you should call yourself lucky that this time there was no real danger, or you would have found out just how woefully unprepared you are. You should consider creating some offensive magic.”
[New quest: Unlimited Power!]
- Quest: Create an offensive skill. Bonus reward if it’s lightning from your fingers.
- Reward: 3 Gold Tokens.
…well. He was curious about the Gold Tokens now, which meant that making an offensive skill just got a hell of a lot more pressing. He could not wait to Appraise them and learn all about yet another new magical item.
“You think that there are other magic users?”
Lloyd shrugged. “Why wouldn’t there be? Of course, there are others! There must be others.”
There was actually a similar question that had been floating in the sea of Albert’s mind for a while. Was Albert magically able prior to the arrival of the system or was his access to magic a consequence of its arrival? Were there other magically powered individuals? His grandpa seemed quite adamant in thinking that there were others, although he was not providing any compelling explanation as to why. It was just a natural consequence of logic to him.
It made sense in a way, of course. The probability of being the only one with access to magic was vanishingly small, and while the fact that the system was tailored to him did suggest that he was somehow special, it didn’t rule out other ways people could have access to magic. After all, all the system did was make magic easier for him. He still had to discover spells on his own. And magic as a whole? It was independent of the system, Lloyd claimed, independent of the substate through which it was being channeled.
There was some lingo that was lost on Albert. Lingo that didn’t really sound as made up as it should have been. Was his grandpa a secret magic user, or an avid daydreamer?
On the way home, Albert experimented with his new skill [Bullet Time]. It was just too good not to use, after all. He mostly used it while sitting still or standing with his back propped against the side of a building as not to move too much in the eyes of the people around. If he didn’t, he was bound to attract attention and a five times time dilation effect was not enough to blur his features and mask him from being seen. A part of his brain just wanted to do it, without caring too much about the consequences but his recent chat with his grandpa made him more paranoid than usual.
Too bad, then. He wanted to see if crossing the street became easier with time flowing more slowly or if it still was impossible to do it on a five-lane road. The traffic light always took ages to become green, and there were at least three more roads to cross before he reached the metro station.
Fuck it. He decided to do it anyways.
