Luca DR
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02 - Flexing muscles
🕑 Added 2023-05-10 16:30:20 +0000 UTCThere was a race of sentient stone, inhabiting a separate plane of existence from our own. They were the Lithoids, and among them a faction was the most powerful of them all: the Pilgrims. Their only purpose was to eliminate blasphemous presences from anywhere they could reach. Organics, among all, were their worst enemies.
***
Albert struggled to keep himself awake through yet another day of classes. It was not that he didn’t like studying per se, but compared to magic it certainly lacked that feeling of wonder. Combine it with the fact that he had chosen an Engineering course just because he could use it to get a ‘real’ job, and not because of a passion, and you can understand why Albert was literally on the edge of his seat during class.
The system had not, almost like it was reading his mood or something, coughed up another quest. It waited there, silent and unmoving, like a person not wanting to distract the poor Albert who was in the middle of class. How polite. Except that it made Albert fidget in anticipation, coming up with all sorts of theories and ideas, utterly unable to wait yet forced to do so by the uncaring universe.
After class, he almost bolted straight home as fast as he could get there. If he ran fast enough, maybe he could catch the bus and get home a good half an hour earlier than usual. He could taste the feeling of excitement and childish passion that would surely come with the next quest. Which, he felt, was only waiting for him to get home before popping up. But he didn't.
Instead, he chose to simply walk towards the group of friends he usually spent time with as he waited for the next bus to pass. There was no rush, no need to draw unnecessary attention to himself. He needed to learn patience. Self-control. Besides, his friends would surely worry if they saw him run straight home, and it wasn't like the quest was going to be quick to complete. Going by the previous quest, it would surely take a while and half an hour of extra time wasn't really going to change much.
He still trembled with excitement. It was one thing to rationalize, and another to actually go through with the decision. Suddenly that half hour felt so important.
“Albert.” Marc said, waving at him.
“Marc.” Albert replied.
“How was class?”
He shrugged. “Bad? How was yours?”
“Quite interesting, actually. We learned about the Lagrangian formalism and let me tell you, the guy who came up with it was nuts.”
“Physicists.” Albert heard Colin mutter.
“Says the mathematician!” Marc shot back. He turned to Albert. “And you’re an Engineer, so you stay out of this.”
He didn’t react to the obvious provocation, and likewise Colin didn’t react in any visible way. Albert noticed the corners of his mouth curving slightly upwards for a fraction of a second, however, hidden by the hideous mustache that Colin had decided to grow. Sooner or later someone had to break it to him, but it sure as hell was not going to be him. Aubrey could, considering that she was the girl he liked, and probably the only one whose opinion on the matter could ever sway him. But she appeared to take more pleasure in not telling him than anything else.
Marc tried another couple times to banter with Colin, and eventually found a hole in his mental defenses and they began to bicker and make fun of each other’s courses. They were all excited about college, Albert thought, motivated and full of hope for a bright future. A long way from how he barely trudged through his own classes. What he needed was a novel way to look at things, he realized. Maybe then his old excitement and curiosity would come back.
“Bunch of nerds.” Aubrey shook her head in mock disbelief.
The four continued with their playful banter for a while, and finally time came for Albert to get going. The others lived in student quarters next to the college, as he was the only one who lived close enough to get back home every day. Even if that meant a good 20 minutes of infernal bus time every day. Maybe if he got a quest he could pass the time better, he thought idly.
As if waiting for the clue, the Quest appeared. He immediately turned his gaze inward, and the bus faded from his mind.
[New quest]
- Quest: circulate the mana around your body.
- Reward: [Strengthening I] skill video.
***
Circulating mana had been hard, but not impossible. The video that played afterwards laid down the basics for how to use this new ability to improve the body: its muscles, its bones and its flesh. So that it could perform better than a normal human could without magic. This, in turn, allowed Albert to develop the skill, [Strengthening I] quite rapidly. It wasn't hard to do, in principle at least. But as he activated it, Albert struggled to feel any difference. He needed to test it in a controlled environment.
The afternoon was scorching hot. Not only was summer still refusing to let the city go from its grip, but the little breeze that came from the bay carried the scent of salt and the sticky humidity that reminded him of the days at the beach. This was no beach, however. It was the diminutive garden of his house, squeezed in between the oppressive forms of brutalist apartment blocks, which didn't even provide any shade whatsoever.
His two story house looked tiny in comparison, but he knew very well how envious all the neighbors were of his house. It was something that would have fit right in a wealthy suburb, and not in the almost city centre they were in. It was a relic from the past, well kept but showing signs of aging, encroached by all sides by the tide of modern angles and dull paints from the seventies.
He felt watched. The dozens of windows, small balconies and few penthouses that surrounded him were a panopticon from which old ladies, perverted men and playful children all watched each other in search of various types of entertainment.
There was no helping it. The interior of the shed was blistering hot. He wasn't going to stay in there for a second longer than was necessary. Also, but this particular bit he would never even admit to himself, he was a little bit excited at the thought of showing off to some unknown observer.
Activating his newly acquired skill, he carried the squat rack outside. Then, he brought the barbell, and the weights. After setting everything up, he started to load the bar.
70kg. His maximum load. Not much by any means, but he was still a beginner.
He went under the bar, checked his form, activated the skill once again, and squatted.
Activating the skill wasn’t like flipping a switch. It didn't have the video-game feel of pressing the button and having the effect happen on its own. It was more like performing an action he had done countless times, a choreography he knew by heart, and that he could do with his eyes closed. Still, even the best pianist cannot claim to play the piano without even realizing, and likewise he had to consciously direct the magic and his body in precise ways. It just felt… natural.
Ten repetitions. Apart from the slight feeling of emptiness inside that came with the expense of his magical energy, he was fine. His legs were fine, he didn't even feel out of breath. His form was impeccable.
He tried to increase the weight.
90kg. This was something that would be plain impossible for the current him without magic.
He felt the skill strain a bit under the weight. The way the magic moved, it didn't seem all that effective now, and his muscles strained and bulged. His back was damp with sweat by the time he did ten reps, his tank top sticking to his skin. But he did the reps, and the form was, if not perfect, acceptable. By extrapolation, the maximum load for a single rep should be around 140kg now.
He did more tests. The conclusion was that, no matter the exercise or the weight, the skill in its current form doubled his strength.
And this was just the first ‘level’ of the skill, as the system stated. The imperfections that he saw, and felt, while using the skill, must be the reason the magic had limits. In fact, he felt that the spell could not accept any more mana than it already did without destabilizing, indicating that there was no correlation between the amount of magic used and the increase in strength. It was all about technique, rather than raw power. Well, he was under no impression that an improved skill would cost less. But maybe it could allow him to regulate the amount of magic he could feed it, so that he could decide how much to increase his strength by feeding the skill more mana. Another couple of tests also told him that not only was he stronger when he used the skill, but it also made his body tougher, to accommodate for the increased strength.
More tests were needed.
***
[Skill proficiency increased.]
[Strengthening I] -> [Strengthening II]
He was right. He was right! He felt like jumping in the air. By manually, painstakingly, and very, very carefully adjusting the little flaws he noticed in the flow of magic, he managed to get his skill to evolve! And now, he could feed it the same amount of mana as before to get up to a threefold increase in strength.
Nice.
A week of trial and error well spent. And, apart from that, he felt that for the first time in a long while, something he did was actually engaging him so much that his mother had to physically grab him and drag him away from his ‘books and study’ to eat. At least he was smart enough to pretend he was studying for college, rather than staring at the wall while he looked at the magic inside of himself.
Speaking of looking. [Perception] had evolved too. Its evolution was a bit odd. There were many things to improve about that particular skill, but the improvements felt modular, as opposed to the straightforward progression of the strengthening skill. Albert had decided to focus on perceiving magic, and the skill evolved just as he managed to perceive it more clearly than ever before. But apart from magic, everything else he still perceived as before. This meant that he needed to evolve every aspect of this multifaceted skill one by one. Which was fine by him. More than fine.
