After a few hours of mentally straining, the odd feeling I was getting from the various clouds of smoke had graduated from ‘something I might be tricking myself into feeling’ to ‘being like when you’re just starting to get adjusted to the dark and can only make out vague outlines in your peripheral vision.’
While there was no way to really quantify and compare the rates people adapted to proper, mostly perkless magic, having some sort of stimulus after only a handful of hours was blisteringly fast. From personal anecdotes, Rebecca and Kay both were on the faster end- taking a few days to properly feel a connection to ULE- and Potato was on the slow end. Almost the slowest ever recorded, so she spent a few tokens to have nanites play with her brain like playdough to get it in the proper shape.
Her words, not mine.
The part about needing a specific shape to your brain was not a metaphor- as you tried to use magic without channeling the ULE through a perk, your brain would literally shift its folding patterns to become overall more regular. As you approached the theoretically perfect geometry, your raw ability to manipulate ULE would increase. The only issue is that the perfect geometry is a fractal not conducive to brain function- so at a certain point the system steps in and actively prevents you from killing yourself by accidentally disconnecting parts of your brain.
Since I was making progress fast, my brain was either much more pliable than normal- or more likely started closer to the ideal. Or maybe Cleo spent some processing time when I was getting my horns attached to kickstart the process…
Nah, I’m sure they would have told me if they had done that.
Regardless of why things were going fast, everyone took it in stride and I was soon being lectured by Rebecca about the different approaches to using magic, “to start off with, the perks you use as a basis for learning magic directly dictate what you can do and how you do it since you are essentially just pushing that perk as far as it can possibly go- then continuing. The most obvious jumping off points are any perks that have something like ‘magic,’ ‘manipulation,’ or ‘shaping.’ All of these are the most general in what they can do, but are more limited with the output-” she briefly stopped as she looked at Potato distracting herself by using a small vortex to collect as much of the rubber from the field as possible- “for the most part. Further perks can boost your affinity, intake, or output to increase the amount of power you have access to.”
Having heard unfamiliar terms, I raised my hand and asked, “I can probably guess what affinity, intake, and output mean, but can you quickly explain?”
“Oh, of course. I had forgotten you haven’t already gotten this rant- my bad. Affinity is how… connected you are to what you want to use magic for. Again, due to the individualism inherent to magic, you can’t quantify it- but you can think of it as an arbitrary coefficient that flatly affects the power of your magic. High affinity with ice might mean you also have high affinity with water, cold, crystals, or a myriad of other things. Or none at all.
“Intake is much simpler as it is just how much ULE you can suck in. It is quantifiable and tied to one’s surface area- which is why most MG of all genders have longer hair and ruffled costumes with lots of streamers and dangly ornamentation. Output is much the same, but independent of any physical qualities.
“Back to the main topic, the next category of magic jumping off points are ones that are tangential. You’re in this category with your [Synthesized Weapon Proficiency]. At the cost of typically being more limited in what you can use as a medium, you can get a lot more power and specific control. Since ‘synthesized weapons’ are a very broad category, you will naturally have more flexibility than someone who based their connection to magic off of swords, smartphones, or- I don’t know- pens?
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“The only bad way to learn magic is through unrelated perks. [MG Suite] or [Reinforced Bones], for example.”
As she had been talking, I had opened a text document and was taking notes. I could tell this explanation was heavily simplified, but that was to be expected. Additionally, I had been mentally poking at the contained cloud of smoke and had started thinking of it as being stubborn or lazy.
After taking a drink from a water bottle, Rebecca continued, “with that out of the way, we can start talking about how to use magic. When people are just starting out, they tend to associate certain arbitrary actions or phrases to doing certain things. This is a bad habit to get into not only because it makes you look stupid, but also because it artificially limits what you can do.
“The slightly better version of this is to practice a certain action while thinking of a reference-code for it. At least that way you’re quiet. Still not great. The best technique is to just trust your instincts and go with them- very helpful, I know. If you get used to it, you can do stuff like what Potato did- and is doing- or this.”
With that, Rebecca reached her hand up slightly in the direction of one of the field’s lights that had just come on within the last few minutes. Accompanying the distortion of magic being used, the cone of light illuminating the field tightened to focus on her outstretched palm. Over the course of a few seconds that light literally pooled up and started dripping down Rebecca’s arm and off the sides of her palm in distinct droplets. At the same time, the other hand filled with a pool of darkness that looked to be evaporating as quickly as it formed.
After I had a few seconds to once again be shocked into silence, Rebecca wrung her hands- dispersing the magic- and said, “eventually, you’ll be able to stuff like that. For now just do what feels right- whatever that means to you. And go along with whatever weird explanations you mind comes up with for what you’re doing. Potato always rants about invisible spirits that need appeasing when asked how she does her stuff. Mess around for a few more hours- then we’ll go get something to eat before it gets too cold.”
Despite the ostensibly unhelpful tips, I actually made better progress by the time we decided to pack up. I still wasn’t able to move anything, but the feeling that the smoke had a personality only grew as I continued to try and coax it into not just sitting there.
I still didn’t have a strong connection to it, so everything I did felt like it was trying to land on a very slippery surface. While it was definitely synthesized, I didn’t really consider the smoke a weapon. Helpful in combat? Sure. Capable of killing things? Also true. But being a weapon? That just felt wrong.
I decided to take a break and sat down next to Kay and watched Potato and Rebecca swap the bulbs in the field’s light around- which they insisted was useful practice. After she finished the page of the book she was reading, she asked, “is there something you had a question about? I do not use magic to stretch the limits of my perks that often, but I could probably provide some insight.”
With a sign I explained, “whenever I try to… influence the smoke, it feels weirdly elusive- like my magic can’t get a handle on it. I think my perk specifying weapons might be causing the issue, because I just can’t see it as one.”
“Smoke is quite deadly in a confined space,” she offered, but I waved that away.
“I guess it is, but the suffocation just kinda… happens. When someone starts a fire that burns down their house, they aren’t trying to hurt or kill anyone with it so you can’t really call it a weapon. Same thing with that. If I stood in there, I would die, but they weren’t made with the idea that you’d suffocate someone with it.”
“A kitchen knife is not designed or made with the idea that it might one day be used to kill something, but I am sure that happens fairly often. You just need to change how you think about it. Humans are surprisingly good at turning anything into a weapon with a little motivation. It is also important to mention this is the first day you are trying to use magic. Frankly, it is amazing that you even got to the point of being able to identify that what you are trying is outside of your reach.”
After Rebecca and Potato finished exchanging a few of the bulbs from a pair of lights with their magic, they noticed that I was done for the day and quickly dispersed the trapped clouds I had been trying to manipulate. From there it was a couple minute walk to a restaurant that was known around the various MG circles for being open late and having good food- and it lived up to both of those quite handily.