"Oh," Morgana said. "Wow. Someone just…spoke into my head?"

"The Announcer," Vesper said, nodding eagerly at Morgana. "But what class did you get? [Mage]? That's the base class most people get, but there's some variations."

"Base class?"

"Classes can evolve over time. Most do. But answer me."

Morgana pursed her lips. She was faced with a brief dilemma. Did she tell Vesper the truth, or simply that she'd gotten the class of [Mage]?

While Vesper had proved herself trustworthy—even oddly so, considering her background and how little the two of them knew each other—should Morgana be confiding in her everything? What was shared couldn't be unshared, and Morgana was in a precarious situation, stranded from her home world.

A smart person kept their cards close to their chest.

How else would she get answers, though?

And she had to trust somebody.

"As I mentioned," Morgana said, unconsciously straightening her back. "I've been studying at the Ivory Institute, the premier Academy for magecraft in the entire world, since I was fourteen. Having met the qualifications for the fourth strata, I earned my archmage's mantle just six months ago. The youngest in my generation." She hesitated, briefly, wondering whether her words sounded arrogant. Actually, they definitely were. But she'd given up so much of her time for that prestigious accomplishment. Years and years holed up in alcoves, neglecting all other aspects of 'regular life'. It was, really, the only thing she could be proud of. "As such," Morgana finished. "I don't find it surprising this 'system' of yours has recognized my credentials. It's declared me as an [Archmage]."

Vesper blinked at her. Then, she leaned forward in incredulity. "Huh? [Archmage]? I thought that was a high-level class evolution. Or…I don't know. Just what some mages called themselves. That's your class name?"

"What do you mean by 'level'?" Morgana asked. The term had been referenced a few times, and context suggested an obvious definition, but, seeing how she was a foreigner to this world, it was better to get explicit answers.

"Like I said, when you do stuff related your class, you level up. As in, from one to two to three to four, and so on."

"And you get new abilities?"

"Yeah."

"How do I see what abilities I have right now?"

Vesper seemed suddenly excited, like that'd been her next question. "Same deal. You just ask."

"And the Announcer will answer?"

"Yup."

"Who is she, anyway?" The cool, feminine voice had injected words straight into her mind. Morgana was a bit unnerved by it, to be honest.

"Who?" Vesper blinked. "Well, the Announcer. I don't know."

"I see."

Putting that aside—as she would have to a great many curious things—she focused on the immediately relevant.

Her skills.

***

[Magic Missile]: CLUMSY. Aim a burst of arcane energy.

[Efficient Usage]: Primordial mana, when utilized directly, is three times as effective.

***

Morgana blinked.

That was it?

And 'primordial mana'?

Did that mean mana in the form that Morgana was accustomed to working with? Gathered through harvesting methods and then invoked with the usage of a spell formula? She could only assume it was.

Three times as effective?

That would be enormously useful if Morgana were to somehow set up her own harvesting arrays. Mana wasn't easy to collect. Even the industrial processes in current modern usage could only provide so much. There was a reason mana was so expensive. Fortunes could be, and were, made in collecting all the various elements.

And Morgana's primitive arrays—if she could even arrange something like that—would be far less effective than modern-day methods.

As for [Magic Missile]. Both the less interesting and more interesting ability. Because it was a spell. Even one Morgana was familiar with. Perhaps the simplest bit of warmagic known to humanity, a staple to all novice casters. And of course it was. The design was as basic as they came: project a burst of base arcane energy forward.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"What does 'clumsy' mean?" Morgana asked.

"That you're not very good at something," Flint said dryly.

"Tell us your skills first," Vesper protested. Then, suddenly, she blushed. "Or, like, if you want to," she said. "You're entitled to keep your class a secret."

"Is that common?"

"Well, it's not something you go sharing with strangers."

Morgana wouldn't have known that—though it did make sense. Regardless, Vesper was once again proving herself considerate. She could simply have let Morgana think that sharing one's skills was something everyone did.

"It's not like level one skills are all that amazing anyway," Vesper said. "I'm just curious. So if you wanna?"

Morgana considered.

"[Magic Missile]," she said. "And [Efficient Usage]."

Vesper blinked. "Oh. I recognize the first one. That's a normal [Mage] spell, isn't it?"

Morgana could tell she'd expected more from a class called [Archmage]. So had Morgana, frankly. "Yes."

"And the other one?"

"It makes primordial mana more effective."

"What?"

"Primordial mana being, I presume, raw mana of various elements, and not—" The tangent reminded Morgana of something important. "Wait. I have an internal mana reservoir, now?" However that worked.

"Oh. Uh, yeah, I would figure you do."

"How do I access it? And what type is it?"

"Type?"

"The element affinity. Is it simply base arcane mana?"

Vesper stared blankly at her.

"Never mind," Morgana said. "How does it work?"

"Mana pools? Um. Just…it's inside you." She rolled her eyes. "Remember how I said you're asking the wrong person?"

"Just intuitive, then?"

"Most things are."

That announcement produced a brief swell of outrage. People in this world just gained access to spellcasting? As easy as that? Because they'd been favored by some 'System'? She'd spent her entire youth agonizing over dusty tomes in an attempt to pass her qualification exams—and then, even after all that, another several weeks of training before she could even begin brushing up against the most basic of invocations. But here, people could just 'do it.'

She pushed that bit of indignance aside. Mostly because she was interested in how it worked. As any disciple of the arcane, she was, more than most things, curious.

Furrowing her brow, she quested out for her 'mana pool,' feeling a bit silly as she did. Because what was she expecting to find? Some vibrating, humming pool of energy hovering within her chest that she could draw upon, as with normal mana sources?

That was exactly what happened.

Eyes widening, Morgana seized the power as she'd been trained a thousand times before. It was shockingly easy. The energy all but threw itself at her. Mana sources were, as a whole, easy to sense and seize—well, easy depending on one's training level, and depending on how exotic the element was—but the mana internalized within her wasn't so much easy to grab as it was impossible to not. She sought it out, and it responded. It scrambled to rush into her grip.

Even more incredibly, [Magic Missile] manifested.

Now, in normal spellcasting methods, a person would have to draw the spell formula first. That could happen in a number of ways. In a dire situation, with any magically conducive material applied onto a surface. Like blood onto her palm. Though more typically, conductive ink onto a tablet, or a spell book's page, at which point the spell design would be called into existence through a process called invocation. From the physical medium, the spell formula would manifest into reality, etching in the air in front of the caster for anyone to see.

In this instance, however, invocation was skipped entirely. Or rather, the physical media holding the spell formula was nowhere to be seen. Upon simply thinking about it, [Magic Missile]'s design etched into the air, seizing onto the enigmatic 'mana pool' sitting inside her chest, with no need for a skillful application of grabbing the mana source and forcefully applying it.

"What are you doing?!" Vesper cried out. "We're in a wagon! Are you insane?"

Halfway through the process, Morgana realized that they were, indeed, inside a closed space with no clear direction to vent the [Magic Missile]. She'd been so caught up in the fascination of the strange method of spellcasting that she'd been lost in the process. She aborted the spell, revoking the link between formula and mana source. The white-blue arcane diagram of [Magic Missile] fizzled, a fire without oxygen to breathe. It faded in seconds before disappearing.

In those short few moments, though, Morgana glimpsed the spell design itself. The sharp symbols and swooping lines that composed the spell's substance. The formula the System itself had designed as a level one [Magic Missile].

"That's incredible," Morgana breathed, even as the lines suspended in the air finished dissipating. "It's the worst spell I've ever seen!"

Vesper and Flint—both sitting upright, alert and concerned—slowly relaxed as it became clear Morgana wasn't releasing a miniature arcane projectile within their cramped shared space.

"What?" Vesper asked, blinking as she understood what Morgana had said. "It's incredible? Because it's bad?"

"It's amazing because it's bad," Morgana said with awe in her voice. "I— how do I even explain it?" She hesitated, then laughed. "It's like if a master painter were to deliberately make as terrible a composition as possible. The inefficiencies in it! The placement of runes! He's making a joke of it! Yet so masterfully?"

It was impossible to describe, especially to someone ignorant of even the basics of magic. In that brief moment she'd seen the [Magic Missile]'s design, though, she'd witnessed genius. A level of craftsmanship even Master Leonel couldn't display. How could she explain it to two laymen? Likely, she couldn't to associates of her field.

If nothing else, she'd learned something.

Whoever had designed this 'System', this framework that defined life within this world, was a master of the arcane. And not in the abused sense of the term. A true master. Someone who understood spell design to such an extent they could exhibit their skill in how badly they crafted a spell. They could make something so laughably inefficient that it was clearly deliberate—something that, in its atrocity, had become art.

Level 1 [Magic Missile], rated 'clumsy'.

Morgana's mind churned over its deliberately chosen rune placements. The brilliance behind the awkwardness.

"Uh," Vesper said slowly. "Right. I think…you might want to take another nap. We're about eight hours away. Maybe you'll feel better then."

Laughing, Morgana leaned against the wooden wall of the wagon, knowing that trying to explain her reaction would be pointless.

But, she mused, a thousand miles in some unknown direction away from home or not, in possible danger of an unknown world or not, she took solace in the fact that her brief vacation from Master Leonel's instruction would, at least, be anything except uninteresting.