Atreus scratched at the little cardboard ticket with a quarter and exposed another frog; which won him another ticket to gamble with which made him shrug. He kept picking the ones that had pictures; not because he couldn't read the numbers on the tickets but because he liked the silly designs on them. Atreus was actually quite happy with how easily he could read basic English since to him it just looked like a less complicated version of common. Sam was there with him since her and the other two people who knew about Atreus thought it would be smart to take shifts in keeping an eye on him since they all had jobs to worry about. She was trying to dredge just a little more flavor out of her mostly depleted blended ice drink that Atreus despised the cloying nature of.

“Are you just going to gamble all day?” Sam asked out of boredom as she pulled out her phone and replied to a text. “Maybe; I’ll probably need a lot of cash at some point.” Sam shook her head in disbelief in his confidence as Atreus won a hundred dollars off a scratcher.

You have won your first big bet

Skill: Gambling Tier 1 gained

1000 skill exp. gained

Atreus grinned and immediately bought more tickets; allocating some to the massive lottery he saw everywhere in advertisements. He neatly tucked a few dozen of the tickets into one of the plastic lottery envelopes they had available and then into his pocket. “You know you're more likely to be struck by lightning than win the lottery.” she said conversationally as she chewed on a dried stick of jerky. Atreus just shrugged as they walked outside so he could smoke another cigarette. “It either happens or it doesn’t.” They stepped outside together and Atreus smoked while pushing mana out of his hands and swinging his hands around and watching the air ripple around him.

“Ugh I was never meant for this. This isn’t how people learn magic…” Sam sucked on a disposable vaporizer and breathed out a huge cloud before replying. “I bet it’s all through books instead of trial and error.” Atreus nodded as he watched her vape; then looked at his own cigarette before taking a drag off it. All of the sudden he imagined his cigarette as his mana bar. Atreus found himself inspired by the action of inhaling a lung full of smoke. He exhaled and imagined his hand filling with mana, then expunging it outward. He attempted this. His hand gently glowed as he concentrated. Then he pushed his palm out as he imagined ‘exhaling’ the mana. The result is that he blew out the windshield in the car in front of him and flung himself into the wall of the convenience store; knocking the wind from his lungs and landing on his ass.

“Oowww!” He groaned as he rolled over and covered his ears to try to block out the car alarm that went off when he destroyed the windshield. The impact had taken some health points off. Sam had frozen from surprise but slowly recovered and took another rip off her vape. Someone ran from the store with their key fob out and shut off the alarm. “What the hell happened to my car, man?!” The middle aged dude with the six pack in his hand didn’t seem to immediately connect the groaning man on the curb with his smashed-up hatchback. Sam shrugged “Yeah man, this guy came out of nowhere and smashed your windshield with a bat. Then he slugged my friend here and ran off!” Sam lied with ease as the guy scratched at his balding head. He didn’t challenge her version of events; he also didn’t extend any help or empathy towards Atreus so Sam didn’t feel bad in the slightest.

Sam helped Atreus up and they hurried to her car. It was plain silver and looked really cheap compared to other cars he’d seen; but Atreus didn’t complain about their form of transportation. He asked Sam to help him find a field somewhere and she obliged. They drove around park to park until Sam found a dog park attached to a field that stretched out until it hit a little patch of woods. Atreus cracked his knuckles and bent over backwards to stretch out his back and try to get it to pop unsuccessfully. He watched as Sam pulled out a cardboard cutout of a short wide-framed guy with glasses. “This is Danny, he’ll be your target for today.” He looked up and down at the picture of the person with a blue button up, off-white pants, and a black jacket. “Uhh, alright I guess.” Sam propped up the cardboard with rocks and jogged a slight distance away.

Atreus was flung backwards again as he changed none of the variables in how he tried to use the mana. The cardboard cutout thankfully was mostly unharmed but did get flung into the air as the wave of force hit it. Atreus rolled deftly since he didn’t have an obstacle to contend with; he was quickly back on his feet as Sam stood Danny up for another go. “I think I'm starting to get a feel for it!” Sam rolled her eyes; which she was getting tired of doing around Atreus and his ridiculous conviction. Confidence was not the right word for what Atreus had. “You should mess around with it; can you push the force out continuously?” Atreus nodded slowly and tried it out. After a few sputtering attempts where he almost knocked himself off his feet he gently pushed the cutout over with a gentle stream of force. Atreus grinned and immediately practiced using both hands to push mana out so he can get an even push of force. Somehow using both hands also made it way easier to control since the power for both extremities was essentially halved when he used both at once.

Sam weirdly found herself having a lot of fun watching Atreus figure this stuff out. Atreus was surprisingly diligent in training himself how to use his new power and they spent the next few hours in that field as he blasted the cutout over and over and fine-tuned his control over his mana. Only periodically taking short breaks to sit down and do nothing here and there. Soon enough Sam was filming with her phone as Atreus was hovering using his mana. “This is so much fun!” Sam could see the gentle glow of purple light from the mana as his palms faced towards the ground; which made her think of iron-man as Atreus shakily controlled his flight. He rose up to twenty feet before he lost control of his upward thrust and landed hard on his side. He was still smiling as he pushed himself onto his feet. Sam put away her phone

“how do you still have mana? You’ve been doing this for a long time.” Sam asked. Atreus used his hands to sweep the small amount of dirt and grass off his clothes as he replied. “I think the system is giving me as much excess mana as possible. No one I knew besides a few extremely powerful people could ever use or recover magic this quickly.” Sam stood up the cardboard cutout one last time. It was showing a curve in the cardboard from the repeated applications of force. “Wanna really try to blast it as hard as you can? Without seriously injuring yourself I mean.” Atreus smiled even wider as he stood in front of the cutout again. Sam saw the look on his face and gave him a lot of space to avoid any debris that might get flung around.

Atreus took a deep breath and got into a wide sideways stance that Sam immediately recognized from baseball. Instead of putting his arms up like he was going to swing a club he brought them close to his waist as they started glowing purple. He leaned into the stance deeply before he shot his hands up and the cardboard cutout was completely destroyed with a booming sound and a blast of purple tinted energy. It was torn apart into a thousand pieces as Atreus dug his feet into the ground and wobbled before catching his balance and stood up straight. Shredded cardboard started raining down around him like confetti as he rolled his wrists.

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You have learned how to use mana with no spell or ability required

Skill: Mana Manipulation Tier 1 gained

1500 skill exp. gained

“Got a skill from it!” He hooted in excitement and Sam was hyped up by his reaction. She lifted her palm high and Atreus immediately responded with a high five. Sam flinched as dogs started standing against the fence to the park and barking at them. They all seemed to be really riled up all of the sudden and the owners were trying to calm them down or pull them away. Sam's eyes widened. “Uh, why are they just now starting to bark?” Sam asked as she looked at Atreus, who wasn’t looking at the dogs but instead scanning the ground around them with a serious expression that made Sam more anxious. “I guess dogs must have really good intuition for this kinda thing; even without the system.”

“What did you summon ghosts by using a bunch of mana or something?” Atreus looked at her with concern. “Ghosts? I really hope not. It’s hard to punch a ghost.” Sam watched as some pebbles started to gently rustle on the ground, spinning in a circle as the ground started to crack. Sam noticed that Atreus had also noticed this and was taking the moment to do some wrist stretches and a couple squats to warm himself up. Sam pointed, “Mind telling me what that is!?” she didn’t mean to shout but she was getting anxious and annoyed by the dude’s flippant attitude towards danger. “Probably some elementals; looks like five or six. Got any kind of weapon in your car?”

Sam shrugged exasperatedly and stomped over to her car and flung open the trunk and started digging around in there. Atreus breathed deeply and smiled to himself as soccer ball sized clumps of dirt slowly levitated from the ground around him; some forming much more slowly than the others. Atreus jumped on top of a dirt clump and stomped it back into the ground before the mana could coalesce into a creature. It kept trying to reform but he prevented it from happening. As he kicked around dust a full elemental finished forming and gently floated toward him. It was a large basketball sized clump of dirt, grass, and rocks orbited by smaller balls of natural debris. Atreus was somewhat interested by the fact that this elemental had only one clump as its body. In fact it was the first elemental he had seen that didn’t take a basic humanoid or animal shape.

Any academic interest faded quickly as the natural construct floated to chest height and began weakly flinging stones and compressed soil at him from the gentle orbit of debris that was slowly added onto. He raised a hand to protect his face and a clump of dirt hit him right in the chest. It was like a child punched him. Atreus did a simple front kick that was just high enough to catch the elemental center-mass. Feeling somewhat annoyed by how weak the kick felt but it still did the job in breaking apart the elemental. As one half of the dirt ball spun on the ground Atreus felt a fist sized rock crash into the back of his shoulder and he immediately cursed in pain and turned his head. He noticed the much larger elemental that was still emerging from the earth; like a boulder being born from the ground. It was as wide as the front of Sam’s car and had a lot more control and power over the halo of orbiting projectiles around it. Atreus squatted to dodge a big dirt projectile that would have knocked him out if it had connected.

Atreus circled around The larger elemental as the smaller ones also slowly trailed after him. They were overall mindless enemies with a simple attack pattern; but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a danger. Especially as he was now. Atreus mana blasted as the larger elemental flung a shower of gravel at him which deflected any of the high velocity pebbles that would have hit him. He watched as the smaller elementals started trailing towards the approaching Sam. Atreus was confused when he saw her carrying a weird heavy looking golden ball with three holes in the side. He sidestepped before another ball of dirt broke his knee and turned his attention towards the big elemental who still had its aggravation turned towards him.

Sam knew she was a strong person with good people skills; but she was still freaking out as she looked down at the floating magic clumps of dirt in front of her as they came towards her. One was almost as big as a bean bag chair and she thought about just taking her favorite ball, getting in her car, and driving off. She lifted a leg and seethed as a rock hit her in the shin from the nearest elemental. “Ow, that stung!” For a single moment anger overrode her fear when it came to fight or flight reflexes and she threw down the bowling ball and her enemy broke apart and immediately stopped moving.

You have destroyed a Primeval Earth Elemental

34 exp. gained

She scrambled to immediately pick up the ball again and awkwardly do a little retreating jog as the other elementals tried to pelt her with pebbles and stones. When she turned she saw that she was leading a section of the elementals away as Atreus was busy blasting away the orbiting projectiles around the bigger scarier elemental. He was carefully circling it; avoiding flung debris as he wore it down. Sam took from his example and kited the smaller ones around as she repeatedly dropped her bowling ball on top of them. She had to run multiple times to avoid getting into range of the one capable of actually hurting her instead of just bruising her legs and getting dust in her eyes.

People were starting to watch them from the sidewalk as she raised the bowling ball in front of her face to block a flying rock from the second largest elemental. She kept herself from retreating. Instead she ran up on it while it tried to pull up more stones from the ground. From five feet away she threw the ball down as hard as she could. It caught the side of the dirt elemental; a shelf of material broke off and it awkwardly spun against the ground like a broken toy helicopter. She hesitated for a split second before stepping up and grabbing her ball by the finger holds and double-tapping the already broken elemental just to be sure. When she turned her attention the largest elemental had completely cleared the ground and was now floating aloft. And Atreus was now riding on top of the construct of earth as people held their phones up from a safe distance to record what was happening. He continuously sent mana blasts directly down on top of the magic entity.

Each purple tinted blast of force pushed the elemental slightly downward but it just immediately floated upward again. The utility of his action was that no new projectiles were allowed to enter the elemental’s orbit to keep himself and everyone around safe from it. Sam couldn’t tell if it was actually doing anything to it besides keeping it suppressed so she steeled herself and took a deep breath. Atreus smiled wide as Sam threw her weird heavy ball directly into the elemental with full force. A chunk of it broke off and Atreus focused hard to make sure he kept her from getting pummeled by any surprise rocks or his own blasts as she chipped away at the giant floating dirt clod

Atreus almost lost his balance as the natural earth-based telekinesis of the elemental failed to support it and it started slowly spinning against the ground to collect enough material to become airborne again. “Step back Sam!” Atreus called as he focused mana into both of his hands and directed them downward. Sam scooped up her now horribly scratched ball and started running towards her car; her gaze still over her shoulder and intent on Atreus as he blew apart the rest of the elemental and sent himself flying into the air like a mortar; leaving behind a giant dirt cloud where the elemental had been. Sam stopped dead in her tracks and dropped the ball as she watched Atreus fall from the sky. He shot his hands down and sent off a little more force than he had meant to. This resulted in him rapidly gaining more altitude and flailing. Sam felt her heart fall into her stomach before she witnessed him catch himself by using his hands as magic jets to rapidly slow his descent.

Sam’s jaw was hanging open as she watched him land almost gingerly in front of her with the wide smile of an insane adrenaline junkie. “You did amazing for your first monster fight!” He clapped her on the shoulder as she stared at him; then she slowly turned towards the few dozen people who were recording with their phones, staring, and all equally stunned silent. Including the four police officers in the front of the crowd; who had only failed to draw their pistols earlier from sheer disbelief of the situation.

Atreus looked around; and his fantastic mood was suddenly taking a very rapid dive as he thought about just running away.