CHAPTER 30: TIME TO START TIME SKIPS

Jenna visualized the Spell she was about to use and mentally overlaid it on top of the sheet of crystal. Even if she could do the same over the oddly shaped glass, she thought it would be better to warm herself up first. With a single thought and pulse of Magic, she Enchanted the piece of crystal. It looked good to her, so she asked, “how did I do?”

First Tier Hardened Glass (Crystal) Rank: A

It was nice that she was able to reproducibly make A Grade Hardened Glass. As she went to keep reading the table, though, Jenna was confused. If there were no flaws in the piece, then why wasn’t it S Grade? Shrugging the confusion off, she Enchanted another sheet of crystal.

First Tier Hardened Glass (Crystal) Rank: A

“What’s wrong with the Hardened Glass I’m making that’s stopping it from being S Grade?” she asked after making two more pieces of Hardened Glass, both of which the Pyramid judged as A Grade.

The transition from A to S Rank comes when casting the Spell shifts from the Conscious Competence Regime to the Unconscious Competence Regime.

“How can I get there?”

Practice.

That was as helpful of an answer as Jenna really could have expected.

“If I run out of pieces of glass to Enchant, is there a way that I can purchase more while I stay in the rift?”

Would you like to buy glass to practice this Spell? Price: 10 points.

After selling the Enchanted pieces that she had made, Jenna bought as much glass as she could, in case it was a one time offer. Jenna crafted piece after piece of Enchanted Glass. At the prompting of the Pyramid, she tried to multitask, shifting the Magical Density around her body as she placed the Spell onto countless sheets of glass.

She started by pushing as much of her Magical density as she could to the tip of her right pinkie toe. With the reduced density in her finger, she was unable to fully overwrite reality on the surface of the glass, giving Jenna her first failed Enchantment in what felt like ages.

Jenna learned her lesson quickly. She couldn’t pull all of her Magical density away from her hand. Instead, she pulled from everywhere else.

Even with enough Magic inside of her hand to fully cast the Spell and impress it onto the sheets of Glass, she struggled to split her attention. Either she would lose her hold on the increased Magical density in whichever part of her body she was trying to strengthen, or she made some simple mistake in the Spell.

A few pieces she made mistakes on the physical location of the different loops and lines of the Spell. Whenever she did so, the Pyramid would advise her to drop the density exercise and make ten pieces of Hardened Glass as perfectly and quickly as she could.

It made some amount of sense. Rather than accidentally reinforce the bad habit of mis-Enchanting an object, she instead made sure to reinforce the good habits. Thankfully, the Pyramid allowed her to continue buying new pieces of glass for the pieces of Hardened Glass she had Enchanted.

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By the time that she could reliably Enchant the correct form of the Spell into glass while forcing a part of her body to increase its Magical density, Jenna was feeling exhausted. Losing the Magic that normally suffused her muscles, blood, and bones made her tired. The mental toll of both holding Magic in its place and forcing Magic onto glass was no easier.

“How long have I been in the rift?” she asked. Even though she hadn’t thought to ask before starting her training, Jenna thought it could be helpful to have a rough idea of how long she’d been working. She’d entered the final floor at around twenty eight hours, she remembered.

Time elapsed since entering rift: Fifty Three Hours, Twenty Two Minutes, Fifty One Seconds.

The seconds continued counting up as she watched. The realization that she’d apparently missed an entire day’s worth of food alerted her to the empty feeling in her stomach. After quickly eating a day’s worth of rations, Jenna moved over to the bed the Pyramid had given her. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

After waking, she once more checked the time.

Time elapsed since entering rift: Sixty One Hours, Fifteen Minutes, Forty Three Seconds.

A little under eight hours, then. That was more than she had been sleeping lately, but she also hadn’t been working herself to the same point of exhaustion. After quickly stretching, Jenna glanced at the schedule the Pyramid had given her. It still had her scheduled for making Hardened Glass, though this time it let her see what the asterisk was for.

Until able to make Rank S Hardened Glass, minimal progress is possible in priorities other than increasing Magical Density. Even that will proceed sub optimally.

Jenna got to work increasing her Magical density and making Hardened Glass. As she worked, constantly buying and selling pieces of Hardened Glass, the average Grade of the pieces rose slowly, going from D’s and C’s to B’s. When she checked the time again, she was shocked.

Time elapsed since entering rift: Ninety Three Hours, Twelve Minutes, Fifty Seven Seconds.

Somehow she had been working for over thirty hours without needing to sleep or eat. Of course, as soon as Jenna became aware of how long she had been working, her needs let themselves become known. As she munched on another day’s worth of food, she considered whether the needs she was feeling right now were physical or psychosomatic.

The fact that she hadn’t felt the slightest bit hungry or tired until after learning that she had been working for more than a full calendar day implied that it was the latter, but she had no way to tell for certain. Jenna fell asleep quickly enough upon hitting her bed that the idea she was just getting better at ignoring her body also carried some weight.

Time elapsed since entering rift: Ninety Seven Hours, One Minute, Three Seconds.

After less than four hours of sleep, Jenna felt completely energized. She still went through her daily stretches, though wasn’t quite sure if they were helping at all. Realizing that she hadn’t checked her Magical density after waking up the “day” before, Jenna quickly picked up the piece of Hardened Glass she had decided would be her reference.

As she poured Magic into it, she felt it resonating. It took almost ninety percent of her Magical density being pushed into the sheet before she started resonating with it. Jenna unconsciously grimaced at that. Now she would need to learn the next technique for testing relative density, since she had about ten times the Magical density of her Hardened Glass.

Out of curiosity more than anything else, she checked herself against the last piece of Hardened Glass that she had made before going to sleep. It had about three times the Magical density of her control piece, which was more than a little surprising. Shrugging, she got back to work making more Hardened Glass.

Jenna’s Status:

Jenna Fredrickson First Year Spells Known: First Tier: Hardened Glass Expected Years Completed: 8 Prediction Confidence: 38% Points: 50 Qualified to Ascend to Next Year? Yes