Still, it was something. Not enough to consider the quest as complete, and so he read on. Now the book mentioned that there were ways to make circuits with magic that were able to absorb the mana in the air and make the items function even without him supplying them with mana himself. Although, this was the frustrating part, such circuits were beyond the scope of the book. What the hell. It sounded like his math book when the authors were too lazy to write the mathematical proofs and just left them as an exercise for the reader.

There was just no way that he could figure out—

[New quest]

* Quest: Create a mana-gathering array.

* Reward: Book: ‘Magical arrays for dummies’.

Never mind. There was a way.

He kept reading, trying not to get sidetracked by yet another quest begging for completion. There needed to be an order in the way he did things, and the order begged that he completed the quests he was working on before switching over to something else. The second step mentioned in the book was going from enhancing a property of an object, to adding entirely new properties that emerged from what was already there.

For instance, turning a cup of refreshing cool water into an energy tonic. There were other ways, such as alchemy or potion crafting the book said, but those too were beyond the scope of the book. Albert wondered if—

[New quest]

* Quest: Create a magical alloy.

* Reward: Book: ‘Alchemy for dummies’.

[New quest]

* Quest: Create a simple potion.

* Reward: Book: ‘Potions for dummies’.

Holy simmering boiling pots of brownies. This was way too much. Besides, this meant that his book on magical items was not going to teach him how to make potions! What the heck? That was a scam alright.

Ah, who am I kidding? This is even more exciting!

Except that now there really were not enough hours in a day to do everything. Even just going through the basics of magical items creation was burning through the afternoon like crazy. Albert checked the time. 6:38PM.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

There was still a good hour of time before he needed to eat, and he felt that he could stretch it to two hours if he was willing to sacrifice some after-dinner free time instead. As long as he was done eating before Mother came back – and she said she was coming home late today and possibly the whole week – there was no problem with it. He could just eat whenever he was too hungry to keep going.

Back to the book. Adding new properties to an object sounded very cool. But what should he be experimenting on, he wondered? The first thought was his mobile phone. Of course, who wouldn’t want to have a magically enhanced mobile phone? Come on, be real. But no, it was too risky. What if he failed? Thanks to the daily quests he now had a bit more than two hundred dollars in cash on hand, but they were not enough to buy a replacement phone in case his experimenting got a bit too explosive to account for phone safety. And the bother of transferring the data from a destroyed phone onto a new one was not worth the gain.

Not yet.

Something else, then. What about the pair of binoculars he had lying on his desk, forgotten and unused? Now he could think about interesting stuff to add to his binoculars, stuff that was, as the book put it, compatible with the nature of the object. For instance he could try to integrate some parts of his [Perception] skill onto the lenses of the binoculars, as to obtain that very same effect whenever he put mana into it, while also retaining the magnification of the binoculars themselves.

Long story short, he was done at 10PM and he had forgotten to eat. But done he was, and he now had binoculars he could use to replicate up to [Perception II] – that meant that they were able to see mana (skill level 2) and that they could focus on anything almost instantly instead of having to painstakingly rotate the little wheel at the top (probably derived from skill level 1). Very cool, and even cooler was the fact that using them did not burn as much mana as using the skill normally did, probably on account of the skill being focused through the binoculars and acting only upon the smaller field of view that the lenses offered.

It had been, Albert admitted reluctantly at first, easy compared to some other things he could have chosen to do. He had been lazy. He knew [Perception] well enough by now that he could replicate it with his eyes closed. He was still light years away from being able to come up with entirely new effects to graft onto objects. But hey, he could now try it with his phone, and make it so its camera could take better pictures!

[Quest: Daily challenge – Day 06 complete.]

It was with a wide smile that Albert accepted the rewards from the system. A scroll appeared right in front of him on his desk, sealed and waiting to be opened.

A rumble in his stomach momentarily put a stop to his delusions of power and knowledge. It was almost half past ten and he hadn’t eaten yet. Damn.