The night was very productive. Working on spells with someone else meant having a second set of eyes on the task, and another creative mind at Albert’s disposal that could come up with all sorts of ideas and improvements that he did not think about. As such, among a couple garbage bins set on fire and then rewound back in time, the fireball spell grew by leaps and bounds. Another cool thing that they discovered, and it was the reason why Marc not only agreed to set things on fire but also did not mind not being able to see the damage firsthand, was that if Albert were to record the deed with his phone and then rewind time, the video persisted through the rewinding. Which meant that there were a veritable amount of videos of not only garbage – though garbage had been the upper limit of their destructive tendencies in the beginning – but also of cars and trees set on fire on Albert’s phone.
They were very entertaining, and without a real-world counterexample of the misconduct there was no risk of being caught. One could always blame CGI.
As such, the improvements to the skill were the following:
[Fireball IV] -> [Fireball V]
* can be dispelled mid-air.
[Fireball V] -> [Fireball VI]
* can be split into two mid-air.
***
[New Quest: Daily challenge.]
* Vanquish the Pilgrim golem threatening to destroy the village of Elvenhome
* Time on Earth will not flow for the duration of the Quest.
* Reward: Hazegem upgrade: efficiency, cooldown.
Albert hummed. Interesting, the system finally gave him a quest that offered a time-stopped Earth. This was a golden opportunity to hone his skills even more, and experiment with things without having to worry about losing precious time in the real world (classes were still a thorn in his side, but he did not want to drop out of college just because he had magic. In fact he believed that magic could benefit from knowledge of practical things and of all things science.) Plus, the time stop mission was going to be the much-needed break from the breakneck grinding of skills and quests of the last few days, a break that would allow him to consolidate his power base without having to juggle in his real world obligations as well.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Even with Marc now privy to his private magical life, and his friend group soon to follow, the idea of not having to worry about life for a while was like the promise of a panacea to all that was wrong with the world. And as such, Albert wasted no time before accepting the quest and getting transported to what he would soon find to be his first real high-fantasy world. Filled with elves and monsters, where he was going to learn about Pilgrims. He had never seen the golems inside the Tryte exclusion zone, of course, or by the end of his quest he would have been able to make the connection. Nonetheless, this was going to be his first real encounter with the species of Lithoids lifeforms from another dimension that were threatening all life on Earth with their invasion.
As soon as Albert got used to the bright light of the environment, his eyes focusing on his surroundings, he spotted several people standing all grouped up a few meters away from where he was standing. A soft chill breeze swept through the grass field of neatly trimmed greenery, surrounded by bushes and a few oak trees in a row in the distance. There were flowers too, swaying in the wind. He shivered. He was, surprisingly, naked.
There was one person standing close to him, holding folded clothes in his outstretched hand. Albert took them quickly, covering his private parts while suppressing a blush. His body was much fuller and healthy than it looked just a few weeks ago, but no amount of improvement and meditation to dispel the sense of ego was going to suppress the instinctive shame the arose when being naked in front of a crowd. That there both men and women watching, the latter covering their eyes but peeking through, only made it worse.
He looked at them while his body adjusted to the unexpectedly comfortable, smooth, and soft clothes. The people of the village were all stunningly beautiful. Perfect. Their skin unblemished. Their features graceful and with a kind of symmetry that betrayed intention and attention to beauty, but never too much to devolve into uncanniness. Their ears were pointed, poking out of the women’s long golden hair, or from the neatly trimmed short hair of the males. Some of them wore braids, or ponytails, and not all hair was golden. There were heads of deep raven black, of soft wooden brown, and some more exotic still. Some were white, pale as snow. Others pink or blue. A few others were too strange to describe, iridescent and changing.
Elves. Real, flesh and bone elves. Right here before Albert’s eyes was the first true fantasy race he had ever met in his life.
“Thank you, traveler, for answering our call. For offering your aid to our village in this time of dire need. And for accepting the miser payment that we offer in return.”