Eve hummed audibly, likely for Ryan's benefit, before she said, "I do, but I don't want to show you." Ryan's cloudy green body slumped noticeably. Since he still lacked a face, his avatar's notwithstanding, Ryan knew he couldn't blush. It still feels like I'm calling for aid...

He gestured at his avatar, arms to the side, eyes empty...and entirely nude. "You have me at a disadvantage here." He pleaded at the unfairness of the current situation. Ryan disliked feeling taken advantage of. He didn't want to see her naked body, but a face to talk to would be nice.

Eve grumbled at him, "Do you know how many naked people I'm talking to right now? I don't care about your fetishes." Her words stabbed through his chest, even though she said it in jest.

"I don't have a fetish about this!" Firm denial. Ryan definitely didn't like to show himself to others. He was sure of it.

"It's not like you're powerless like this. You can have clothes if you really want to." Her tone remained level, but he could tell she was laughing at him. Even though she didn't address the fetish comment again, Ryan's face still felt like it was burning.

So Ryan heeded Eve's advice and concentrated, envisioning a basic jean and tee combo. Nothing. Of course, it can't be that easy.

"It's not just imagination. Reach out with your senses, feel the substance around you, and mold it." Ryan repeated Eve's advice as he focused on the strange pulse he felt when his avatar manifested, and before when his phantasmal green body appeared. Coalesced might better describe it.

A muffled cough from Eve bothered his focus for a moment, but he tried again.

Ryan was, unwittingly, in the perfect situation to test the "sixth sense" that Monte had mentioned in his interview. Unattached to a physical form, Ryan didn't even need to breathe, which allowed him to focus entirely on the memories of Eve's tips and the sensation when things appeared in this world. Since I know mana is here, even if I can't see it...

Ryan unfocused his "eyes" and stretched all his available senses. The sensation was odd, like using peripheral vision as much as a faceless green blob could have a peripheral vision anyway. Bit by bit, Ryan managed to drag what was at the edge of his vision to the center of it so he could see it. It felt a bit like cool water from a hose as it washed over his head, where he rested just beneath a pool's surface. Once he was aware of it, it was like standing underwater. The strange sensation was synonymous with the visual manifestation in front of him.

Eddys of energy swirled around him, mana in its neutral blueish-green form. Ryan looked around slowly to avoid losing the feeling. It really is like I'm at the bottom of a pool on a sunny day.

After Ryan basked in the surreal beauty of the mana all around him, the young man focused again, trying to mold the energy around him. As he maintained a relaxed state of mind, Ryan threw himself at the task.

Starting with the energy nearest his green form, Ryan began small. He did his best to form a hand out of the mana. His first, second, all the way through his tenth try, Ryan failed each time. If he focused too much on the image, he could not relax and lost sight of the mana just as it started to shift. On the other hand, if he didn't try hard enough, then nothing happened at all.

Undaunted, and with the promise of progress in front of him, Ryan mentally took a step back. While he kept the mana in-sight, he gave up on shaping it. He ran through a simple mental game, one he used whenever he had trouble with school work.

In a black mind space, Ryan drew a circle, square, triangle, and star. From left to right, they burned themselves into the black in white lines. Over and over again, Ryan kept drawing them in his mind like he was filling up a blank sheet of paper. As more appeared, the originals never lost their clarity in his mind's eye.

The exercise's purpose was to settle his mind when he handled complex variables, like doing long polynomial division in his head. It was not necessarily difficult, but something that required "pinning" a thought or answer in your brain while the rest of the solution was puzzled out.

Inspiration struck Ryan like a bolt from the blue, and he jumped, losing sight of the mana again. Excited, Ryan was blind to everything around him as he pulled the mana back into view, the sensation of cool energy surrounding him again. Once he could hold that state, Ryan started the mental exercise once more. However, this time he didn't keep the shapes in his mind but traced them in the air before him.

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With the same methodical openness, Ryan drew the symbols. Instead of hundreds of signs, he used the original four. Ryan focused on the mental trick and imagined the bluish-green mana drawing itself into the characters in front of him. As he did, Ryan felt something in his mind stretch as if his awareness wasn't just limited to his senses. Then he felt it.

It was like he extended a psychic "arm" in front of him. The feeling was so similar to just reaching out that Ryan had to check if he had or not. They still hung, green and ephemeral near his sides. Once he felt it, Ryan felt like an idiot. While it was a little mind-boggling to do, it was a whole lot simpler than he made it out to be.

Ryan abandoned his exercise and stretched his mental arm toward the avatar. His "arm" brushed through the mana and the sensation of cobwebs transmitted directly to his brain. It was not unpleasant like actual cobwebs, but like each little eddy was another brush against the cool energy that washed over him before.

After he attempted a few swipes through the mana with his psychic arm, Ryan quickly realized it was futile. Ryan could gather it, but it dispersed when he tried to swipe for more. So the young man switched it up. He stopped the command to reach out and instead tried to cast a net, like stirring the water with his hand's palm, only larger.

Much more useful, Ryan managed to catch a lot of the material before wrapping the net around his avatar. It looked like a nimbus of thick, blue-green energy around the body. With the same effort he used to draw the symbols in his mind, Ryan separated the net into two smaller ones, focused on his avatar's torso and lower half.

Then he willed the image of a red teeshirt and blue jeans into the mana. To his surprise, it worked. The colors bled into the wispy material like ink in water. Soon, the clothing's detailed image took shape and coalesced, sending another pulse of mana through the game lobby.

"You..." The world pulsed again, the mana briefly visible to him as it became active a second time in quick succession. The sight and feeling distracted him. Why did it appear again? Cuz' it was two different items?

He looked back up.

In front of him was a young, sweet-looking girl with pale green hair and blue eyes, wrapped in a blue floating blanket. The little girl, she looked to be around twelve, zipped around him in a dizzying circle, far faster than feet could carry her.

"You did it! That's amazing. You're the first player to open your 'eye.'" The little girl's voice sounded just like Eve's. She suddenly floated up and tapped the forehead of Ryan's green body. His view lurched forward and shoved itself into his avatar. The instant shift in perspective made Ryan want to vomit.

He fell on his ass as the weight of the body suddenly felt unfamiliar to him. Thankfully his clothes didn't vanish after all his painstaking effort.

"My...what? You're Eve?" Ryan felt like he had to confirm it, even though the girl's voice sounded just like Eve's.

She materialized- summoned, coalesced?- a bright red sucker out of thin air and popped it in her mouth.

"Duh, who else could it be?" She floated in a circle around him once more. "You've got a really flexible mind, ya' know? Monte likes to call what you just did opening your mind's eye because you have to see with more than just your physical sight."

Eve hummed to herself, rolling the sucker in her mouth, before she continued, "The beta testers struggled with it before they figured out the trick. We are letting them into the game in the next hour so they can't use their knowledge to get too big of a head start just for that reason; otherwise, they would go in at the same time as everyone else." The blitzkrieg of information, and the tangent about beta testers, made Ryan feel like his brain became cross-eyed. Especially with Eve's sudden appearance, even though she refused his request before.

Ryan needed to give himself time to think, so he said, "I don't know about third eyes or anything. I just thought that I could do it, I guess..." Ryan's explanation felt a little lame even to him. "This is supposed to be a world where anything is possible. Monte stressed that we had to be committed, and you confirmed that we need to believe in what we are trying to do."

He shrugged at her, "Once I stopped focusing on the "try" and just treated it like I was using my body naturally, it all came together." Of course, it wouldn't have been nearly this easy if I figured it all out from scratch.

Monte and Eve left some pretty big hints, to the point that Ryan believed everyone would eventually figure this out. After all, it centers on the core mechanic of magic in [Frontier Online].

The news about the beta testers was unexpected but welcome. Ryan suspected Eve told everyone something similar during their setup, so no one was accused of cheating.

He was busy lifting and dropping his arms and legs while Eve was quiet for a while. They feel so heavy now. He didn't remember a body being so heavy.

Her voice cut into his reverie, "You look like a flightless bird, flapping around like that. Just hold still for a sec. I need to tell you more. I've begun telling most everyone about the game, and you're falling behind." Her face wore the annoyed look of a child finishing their chores.

"Is anyone already in the game?" Ryan's heart dropped. He didn't want to get left behind. His goal to be the strongest would wither before it began.

Eve shook her red sucker at him, "Not yet, but I can only keep everyone in the same instant of time for so long."

She held her hand up for him to be quiet and took a deep breath, "So here it is: pick a name, you start without a class, you can evolve a skill more than once and layer them together to create your style. Chase feats and achievements, only players who stand on the frontier will be powerful." She started spilling facts out quickly, and Ryan began to feel overwhelmed. The last bit sounded like a script, but she had clearly blitzed through the preceding information.

Another green menu appeared in front of Ryan and asked him to enter his name, with the note that names already taken won't be available.

Ryan thought for a moment before he willed his response into the box rather than use the interface. The trick was simple now that he'd undergone the earlier crucible to mold the mana around him.

"Rydr." Ryan had never played a game before, so he didn't have a "legacy name" as career gamers would use in every new offering. Instead, he truncated his first and last name. Ryan Donovan Harringer turned into "Rydr," with his middle initial thrown in the middle. For some reason, an aggregate of his names felt right, rather than using just one of them or making up something new.

"Okay, Rydr, keep up with the practice to use your will and senses. This habit will help you more than any other. I can't tell you why, but you're three steps ahead of- oh! Never mind. Someone else managed it too. Well, you'll still get the feat for achieving it first." She patted the top of his head like he was the child here, not her.

Eve pulled the sucker out of her mouth and gave Rydr her biggest Cheshire grin. She then floated back and looked him over in a more professional manner.

When Eve opened her mouth, her tone gave him the feeling that her next sentence was a broadcast to all players. "Become strong fast, or the game- and everyone in it- may leave you behind." Then he fell through the floor, and his heart tried to stay behind. A scream echoed as Eve leaned over the pit, "Don't tell anybody about my age!"