“This looks just like the other ones.”

Samantha Cromwell towered above her colleagues on her high heels, worn with the casual ease one would wear sneakers when going around town. At the worksite, she looked completely at home, her unusual wardrobe choices not bothering her in the slightest. Something that could not be said about the other military men who had been brought to secure the bridge after the event. They were all trained personnel, and each and every one of them was familiar with the consequences of ogling that dangerous woman.

The diminutive man beside her was insignificant. He was hunched over a complex set of instruments that were all glass and brass tubes, held together by unseen forces and mechanisms. His face too was hidden beneath a thick layer of glass in what pretended to be a pair of glasses but was more like a face mask.

“So, what have we got?” she asked.

“Space is stable. The astral team is inside the perimeter.” he replied, his wrinkled face only slightly relaxing after he put his instruments away.

She nodded approvingly. “Good. Timings?”

“Space destabilized for thirty-three minutes, putting it right in the high end of tier one, as you accurately said earlier.”

“Even if it’s only a tier one, this bridge will have to stay closed for at least a week. Tell the general to send the repair team right after we’re done here.”

He nodded.

“Anything else out of the ordinary?”

“Not really, no. Same pattern as the other category ones. The egg is nestled right in the support beam railing. Three suspension cables snapped after the material was removed by the event, but the structure is still safe. No particular signs of residual energy apart from the predicted increase.”

“One of the last category-ones, then.” she said solemnly.

“Yes. There will be another, maybe two more before no weak events will spawn anymore.”

“And the egg?”

He looked at her, adjusting his glasses. “No movement yet. But the astral team has something.”

“Okay. You can go now.”

The man scuttled away, while she approached the military tent set up on the bridge. Inside it was very spacious, creating a single open space that encompassed the whole width of the bridge itself. At the sides, it even included the support beams and cables as well. To one side, a circular section of the metallic structure was missing, like butter carved with a hot knife. At the center, resting on the concave metal, was a black orb.

She approached it. The few lines on its surface were a murky white, now and then glowing with a golden light almost imperceptible to the naked eye. Her eyes could see it well, however, but she only gave the whole item a passing glance.

The small circle of white lab coats surrounding the egg parted. A single uniform stepped away from it, and saluted. Upon noticing who had just entered the tent, his gait, usually full of confidence and arrogance, became more subdued. His face contorted for a fraction of a second, all the time it took for him to understand a couple very important things about the woman in front of him.

Samantha studied him in the fraction of the second he took to salute. She knew that, like with the small and frail-looking SpaceOps, there was more to this man than his looks alone suggested. On the outside, he was the muscular, trimmed, arrogant army grunt. On the inside, his mind held a power that few in the whole world could claim to be able to beat.

“PsyOps? Report.” she commanded. “SpaceOps gave me the quick rundown, he says there’s something you have for me.”

“Sir, our readings of the astral show movement. Something… massive is waiting on the other end. Perhaps even moving our way.”

“We all knew something was coming. All these events, and the eggs… have you managed to crack the meaning of the eggs?”

He shook his head.

“It can’t be another Holy War, can it?” she asked.

“Sir, the Holy Wars are just a rumor.”

“A rumor…” she muttered. Her head snapped towards him. “What do you know about Pilgrims?”

He shrank. “Not much, admittedly. But the rumor is that they were responsible for the Dark Ages.”

“Exactly. But it’s not a rumor. It’s the truth.”

***

“Mom! I’m home!”

Albert threw his backpack on the sofa and, upon hearing no response to his greeting, moved around the house in search of his mother. Being a single child of a single mother, living in a three-story house with as many rooms as his house did meant that more often than not the house seemed erroneously empty when it was, in fact, not. But this time it seemed like it was indeed empty, as a thorough search of the rooms and of the garden yielded no results, even while using [Perception].

Frowning a bit, against his better judgement that screamed at him to go do some magic, Albert decided to laze around until his mother was back. He plopped on the sofa next to the backpack and turned on the television.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“It’s a tragedy.” A reporter said. Behind him, the base of the looming red bridge was hidden from view by military tents and a dozen armed men in uniform. “The military have cut off the area while a team of engineers assesses the damage. The official reports indicate that there were five cars involved in the accident, and two people confirmed dead.”

Albert had wondered why the traffic was completely out of control today, clogging the main five-lane road alongside which he walked every day on his way back from college. This was it, the unexpected event that threw a wrench in the delicate workings of city-planning and traffic. He didn’t know what was the actual event that happened on the bridge, that part of the news report had happened before he turned on his television, but in truth he found that he didn’t care much about its nature. It was always something bad and depressing.

At least he knew why his mother was not home. She worked in the other side of town and was bound to be stuck in traffic for a while before this whole situation was sorted out.

He turned off the television. He was a bit hungry, and since waiting for his mother was not an option, he went to raid the fridge of all it could offer. While he ate thoughts gathered in his mind, thoughts about the nature of the system that had come to take him as its user, about who else might have it and, above all, about how to use it more effectively. He found that he could not avoid thinking about magic, and for good reason.

Still, he needed to avoid becoming obsessed about it. Or at least this sounded like the better approach to the matter. He didn’t like it, though. The rational approach. Humans were only rational insofar as rationality served their inner emotions well, and when it didn’t they discarded it. Why would he ever want to limit his time spent studying magic? It was still early in the semester; he could worry later about studying for his classes. He was not sacrificing time he could spend with his friends. He was not skipping meals or workouts. Then, what was the problem?

Once his mind was set that there was no problem, he decided that he wanted something new to do with magic. Namely, he wanted another quest to expand his magical toolbox. Having only [Perception] and [Strengthening] didn’t make for a good mage, after all.

[New quest: Projection.]

* Quest: project mana into the world.

* Reward: Magic orientation video.

Finally, some excitement. Running to his bedroom, he immediately set to work on experimenting with magic and how to make it appear outside his body. It was a completely different task than the previous two, both of which involved manipulating something that was internal and not external. It was refreshing, in a way, although the novelty ran out pretty quickly when Albert realized that he had no idea how to make magic leave his body to materialize in the real world.

As usual, a hurdle that seemed impossible to overcome. These hurdles were of the frustrating kind, because like those images that you can’t un-see once you have seen them, they all seem very obvious in hindsight. But, much like those images, until the obvious could be understood they looked completely nonsensical and cryptic. Such was the nature of magic, or the nature of his magic at least. As counterintuitive as it gets, and then completely natural once he understood it.

It was dark outside when the sudden noise of keys scraping against the keyhole, in search of the perfect alignment so that they could slip inside and unlock the door, shook Albert out of his contemplative concentration state. He was covered in sweat, he realized, completely drenched. Had he been concentrating that hard? It was certainly a first. Never before had he felt such a flow state come to him, especially so easily as to not even realize it.

Before his mother could see him like this, he threw on some gym pants and a tank top and flew down the stairs.

“Hi mom.” He said.

“Hey sweetie. Sorry for coming home so late! There was just so much traffic, I was barely moving. Are you hungry? You haven’t waited for me to come back to cook for you, have you?”

Albert smiled. His mother still saw him as the little kid he had been years ago. “Of course not, mom. I cooked my own lunch, and then dinner too, you know? I made an extra portion for you; you can heat it up. It’s in the fridge.”

His mother, watching him with her usual stern expression but with unusually wide eyes,was surprised. She was tall, even more so in her high heels. Part of the dress code for the job, she always said when Albert asked her if she needed them, tall as she was. She undid her ponytail. Her dark hair was held so tightly that when the rubber band came off, it exploded in a shower of darkness on her shoulders.

“Really?!” She said, taking off her heels and throwing them to their designated space under the drawer. They landed upright, and perfectly parallel. A skill Albert could only dream of having, system or no system.

“Yep. I’m a big boy, you know? Now I need to shower though… I… I have been working out while you were locked in traffic, getting no physical movement.”

“Dah,” she groaned. “What do you know, I don’t need to move. Or are you saying I’m fat?”

“No, no, no. I would never!” Albert said, bolting for the other room. When he was at the door, he looked back so that he could stick out his tongue to her, but his mother was already in the kitchen, heating up her meal.

The TV was on, and it was broadcasting updates on the situation at the bridge. Traffic was going to be problematic for the whole week, the newscaster said before Albert was too far away to hear the distinct words. An idea came to his mind. What if he tried to enhance his hearing with magic? Easier said than done, because nothing happened when he tried. But he was not one to let go of his lofty goals so quickly, especially when it came to magic. It would be correct to say only when it came to magic, but Albert would never admit that fact about himself.

Thus, he spent the whole shower – which ended up lasting well over forty minutes – trying to get his hearing to improve via magical means. He didn’t even stop to wonder why his mother had not come to pull him out of the shower by force, lecturing him about saving money and not wasting perfectly good water just so he could have his fun in the shower. The thought didn’t even cross his mind until much later, when he was finally out and looked at the time. What made him eventually leave the water was a notification.

[Skill proficiency increased.]

* [Perception II] -> [Perception III]

It worked! And now, he could—

“What?” his mother’s voice in the other room was muffled, but very much audible. There was also the noise of the television, but it was just music. “Another? Is it still safe—”

He couldn’t make out the rest of the words, because the television was now too loud for him to extricate his mother’s words from the ones of the ad. But still, this was a huge improvement, because he couldn’t even hear his mother’s voice before activating the skill. Now he only needed to figure out a way to complete the quest that he had, which was to cast magic outside of his body. But first, he had to get dressed.

“They called me from work, sweetie.” Albert found his mother already dressed in her suit, by the door. “They said it’s an emergency and they need us to come back immediately! I’m sorry but I need to go.”

As she left, Albert was left wondering. What on Earth could have happened that they needed an accountant in the dead of night? Had some rich eastern oil prince just landed their private jet and asked for a skyscraper on sale? Shrugging, Albert went up to his room. Sleep came surprisingly easy, the sounds of the world soft and gentle. Like they were far away, and all was quiet. The world was surprisingly silent when he was not using the skill to enhance his perception.