Albert had come to think, in a catastrophically erroneous manner, that whatever magic he acquired via a skill video was completely instinctive and could be used on a whim. This was not, however, the case and the problem reared its ugly head right when he was in a pinch and needed magic the most. It happened during his return trip home, following a night out with his friends. He avoided touching upon the matter of magic with them, for now, at least until he had enough to show them to prove that he actually had magic. This was because while his [Strengthening] skill was at level 2 and allowed him to wield superhuman strength, as far as magic went it was a bit lackluster. [Perception] was even worse since it really was nothing to show.

Still, he felt pretty good about his magic. The world was his oyster and soon he would have to make some decisions, which meant that the time he could spend in relative ease and bliss was fleeting and he needed to make the most out of it. That was the mood he was in during his walk back home, a mood which probably affected the way he handled the situation that he was presented with and in a way, even caused it. The night was dark. He had decided to take a shortcut home that led him through some questionable back alleys nestled between the tall buildings and old houses that still stood between the new and shiny skyscrapers. He felt safe, confident that whatever happened he could deal with it. He was, after all, able to deliver a thrice strengthened punch to whichever poor soul decided to mug him.

It was a delusion of grandeur.

He groaned, lifting his shirt up to inspect the extent of his bruises. His encounter with said mugger left him limping and only by a streak of luck not bleeding. It turns out that, when slightly inebriated and flooded with the adrenaline of risk, magic was not so easy to summon as he thought. It didn’t come as naturally as breathing, although he had to concede that not even his breathing was all that natural in the state of initially mild and later increasingly rising panic he was in when he was surrounded by the three tall, hooded men.

He was now walletless and hurting.

“Ack!”

Even removing his shirt meant pain.

[New quest: Magical soothing.]

* Quest: direct mana into the wounds.

* Reward: [Healing] orientation video.

Finally, some help from the ever-watchful, rarely-helpful system. Too bad that concentrating on the task while staring at his bruises, shirtless, in the ground floor bathroom with the door wide open meant that when his mother returned home not only did he not hear her come in, but she immediately noticed that something was wrong.

“Oh, honey!” she cried out, rushing to him. She almost embraced him but stopped herself just shy of touching him. The action still made him recoil in fear of the incoming pain, which in turn made the pain flare from his battered flesh.

“I’m fine mom. Very lucky to be alive, but fine.” Albert groaned.

“What happened to you? You’re limping, and bruised all over! Here, press the ice on your knee or it will swell.”

Sighing inwardly, Albert began to recount the encounter he had with the three thugs. He half expected, or rather he was 99% sure that a lecture was going to follow as soon as he was done talking. Perhaps even during the part where he described how he tried to escape – he actually wanted to fight back and his magic failed him, but he retconned the story – and got hurt in the process. However, much to his surprise and confusion, none of what he expected happened. No lecture. No anger.

What came over his mother was a cold gaze of hatred and contempt which, fortunately, was not directed at Albert. He felt that if it ever did, he could faint. His mother was already tall, and she was still wearing her high heels, however, the way she towered over him like a giant was not a product of these factors. The rest of the world seemed to recede under the stern gaze of her fiery eyes, glinting with a sinister light. Just as it came, it went. It was over in a matter of moments, which made him question if what he saw was even real. He knew it was, but it felt like a mirage. Now his mother was back as she usually was, and she bent over to nurse his wounds and take away his dirtied clothes, all the while asking him questions about his wallet and money and the documents.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll go to the police first thing tomorrow. Actually, you will need to come with me to get your credit cards deactivated.”

He nodded. This was going to be a long and sleepless night, dreading the upcoming day. Going to the police and then the bank meant talking to many strangers who held positions of authority, which in turn meant that whether he wanted or not his brain was going to cycle over countless iterations of whatever conversation he was going to have with them tomorrow in order to go there as prepared as possible. He hated that about himself. And he hated that no matter how much he thought about preparing for the conversations, they never went the way he predicted they would go, which only made his obsession worsen.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Luckily, he had something to distract himself with. Two different quests from the system, involving experimenting with magic! The only thing, he found, that managed to still his mind and let him rest while he focused on it.

***

[Quest: Magical soothing complete.]

“Healing comes in different ways.” The other Albert in the screen said. “There’s the easy way and the hard way. Today we will focus on the easy one, because not only is it the only one you can have any chance of learning this early in your path to magic, but it’s also the cheapest and the hardest one to mess up. Don’t blame me for not teaching you the other one yet, I know you want to learn it, but if you mess that up… well… You have seen on yourself what the consequences are when one is too cocky. Consider the beating up a warning, and learn from it.

Back to the topic of healing.

It works like this: you use magic to boost your natural healing. That’s it! What would heal in a matter of days now only takes a few hours! Zero risk of messing up because it’s your body that’s doing the work, using its own cells and an immune system that evolved over billions of years. You can see the obvious limitations of this, no need for me to spell them out. But still, for wounds like you have, this is more than enough.

Let’s get started! Let’s begin with trying to direct some of the mana to the cells in the area around the wound, and we will work up from there.”

…

[Skill acquired: Healing I]

***

“You’re not limping anymore! That’s great.”

“Yeah mom.” Albert said. They had parked as close as possible to the police station, which meant spending hours in traffic due to the bridge being closed, but it was still some distance away from the car and they had to walk. “I kept the ice on it all night.”

“That’s good.” She smiled sweetly. “Finally, you do things as I tell you. It’s almost unreal!”

Albert shook his head. She didn’t know, of course. Ice would have never helped, that’s why he never used it before.

There was a bizarre scene at the police station. Apparently, during the night the three muggers who beat Albert up got into a fight with someone, and ended up thrown into a trash can. When the police got there, they took them in and found a wallet with documents that didn’t match any of the three. As they were carried off to the hospital, sporting some rather gruesome wounds according to the police official, the wallet was left at the station. It was Albert’s wallet.

“You need to stick to the main road at night.” Finally, mother’s lecture came while they were stuck in traffic on their way home. “The city can be dangerous. You might think you’re so strong with all the gym stuff that you do, but as you can see—”

“Yeah, mom. I know.” He said in a low voice. It stung to be told this by his mother, especially with all she didn’t know. “I’ll be more careful. Changing subject: shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I took the day off.”

“Didn’t you say that they were so busy they needed you to come in during the night?”

Mother scoffed, like she didn’t believe what she heard. “You really think work is more important than you?”

***

It was after much trial and error that Albert finally succeeded. His current focus was completing the quest that asked him to manifest mana in the world, and he finally was staring at it. A small iridescent thing, shining in his hand. Like a crystal.

[Quest: Projection complete.]

The familiar sight of the holographic, partially see-through screen greeted Albert. In it, the other Albert was dressed in different robes than usual, and he was standing next to a whiteboard. He was holding a totally out of place black marker in his hand, that did not fit his whole sorcerer aesthetic in the slightest. What’s more, he seemed very aware and amused about it.

“I know you very well,” said the Albert in the video, eerily similar in his mannerism yet different, resulting in that uncanny valley kind of feeling that made Albert uncomfortable. “Firm believer in subject-object duality. We are going to have to break the shackles of this illusion if you want to progress in the path of magic.”

He paused. “How do I know, you ask? Look at me, I’m you!”

“In any case, there is no need to rush these things now. This is not a skill video, it’s a presentation video that precedes the handing out of Quests by the System. It’s a purely theoretical lesson. Listen well:

There are three types of magic, as far as you are concerned. I know what you’re thinking, what about other people, other mages et cetera et cetera. That’s irrelevant. We are talking about you, here. You surely have noticed that you can move magic around by yourself, without a skill. You have also noticed that you can activate skills to do things, which make the whole process much easier. In theory you could do the same stuff without a skill, by purely controlling the mana with your mind, and have the same results. However, you have already managed to fail to use magic even with the help of a skill, so I wouldn’t try to do magic without just yet. That’s something even I sometimes struggle with.

Back to the three types. The first type is hard skills. You activate the skill, concentrate a bit, stuff happens. The three skills you have are all hard skills, for instance.

Then there’s passive skills. They are always active, without you thinking about them and without using any mana. Some of them will use mana when some conditions trigger a special activation, so keep that in mind.

Then there’s freehand magic. That’s the skill-less kind. Even though it’s the most versatile, it’s also the most volatile. You must have realized that before a skill is created, you need to perform freehand magic at least once. That’s why I made the skill videos, to guide you through the steps. You have also learned that in order to upgrade a skill, you need to perform the freehand version first. What this means, is that you can create any skill you want, provided you figure out how to freehand it first.

After that, it's best to rely on just using the skill. The whole reason why the system exists is to make magic more reliable without any drawbacks, after all!

And yes. This also means that with time, skill videos will become more and more scarce. Only helping you with things you cannot figure out on your own. But you can do it, I believe in you!

Cheers.”

The video window disappeared.

[New quest: Videoless.]

* Quest: You know how to project mana into the world. Create a Skill without a video.

* Reward: Defensive Treasure.