With the automatic techniques that I have set up, I mostly go on with my life. I of course take power naps regularly (at least 20 a day) and because I get about half of my power nap time in sleep I stay up a good portion of the night. I mostly just spend it laying in bed still, but I’m awake and active. I don’t do any magic in the material world besides improving the efficiency and language that I use for my techniques. I also use my skin improvement technique a lot. I also started researching other types of cells at that time. I’ve learned there are over 200 different ones, and there are tons of variations between the same ones even, depending on where in the body they are or what they’re role is.

I start creating improvement techniques for them all. I start small, with just a single cell and then improve upon it, then see what magic will do to improve it. As my experience with improving the function of cells improves I can continue to improve them. I learn tricks that magic made up, or from other cells. As I’m improving individual cell types I continue to add them all to a master technique. This master technique is just called Body Improvement level 1. As I’m working I also spot issues, big and small in my own body. I add techniques to Body Improvement level 1 that will cure bad eyesight, asthma, scars, too much or too little cholesterol. Too much or too little fat, vitamin deficiencies, osteoporosis. All of the different diseases, parasites, bacteria, and viruses that are really bad. It takes me around a year of time. But I’ve effectively removed every potential issue via spell. It’ll take me literal decades of focus just to actually finish all of this in my own body. Over that much time the cells that I’ve improved will start to replicate themselves and so the process will be sped up.

Some of the changes and improvements I made I purposely hide. I don’t change my weight drastically for now. I do go ahead and fully fix my eyesight, but I modify my glasses so they don’t actually change my vision. The changes to my muscles will make them improve drastically as needed. Naturally your body will increase its strength and endurance as you use your muscles and they heal. This process is now drastically sped up in my body. And my base level of strength and endurance is much higher. I think my base level is around what someone who exercised an hour a day would have. And that’s what I get without the improvements being done.

I have improved my eyesight so it’s no longer just not bad, but actually really good. It’s nearly telescopic when I want, and my eyes adjust to changes in lighting almost instantly. My nervous system is super efficient and fast. My twitch reactions are nearly instant now.

One of the largest changes that I made, and was very nervous about was my brain. I first just kept everything the same, but made it a little more durable and protected from shock and disease and things like that. Overtime I explored how to increase my intelligence. It took some fiddling and testing. I ended up doing some crazy tests where I would actually grow a very small test brain in my chest. I could connect with and use this brain almost like a separate thing. It was logging into a computer or something. With this I didn’t have to worry about killing myself and much, and it had no consciousness by itself without me connected so I didn't have to worry about a body snatching horror story.

I found ways to increase intelligence, increase creativity, increase neuroplasticity so that I could learn faster with it. I could also create separate trains of thought on the fly, and explore different ways to have split trains of thought. For example, I could create a small portion of the brain that would do one thing by itself, like watch through my eyes and count the number of cars while driving. Then have it check back in with my main consciousness every so often, or when it got to a certain number, or when I stopped driving. Stuff like that. With the increase in intelligence and memory density I could make something the size of a golf ball that was equivalent to my previous brain all combined.

It would take those many decades to finish the improvements to my brain as well, but in the meantime I’d slowly get better in every way without really trying.

Almost 13 months after I first discovered magic I think I’m ready to bring other people into the loop. I have developed dozens of techniques that can do all sorts of stuff. I can attack with different elements by creating or controlling them, I can kill if needed by just crushing a tiny portion of the brain of any living thing. I can protect myself with forcefield-like structures that will automatically kick in and protect me from projectiles or even kicks and punches. I can teleport myself and objects (even other living things) through space. I can’t and haven’t tried time though. I have explored the astral plane and can now find the souls of other people. I haven’t found a soul for anything other than a human though.

Because of the improvements to my mind I’ve been able to get promoted at work and have even squirreled away a little money that I then invested in more risky stocks. I’m still not a genius investor or anything, but being able to force myself to have better focus and dedicating multiple human level intelligences to studying and watching the stock market results in me making almost a million dollars. Plenty of money for the next part of my plan.

I’m finally ready, so one morning of a 3 day weekend I wake up early, make a huge breakfast, and wait for my wife.

“Good morning honey!” I say as she bleary eyed walks over. I can see the surprise in her eyes as she sits down. I set a fresh cup of coffee down in front of her.

“Hey, you’re awake, and stuff”

“Hah, yeah. It’s going to be a big day for us. Eat up and drink all the coffee you need. Take a shower if you want. There’s no rush, but let me know when you’re ready.” I smile at her.

“Ok, thanks.”

We both dig in and eat some of everything. After a shower and 3 cups of coffee she finally sits back down at the now clean table.

“Ok, I’m ready. So what’re we doing?”

I smile awkwardly. I really hope this goes well.

“So… Today I’m going to teach you magic.”

I let the words hang in the air and I can see her make a face like this is a joke or a theoretical question that I’m leading up to.

“For real, magic is real.”

I hold up a finger and create a small flame at the end of it. She stands up and walks around to see the back of my hand. There’s no lighter there. I can see the wheels spinning in her head about how I could be doing this.

“It’s actually magic, not a trick. I can prove it, and I can do more than just this. If you let me, I want to help you awaken to this as well.”

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

We spend the next hour or so trying different things and because I can make almost anything happen on a relatively small scale it’s easy enough for me to continue doing what she asks for as proof. Eventually we sit down and she stares at me.

“Ok, I believe it. But how?”

I proceed to tell her the story of how I discovered magic. How it was basically an accident and crazy coincidence. I try to not explain too much about how I use magic or what it looks or feels like to me. I don’t want to influence her and decrease her chance at discovering what works for her.

Around noon we settle down and I walk Andrea through the process of how to meditate. I guide her with my voice and describe the sensation that I felt the first time. We try throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening. I get us food and try to keep distractions at a minimum, but she doesn’t get it on the first day. Because we have a long weekend we get up and try all of the next day as well. I can tell that it’s starting to bother her though at the end of the second day.

“I have some things I may be able to do to help, but they’re using magic and I’ve been very careful to never use magic on you or any other person.”

“Alright, let me try by myself, but if I can’t get it tomorrow I’ll probably ask you to do it.”

We go to bed and start over again the following morning. She can get the frame of mind, and the desire is there, but she’s not actually able to astral project though. After getting frustrated we take a break and then I try to help.

Allow this person that I am touching to astral project to their own soul. Allow them to leave the astral projection when they want to.

She slumps very slightly and I quickly astral project myself. I have to travel quite a ways in the Astral to find her soul, but eventually I do. When I get there, there’s a soul that’s similar to mine, but I can spot countless tiny differences. Every soul is unique I theorize. I can see her consciousness, it’s a tiny bright dot. She’s moving around her soul and looking at it. I imagine that I did much the same thing. I think she’s only been here for the equivalent of a few minutes so she’s still busy.

I didn’t tell her that I touched my own soul to try to prevent messing up her chances of having a unique experience. What worked for me may be wrong for someone, or everyone else. But eventually she touches her own soul just like I did.

When she does I get an outside perspective of what happens. A more deep connection is made between her consciousness and soul, and the soul grows a little large, active, and stable. It’s less like the potential around us, and more like my own soul now looks. I see her shake and get thrown around a little by the event and then after it settles down the consciousness blinks out. I leave the astral projection myself and I’m now sitting by her in the real world again.

“Holy crap!”

Haha “yeah, it’s pretty crazy! Congrats, you now have magic!”

“Wow, so I can do all of the crazy stuff that you did now?”

“Well, kinda. I told you my story of how I discovered it, but I didn’t tell you how long it took me to get to this point. I figured this out about a year ago and since then I’ve been trying to get to a point where I’m not afraid I’m going to blow up or hurt someone. I tried not to share too much because I don’t know if what worked for me will work for you. But you have time now. I didn’t tell you before, but I’ve made enough money that I can support us entirely myself without working too much. We won’t be billionaires or anything, but we can live here and have plenty of money for normal stuff, and even a bit more in case we need to buy some stuff.”

“What?!? But how have you hid this for so long?”

“I’m really sorry, I thought that I was doing the right thing, and you may not agree with my reasons, but I hope you know that I did what I thought was right.”

“I’ll have to take some time to think about it. But yeah, thanks for helping me get started with magic.”

“Of course. I understand that it wasn’t a good thing to do, but I felt like it was the right thing. And I could have probably shared a little earlier, but I really did tell you about as early as I thought I could.”

“Well thank you for being honest about it.”

We went our own ways that night and I saw her practicing on her own. Obviously SP is basically invisible and there are tons of things that won’t have any visible effect, but I see her doing more things in the physical world. We spend the rest of the evening in separate rooms working on improving our own magic, although I spend a large portion of it fretting and growing more and more anxious about it.

Eventually she comes and gets me and tells me that she still doesn’t like that I hid it for so long, but she probably would have done the same. We talk about what she’s doing and we find that her approach to magic is much closer to what you’d find in a video game. She thinks about SP as mana, she has a better innate understanding of how much she has and the magic actually exists in her body when she’s not using it. She can’t do too much, just like I couldn’t at first. But her initial efforts are her saying out loud what she wants to happen. She also doesn’t have to say as much to make the magic manifest in the way that she wants or expects. She even shows me how when it would fail because of a lack of power, that it will instead just create a visible display related to what was supposed to happen, like a shower of sparks and a whiff of smoke, but she gets most of her magic back.

We both end up putting in our 2 weeks notice and quit our jobs to focus on magic. We both agree not to share it with anyone unless both of us agree to it. We continue to work on it ourselves over the next 3 months, I continue to gain SP capacity, rate of conversion, and improve my physical body with magic. Andrea’s magic is pretty significantly different though. She creates spells and she asks magic to actually separate them into tiers like games and such would. It seems like her magic is much more unconscious. She can also astral project into the Astral plane, and she does on occasion, but much less than me. It seems that it really creeps her out when she goes there, especially alone. She is able to meditate in the real world though and can regain her Soul Power at a significantly larger rate than is normal in the real world. She can recover SP about half as quickly as when she’s there. She considers it an even trade because she doesn’t like to go there. She ends up developing a sort of man channels and core in her real body. The mana that she has in her body is much more physical and I’ve even detected traces of it when she uses magic.

After the 3 months of our alone work we decided to start planning for the future. We need a plan for the future. Are we going to be the only 2 people that have magic? Are we going to use it to make the world a better place? Should we improve science and society? Maybe we should just leave and explore the world, or the galaxy? We don’t know if the material plane and the Astral plane are the only 2. Maybe there are more universes out there, just waiting to be explored, or make friends, or contain adventure and treasure!

I tend to think that people as a whole are dumb and destructive. A single person that I sit and talk to, I can learn to like, find out why they are the way they are. I can appreciate them and even understand and rationalize the mistakes they make. But when talking about people as a whole, I don’t really trust them. Because of this we decided not to go public with magic for now. Instead we are going to try to see if we can make a system of magic that can be used by “people”. This system will have limits that will prevent the strongest from being so incredibly powerful they can take over the world. Strongest doesn’t make the best, or most ethical, or anything else really, except the strongest.

We will work and test for the next few years while we figure out a way to make a magic system for now.

Four years later a huge muscular man, and tall, lithe, radiant woman stand in front of a group of 200 people.

“We’re so glad that you chose to be part of this exciting new project. You’ll be training here with your fellow participants over the next month, and then the adventure begins.” his eye twinkles, almost literally.

“We’re really wishing you all the best of luck! We’ll be watching over you!” She tilts her head slightly at the end and finishes with a dazzling smile.