With the knowledge that something so dangerous had been present, there was a need for him to observe what was around as he walked onward. All that he could find accompanying his presence was just the street itself, air uncontested in occupying the path he was taking.

His eyes hopped from building to building. Behind the windows were often just furniture, the ceiling, or a wall. Eventually, he did find relief from seeing that some people were there. But for those who happened to look at him in return, their silent gazing made Aurora feel like a nail sticking out.

“(Maybe I should get to work on it.)” Aurora was against attracting attention with this kind of atmosphere. Both bodies moved to where they were less likely to be seen so that a kind of magic could be tried.

“(Stealth magic should be a thing.)” They each lifted up their arms. “(How would I go invisible?)”

Unlike with the natural acquaintance with muscles where mana could be treated as such, and also as she who was of the magic world knew not of this, Aurora had to process on a conceptual level first how invisibility would be achieved.

What allowed sight was light. And, what he recalled as a representation of light’s existence was a ball with a trail of helixes. There were many of them, each very small and very fast.

“(Can I just absorb it?)” For the first idea, mana blanketed their body entirely, to absorb the light before it could reach onto its surfaces. But consequently, both sets of eyes saw just black. In surprise, Aurora lost focus on the magic, and so as the absorption of light stopped, their vision was restored.

A second attempt of the same idea. “(Do I have to go blind?)” While keeping the effect going, Aurora checked for the presence of mana. Unlike the world that his eyes were made unable to get any information from, the mana was still willed into appearance, showing up as the cloud-like form and texture it had always appeared as.

Though with the building feeling of not wanting blindness to occur, such a side effect did not last for too long. Aurora could see again as the mana around their eyes stopped, allowing some light to pass in.

And then, they saw their hands appearing as dark as black holes, a thing that swallowed light. Looking at such a result made Aurora feel uneasy.

Since this unusual appearance was very likely to attract attention more instead of less, another idea was decided upon and moved on to. Bouncing back light instead of absorbing it.

The idea essentially brought their bodies into acting like a mirror. What immediately took their attention were dark circles on their hands. With her seeing a blue ring around such circles, Aurora identified what they were. Although they appeared not as floating eyeballs, floating pupils could still be unnerving to look at.

In trying to have that part of them be invisible as well, Aurora repeatedly experienced the fading in and out of darkness. After some visual distortions resulting from the mana’s movement to the tune of their minds’ shifting pathways, Aurora was able to see without too much compromise.

Mana duplicated incoming light, one for the eye to receive, and the other moved back to the world. Still, being like a self-moving mirror was not the invisibility Aurora intended.

In the effect Aurora settled on, the angles began to revolve on their hands. What became shown to them was firstly what was behind themselves, the next was the sky, over to what was in-front, and finally to showing the ground that would have been covered by the hand.

Reflection had turned to refraction, from sending light back by 180 degrees to moving it around with near zero displacement from its original course.

Perfection was fairly difficult to reach. The transparency appeared with an offset of a few millimeters. And, the more Aurora’s concentration on the magic took it lightly, the more the refraction as a whole became less uniform. A subtle swaying with the varying distribution of strength in the mana could be observed. But, it was effective enough for while the direction they were in was not stared at intently for too long.

Every part of their body then moved with their legs, and the effect did not waver so much or become any bit inactive. As with the flight magic, being attentive to the presence of mana as it did what it did was a simple enough concept to grasp and enact.

In seeing how much it consumed, this kind of effect was the least hungry for mana within what Aurora had done with mana so far.

“Okay.” Aurora said, to move over the subject of thought.

From the time spent outside, Aurora had heard gunshots. All of them were not so close to either body. Because of that, there was more than enough time for Aurora to think of safety over the initial drive to be where something of interest was. Decidedly, approaching people who had guns was far from being the best idea to carry out.

Aurora did think of it. Learning the ability to deflect or absorb bullets was something to do, to be safe when faced with such weaponry. Neither bodies owned nor had access to a functional gun, though. So, Aurora would most likely just have to try accelerating something to the speed of a bullet instead of getting one to test how they’d defend against modern firearms, at a later time, when possible.

While he was walking, before he arrived at the school gates, he had come upon only a pair of those dog-like things, and nothing else so interesting was met. For her, she had seen them coming by on three occasions. On one occasion were two of those dog-like creatures. The other two occasions were of a solo appearance.

And, to those that were alone, Aurora took the opportunity to take their mana cores. When attacking, mana would be sent out, so it was seen how invisibility deactivated as per which volume of mana was directed to do something else. Likewise, when he decided to just leap over his school’s fencing, his shoes became visible, though, not that no one was around to see that.

To measure the growth from absorbing mana cores, Aurora had compared how much mana could be fit into the two bodies. No numerical system was available for Aurora to use for reference, but it could instead be felt. With both bodies at full capacity, the mana she had was nearly twice as much as he who had absorbed no cores.

“(And, another locked door.)” As there was no use for them this day, the school had locked the doors for the houses of classrooms.

“(This sure is unfortunate.)” He slid his fingers onto the door, and stretched them across its center, giving a good chance to the thought of just breaking it down. For a while, he stared. After some moving about of his eyes, he realized. “(I can just pick the lock.)” And with that thought, she also went over to try picking the lock on the apartment.

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There were movies that featured the act of lockpicking, and the media suggestion algorithms had shared the existence of some related videos, so it was not so strange a concept to him. The mana had to imitate the shape of a key.

He turned and turned his index finger which he used to have the mana stem from, and in a few tries, the door unlocked. In those tries, it felt to him like mana became an extension of his body. His sense of touch seemed to extend to where it was. It wasn’t as solid a feeling, but it was there.

After making his way there, he arrived at his classroom, which he also had to unlock. Behind the doorway was the classroom in its template emptiness. It was apparent that everyone else had vacated with their belongings, with his bag being the only sign of a student in attendance.

Searching through his bag where he habitually placed everything into, he was relieved to find his wallet, with his phone also in there as well, with his keys. Nothing so important had ended up being left in the forest.

The next thing for him to undertake was the trip back. He was used to just walking it while it wasn’t like it was too long a journey. But then, now, magic’s conveniences for travel was something he could improve on.

Task done, bag acquired, he left, and locked again the doors.

Looking up a wall a good number of times taller than him, about two floors at least, he crouched down. In the next moment, charged with mana, his legs straighten.

Landing on the roof was a similar experience with landing after leaping over the school’s fencing, but a bit more with the taller obstacle. He uncloaked a bit of his arm around the wrist, and his hand, and a bit above his ankles as his body fell, to have more mana on controlling velocity. “(Won’t know if I don’t try.)” He looked at the next roofs to move onto.

Upon entering his apartment, she trained her eyes on the object of utmost importance in the room. The computer. She clicked the power button, and it booted up.

Memories of its usage were brought up so she could understand it.

Her eyelids twitched for a moment from what tried to surface from the trash bin of his subconscious. But with success in pushing those exciting parts of the internet back to the depths, her brows were brought back to rest.

“(Anyways...)” After the desktop home screen had appeared, the browser application was clicked on and started. One thing to do was find and gather information.

Her hands moved over to the keyboard. The first presses were slow, and in contrast to what his brain was used to, her head had to look down onto the keyboard. With not having so much to type, the pace was maintained.

Riverfield City was in the search box, and the enter key was pressed.

There was a section of the search engine for news. But, what got her interest then was maps. She recognized she was reading characters not of her language, but their link made her feel those letters being not unusual to see.

The computer loaded the map data, and gave her a look of the world from a point of view out in space. “(Our worlds mixed?)” He could recognize one half of a continent from his world unaffected, while she could recognize hers appearing over on the other half. Some island nations were scattered about.

As for the country he could recognize being the one he lived in, its continent was made bigger with some protrusions of land.

However, other than where the modern countries were, the maps weren’t so up-to-date as he saw only such names. Lines for borders and names for more specific places did not appear. With not much being so quick to know from there, she moved out of looking at maps, and proceeded over to checking the news section.

The one tab became less alone as she opened every hyperlink she found interesting. She had also clicked on the bookmarks to his social media accounts. And, Aurora began looking into them.

“The people in Riverfield were no exception from the earthquake and bright light felt and seen around the world, but what’s special about them is that their city has a castle inside of it.”

Along with text were images and videos. With a click, the embedded clip played. From inside a room one floor above the ground, a camera was looking onto where there was a crowd of people.

The group of people nearest to the camera wore soft fabric, while the other group, the farthest from the camera, stood beside the opening of the wall, and had leather and metal armor on.

When the people who wore modern cloth appeared too close for comfort, one who was standing beside the opening of the wall, a guard, stepped forward. And in the next moment, everyone unwelcome was blasted away.

An act of magic had been observed, and recorded. The video of a scene that had gone viral ended there. Moving on, she finished reading the rest of the article.

After reading more articles, what Aurora newly learned from such articles for the city he lived in was that armed personnel were positioned to contend with what the people of the castle and its settlement might do.

In relevance, she read there being plenty of issues for the governments from the physical world.

There were issues at sea. Ships somehow ended up too close to another country’s land. In some cases, they departed to the sea immediately, and in others had to leave after meeting another country’s fleet.

There were fleets of wooden ships that modern ships were ordered to observe.

Diplomatic issues on land were there. Some armed soldiers had moved into another country’s settlement, and then some reports of gunfights were made.

On trade and transportation, cargo ships were off course. A few cities were no longer coastal.

Reports of damages in a city were made after people who knew magic fought off attempts of arrest.

That was all she got for simplification from the articles in the news section before moving onto what those on social media sites had to say.

In some posts and comment threads, people talked about where they had woke up, or shared where others woke up being in. What she took notice of were those who brought up concerning scenarios.

“I was driving a motorcycle.”

“I was driving a car.”

“I wonder what happened with pilots?”

Despite the implications of falling unconscious in vehicles at high speed, they claimed no injuries, and were well as they were able to post on the internet.

“I was on a plane. It was flying but it was landed when I woke up. Felt I was just dreaming until everyone started talking.”

With no need to scroll further down, she found a post involving the city he lived in. And, the post had several comments.

“When I saw what happened when people got pushed, magic exists!” The poster titled, and the poster wrote: “It happened in Riverfield city. A whole bunch of people got pushed away and I mean really pushed away by those guards without even being touched. It was weird. But when I tried pulling a cup over to me, it happened. I have magic!”

“I can confirm. Broke my cup, though.”

Meanwhile, the next comment was on the opposite end. “It didn’t work for me.”

But firstly, Aurora focused on the replies to the comment agreeing with magic’s existence.

“Hit myself with a ball. I was skeptical, but it seems it’s true.”

“Shouldn’t we call this telekinesis?”

“I tried creating fire. It works. Either way, it must be magic.”

“Be careful not to burn your house down. Lol.”

“Can water be created?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not a lot.”

“How big could you make it?”

“Not a lot.”

“Grab a ruler and measure it.”

“I measured mine. It’s only a third of an inch.”

“Tiny.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Sad.”

“Just grab water from the faucet, I got mine to around two inches, but it melted or something after that point.”

“How are you guys doing magic?” For those who failed to as quickly do magic, the question was presented.

“You just imagine it.”

“Concentrate a bunch, and it’ll happen.”

The answers were rather simple. But, with the shortening amount of time since the comments and replies were posted, the likes were on an increasing trend for the comments that agreed with magic’s existence. More and more of those who expressed skepticism eventually took back their statement against magic’s existence.