MARTHA’S POV

Since I invited Cory to live with me life has been strange. I know Cory’s bad at telling lies. It’s written all over her face whenever she tries. But the truth is just so unbelievable, and she says it so sincerely people think it’s a joke and her usual awkward inability to lie is just how she is. But I know for a fact she’s just a terrible liar. And since I’ve lived with her life has been a little strange. After the first week of living with her, I had a slight headache for a little while that had me wearing sunglasses for a few days because light and sound were especially painful at the time. I later found myself trying to open a jar in my painfilled state that was tightened a bit too tight and after giving up and verbally wishing the jar would just open the cap seemed to undo itself and I was able to gain access to the pickled onions I wanted but was more frustrated by my slow descent into madness from the absurdity of my current situation.

Since then I’ve been spending time reading fictional works about magic to see if perhaps I could learn from fiction how to make what I was currently experiencing make any more sense than it did. Opening the jar of pickled onions with a sentence instead of with my hands left me feeling lethargic like I had just spent an all nightery studying for a test in a subject I hate like operational budgets and plans. And I woke up later that night with half-eaten pickled onions in my mouth and a loosely sealed and dripping jar of diluted salty vinegar and onion juices dripping on me. So I studied magic from a fantasy perspective and found it to be worthless and decided to try brute-forcing it to work by thinking really hard until what I wanted to happen happened and eventually a strange dream came upon me.

“You are the first to use magic in this world who was born on this world, we know and love, as such you, will be given exclusive rights to decide how magic is to be used here. If you are found insufficient magic will be set to the laws of the world from whence this magic has come to yours choose now.” A scantily dressed ethereal apparition. “Who are you?” I asked it. “I am as a figure of your imagination, if you would like you can set the rules for magic in this world. If you would not I can simply set them to the rules of the previous world.”

“what are the rules of magic in the previous world?”

“There aren’t many. There are few limits set to what can be done using magic causes pain or inconvenience equivalent to the collective perceived usefulness of the spell used and it is only through suffering that a person can attain greater strengths in magic because it is their resistance to the pain that makes them more able to use magic, not the magic becoming less painful.”

“can I set the rules so that they don’t change for outsiders but that they are different for the people living on this planet?”

“How so?”

“mana plays a part in using magic right?”

“yes, it is painful to acquire and painful to use.”

“can I make it so numerical values are assigned to the mana available in this world that people who can use magic in this world can see and evaluate how best to use the mana they have available to them by attributing costs for stronger or more dangerous spells?”

“I see… which work of fiction would you like to model your world’s magic on?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to-” she cut me off “but it would be easier to just do so wouldn’t it?”

“I guess it would but I wanna do this right.” The dream seemed to go on for hours after that and while I don’t remember many of the specific details, I have made three noteworthy changes. The system that I have set in place will not allow people with chemical or mental imbalances to use magic at all. So people who wouldn’t be able to control the power wouldn’t gain it and misuse it to their own and everyone(around them)’s detriment. The second rule I’ve set is that the mana within a person of this world will not be outwardly visible to anyone who comes from another world so I can slowly build up her magic abilities without them noticing and getting suspicious of me. The last rule I remember pertains to the rules for gaining strength in magic. Two parties within this world can strengthen each other by simply existing around each other with a common goal and the closer their goal, and the closer they are physically, the stronger they will become.

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This was one of a few rules I set in place for the strengthening of the people’s ability to use magic in this world, another of which was that I could directly give half my mana to one willing party in order to have someone else practice magic with but as this is more of a spell than a rule I wouldn’t really count it but I will be using it.

I have become aware that Cory and her friends would probably destroy my world if to meant accomplishing their goals, so I have been slowly doing my part to foil their plans. As every chance I get I create a little magical token with the create magic item spell I learned from watching Cory just randomly make something when she’s inconvenienced and I’ve been using them to slowly drain the lands she’s saturated with mana so they don’t extend too far. So far all these tokens have done is stop the spreading of the saturation of the land and not revert it. Since I wanted Cory to be as oblivious as possible to the fact I gained control over magic since she came here I left the rules for people from other worlds using magic to be the same as they remember it, which means magical monsters from her world might appear from her saturated lands if I don’t keep the levels of mana in them down to a point where they won’t materialize into angry rampaging states. As she often talks about them in her podcasts.

The person I’ve chosen as the person to multiply my own mana with is the girl whose name I’ve already forgotten who was a fan of Cory and her librarian friend Νεκρα. I told her “I learned how to use magic by hanging around them and learning from their example. I can teach you but you have to promise not to tell them until we master magic. I want to surprise them.” Her starry fangirl eyes made it really difficult to lie to her about my motive for keeping it a secret but if the world is ever in danger by their hand she’ll probably come over to my side.

So we both got together with the common goal of being better at magic than the other and began practising homemade spells until I heard a somewhat familiar voice in my head. “level limit reached. Admin privileges now accessible.” I looked to my left and my right and when I found a reflective surface, I saw the girl from my dream floating over my shoulder and talking to me. “you have now become strong enough and grasped the limits you set on magic and forgot about as per our agreement. Now you may ask me anything you want about how best to use your newfound abilities. You may also make minor alterations to the system for 70% of your permanent mana reserves you’ll have to earn back the way you received them per change.”

“can other people see you?”

“only if you want them to” I breathed a sigh of relief “I do not.”

“acknowledged”

“by the way what should I call you anyway.”

“call me the administrator. One of the rules you yourself set was that no one who uses admin privileges can use them to kill or harm anyone including those who would otherwise bring such an ability with them from another world. Remember that if you ever try to abuse the abilities you limited yourself.”

‘of course, nothing’s ever so easy’ I thought to myself. “you set this rule because I explained that there are other worlds where people have achieved such heights of magic that they can essentially re-write the rules of physics and change the laws of science to fit their whims. You set this limit because some use their admin privileges to cause natural disasters. You limited them in this world to only be able to do so indirectly like making a magical weapon or armour with admin privileges. Though you are not the administrator I am and you made it very clear you wanted to make it almost impossible for a human to attain such heights.”

‘wonderful… wait did you respond to my thoughts?’

“I did what of it”

“is something wrong?” Sara whose name I still don’t remember asked, “no not really why?”

“you asked if other people could ‘see you’ while staring at your own reflection and then you got this constipated look on your face as something happened.”

“oh, that… the reason I asked you to learn magic with me is that I was afraid if I tried to study magic alone I might go insane so I brought you along to help me not to… I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed since I met Cory after all” I lied to her face but she seemed to have a look of understanding on her face so I won’t correct her misunderstanding as it would be harder to explain than to just go with whatever she thinks I meant.