The days dragged on, on a monotonous schedule. Wake up, have breakfast, go to the farm, do farm duties, return, eat supper, sleep and repeat. It took me three days to get used to the work in a way that I had enough energy to do anything else after I arrived to Silas’ compound. And I used the few hours I could manage to stay awake to take a shower. And, try and put the little I had learnt in the library to practice.
I used my sleeping quarters as my primary training grounds. It had enough room for throwing small Skills around. With a width of just over two meters and a length twice that.
The first day had seen no noticeable practice time. In my over eagerness for having the energy to practice magic after the day was over, I pushed too hard and too fast. And I passed out. Not from Mana drain. That wasn’t really a thing, at least I hadn’t come across a scenario where someone lost consciousness because they ran out of Mana. Not from the stories I had listened to or the books I had read in the library. I surmised that if Mana drain was a thing, the two books would have dealt with it first.
No, the reason I passed out was because I had run out of Stamina. Like Boni had said, using Magic also used up the Stamina someone had. And I had had little left after a day in the farm. The degree by which that was, depended on what one was doing. It was very common for a finesse magic Skill to consume more Stamina than a more Mana costly Skill. Common, but not always the case. Boni had told me that.
So, the following day, I paced myself. And I soon learnt that the trick was to perform less Stamina-draining Skills for a while before taking a break. Allowing the body to recover somewhat before going at it again. Doing that allowed me to prolong the time I had to practice my [Mana Manipulation].
I was surprised to learn that some of the things I could do with [Mana Manipulation] didn’t warrant a Skill of their own. Most things that fell into the first form of Mana manipulation didn’t. Moving drops of water from my cup to my plate got me no Skill, no matter how many times I did it. Or how big I let the drop get. I had been hoping for a [Water Mover] Skill. I thought it would be valuable in times of a fire breakout. Especially in a town made up of mostly wood, if not entirely.
But I did enjoy playing with water. Everyone did, after they got burnt by fire. Like parting the water in a bowl, but it didn’t give me any Skill. Which was disappointing until I figured out that I wasn’t controlling the water but pushing a continuous air flow at it. But since I got no Skill, I even got angry adding more Mana into the air flow, earning me a [Wind Gust] Skill. And water all over me. It was cold and refreshing.
Further experimentation with water got me a [Whirlpool] Skill. It was pretty weak and required constant Mana input to keep going. I didn’t think it would ever help me. Unless I decided to start a job as a churner. I didn’t see that in my future. Then the water Skill I loved the most, the [Water Punch].
Since I hadn’t been able to turn water into ice, I didn’t bother trying to create an icicle. But a [Water Punch] was easy. Maybe even easier than the [Fire Bolt]. Take this water, and move it as fast as you can towards that target. It couldn’t get any simpler than that. I had read somewhere that falling into water at a fast speed would feel like hitting concrete. I was hoping that as I raised its level, I would be able to get it to move at such speeds that it would feel like being hit by a block of concrete. At its current level, it only gave a slight push as it splattered on hitting the target. It was possible that was because I wasn’t putting too much Mana into the Skill.
Sadly, I lacked the finesse required to dry my own clothes with the water manipulation I had learnt. Or the air or wind ones. The [Wind Gust] tended to thrown the clothes right down to the dust. And if I held them too tightly, I swore I could hear tearing sounds. Better leave that to the experts.
My foray at creating a water slice was laughable at best. Yes, I created a thin layer of water that was directed at the target, but all it did was splatter on impact. Nothing else. It had little force behind it. I really needed to know what Skills were actually available, or whether the System didn’t have a list of Skills and just named them as people learnt them.
The last time I had asked Clare, all I got was that I didn’t have the privileges to access that kind of information. My words, not Clare’s. Boni was no help, telling me that one gained Skills by doing things. There had once been a book like that in the library, but he hadn’t seen it in years. When I asked for the Skills he had, I was surprised. Most of them were farming related. [Weeding], [Planting], [Pruning], [Seed Enchantment], [Plant Enchantment], and so on. There were a few that weren’t in that category, such as, [Archery], [Dancing], [Woodworking] and [Stealth]. He didn’t know the total number of Skills he had, and Clare said I could have as many Skills as I wanted.
Due to my training environment, I didn’t mess with fire too much. But I did manage to learn the Skill I had seen the carriage driver use, a [Fire Ball]. Mine was several levels weaker than theirs, though. I had wanted to try something like a fire blast, but that would have to wait until I could find myself a more perfect training ground.
Working with fire also made me try my hand at the creation form of Mana manipulation. Air was unnoticeable at all. I don’t think I succeeded in creating it at all. I didn’t see any Skills from all my efforts. And when I got the [Water Ball] Skill from trying to reproduce the [Fire Ball] but with water instead, drove that point home. Creating a [Water Ball] costs more Mana than it did creating a [Fire Ball]. Plus, the [Water Ball] was noticeably slower than the [Fire Ball], making it easier to dodge. The punch force behind the two was hard to compare. And the [Fire Ball] had an edge for setting its target on fire if it was flammable. All the [Water Ball] would accomplish was getting someone wet. Unless I was playing wet t-shirt, that wouldn’t be the intended result.
Then there was the [Hurtling Projectile] Skill. That was something. When I had begun, I had pictured the way I had seen the carriage driver, or was it the other one, throw the rock at the bandit leader. I wanted that kind of attack in my arsenal of attacks. But I knew that I wasn’t powerful enough for rocks, those people had been above Level 30 while I was barely above Level 10. So, I started with a small piece of wood. It took a lot of tries to even get it to move let alone speed up. Stubborn than water had been.
Then, I had had to work on adding enough speed for the System to recognize it as a projectile. I wished I knew what the number was, it would make it easier for future advancements. When I achieved that, it had been named [Wood Projectile]. When I moved on to small rocks, I got a [Rock Projectile]. And when I tried it with chunks of earth, I got [Earth Projectile].
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Due to the availability of the resources required to work with them, the three Skills saw most usage from me. Managing to get them all to Level 2 within a day. But then they had combined to form a single Skill, [Projectile], and dropped back to Level 1. Because I had felt cheated for losing three high level Skills and only getting one low level Skill, despite Clare’s insistence that it was more powerful than the individuals, I trained it hard to get it back to Level 2. I think you know what happened then.
Yes, you guessed it. It got a new fancy name and dropped back to Level 1. I gave up after that. I still practiced it, to and from the farm, when I had free time and space to throw things around; but I stopped obsessing about the second Level. I accepted that the System would get to decide which of my Skills got to stay that way, and which didn’t. Instead, I focused on working on my finesse. Instead of trying to hurl bigger and bigger things faster and faster, I tried handling them through intricate movements. Using a lump of earth to create a face, which always ended up looking like an irregular lump of earth. Yeah, I sucked in the finesse department.
Masi said I should try working with water, twirling and twirling. Making it flow in intricate patterns. She gave a demonstration by creating a dancing water person. Well, they were about fifteen centimeters tall, but the dance moves they executed were mesmerizing. Maybe there was a reason Boni had a [Dancing] Skill.
Speaking of Masi, two days before the sixth day break, she had begun her second round imbuing the crops. Her schedule was very different from the one we followed. She usually began at the same time we did, but would end her session around four hours in. She would head back to the town then. When it was time for us to head back, she would come back to the farm for another shorter session.
From what little I understood about how the Attributes and Status worked, I concluded that she had a faster than normal MP regeneration rate. That would explain how she had enough to do two sessions in the same day, still wake up in the morning and repeat the previous day as if she had fully recovered. I really wanted to know how her Attributes looked like, but I felt uncomfortable asking. To me, that felt like private information. Something that should only be share with close friends.
Boni had already told me it was alright to check other people’s [Status], but I still had lingering attachments to my old way of life. It would take me sometime before I was comfortable going around checking other people’s [Status]. Don’t get me wrong, there were instances where I had no issues checking out the [Status] of those around me. The best example, when there is a high risk of a confrontation happening.
After asking about the imbuing process and being directed to the book that gave me information about it but not how to actually do it, I had come to the realization that Masi might be the only person in the family who could be able to explain it to me. But she had been busy actually doing the imbuing by the time I made that conclusion. I couldn’t, in good conscious, ask her while she was working. And she was never at the compound when I was, what with her later in the day sessions she had going.
I settled to just watching her work on the farm. I knew she had to be in contact with each plant to do whatever magic she did, but when I really observed her, it appeared to me like she was just slowly walking through the farm in a slight squat.
Was that what it would be like when one of my Skills got to a high enough Level? I would be able to use a complicated Skill in the time it took to blink? Just how much of a Level difference was there between us? Even my fastest Skill still required me to go through all the steps rigorously and without any mistake.
And then there was the twins. I couldn’t properly recall their names other than they were similar with only the vowels changing, and that it was something close to Nina. It was a boy and a girl, around ten years of age. Both of them not yet Level 10. The first time they had come to the farm, they had tried to help out with the weeding but they weren’t as well leveled as they needed to be to be able to keep with us. It brought to attention my ability to keep up with Silas and Boni. Strictly speaking, I was closer in Level to the twins than I was to them, and yet I somehow found it in me to keep up with them.
Boni attributed it to the fact that I had the knowledge and skills necessary to weed, I had just needed to gain the Skill and Level it up to be able to work. The twins had neither. Plus, the attributes showed how much my body could take. It explained why I felt so wrecked by the end of the day, but they felt nothing more than just tired.
Spending time with the twins also brought to my attention that there was a school system in place in the planet. Only that it usually involved small groups of students starting at the age of five, and lasted no more than six years. By then, the students were expected to have gained the knowledge necessary to seek out apprenticeship at their prospective fields of future employment.
As for my own future, all I could see was a life time of hard work with little to nothing to show for it. The best I could do was increase my own worth as a laborer and hope that things would get better. That I would get better employment opportunities. I thought of moving to a bigger town, maybe even a city. In a magic world, mages were always valuable. I convinced myself so, as I walked purposefully towards the library. I had already learnt where it was, came a few times as practice to make sure I wouldn’t get lost. And now I had a silver to spare for a two-hour reading session.
…
‘Clare, Notifications.’
‘{Congratulations, the General Skill [Language Proficiency] has leveled up!
[Weeding: 1 -> 2]}
{Congratulations, the Attribute [Agility] has leveled up!
[Agility: 10 -> 11]}
{Congratulations, the Attribute [Strength] has leveled up!
[Strength: 14 -> 15]}
{Congratulations, you have leveled up!
[Level: 11 -> 12]}
…
{Congratulations, you have gained the Skill [Wind Gust]}
…
{Congratulations, you have leveled up!
[Level: 13 -> 14]}
{Congratulations, the Attribute [Constitution] has leveled up!
[Constitution: 12 -> 13]}
{Congratulations, the Attribute [Agility] has leveled up!
[Agility: 11 -> 12]}
{Congratulations, the Skill [Mana Manipulation] has leveled up!
[Mana Manipulation: 1 -> 2]}
{Congratulations, the Skill [Projectile] has leveled up!
[Projectile: 1 -> 2]
The Skill [Projectile] has evolved to the Skill [Hurtling Projectile]}
{Congratulations, the Attribute [Endurance] has leveled up!
[Endurance: 18 -> 19]}
End of Notifications.’
‘[Identify]’
[Species: Human]
[Name: Hartie]
[Sex: Male]
[Level: 14]
Status:
[HP: 1122/1341]
[MP: 1587/1791]
[SP: 2430/2621]
Attributes:
[Agility: 12]
[Constitution: 13]
[Endurance: 19]
[Intelligence: 14]
[Strength: 17]
[Vitality: 11]
[Wisdom: 15]
General Skills [3/3]:
[Identify: 1]
[Language Proficiency: 2]
[Mana Manipulation: 2]
Skills:
[Bludgeons: 1]
[Fire Ball: 1]
[Fire Bolt: 1]
[Herbalism: 3]
[Hurtling Projectile: 1]
[Spears: 1]
[Stealth: 1]
[Water Ball: 1]
[Water Punch: 1]
[Weeding: 5]
[Whirlpool: 1]
[Wind Gust: 1]