Two whole weeks had passed, and by now, Adam had finally managed to finish reading the macabre phrase, and the eyeless old man had returned his magical book to its shelves. It seemed like a joke, but Adam understood how the ability worked after repeating the phrase countless times. Luckily, the effect of the magical book was incredible, although it required some time to prepare, and the process to prepare it was terrifying for the young redhead.
Adam stood up from the desk chair and started climbing the steps of the cave. However, his shadow remained at the desk as if he were still sitting.
When Adam reached the top of the cave, he said aloud:
—How inconvenient, it seems I forgot to write the story.
*Puff*... The young man vanished into thin air and reappeared sitting at the desk in the same position as before. With both happiness and bitterness, Adam murmured to himself:
—Yes, this truly feels worthy of being called a magical ability. But what a revolting magical ability I had to choose...
The redhead stood up again, and his shadow accompanied him to the stairs. On the stairs, Adam repeated in his mind: ''How inconvenient, it seems I forgot to write the story''. Each time he repeated the phrase in his mind, his shadow took a step back, so it took Adam a few minutes to get his shadow back to the desk.
When the young man's shadow reached the desk, Adam climbed the steps and said aloud:
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—How inconvenient, it seems I forgot to write the story.
*Puff*...Adam vanished again and was now standing in the middle of the spiral staircase. The shadow didn't stay in one place but stepped back each time the young man repeated the phrase, then the shadow followed with a delay.
Another curiosity that Adam discovered through practice was that if he placed a small object where his shadow stood and then teleported himself to his shadow, the object would move on its own to make room for him. However, if the object was too large, it couldn't move by itself. As a result, the effect wouldn't activate, and Adam wouldn't teleport anywhere.
The magical effect of the book itself was very, very good. The problem was that in a real battle, it had only one use, but the key was the ingenuity in using that charge. The other creature or librarian would never know that Adam had actually gone back in "time", so they would only see the young man disappear into thin air if he used his magical trick at the right moment.
This was one of the abilities his godfather had mentioned: the more he understood it, the more he could make the most out of it, so practice was the key.
After having a hot chocolate and taking a good rest, Adam prepared himself to read his next magical book, praying that it wouldn't be torture like the previous one.
After asking the eyeless old man for the book, the young hero smiled like a madman when he noticed that his next magical book was extremely thin and would have, at most, 10 pages.
The fourth magical book, Ants and Elephants, looked quite ordinary, and the only remarkable thing was its cover made of yellow plastic. As he opened it, the young hero joyfully realized that the book was actually a children's comic about a girl lost in the jungle, cleverly hiding from a beast.
The lunatic smile on the young hero's face only grew wider: after repeating a phrase countless times, there was nothing more comforting than discovering that with just a few read panels, he would learn his next magical ability.