“So what do you want to try and do?” Patrick asked me. We were in my backyard. I had asked him to watch me make sure I didn’t die when experimenting.

“I’m going to try and learn aspecting. It's a foundation skill, so it should help for any latter magic. ” While what I said was true, I had left my real reason unsaid. I wanted to prove something to myself. I wanted to prove that I could do this, that I wasn’t the type of person to give up at the slightest hint of danger.

“I’m ready when you are,” he said blandly. He didn’t seem that excited, and I could hardly blame him. Magic experimentation wasn’t that interesting to watch.

I nodded and got started. I began by retracing my steps from my last attempt. I first focused on hardness, on resilience, on durability. When I felt that wisp of potential, that whisper of strength, I did something different. Before, I had tried to infuse it directly into my core. This time, I instead split off a sliver of mana and brought it outside of my body, then I infused it.

For a second, I thought I had it. My ball of mana had changed color. Where before it was a light blue, it had become metallic silver, not unlike mercury. Alas, it was not meant to be. The orb's surface roiled, bulges of metallic mana extending in every direction. I struggled to hold on, to maintain control, but I wasn’t infallible. The magic slipped out of my control and burst in a cacophonous bang.

I hastily covered my eyes and just barely made it. I felt it hit my arms, my chest, and my pelvis, just barely missing my crotch. I cautiously lowered my arms and called out to Patrick, “You alright?”

“Yeah, I was far away enough. Are you? You were right next to it.” He replied, concerned from his spot ten feet away. It seemed that he backed away while I was experimenting.

“It hurt a bit, but it wasn’t that bad,” I said as my wounds glowed with healing green light. It may not have hurt that much, but I wasn’t a fan of any pain, regardless of intensity. “I’m gonna try again.”

He nodded to give me the go-ahead. That was all I needed to dive back into it.

That being said, I knew not to repeat my steps and back and hope that I would eventually have enough control after repeated attempts. Unlike controlling my mana to form a magic missile, this didn't stay at the same difficulty. As time passed, it got harder and harder to control. I was doing something wrong.

As everyone who graduated from elementary school knows, you can only change one thing at a time when experimenting. So I began from the beginning, starting with taking the magic out of my core before creating the affinity. It failed. Violently. Next, I tried introducing the affinity to the mana slowly. It lasted longer, but it failed as well.

The problem was with the mixing itself, not the location!

With renewed vigor, I resumed experimenting. I tried spiraling them together in a whirlpool, I tried mixing them in a third pool evenly, and I tried introducing the mana to the affinity rather than the affinity to the mana. All failures.

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I was pretty frustrated by this point. While I am usually good at dealing with failures, usually I wasn't pelted every time I fail. I decided to take a break; my control was suffering.

“Hey Patrick, I think I need some help,” I said, but I just wanted someone to bounce ideas off of.

“Sure, what exactly are you trying to do?” He replied looking direc - was he staring at me?

“Aspecting mana?” I could have sworn I told him this already.

“Yeah, but what part of it?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s the last step. I need to mix the affinity with my mana, but whenever I do that, it explodes.”

“Have you tried giving the mana itself an affinity instead of mixing it with an affinity?” I blinked. I had, in fact, not done that. I had overlooked it as too obvious, which in hindsight was stupid. Magic isn’t a puzzle, as much as it sometimes feels like one.

“No, I haven't. I'll try it now. Thank you.” He gave me a lazy salute and went back to his phone.

I drew mana out of my core and expelled it. Then, I focused on the mana itself, of it becoming stronger, harder, and more durable. I felt something snap into place, and my mana took on a metallic sheen. I waited. It wasn’t getting harder to control. It worked!

You have earned the skill mana aspecting.

I beamed at the notification and walked over to the sphere. I poked it. It was rock solid. No, it was harder.

“Patrick, you’re a genius! It worked! I got a skill and everything!” I exclaimed excitedly.

“Of course I am. I got mana sensing from trying to follow what you were doing.” He delivered casually as if he was trying to make it seem insignificant.

My eyes widened in shock, “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy crap. Anyway, do you want me to teach you aspecting?”

“Of course I would,” he looked at me as if I was asking the obvious, which to be fair, I probably was.

“Right, so what you want to do first is draw magic out of your core, and push it out of your body. As you might have noticed, I was causing a fair amount of explosions. You don’t want that going off inside of you.” I waited for him to nod and then continued. “Then you want to imagine your mana becoming the concept you're going for. I went for hardness, so I imagined the strength of steel, the hardness of diamond, and the tensile strength of hair.”

He burst out laughing and lost control of his sphere. “Don’t laugh,” I whined, “hair is durable!”

“It’s just,” he wheezed, “why hair? There are so many other things!”

“It worked,” I muttered under my breath.

“What‘s that?” He asked in a teasing tone.

“Nothing,” I said, “do you want to learn or not?”

“I do, I do,” he rushed to appease me.

“Okay then, remake your sphere.” Once he did I continued. “Imagine the concept you are going for. Get as detailed as you can, but don't use solid numbers. How hard does it feel? What heavy things can it hold?” As I spoke I closed my eyes and tried to sense Patrick’s mana. I could sense my own just fine, but his was another story. When I focused I could just barely make out a wisp, so faint I was almost convinced it was my imagination.

All of a sudden, it flared to life, gaining both clarity and brightness. It was accompanied by both Patrick's shout, “I did it!” And a system message.

You have earned the skill mana sense

But I paid them no mind. The closest thing I could compare gaining a mana sense to was the first time I wore glasses. I came in convinced that they wouldn’t be useful, but once I put them on, it was like I was in a new world. It was like that, except it wasn’t merely enhancing a sense that I already had; it was an entirely new one.