John got out of the capsule and the fatigue from working his body to the limit finally hit him. He then quickly took a shower, and went to sleep right afterward. When he woke up the next morning he washed up, then went to the kitchen and made himself breakfast. It was a simple meal with toast, eggs, and two sausages. When he finished his meal and washed his dishes, he began preparing to log back into Fantasy Road. He then proceeds to enter his capsule, and pressed the start button.
Spiral stood up and looked out his window and saw that the sun was already up, so he quickly took his book and went towards Magnus's room. Spiral knocked the door a few times, and after standing there about a minute he tried using the Index skill to see if Magnus was actually in his room. When he did find was that Magnus was currently not inside his room, nor was he in the library.
Spiral went back to his room and put his book away and took off his researcher gear, and then proceeded to wear back his starting gear. The reason why he did this was because he didn't want to stand out, and because he didn't want to accidentally lose his gear with what he was about to do. After Spiral finished changing and put away his researcher gear in his room he left towards the fields outside.
Spiral knew how to get back to the square where he started, and from there he proceeded to ask random strangers where to go to get outside the city walls. Eventually after asking one resident and one adventurer he reached outside the city walls.
When Spiral looked outside the walls he saw adventurers trying to kill what seemed to be rabbits with horns. He looked around for any mages, since he had yet to see how others casted spells. Eventually after wandering around the area he saw a group of adventurers with decent gear fighting what seemed to be a fox. There was one person that stood out with the signature wizard robe, and he saw that he used what he considered to be thunderbolt.
Spiral followed the group and noticed that the man sometimes said the spell and sometimes just casted the spell without saying anything. Since Spiral didn't want to be seen as a suspicious individual to the group that was looking his way a few times, he walked away as any spectator would once he noticed he wasn't welcomed.
Spiral went back toward the field of rabbits, and began trying to cast a fireball at the ground. He first attempted to use the spell by saying the name out loud.
“Fireball” (Spiral)
The moment he said the spell's name out loud his mana analysis instinctively took over, and he knew that something inside of him was gathering on the outside of his left hand. He could see some sort of symbol that was located where his mana was gathering, but couldn't make it out. He assumed that the reason he couldn't see what seemed to be a rune clearly was due to his level in mana analysis, since it was the skill that allowed him to see whatever it was.
The moment the rune brightened he felt as if he could fire whatever was there, as if he had notched an arrow on a bow. He aimed his left land at ground further away and tried to fire it by releasing whatever it was that he felt was notched. The moment he released it he saw a fireball lobed its way towards where he aimed his left hand. It wasn't the most fastest fireball if anything it was quite slow, and as it hit the ground it created a boom sound and the spot where the fireball landed was scorched.
Spiral then tried to cast the fireball by trying to emulate what he felt when he said the spell aloud. He stood there for about 10 minutes trying to emulate what he felt originally when he casted the spell, but nothing happened. Spiral didn't think it mattered that he couldn't cast the spell currently without saying it out loud at the moment, since it was probably something he would get to eventually. If his guess was right, the mage he saw casting thunderbolt without chanting was able to do so, due to something close to muscle memory.
Spiral didn't think that casting a spell with muscle memory was bad, but he expected that it was also possible to invoke the rune he saw that was absorbing his mana to cast the spell as well.
Either way it didn't matter to him currently since both were just his hypotheses.
He then casted fireball again, but this time when he felt the spell was notched he began to pull an invisible string with his mind as hard as possible. A problem occurred when he could no longer handle the mental strain and the fireball flew outside his left palm towards whatever it was pointed to at the distance, which was luckily a tree since he was scared he might have killed someone on accident. The fireball flew at the tree as if was an arrow fired at max speed, and the moment of impact a loud boom sound could be heard and a large hole in the trunk was created with bark flying due to the blast.
Spiral could tell that the second fireball was definitely stronger then the first one, and from what he could measure from his mana bar their mana cost was basically the same. He then tired something different, since it didn't make sense to rapidly fire fireballs at an enemy using either the lobbing fireball due to it's terrible speed or the maximum drawn fireball due to the strain and time it took.
Spiral then imagined that a gun was loaded instead of a arrow being notched when he casted the fireball skill again. He then proceeded to pull the trigger, and this time the fireball didn't move as fast as the second try but a lot faster then the first try. It moved as fast as one would expect a fireball would travel, which was probably the feeling most mages used to cast their spells.
Now that Spiral knew how to fire a fireball, he went trigger happy firing at the tree in the background. After about 20 more fireballs at the tree which felt great using the gun as the method of choice, he noticed that it took at minimum 3 seconds for him to fully charge a fireball. The tree that took the fireballs after the 20thshot basically fell over towards the plains due to the damage the trunk took from the constant barrage. Since he shot the trunk the tree didn't actually catch fire from the barrage, but it was actually very hard to start a forest fire due to the nature of Fantasy Road. The gods of nature that existed in Fantasy Road prevented forest fires, since they didn't want their forest burnt down.
Spiral's mana pool was at around 10% when he stopped firing, and it would take him about half an hour to recharge his mana pool. Spiral looked at his mana and knew it was still enough to start his real objective, which was to test out the passive of mana analysis.
Spiral began by casting and loading the fireball skill, and from there he began to try and force more mana into the rune that was located near his left palm. He pointed at another tree in the background, but as he forced more mana into his palm without restraint and due to his lack of practice he wasn't able to limit the amount of mana his body was sending to his left hand. It was as if his mana pool short circuited and all his mana went straight into the symbol, and then a huge explosion could be heard a mile away.
Beginners were confused when the large explosion could be heard, since they thought that there shouldn't a high level adventurer anywhere near the beginning field that could make such a sound. Though some went to check the area where the sound came from, all they could find was a tree that was some reason cut down, and a scorched area in the middle of the field.
Spiral was of course dead, and nothing was dropped since he had nothing on him but his rye bread and water container. Spiral didn't actually know how much damage he took from the explosion, but it had to have been more then 215 damage which was all his life without his researcher gear.
John stepped out of his capsule, and thought to himself that what happened doesn't add up. He didn't think 3 ½ fireball worth of mana did the amount of damage it did to him. The only assumption he could think of was that he literally short circuited the system that produced the fireball, and with the system shorting it released a huge explosion that was basically a different skill in it's own right. This explosion he predicted was probably enough damage to probably kill him many times over, and he expected that he would probably never live through this unless he had almost no excess mana. He found out first hand why the few reports on mana overloading explained it to be very dangerous, and why they recommended a great amount of supervision over the caster if they wanted him to survive.
John now had to wait a full day in real life before he could log back into the game, and he would have lost a level but since he was level 1 he couldn't actually go lower. The game didn't actually penalize skill progression, since they didn't want players to actually have to regrind them if some reason they died so many times and went back to level 1. John was now thinking what he should do once he got back into the game, since he needed a clear plan on how to tackle mana overloading.
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John knew that when trying to overload a spell he instinctively sent mana to the blurry symbol that was in front of his left hand. He also knew that the system that was used to generate the fireball skill couldn't take 3 ½ it's mana cost. It also mattered that he currently didn't have enough control over his mana to attempt to limit how much mana was actually sent to the unknown symbol.
He thought awhile and then came up with a few possible plans of action he could take to try and improve his situation. First he could in reality just use up enough mana to reach his desired mana count and a few deaths to find out the upper limit of the system. He pondered the thought of the suicides required for a skill that would be probably worthless in any actual combat situation. He could do it for the sake of research, but his time was probably worth spent elsewhere.
Second he could try and figure out what the blurry symbol representing the system was. He suspected it was a sigil, since symbols representing magic were essentially sigils. He could do this by leveling up the mana analysis skill, and his only clue was mana overloading which required him to blow himself up an absurd amont of times. This was clearly not a realistic option since every death was very time consuming and his first option would clearly be better then this.
He had another possible route which was to study magic symbols in Fantasy Road, which would probably take a huge amount of time, but would require no deaths till he had enough knowledge on the subject to start new experiments. This was a far better option then the two other ends were he would continuously blow up for the sake of research. He also had a third option which was to abandon mana overloading and just research more into other subjects he required to start what he wanted to do in Fantasy Road.
He ponders his options and knew that the studying of sigils would be a subject he would eventually have to research into anyways to accomplish his original goal. With his new destination set and mind now set on the new horizons of sigil mastery, he did some exercises, checked his e-mails, and ate his meals and slept then logged back into the game the next day.
Spiral woke up and saw the fountain he first saw when he arrived in Fantasy Road. He began to examine his clothes, which were pretty much beyond repair and looked like the remains of some rag, if anything it made no sense how his starting equipment still held at all after that explosion. He then spoke out the command to view his equipment screen.
“Equipment” (Spiral)
[quart=Defense:,Durability:]0, 1/1[/quart][quart=Quality:,Type:]Asbismal,Chest[/quart]
Ruined Shirt
A terribly destroyed shirt.
[quart=Defense:,Durability:]0, 1/1[/quart][quart=Quality:,Type:]Asbismal,Legs[/quart]
Ruined Pants
A terribly destroyed pair of pants.
[quart=Defense:,Durability:]0, 1/1[/quart][quart=Quality:,Type:]Asbismal,Feet[/quart]
Ruined Shoes
A terribly destroyed pair of shoes.
Spiral was pretty much standing in the middle of the spawn location looking like a idiot, from the view of others around him. Spiral noticed that everyone was steering clear of him due to the way he was dressing. Spiral though to himself that it's not like he wanted to look like this, and was scared his 1 durability pants or shoes would destroy themselves before he had a chance to find something decent to wear. Spiral hurried his way towards the library trying to draw as little attention as possible.
As Spiral hurried his way back to the library he was scared some guard would stop him and make his terrible experience more terrible. Though it didn't happen but his attempts at drawing as little attention as possible wasn't very successful. When he entered the library everyone was steering at him, and all the players that saw him expected him to get escorted out due to how he was dressed. Instead the players all just watched him walk into the restricted areas of the library, which made everyone that saw him very confused.
Spiral quickly went to his room to get changed, and as he finishes changing he heard a knock on his door. Spiral then opens the door expecting his guest to be who he thought it was. It was obviously Magnus who else could be on this floor except for him, as only Spiral and Magnus lived on this floor in the first place. As the door opens he greets Magnus with a smile.
“Good evening Magnus” (Spiral)
“Good evening Spiral” (Magnus)
“What bring you to me this hour?” (Spiral)
“I was informed that you have returned, and that you might have fallen upon some misfortune...” (Magnus)
“You mean that... come in and I'll explain what happened...” (Spiral)
Magnus walks into the room and then sits on one of the chairs next to the table. Spiral begins to telling his tale of what happened after he finished writing his book to how he killed himself by mana overloading a fireball skill, to how he finally reached back to this room. Magnus was listening carefully to the young researcher he had given the class to, and was quite amused at what had just happened to him.
“That was quite a tale Spiral” (Magnus Smiles)
“Indeed it was Magnus” (Laughs Spiral)
“Right, Magnus do you want to read my completed book?” (Spiral)
“Hm, it sound interesting and I have the time sure” (Magnus)
“Could you store it somewhere after reading, so that no one can normally read it?” (Spiral)
“Sure, how secret are you talking about though? Fobidden teir? Sealed teir? Or just Highest Access teir?” (Magnus)
“I'm not sure... can decide that for me?” (Spiral)
“Alright” (Magnus)
“Thanks” (Spiral Smiles)
“No Problem” (Magnus Smiles)
Magnus gets up and starts to head towards the door, as Spiral watches him leave saying “thanks for coming”. Magnus replies laughing with “have a good day Spiral” as he exits the room. Now that Spiral had given Magnus the book which he was going to attempt again to deliver after changing clothes out of the way, he had nothing else on his to do list except MORE RESEARCH except this time it was going to be on magical symbols whatever they maybe called in Fantasy Road.