Sunlight slowly crept upon Finn's face until it reached his eyes, waking him from his sleep. With a groan and a sigh, Finn stretched his arms out, squinting his eyes in the sunlight. His vision was blurry, and he rubbed his eyes to try and get the morning gunk out of them. Holding his hand up to block the sunlight, he could see better now, but there was something else in the corner of his eyes, at the bottom right. It was oddly colourful as well.
With a sigh, Finn sat upright on the edge of his bed, hunched over, so the light missed his face. He rubbed his eyes again and looked at the floor of his room. He could still vaguely see something in the lower right corner of his vision. When he tried to focus on it, he failed; it simply followed along with his vision. Was it stuck to his eye? Finn got annoyed as he tried to focus on it, rubbing his eyes again. It seemed never to come out and to always move out of the way. When Finn was about to give up and accept it out of frustration, he suddenly could focus on it and get a sharp image. To his surprise, it was not a muddy spot as he expected. Instead, it was three clear symbols—a plus icon in between two carets. The icons were made up out of thin, white lines. Behind the icons sat a light green circle that pulsated in size, growing bigger and smaller. Growing as big as to encompass the icons barely and then growing so small it was barely visible behind the plus.
As Finn was wondering what the hell was going on, the monotone dance of the icons suddenly changed. The carets closed in on the plus, and then all three of them started to twist around quickly. The colourful circle first grew slowly smaller. Then suddenly expanded rapidly while fading to a transparent hue and then disappearing altogether. The carets vanished as well, while the plus grew larger and transparent first before vanishing. From where the icons sat, two lines started to trace his vision. One moving along the lower plane, the other up on the right side of his vision. They arched around his vision like that, creating a square form before dimming to a barely visible blue hue. In the middle of the newly formed square, another one popped up, this time with a dark blue border and a light blue background, almost white. On top of that, text appeared as well, in plain English.
Welcome new Player!
Congratulations on activating your Player status with the system. This took you about 95% less time than the average person. Now that you have been activated, you can access your personal suite at any time by focusing on the suite icon at the lower right corner of your vision. In time you will learn to summon the suite by thought alone, as well as the various other features it offers. Pay attention for a moment to the thin bar at the top left of your vision right now; this bar represents your experience progress. Filling the bar will reset it and gain you one or more talent points. Focussing on it will open a detailed info tab. If you require extra guidance, do not hesitate to use the system wiki and almanac, which can be accessed through this suite. Please enjoy the suite, and do not forget to invest your accumulated talent points!
Your yearly talent point allowance has now been cancelled. Further talent points need to be earned through experience point gain.
Finn read the message a few times, rubbing his eyes more. Whatever he did, the text remained. He was sure he was still dreaming. The text box stayed up in the middle of his vision until he noticed the greyed out checkmark at the bottom centre of the text box. Focussing on it made the border slowly fill in with a green colour. Once it made a full circle, the box closed by folding in on itself and then quickly shooting off to the right. Now his vision quickly filled up with a blurry background. At the top, a square box appeared with a picture of Finn inside of it. Next to the box was a number, twenty-three, and then in a smaller font, talent points.
Underneath those sat a row of seven boxes. Each divided up two parts, one with an icon and one with a number. All had a small title above them. Finn read them from left to right.
Strength, Agility, Health, Intelligence, Wisdom, Arcane, Piety.
All of these had the number five next to them, aside from Intelligence, which had a six, Arcane with a zero and Piety, which had a one. It made sense, Finn had always been the clever one among his friends and classmates, and he believed in no God. Focussing on one of the boxes made it larger, adding a third part to them that gave him more information about the so-called talent. The first five were what he expected, but Piety and Arcane were vague. Piety read, 'Belief, and thou shalt receive, the blessings of God'. Arcane simply said, 'The art of the master'. Finn assumed they had to do with magic and faith, but neither were properly explained, especially when he compared it with the strength talent, which explained in detail what aspects it would change if he improved it.
Was it real? Is this real? The questions burned into Finn's mind. Swarmed and overwhelmed him. With a loud groan, he got up, throwing some clothes on and rushing downstairs. He needed to get some air to get his thoughts in order. He stumbled through the hallway and down the stairs as everything was hidden underneath the overlay of text and icons. At the end of the stairs, he figured out how to minimalize the suite back into an icon in the bottom right corner of his vision. His mother was preparing some breakfast and greeted him. He gave her a quick 'good morning, I'm going for a run', and then he was out of the door.
The air was crisp and chilly in the way an early summer morning was. He didn't care for stretching and just immediately set off, running down four streets and then into the woods and fields next to the village he lived in. Finn came here often for a jog and knew the route well. Curious, he opened up the suite again by focussing on the icon. He could still see the real world, albeit barely, but it was enough to be able to do this while running. Finn jogged until he felt exhausted. Then he opened up the talent screen again and added a single point to Health. To his surprise, the exhaustion was suddenly gone. There was no transition, one moment; he was breathing heavy and exhausted. The next, he felt fresh and ready.
His health talent now sat at six points, and the counter next to his name had gone down by one to twenty-two. Finn moved into a sprint, running as fast as he can until exhaustion struck him again. He kept running until his stomach felt twisted, and he could feel his pulse in his head. He managed to put another two points into Health with effort, erasing all of the exhaustion he felt. He stopped running when he got to a clearing in the forest. The trees made way for some rocks and boulders sitting in loose sand. Finn remembered how he tried to lift the rocks with his friends when they were kids. The smallest was already huge, the size of his chest, and probably weighed a few hundred kilos. Even now, he wouldn't be able to lift it. Curious, he spent some points on strength as well, getting it up to eight as well. He walked over to one of the smaller boulders and grabbed it with both hands. Tensed up and then tried to lift it. Finn yelled in surprise when the boulder came up with ease. It felt as if he was picking up one of his cats.
"What the hell!" He screamed as he lifted the boulder up over his head. With near to no effort, he threw it away. It flew several meters further even without putting effort into the throw.
Finn sat down on one of the big rocks, folding his legs beneath him. It was clear that the system was real and that the skills worked. He had eighteen points left and seven talents to spend them on. He had to figure out now what talents he wanted to boost. His initial thought was to boost Health, Strenght and Intelligence. But he would need to 'earn' more points by gaining experience. And he had no idea what talents were the most useful for that. Or even how he could earn experience. He looked at his experience bar again and noticed it had filled up the tiniest of amounts. Was it from his jog? If it was, that meant he could earn experience through training. Although the amount earned was hardly worth the effort by the looks of it. He sat on top of the boulder contemplating his next move for over an hour before finally getting frustrated enough to yell out again.
"Fuck it," He said and pulled up the five first talents to eight points. He pushed Health up to ten points, having always been frailer than others, and then looked at the last two skills. Piety and Arcane. He had eight more points, and he could divide them up between the two. But he had never cared much for gods or religion. Finn quickly decided to put the remaining points in Arcana and then confirmed his selections by focussing. As soon as he did, several things happened at once.
First, a new bar appeared under his experience bar. This one was blue and had the text mana next to it. Then, three pop up boxes appeared with text in them. The first box read:
Information about the arcane arts is now added to the wiki!
Right, the wiki. Finn cursed at himself. He should have checked the wiki before spending all of his talent points. Annoyed with himself, he started to read the next box.
Arcane apprentice rank obtained. Your talent tree has developed new Arcene talents! You unlocked your first arcane talent! Basic elemental surge, please pick your element.
Underneath the box stood four more squares, each with an image in them. They clearly represented water, fire, earth and air—the classical elements. Finn chose fire; he had always felt an affinity with it. Playing with candles and campfires since he was little.
As soon as he chose, the other squares disappeared, and the fire square transformed into a small icon and moved next to the plus icon that he used to open up the suite each time. Finally, the lost pop-up box was shown.
You have set your first steps into the Arcane arts and have earned your very first spell! With this, you have earned yourself the first level into Arcane Grammerie and mind attunement. Both are talents that are essential to the arcane arts. Study and train both to improve your mastery of the arcane arts. As with all talents, using them will also increase their level!
Finn frowned as the box vanished from view, thinking about what it had said. Then it hit him. 'As with all talents, using them will also increase their level!' it had said! Did that mean that all of his talents would have a level that can be increased, aside from the experience bar he had? He quickly opened the suite again and navigated to his talent screen. Immediately he saw that there were two new squares now. One for Arcane Grammerie and one for Mind Attunement. They both branched out from the Arcane talent square, with thin lines connecting them to it. Focussing on any talent showed him a small experience bar. Most of them sat at 0%, but for Strenght, Agility and Health, he had 1.2%, 0.8% and 3.5%, respectively.
"Odd," Finn rubbed his chin as he pondered. His talents had developed at varying rates. He assumed endurance fell under Health since that had gone up the most. Strength experience clearly came from rock lifting and throwing, and Agility probably came from both exercises. It bothered him that neither Intelligence nor Wisdom had gone up. True, college had ended, but Finn liked to think he used his brain whenever he could. And he certainly had done quite a lot of thinking the last few hours. He would have to look into what made those two talents progress later.
First, he opened up the new screen that had appeared next to the plus icon. A large box opened up with a single icon in it. The title was 'Basic elemental surge'. The larger box was probably a list of skills; when Finn focussed on the single skill inside it, a new screen opened up. It described the effect of the spell, the elemental affinity and the cost of mana. There was also some more text describing the spell. And finally, a button that read 'Show Grammerie'. Intrigued, Finn focussed on the button.
A new screen popped up, showing a large image. First, it baffled Finn. Then he realized he was looking at a bunch of symbols and glyphs strung together in a pattern. He first assumed it to be a random mess; he soon started to recognize a general pattern. Ideas, theories and abstract understandings started to pop up in his head suddenly. They came hard and fast, and the experience was overwhelming. Was this because of his Arcane Grammerie talent, he wondered. The flow of ideas came to a stop, and Finn gasped when he suddenly realised that he could read the mess of glyphs and icons now. He could discern the parts it was built out of, how the various glyphs worked together to form parts and components. He realized there was structure and logic to the spell and that if he understood enough of it, he could make his own spells. Was that how the system worked? Or could he possibly cheat this way? He'd need more understanding about the glyphs and how they interacted with each other first, though.
He got up, stretching and inhaling deep. His head was bouncing with all the new ideas and knowledge. It felt suffocating. Almost too much. Finn got off the rock and noticed with how much more ease he could move around now. The talent points were amazing. He had to test now if the Arcane talent was just as real and amazing. He focussed on the skill button again and selected the spell. He looked around but found no 'trigger' or 'fire' button. He found no way to use the spell. As he got frustrated, he suddenly realised that his hands were covered in a strange fog now. It slowly curled around his hands in wisps, changing its colour through a kaleidoscope of pastels. He held his hands up and studied them. The moment he looked at his mist-cloaked hands and focussed on them, Finn knew how to use the spell. The knowledge came to him as it had before.
First, he charged the spell by imbuing it with his mana. As soon as he did this, his mana bar depleted somewhat, and the fog turned into brighter colours, turned and swirled more erratic. More energetic. When he moved his hands closer to his face, he could feel the energy inside of them, emanating in a sort of warm, buzzing hum. He could feel when he had supplied the spell with enough mana. He looked around and saw a tree stump. It looked old, half-rotten. He aimed at it with both his palms; he knew to use both since he had sent mana into both hands. Finally, he triggered the spell. With a thought, the magic started working. The fog lighted up as if it was a small thunder cloud with lightning roaring deep inside it. Then it went up in a flash as if a spark found a small cloud of flammable gas. It was replaced by small bursts of flames shooting forth from his palms, racing towards the tree stump. The flames sputtered and lashed at the old, rotten wood. And as soon as they appeared, they vanished as well. The whole thing barely took up two seconds. The stump was burned to a crisp now. Half of it turned into charcoal, with some cinders still smouldering.
"Fuck!" Finn yelled and quickly ran over to the stump, kicking some loose sand over it and putting out the last cinders. A thin swirl of smoke came from the stump. Finn watched it as he felt his heart beating in his throat.
This was it. This was real magic. Real, fucking, magic.
Finn couldn't help but giggle like a small child on Christmas eve. Looking at his hands, toying with the spell. Summoning the fog, letting go of it again, then summoning it again and charging it before letting go of it again. he noticed that summoning the fog took up a tiny bit of mana while charging it took up the full cost. Letting go of it never gave back the mana he supplied the spell with. He was eager to learn more; this was by far the most interesting thing that had ever come into his life. It took him half an hour to get comfortable with the spell casting mechanism. Comfortable enough to know the basics of use at least. He now knew that if he let go of a spell before charging, he would get the small amount of mana back, but he would lose all mana invested in the spell after charging. Additionally, and he found this out the hard way, charging and discharging a spell a lot will charge the air around him, making it prone to either flash ignition or static electrocution. Nothing that could really harm him, but it did very well sting.
He spent the next half hour casting the spell. First at the log, but when he got tired of kicking out the embers each time, he dug a hole and fired into that. He kept going until his mana bar was fully depleted. Checking back on his skill, he saw that it had only increased by a mere 1.2%. His Arcane talent experience went up by the same amount. It was nowhere near what he had hoped to see, but Finn refused to let himself get down by this. Leaving the magic aside, he set out on testing his physical skills. He tried various things; running, punching trees, lifting rocks and boulders. He found that his body had become more durable and resilient as well as much stronger. But nowhere near superhuman abilities. He got frustrated and annoyed at first but then reminded himself that he basically got the strength of a professional athlete overnight by spending some points.
Somewhat content, he sat down again and noticed that some of his mana had replenished during his testing. The bar was about 10% filled up again. It wasn't much, but it was a relief to be sure it would refill on its own. Finn opened up the talent screen again and clicked on the Mind Attunement talent. He realised he was getting used to thinking in game terms about all of this and noticed that he got faster in navigating his personal suite. He focussed on the Mind Attunement talent to summon the infobox.
Mind Attunement is the talent that governs ones control over mana. A higher mastery of the skill allows one to better source and manipulate mana. It will also provide the user with a deeper understanding of mana and the arcane.
It was a somewhat mystical explanation, but if he understood it correctly, Finn assumed that getting better in this skill would act as a buff or boost for most magical things he could do. And so far, he really loved the magical side of things. He noticed a small icon of a person seemingly sweating in a lotus pose and clicked it.
Training
Training this talent can be done through meditating and applying any of the arcane cultivation techniques. You currently have access to these techniques: Ant of the stream.
Ant of the stream? That is a random mane for something like this. Then again, this was magic. Something Finn would have found impossible just a day ago. What did he know about it, and what names would be fitting. The text was a slightly different colour, and when Finn focussed on it, he found that the window changed. Instead of text, it now showed him an image. The image was of swirling water, with at the centre an ant. Even though it was an image, it seemed to move, but at the fringes of your sight, so that you never could really focus on the movement. After trying to focus on the movement for some minutes, suddenly, the whole image lighted up as if just before it had been disabled and greyed out. The colours grew more magnificent and bright. Finn felt as if he almost could taste the colours. A small text box popped up, blurring everything else out. Finn was starting to get used to the background blurring by now.
Ant of the stream cultivation technique learned. You are now an initiate and can start meditating by using this technique.
Finn let the air out slowly between his lips, making a low, frustrated whistle. This whole thing could have been made a bit more thoughtful and helpful. He was already cursing its creators after one day.
Okay, meditation. He could do this. He had done this before, in high school, one of those extracurricular courses. Of course, he had thought it was bullshit back then. And of course, he had used the whole class to just take short naps and joke around with his friends.
He sighed and sat back down on the rock, taking the stereotypical pose. Legs folded over each other and hands resting on his knees. His back straight, even touching his fingers and thumbs together. He started to slow his breathing, using his diaphragm to breathe, just as he had learned back then. At first, nothing really happened, but then he felt as if his consciousness was falling deeper into itself. As if his body, his senses felt further away than normal. Every time he panicked at this, it all jumped back immediately, though, and it took him quite a few times before he could move past the strange sensation. A few minutes passed, but nothing happened really. So he started thinking about the whole thing. As soon as his thoughts moved to the image he had seen, it suddenly appeared in front of his mind.
Here, the image was more vivid. It was not that the colours were more bright or that the image was more clear. It just felt more real, more vivid, more immersive. Finn felt his consciousness being pulled towards the centre of the swirling waters, towards the ant. He felt his mind bend and form as he studied the picture. He started seeing things; patterns, ideas, thoughts, ideologies and maxims, all over the image. In the water, in the ant, in the foam of the small waves. It felt as if he was sucked into a vortex. It seemed like moments had passed in an erratic, torrential stream. But when he pulled himself away from the picture and got up, the sun was already low on the horizon, slowly disappearing. His phone told him it was already ten in the evening.
Moments after leaving his meditation trance Finn was overwhelmed by feelings. Hunger and thirst first. Then his full bladder. And finally, exhaustion. Deep exhaustion, both mental and physical. As if the meditation had kept all those senses at bay so he could focus better. Finn groaned as he started to gather his things, a small backpack. Luckily he had grabbed a water bottle and a field snack, quickly devouring both. It did little to still his hunger, but at least his thirst was quenched for now. He started walking back home, not finding the energy to jog back, and opened up his suite as he walked. He gasped as he saw that his Mind Attunement talent had gone up by fifty-three %. Even though he had spent more time on it, it meant it increased much faster than the other talents and skills. Perhaps he should focus on increasing this talent first; maybe it would make it easier to increase his other magical talents and skills. He also noticed that his mana bar had almost been fully replenished. And both his Health and Wisdom talents had gained experience as well, far less than the Mind Attunement talent. That was his only talent that was anywhere near levelling up.
As he walked home, he started to form a plan, an idea of how to tackle all of this. It helped him ignore his aching body and fatigued mind as he walked home, but Finn was already counting up the days he had left this summer, where he had no class. And trying to maximize his time with training in these skills. The system might have been a great gift, but it would be up to him to make something out of it. So, exhausted, he reached his home, but his spirit was on fire. Eager for a new day so he could explore more of his new life.
