It was difficult to weaponize his Mana Ball. The Mana was there and using it was also intuitive. The problem was actually forcing the energy into moving fast enough and being compressed enough to do some real damage. There was a handful of screens in front of him —all showing the required component circles for what he’d planned for. So far, it could only move with a speed that was equivalent to him actually throwing it. One burnt hand later, Sean learned that his magic was not necessarily harmless to him. It stung.

His best plan was to smother the enemy with the Mana Ball for at least a hundred seconds, provided they were humans —they weren’t, and would probably have HP far beyond his if they were giants. And most importantly, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. What he’d also come to learn was that Theoretical Magic was long-winded. To do anything that was beyond the basics, he would have to spend weeks! Weeks he didn’t have, most likely.

While there was a part of him that wanted to complete it —the grinder within him— there was also another part of him that wanted to get back home early. And despite the seemingly omnipotent capabilities of the System, Sean didn’t think that it would be able to make mere moments pass if he spent weeks in the Calibration. He wanted to get back home, home ‘home’, but to Clara.

So now? He stood outside the house, so as to not break the house, Fillmore right next to him. The old man had a grin on his face as he shook his head, “Kiddo, don’t burn down the village.”

“Thankfully I’m not an Elementalist. I have no promises about not exploding anything, though,” said Sean, half-joking, half-meaning it. Most of the village was there. Fillmore had called in nearly everyone in the tiny village, shouting that he had a mage about to perform a spell. It was probably a good change of pace from a dreary day-to-day life in a village with nothing to do.

There were around 80 of them —more than he expected, but not all that many. There were around 30 houses, if he counted right, which meant that each house had around two to three people in it. Apparently, Fillmore had the largest house in the town. Something about his parents having been Jarls before the giants came.

The world froze, or rather, the more correct term would be ‘the world slowed down’. Everything became grayscale, and the noise first became muffled, and then it faded into nothing. The environment became blurry, but if the blurring effect wasn’t in place, he would be able to see the people moving far slower, their chest moving ever so slightly as they breathed, almost imperceptibly. Alas, he couldn’t even focus on anything other than something analogous to a book without the effect wearing off —it had climbed up to 20% Mastery when he studied his new textbook, which meant the slowing effect had also increased to 20%.

In his mind, there was a simple diagram of: Release + Condensation + Push + Expansion. What it was meant to do was obvious —create a ball, condense it, push it, preferably get it inside something, and then to have it expand. The double circle with a triangle was the first to be imagined, and he easily created that on. After all, he’d made around a dozen Mana Balls before. Condensation, too, but that didn’t give him an extra skill.

The Condensation Circle was more or less an addition to the first one, which was creating a trio of triangles at each point of contact with the outer circle that the large triangle had, which would then connect with a circle in the middle through the bases. The Expansion one was the opposite, with two points on the outer circle and the third one slightly inside the inner circle.

As for the Push Circle, it was a separate one that would have to overlap with the first. It was a square drawn within a circle, which would coincide with the outer circle of the Release Circle. The rectangle was turned 45 degrees sideways so all 4 would-be cardinal direction points of the circle would have the 4 points of the square. And then a line would run between the left and right points, with a somewhat large circle in the middle —at least a bit larger than the one drawn in the Condensation Circle.

Overlapping all 4 would get his desired result.

So he imagined all 4, in succession, with the Push Circle coming last and then released the Mana. He was in front of an audience, and he didn’t have room for failure. The circles came in the same order they were imagined in —except one difference was that the Mana Release Circle came with the two additions to it while the Push Circle came later. And then Sean tapped on the one closest to him.

On cue, the first circle released the Mana Ball as the effects of Research faded. It was small, yes, but it suddenly grew larger, devouring its own circle in the process. It then grew smaller again, and larger, then smaller after that with a one second interval. Before Sean could stop it, the Push Circle touched the Mana Ball and then sent it hurling forward —thankfully toward no one, but it did hit a cart filled with hay when it stopped, scattering the hay in the process, all the while revolving between the size of a ping pong ball and a basketball. Then came a notification.

 

 

Wait… the formula didn’t change, but the amount did?

“Status,” said Sean out loud. It was awkward to say it out loud in public, but he had no choice. And sure enough, his Stats had increased from simply practicing Magic. A grin appeared on his face. This was fun. Screw programming —while it was cool, he doubted it would have much use in a world with a System like this. And he had an alternative! With concrete results that he could see very easily. And this was the simplest spells! A scholar at heart, Sean loved discovering new things by himself, and Magic allowed just that. Programming was the only field that could give him a sense of accomplishment, but Magic? It did that, but better.

 

 

Some of the stats had increased, but as Sean wasn’t really keeping count, he couldn’t put his finger on what upgraded to what aside from Durability, Intelligence and Wisdom. Of the three, he was happiest about Intelligence and Wisdom —that meant his Mana Pool and Mana Regeneration had increased significantly!

With how much the Revolving Mana Ball drained, he could use 11 of them. Technically speaking, Sean could now be able to kill another human —provided they had the same HP as him, with 7 impacts alone. If he considered the revolution damage applying once per person, then that’d be 4 of them! He didn’t know what it’d be like against giants, but possibly, he could spam all his spells and take one down with 11 of them! It’d be an easy grind!

It was eerie, how easily he could kill them now… But then again, he could have killed someone with a knife far more easily, so there was no update on that front. He just had another tool to use for murder, if needed. That made him feel somewhat guilty, but as someone who had never started a fight before, he wasn’t all that worried about abusing it.

With the Mana Regeneration, which was obviously based on Wisdom from the math, Sean could now regenerate his entire mana pool in around 340 minutes, which was around 6 hours. Well… one giant per six hours and two per day? That didn’t seem all that much of a bad deal —not at all.

But first, he had to create a few more Spells —without the revolution, so a regular push variant, a regular condensed variant, and whatnot. Before he could ponder what had gone wrong, Sean was interrupted by Fillmore, “Good job, kiddo. Failed, eh? No one thinks bout that as the completed product until a while later.”

“You know magic?” asked Sean, raising an eyebrow. He seemed to like that one guy who was great at everything —the mentor figure in the tutorial that was actually a high-level NPC. It was a common trend, but he was answered with a tired shake of his head.

“Oh pshaw, I told ye that one comes around in every five years, eh? I’ve seen two do that. Having all those nifty books lets you see a lot of interesting young’uns, wouldn’t you agree?” asked the old man and walked away, waving his hands, “A good hunt to you. The last time someone’s done that, they got rid of one of those nasty bastards for us. An old man can hope, eh?”

“I’ll try,” mumbled Sean under his breath. He didn’t really know what to expect of the giants. He didn’t know how powerful they were, he didn’t know how fast they could kill him, and most importantly, their HP Pool. Sean doubted anyone knew that, as he didn’t necessarily see HP and MP bars over everyone’s heads, which made it far more realistic than a game —it was times like these he was reminded that his reality itself was fantasy. So much for having a ‘mundanely adventurous’ life.

He then looked at the villagers. They all moved as if they were real people, unlike NPCs, and that made him wonder —was he transported into an actual world that had been created from scratch, or was he in some simulation? The latter seemed improbable, but he was staring at a System that let him use Magic. If you said that Dracula was his neighbor, Sean would believe it at this point. That was how ridiculous life had become. Not that he was back home for now, but he wondered what his parents would say when they see him using magic.

“-ster. Mister!” said a voice and Sean finally snapped out of his stupor. Staring off into empty space and fading out of conversations was a bad habit of his. The System only encouraged that. Sean turned toward the voice and noticed that a group of kids had encircled him. Back home, he wouldn’t notice his parents standing right behind him when he was playing a game, and he had the best game right in front of his face all this time, “How did you learn Magic?”

The one that was speaking at the moment was a girl, clearly evident from her brown chestnut hair and feminine face, despite only reaching his waist in height. Seemed like she was around the time she should be in elementary school. The other kids varied in shape and size, but they mostly seemed to be around the age of two and eight. They had stars in their eyes, but the parents shook their heads in the background, some looking down, some away —but what they meant was obvious.

Sean was never one to like interacting with kids, and vice versa, kids didn’t like him all that much. But he tried to be ‘that cool uncle’ for the first time in his life and smiled. He then placed his hand on the head of the girl and ruffled her hair. And he spoke, “I don’t know. I always knew.”

The expression on the girl’s head changed and the smile faded. Many little hearts broken, most likely. The others, too, seemed to get instantly depressed. Children were great like that. They didn’t know the difference between truth and lies —not consciously, at least. They didn’t have even think that they were lied to until they realize it far too late.

“And that’s it, children. Let’s all go and play in the barn, shan’t we?” asked a girl, appearing out of almost nowhere —Sean assumed her to be such, as she seemed to be a high school student at youngest and a university student at oldest. Maybe an older sister figure. As the children were all led away, she momentarily turned her head to look at Sean and nodded his head. And the moment the kids walked away, so did the adults; some shaking their heads, some sighing and some with wry grins on their faces.

But now, he had something more important to do —making more spells. And so, he made his way toward some corner of the city, an unspoken agreement of non-interference established with the villagers after the show. There really was no need to talk with them at the moment. And after he created all the spells he could, using the basic components, he’d be ready to go hopefully finish the task at hand.

He regretted choosing the Giant option now…

If it had been goblins, much of the dilemma he had at the moment would be gone, but then again, if it had been goblins, then would he have run into Fillmore to get access to Spellbooks? He supposed it was a feature in all the Stages, otherwise, it’d be unfair. But still, he couldn’t really be sure of anything much at the moment. And he knew his death could possibly be painless if he just fell down. Probably the air would kill him before the impact, but he couldn’t be sure. All he knew were stories.

“Well… can’t complain about my own life choices,” said Sean to himself and looked at the landscape. He wouldn’t mind having a house here. It looked like a fantasy world, but the fact that it actually was a fantasy world didn’t help the charm all that much. In fact, it had an adverse effect —it made him think ‘It’s obvious since this is a fantasy world’, taking it for granted already. How terrifying how someone’s perception of ‘normal’ influenced what they thought of as beautiful.

 

***

 

 

 

Sean looked at the skills with pride. The Revolving Mana Ball seemed to be an overall D-Rank concept, and the ones without a revolving size were F-Rank. After thinking for a few minutes, he figured out why exactly it failed —the concept he thought of was far more complex than he assumed. There would have to be a time component, which by itself was simple to add, but adding a time sigil would make the complexity far more difficult, and in extension, difficult to imagine and had a higher rate of yielding. At the very least, mastering the Mana Ball was essential.

But what was more interesting was a notification he got, and with it, a title.

 

 

While the Mana Cost decrease was not active, the stat increase was. So titles were one way to gain Stats, that much was for sure. The fact that the Title was not added for now meant that it would be added later? Seemed so. At least he wouldn’t have to fight some sort of serpent with a deadly poison. Being crushed to death would have to be a painful experience, but not as painful as poison or acid, he wagered.

He may have looked a tad bit too lonely sitting on a boulder at the edge of the village. The houses were a fair distance away from him, and he was near the well which was around fifty meters from the outermost house. He remembered that he hadn’t had anything to drink, so he’d emptied his metal water bottle and refilled it with the water from the well —it was the classic kind, with a bucket that extended toward the bottom.

“You alright over there?” asked a voice —a female one. He had an inkling as to who it was, but he had to turn to look just to be sure. No one really memorized a voice from a single meeting, especially if they weren’t quirky or special. It was the girl from the village. She walked over to him and took a seat next to him on the boulder. It was large enough to freely fit the two of them without touching each other. There was a bucket in her hand, and it was obvious why she was there.

Now that Sean looked at her, she seemed somewhat pretty. Well, most girls who weren’t obese would pass as ‘attractive’ to him, so that made sense. She was the only ‘girl’ he’d seen in the village, and that may be one of the reasons. Boys, sure, but not really girls. And he had a thing for brunettes and blue eyes; albeit the girl had golden yellow ones —just as rare, but it didn’t push the right buttons. That, and she didn’t have skin as pale as snow.

Her fashion made her seem like she was straight out of a fantasy novel, which… well, she was, wearing a dirty white tunic and what seemed to be an orange skirt that reached her ankles for her lower body. A red handkerchief had been tied across her head, keeping her hair from falling into her face, and her hair was tied into a tidy ponytail behind her head.

“More or less. Just wondering about how a boring guy like me can take a giant down. Any suggestions?” asked Sean, with a momentary wry smile, but the frown on his face couldn’t be hidden. Magic was fun, but that distraction could only hold his mind for short intervals. It always lapsed into him thinking of what would happen.

“You’re a weird man. Most Outlanders take a few days before they adapt,” said the girl, tilting her head slightly as she did so. She stared at him in the eyes, and Sean did the only thing he knew in such a situation —he stared back, “You don’t have to do it, you know? Fillmore should have given you the dagger.”

“No, I’m fine,” said Sean and breathed a sigh of relief. Every child had a dream of grandiose adventures, but only after they became adults did they realize that they’d have to kill to accomplish what heroes did. Many weren’t ready, and Sean wasn’t. He’d so casually drifted toward the ‘how’ that he’d forgotten to think about ‘could he’. Not physically or magically, but morally, “Thanks for caring, though.”

Sean pulled his eyes away from him, thinking about Clara —she was the ‘perfection’ that he sought. If he had ten boxes to check to deem someone perfect, Clara made another ninety and checked all hundred with a big bright ‘okay’ sign. He was loyal and had no intention to let others get in the way of his romance. And he easily got attached, so the only way he could do it was to not get attached at all, meaning not to interact too much in the first place.

“No, you aren’t,” said the girl and cupped his face by placing both her hands on his cheeks, and pulled his face to force him to look at her. Sean didn’t resist. He wasn’t good at saying no, and that applied to approaches, “You don’t even know what they look like. They’re monsters. You… you don’t look like you’re used to fighting, manling. Many who could strangle you with one finger. The Jarl’s men who lived for the battle were helpless against them, and they could lift boulders with one hand.”

“Hey, I mightn’t look like it, but I’ve never lost a fight,” said Sean, and finally worked up the courage to peel her hands off, except… he couldn’t. It felt like they were practically latched on to him and he was trying to push against a wall. So he threw away his shame and tried to use two hands for one hand, and finally managed to peel it off. The girl, meanwhile, stared at him with a mocking smirk. But when he finally managed to pull the hand off his face, she casually grabbed his hem and threw him to the ground.

“You were saying?” she asked, far too mockingly for his liking. Right… life on the farm built muscles.

“I’m a mage anyways,” said Sean as he picked himself up, and dusted his jeans and back. Then he stopped and stared at his palm. Where had that injury gone to? And then he hopped up and down. Everything seemed to be in the right place. So did that mean his HP healing to its full amount healed injuries? Would it heal broken limbs? He didn’t know, but he hoped it did.

“As I was saying,” continued the girl, quite loudly, noticing his inattentiveness. Sean snapped back to reality and nodded, “If I can manhandle you this easily, you have no chance, none at all. I’d say even Joshua can take you down with those thin legs of yours,” she said and walked over to the well, doing what she had come here to do, “So the dagger. That’s your best choice, trust me. They won’t kill you painlessly. They’ll make you suffer as they did with all the Insurgents and the ones before you.”

“Does anyone here know how to fight? I’d like to learn,” asked Sean, finally starting to regret not taking lessons. The girl then turned to look at him, now a somewhat entertained expression on her face —one side of her lips slightly curved up. Or maybe annoyance?

“The ones that did died. Fillmore’s your best bet. He can at least use a hammer well. I assume pounding giant swords all his life would help in smashing someone’s face,” she said, shaking her heads slightly to make it more apparent, “Otherwise the most you’ll see is Joshua flinging his pitchfork like a moron, trying to fend off wolves —which he calls a fighting style. He’s seven.”

“I see,” said Sean and he took a seat on the boulder. Then he pulled the backpack he’d placed on the ground up on his knees and pulled out a Snickers bar. Then he gestured toward her. She walked up to him suspiciously and grabbed it, stared at it for a while, and looked back at him, “You tear the paper open.”

“It’s… how is it fully closed?” she asked, but as Sean opened his mouth, she held up her hand and shook her head, “Wait, don’t tell me. Outlander shenanigans, yes, I know. I thought out loud.”

He smiled for a second and looked at her tear open the paper and bite into it. Her eyes widened when she tasted it and nodded her head. The bite was small, and Sean noticed her wrap it back up with the torn paper. And she savored the taste for a bit, closing her eyes. After a good minute, she then turned back to Sean, “That’s better than berries.”

“It is. No one likes fruits back in my world thanks to them,” said Sean and let out a sigh. Right, his world. Were his parents alright? His mother most likely already had died in the Calibration and would have gotten back, and would most likely have started to worry about why Sean and her husband were taking so long —while they were very different, there was one trait that both shared. It was their love for adventure and stubbornness. And being far more able-bodied than Sean, his dad was most likely succeeding in the Goblin Stage. At least he thought so. Then he added, “At least not the kids. They get addicted to sweets.”

“So you’re still going to try,” said the girl after a few seconds, almost knowing what his intentions were. Indeed, Sean would. This was perhaps the only chance he could actually fight without the fear of death. After this? Then every turn would have the risk of death. America was scary with guns, but when there were people who could hit hard enough to punch through someone, it’d be far more dangerous, “You’re stubborn.”

“What’s your name?” asked Sean, almost out of nowhere. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about important matters to someone whose name he didn’t even know.

“Ashley. Sis, if you want to push it. Even the grown-ups call me that. It may as well be a name at this point,” she said after putting the Snickers bar on the ground. She made sure to fully cover it, and that, Sean could appreciate it. There were no pockets in medieval clothes, which she wore.

Sean chuckled. She had the same vibe as Clara.

“So then, sister,” Sean started mockingly, with emphasis on the word sister, “I honestly… don’t know. I don’t want to fight and I certainly don’t want to kill, but my world has undergone a major change. Tell me, sister, you were born in the village after the giants had already taken over this place, no? Old Man Fillmore makes it seem like they’ve been here for ages.”

“A hundred and eight years,” added Ashley, “But yes.”

“So that means you’re… if you’ll excuse me, used to this. With monsters that could easily squash you forcing you to send them tithes and whatnot. My world wasn’t like that. It was peaceful, and no one had to fight. Well, for the most part. You had to be worried about some bossy kid picking a fight with you at most. But now, metaphorically speaking, the giants are coming. Everyone will probably grab whatever weapon they can find, and then they’ll start being irresponsible with it. I don’t trust them with my life, so I have to learn to protect myself. If I have to kill those giants to be able to live my life without being oppressed or killed off like some fodder, I’ll do it,” said Sean, and thinking about it made him miss the old world. He realized his selfishness for liking it —now so many innocents would be in danger due to the fickle nature of humans. They couldn’t be trusted with power.

“And you know that killing myself here won’t truly kill me. This is the best chance I got. I’ll try my best, and if I succeed, so be it. If I don’t, so be it. But I want to prove to myself that I can do it. That I’m not some cattle waiting to be rounded up by a wolf,” he said and pulled the dagger out from the backpack, and put his backpack down to the ground. Sean then brandished it, “I’m afraid, but I have to push forward. If I don’t, I feel like I’ll lose everything I have to those who did. I don’t want to regret my actions.”

There was a pause as if she was processing the information. But finally, she spoke, “Then good luck. Go get them.”

“I will…” said Sean, audibly. Then he muttered underneath his breath, clearly inaudible, “…try.”