17 – Too many quests

Monday afternoon – Albert.

It was post-rewind. Which meant that all the studying was done, as well as some physical training coupled with a good session of [Healing] and a nutritious meal. Now it was time to focus on magic until it was dinnertime again and then maybe even afterwards! Albert was pumped, to say the least, riding the dopamine release of having completed all the necessary tasks of the day.

That wasn’t to say that he was feeling good overall. The day was gloomy, it was dark even though it was early afternoon, and an empty house was a weight to his mind that the system didn’t fill. There was a tense air in town, and even in his friend group. Whenever he hopped on the group chat, from which he had been absent in the prior five hours because it would have been pointless due to the time rewind, he saw the same sentiment reflected in the others. There was something going on that seemed to affect everyone. Some kind of negative energy spreading around, no matter how silly the idea sounded. Yet again it was something that old Albert would have never believed in, but now all had changed. Still, his magic sight revealed nothing of importance so he was left with his gut feeling and nothing else.

Well, there was something else. There were news coming from the countryside. From a little town called Tryte. Images of things there, flashes and fragments of videos that disappeared from social media before Albert could even press the share button and send them to his friends. Something was being actively censored by the government or by some sort of organization, but he had no way to even tell what it was given what little data he had. All he knew for sure was that there were rumors about people seeing strange things in the storm that was threatening to raze the whole village to the ground, and that the military had cordoned off the whole area.

Now, under normal circumstances he would not have thought much of it. He still remembered the incident when it happened in Ohio and what it brought afterwards. He remembered all the fake conspiracies being brought up left and right. But this time it was different, because him having the system and having seen magic with his own eyes meant that perhaps there really was something brewing over there, and he wondered if the military even was ready to deal with it.

He felt that the whole situation might end up being his problem sooner or later. But the system had been silent about it, and he wondered if it meant that it was not yet time for him to intervene in such affairs. Certainly he did not want to intervene himself, and if the system was not telling him to do it either… well, it must mean that the army had it under control for now. For sure.

He didn’t feel all that sure. He sent a message to his grandpa about it, and in response Lloyd said that he would look into it, using some old contacts he happened to have in the area from his old days of travel. He later came back to Albert, much later, and told the boy not to get involved and that it was better to stay the hell out of it while he was this weak. To not involve himself with matters too big for him to handle until he was strong enough not to get swept by the currents. It was genuine advice, of course, but when pressed about his sources he refused to elaborate further, which was jarring to say the least.

Surely his grandpa was not going to keep his cards hidden from Albert much longer. He was due to come live with them in a matter of days, after which Albert could grill him as much as he wanted. If the old man wanted to be his mentor, then he was also going to be his information source as well whether he wanted it or not, especially since he didn’t seem to be in any way lacking in information.

[New quest]

• Quest: Daily challenge – Day 06: Create one magical object.
• Reward: Knowledge Scroll ‘on the condensation of mana into crystalline semistable structures’

Well, well, well. The system once again coming to Albert’s rescue. He was wondering whether he should tackle the contents of the book teaching him to produce magical objects or if he should focus on completing the dailies, and now he didn’t need to worry about choosing anymore! Was the system pampering him? Without further ado, he sat down and began to read through the heavy tome that was the book. The dusty smell of old pages rose from the yellowing paper and ink as his eyes slid through the words, assimilating concepts and new ideas.

There was a way, the book said, to imbue everyday items with magic, enhancing their properties. He wondered if this was a manipulation of entropy perhaps, in a similar way to the practice effect in David Brin’s novel. If this was indeed something similar, then even the applications of such a simple concept were virtually infinite. He kept reading. Adding mana made an object magical, but it did not make it able to grow on its own. Nor did it make it retain its properties.

Then the book included an exercise for the reader, which he did in earnest.

“Lightbulbs lightbulbs… where did mother put them?”

The shed in the garden. He rummaged through some old boxes until he found one small incandescent light bulb, forgotten here for who knows how long. The scope of the exercise was deceptively simple: just add mana to it while picturing the lightbulb’s normal use in his mind. Just that. And he did. He knew how to manifest mana, and he knew what a lightbulb was supposed to do.

3FU later the little glass sphere was glowing in his hand like he was Uncle Fester holding it. There was no electricity flowing into it from anywhere, and yet it was alight by itself.

Then darkness again. The light did not last long once Albert stopped supplying the lightbulb with magic. But what was the meaning of what he just did? Surely, the whole concept of making the object better at its purpose than it was before did not apply here, did it? It was functioning without electricity, but it was hardly doing the job better!

Still, it was something. Not enough to consider the quest as complete, and so he read on. Now the book mentioned that there were ways to make circuits with magic that were able to absorb the mana in the air and make the items function even without him supplying them with mana himself. Although, this was the frustrating part, such circuits were beyond the scope of the book. What the hell. It sounded like his math book when the authors were too lazy to write the mathematical proofs and just left them as an exercise for the reader.

There was just no way that he could figure out—

[New quest]

• Quest: Create a mana-gathering array.
• Reward: Book: ‘Magical arrays for dummies’.

Never mind. There was a way.

He kept reading, trying not to get sidetracked by yet another quest begging for completion. There needed to be an order in the way he did things, and the order begged that he completed the quests he was working on before switching over to something else. The second step mentioned in the book was going from enhancing a property of an object, to adding entirely new properties that emerged from what was already there.

For instance, turning a cup of refreshing cool water into an energy tonic. There were other ways, such as alchemy or potion crafting the book said, but those too were beyond the scope of the book. Albert wondered if—

[New quest]

• Quest: Create a magical alloy.
• Reward: Book: ‘Alchemy for dummies’.

[New quest]

• Quest: Create a simple potion.
• Reward: Book: ‘Potions for dummies’.

Holy simmering boiling pots of brownies. This was way too much. Besides, this meant that his book on magical items was not going to teach him how to make potions! What the heck? That was a scam alright.

Ah, who am I kidding? This is even more exciting!

Except that now there really were not enough hours in a day to do everything. Even just going through the basics of magical items creation was burning through the afternoon like crazy. Albert checked the time. 6:38PM.

There was still a good hour of time before he needed to eat, and he felt that he could stretch it to two hours if he was willing to sacrifice some after-dinner free time instead. As long as he was done eating before Mother came back – and she said she was coming home late today and possibly the whole week – there was no problem with it. He could just eat whenever he was too hungry to keep going.

Back to the book. Adding new properties to an object sounded very cool. But what should he be experimenting on, he wondered? The first thought was his mobile phone. Of course, who wouldn’t want to have a magically enhanced mobile phone? Come on, be real. But no, it was too risky. What if he failed? Thanks to the daily quests he now had a bit more than two hundred dollars in cash on hand, but they were not enough to buy a replacement phone in case his experimenting got a bit too explosive to account for phone safety. And the bother of transferring the data from a destroyed phone onto a new one was not worth the gain.

Not yet.

Something else, then. What about the pair of binoculars he had lying on his desk, forgotten and unused? Now he could think about interesting stuff to add to his binoculars, stuff that was, as the book put it, compatible with the nature of the object. For instance he could try to integrate some parts of his [Perception] skill onto the lenses of the binoculars, as to obtain that very same effect whenever he put mana into it, while also retaining the magnification of the binoculars themselves.

Long story short, he was done at 10PM and he had forgotten to eat. But done he was, and he now had binoculars he could use to replicate up to [Perception II] – that meant that they were able to see mana (skill level 2) and that they could focus on anything almost instantly instead of having to painstakingly rotate the little wheel at the top (probably derived from skill level 1). Very cool, and even cooler was the fact that using them did not burn as much mana as using the skill normally did, probably on account of the skill being focused through the binoculars and acting only upon the smaller field of view that the lenses offered.

It had been, Albert admitted reluctantly at first, easy compared to some other things he could have chosen to do. He had been lazy. He knew [Perception] well enough by now that he could replicate it with his eyes closed. He was still light years away from being able to come up with entirely new effects to graft onto objects. But hey, he could now try it with his phone, and make it so its camera could take better pictures!

[Quest Daily challenge – Day 06 complete.]

It was with a wide smile that Albert accepted the rewards from the system. A scroll appeared right in front of him on his desk, sealed and waiting to be opened.

A rumble in his stomach momentarily put a stop to his delusions of power and knowledge. It was almost half past ten and he hadn’t eaten yet. Damn.