After two more days of near non-stop training, my physical skills had improved enough to correctly execute even the advanced movements of the forms of martial arts I had learned. Inside my head, I knew that was ridiculously fast, but inside my heart, I was impatient the entire time.

I still hadn't found any sense of how to use magic, and it was eating me up. So I asked Gilda if there was a simulation where I could fight somebody, putting my new martial arts skills to the test. To my surprise, she offered to be my opponent, which appeared to be part of her guide duties.

She changed, and we moved to the exercise room. Once we started fighting, I learned an important thing quickly. Without any practical experience under my belt, the martial arts I had learned were almost useless for actual combat. I found that just plain old boxing, which I had real-world experience with, was way more practical in a fight than those showy kung-fu stances and moves. Initially, making me feel pretty dumb for having spent all that time learning them.

While the kung-fu was a disappointment, Gilda, on the other hand, turned out to be tougher than an old boot. She wiped the floor with me. Her pretty looks had me delusionally thinking I needed to take it easy on her at first, but the reality was the exact opposite. She was stronger, faster, and far more dangerous than me in hand-to-hand combat, so surprisingly I never outright won.

I also rediscovered the undeniable usefulness of weapons. Even a simple stick gave you the advantage of distance from your opponent. When I used one, I could almost dominate Gilda. But again, once she was armed as well, my advantage evaporated.

Still, I kept at it with the combat training, pushing for that elusive discovery that might pull all the pieces together. Over four days of hard training, I saw good improvements in my practical combat skills. I learned what parts of the various martial arts worked for me and when to apply those techniques in a fight. By the end, I could defend myself well enough and sometimes even get in a few good licks. But I wasn't any closer to unlocking a sense of magic through physical combat.

Eventually, at the end of another intense and sweaty bout, Gilda said something I hadn't considered.

"Perhaps the issue is a simple matter of compatibility."

That caught me off balance, and I had to stop for a second to think on what she meant.

"You mean we aren't compatible, and that's why you keep winning?"

"No. I was referring to your difficulties in feeling magic."

I felt pretty self-conscious about that, so I got a bit defensive.

"So, what exactly isn't compatible?"

She either didn't notice my change in attitude or didn't care because she just continued talking.

"Magical systems often center on elemental attributes. Some users seem to have an affinity for a specific attribute, for instance, fire or water."

That blew away my defensiveness with sheer novelty. It was so different from my previous train of thought that I probably would never have considered the idea had Gilda not mentioned it.

"So, you're saying you think I might have an undiscovered magical attribute like that?"

"Perhaps. Technically mana is formless. The wielder gives it form. So there should be no such limitation. However, it may be more helpful to focus on trying the different attributes until you experience your first magic."

"Alright... So, what are the attributes?"

"The big four orthodox attributes commonly are Earth, Water, Fire, and Air."

"Yeah, that sounds familiar from ancient Earth ideas about the elements."

"There are also sometimes rarer attributes like Light, Dark, Sex, Taming, and Summon... there are many niche forms."

"Wait. Wait. What? Sex? How is that a magical attribute?"

"Seduction of enemies, draining of life force, enslavement, and manipulation of memories commonly are skills for sex attribute magic users. That skill set has proven particularly useful for espionage operatives."

"Whoa... I didn't expect there to be so many useful skills."

"It makes perfect sense. The urge to reproduce is one of the main drivers of behavior for most life forms. Subverting those primal impulses with magic can be a very potent tactic."

"Hmm... I guess I shouldn't judge the usefulness of something until I know all the facts. So, how would I go about testing to see if I have any of these affinities?"

"Without specialized testing tools, the only effective strategy is to come into direct contact with each attribute and attempt to get a response."

"So what, I just touch some water and see if I feel anything?"

"Not exactly. The idea is to concentrate deeply on the element and strongly visualize altering it in some way via your mana."

"Okay... Well, it seems like we've been banging our heads against this particular wall long enough to see that training like this won't trigger my magic, so I guess it's worth trying a different approach."

After that, I spent quite a few hours going through each attribute. In the case of the earth attribute, I used a bucket of sand, which I tried to solidify into some sandstone. When that didn't get results, I moved on to attempting to make a bucket of water into a fountain. Eventually, I gave up on that too, so I moved on to try fire, increasing the size of the flame on a candle by focusing on the consumption of fuel. I didn't get any results there either, so I moved on to try air, intending to create a gust of wind. Visualization was supposedly a key component of magic, so I concentrated on changing the layers of the air in the room into either warm or cold masses. A slight wind would be the expected result. However, that was a failure as well.

Having failed to trigger magic with any of those main attributes, I moved on to giving the rarer ones a try. In my heart of hearts, I was secretly hoping I might get an excuse to try out the sex attribute. However, suggesting that one first might tip Gilda off to my true intentions, so I decided to start with light. For that, I sat in a dark room, trying to create a small ball of light from my mana.

I was still having difficulty conceptualizing mana. Gilda explained it as a form of energy that you couldn't see. However, that vague conceptual energy was so just too abstract for me. I mean, whenever I thought of energy, I could only imagine the electricity used to power machines on Earth. I was supposed to be making a ball of magic light, but the more I focussed on making that light, the more I found my mind could only imagine a light bulb. After a few minutes of trying to visualize moving energy to make light, I saw a brief flash and heard a noticeable pop.

I was stunned. I thought I had finally succeeded in making a light, but perhaps it was too weak and popped like a bubble. Excitedly, I called Gilda into the room and tried to do the same thing again.

Now that I had succeeded once, I found it was far easier to feel a reservoir of mana inside my body and move it according to my will. I wanted to make a light, so I thought of the light bulb again, with my mana feeding into it like electricity. However, the result was not what either of us expected. Instead of a ball of light magic, what appeared were a few small arcs of electricity crawling between my fingers like a Tesla coil.

Gilda seemed confused by the result and asked me to explain what visualization I had used for the light magic. Once I had explained what I had been thinking about, she seemed to understand where I'd gone wrong.

"Congratulations, Willie. Your first magic is from the Lightning attribute."

"Lightning attribute? I wasn't visualizing lightning at all. I didn't even know that was a possible choice."

"Yes, lightning magic, one of the rarer types. However, as you might imagine, it can provide for truly devastating attacks."

"Well, that's grand and all, but why did I get lightning when what I was after was a ball of light?"

"It seems the most likely reason is that you imagined your mana as electricity."

"Oh..."