Casual Heroing

I excused myself before anyone could notice how rattled I was.

Now, I’m in my apartment looking at the spellbook.

Is it me, pal, or is it you?

The warm feeling in my chest is still there.

It’s weird. It’s not something that I would describe as ‘my usual demeanor’. And I mean, ‘demeanor’, what does that even mean? But let’s not digress.

I’m feeling… giddy.

Bubbly. Dizzy. Gaga.

I’m feeling a lot of things right now.

It’s the same feeling you get when you are a kid and you suddenly solve a weird mathematical problem, and you think ‘I’m a goddamn genius!’. The problem is that you usually find out right after that you simply applied the most basic principle that someone had already pinned down before Christ himself was born.

But I’m still feeling it.

I’m not stupid.

Something’s telling me ‘You might be onto something.’

Am I really good at magic?

It’s a simple question, isn’t it?

But what if the answer were ‘yes, you are incredibly good at magic’, what then? Do I go off to the Nine Towers Academy and do whatever they do there?

What happens if you have an incredible talent for something, but you have no interest in pursuing the most common career in such a field?

See, I don’t mind learning magic and baking goods with it. Actually, I would love to make that a thing. But what if my talent is so great that everywhere I turn, people will say ‘your talent is wasted on baking, son, go save countries and rescue princesses’.

I don’t know what to do.

I really don’t.

People imagine that as soon as you have this great gift for something, you just have to use it. As soon as you get an opportunity, no matter the cost, just dive into it.

Honestly?

I’m not that kind of person.

People offered me many chances in life. Hell, some even offered me incredible business opportunities when I was baking. But I don’t want that.

I want to enjoy my life.

I want to be a simple man, baking his goods, getting home to his beautiful wife and kissing her. I want to kiss my wife when I come back home and to only think about that. Instead, if you want to open a mighty business, or maybe be an [Archmage], kissing your wife is not the main thing on your mind, is it?

People call it ‘making it’, I call it ‘hurting yourself’. The more pieces of you are surrendered to the world, the more you can succeed. The more you sacrifice, the more you get. Maybe, if I went and did more than a couple baking courses and then apprenticed under some great patisserie chef, I would have become more famous than Martha Stewart. And maybe higher than Snoop Dogg, who knows.

But I don’t want that.

I do want to do amazing magic, but do I have to become an [Archmage] and do silly stuff if I want that? Will people come to challenge me, try to steal my knowledge or even try to kill me if I embark on this path?

This is heavy stuff.

However, having lived most of my life in a globalized world, I’m afraid that some equivalent of the Chinese kids capable of playing the piano like Mozart at six years old would probably make me look like a fool.

Am I special? Or do I just want to believe I am? And even if I am, what then?

I shake my limbs and shoulders and exhale vigorously, rolling my body left and right to come back to my senses.

Why worry about problems when you can do amazing magic?

If problems come knocking, I’ll pellet them with my not-supposed-to-put-holes-in-walls [Lights].

Fuck anxiety.

Let’s roll, baby!

I rub my hands and activate [Advanced Mana Sense].

Before slipping into [Deep Focus] or using my [Light Manipulation], I simply ponder the problem.

I’m clearly doing something very different from what dear Domitilla was doing before. Her [Lights] were extremely weak and they looked as if she had conjured them by mistake. Even if I did not pay attention to the spell matrix, I would be able to conjure much better [Lights] than that! God, if she came to my apartment, I’m not even sure I could conjure some terrible [Lights] in order to not give away my secret!

And I’m pretty sure she did not add movement to that spell through the spell matrix itself. She was just dragging the Mana around. But why would she do that? What happens when you have to conjure a proper [Fireball]? How would you move that? You can’t just drag it like a lazy dog who just wants to sunbathe his ass on a random curb by your house, right?

And this brings us to the problem at hand.

How do I make the [Lights] spin with just the spell matrix?

The book said that you can’t imprint movement on the matrix itself. I mean, not on the structure. You can obviously use the polarity.

However…

One vector only moves in one direction. If I wanted a true physics-approved circular motion, I would need—too many vectors of power.

This is an interesting conundrum. Wait. No, not interesting—deadly conundrum. That’s because I either solve the problem or get executed in 333 days.

Well, how can we avoid that?

So, maybe I could anchor the center and have a moving vector?

I doubt you could do any of those two things with just a spell matrix.

UNLESS.

I look at the matrix and I imagine a cube in front of me to make it easier to elaborate some theories.

What if I anchor one of the starting points by focusing some Mana on one corner of the imaginary cube? Can I do that?

“Book, can I anchor one part of the spell matrix in place?”

The book flies from the top of my reddish blanket and hovers in front of my face. The writing appears slowly, almost unsure.

‘Yes. You have to charge one part of the matrix with enough energy to offset the nearest Mana path generated in the opposite direction.’

Ok, I guess that a ‘Mana path’ is the trip my Mana takes on the squiggly lines of the matrix. And the offsetting thing should refer to making a stationary Mana charge that doesn’t get displaced by the nearest vector.

So, I basically nail down the corner strongly enough so that the closest starting points do not affect it. If there is more than one, I probably need to add that into the equation, right? I mean, it’s probably better to incorporate that from the start and simply begin with a corner, create two vectors on the two sides and sum their energy.

Easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy.