Forever

While Salim might have had an infinite amount of time to practice magic, the monotony of trying to coerce his mental state into the mystical state of understanding required, was incredibly tedious. With the help of learning the hidden mechanics behind said ‘magic’ from Fallon, he spent the next day attempting to do anything with the meager amount of mana he had managed to pool. He wasn’t sure if there was a way to speed up the generation process, if he had to guess it was tied to his stats, although he wasn’t sure which.

Fallon watched him, standing only a few feet away, as his face scrunched and clenched in concentration while failing to do anything besides glow pathetically. Not calling it quits even after hours of attempts, Salim continued to imagine a program for his spell, going deeper and more intricate than his previous attempts. He was attempting to create a simple push effect, since Fallon had told him that it would be one of the easiest.

Unfortunately, nothing seemed to come to him naturally and by midday he hadn’t accomplished anything other than drain his entire reserve of mana, and had working up an appetite. An appetite he couldn’t quickly fix because he had been messing with magic instead of trying to catch food for the day.

Surviving is such a pain.

With a groan, Salim got to work, fetching his spear from its resting place on the ground next to him, and stalked towards the river. While it was only his third day of spear hunting, Salim felt as though he was improving rapidly, his strikes much more precise and quick even if they were assisted by stats. Stomach against the ground, Salim stalked his way over to the stream’s edge, peering down with [Arcane Eyes], waiting for a fish to swim a little too close to the surface.

Watching fish slowly meander past his hiding place, Salim waited, for the perfect moment to strike, arms tensed as he prepared himself.

NOW!

Thrusting into the water with, Salim clipped the fish in its flank, not quite piercing through its scales but enough to cause blood to flood cloud the water. Salim immediately realized that he might have made a mistake when he canceled [Arcane Eyes] and saw that the fish was much larger than what its glow might have suggested. The fish was a dull brown color, blending in well with the river bed and around five feet long, its body being incredibly bulky.

Thrashing in pain, the fish jerked around, yanking the spear and pulling Salim into the water as his grip was tight around the shaft. Falling into the water, Salim had pain flash from his right side as the fish slammed him, attempting to bludgeon him to death with its bulk. His mind panicking as he tried to not drown, Salim tried to get onto his feet as the stream as the fish did everything in its power to keep him off balance.

Managing to right himself, Salim looked around only for the fish to slam into him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, he watched the fish swim away after dislodging the spear from its body, a trail of blood lightly flowing behind it. Having lost the battle with the fish, he regretfully returned to shore, where Fallon waited, arms crossed.

“What?” Salim huffed, frustrated at his embarrassing failure and feeling vindictive that they had just watched his entire struggle. He didn’t wait for a response, shaking off as he began searching for another branch that could be whittled into a spear.

“Try harder?” Fallon responded, sarcastically? It was hard to tell when they only spoke in monotone.

He rolled his eyes and sighed, biting back a remark as he rubbed two new bruises on his chest, which were slowly turning a dark purple color. He was hoping that a twenty-five in [Resilience] would prevent any internal bruising or bleeding because he had no way of dealing with that besides keeling over. Finding a serviceable branch, Salim dragged it back to his campsite before setting it down and pulling out his sharpest stone to begin whittling.

Ignoring the hole Fallon was burning into him, Salim used the river stones to slowly shape a spear from the branch. Having gotten used to the task, Salim found his mind drifting, not really paying attention to the simple point he was creating on the branch. Realizing that he was having a hard time paying attention to the spear, he decided to keep experimenting with his core so that the time wouldn’t be wasted just aimlessly cutting away.

With the meditative monotony of wood shaving, Salim dove deep into his core, each cut along the branch driving him further. Deeper and deeper he descended, using every point of his [Resolve] to focus on the core until finally, he was as far into a trance as he could go. It felt like a lucid dream, having control over his actions but not full awareness of himself, along with a fluttery feeling he couldn’t fully describe.

Trying to get back on track, Salim focused on what he wanted to accomplish: creating a spell that can push an object. Picking back up off his failed attempts, he got to work, creating functions with his hodgepodge of pseudocode that seemed just logical enough that they might work with enough infrastructure. One was supposed to draw mana, another to define the distance he wanted to push said object, and another that acted as the form of the spell.

All of these things made sense to Salim with how magic could possibly work, but he wasn’t sure if his internal logic had any sway, as all his ‘spell’ amounted to was a hodgepodge of different coding languages that looked functional. Did he have to be more granular? All the way back to flipping magical levers until he found something? His thoughts fighting for dominance before he was able to pull himself back together.

No. He definitely didn't need to get more granular, although it could only help if he wanted to do something specific, after all, Fallon supposedly accomplished magic through simply iconography and constellations, which was much simpler and free-form.

Maybe the reason my spell keeps failing is that I’m unsure if it’ll work. Salim mused, it lined up with the idea of intent that Fallon kept emphasizing, maybe he just needed to be sure that his spell would work, as confusing as that was. It was all high concept stuff that gave him a headache, but also came with the territory of it being literally magic.

Looking at his creation, Salim admired how different it was from Fallon’s method, less of a shape and more of a flat screen with his program inscribed. Unlike with the system skills, he could form it inside his core without it dissipating the instant it was used. Trying to evenly fill the program with his mana, Salim was having trouble as it easily unbalanced, the full spell felt like it was pulling mana at different speeds and directions. Not discouraged, since he was pretty sure the program was failing due to user error, he tried a few more times before shaking himself awake.

Finding himself sitting on the ground with the branch, Salim saw that the spear had suffered under his inattention, being shaved down by rough a quarter of what it once was with no spear tip in sight. Not feeling too disappointed since his experiment was slowly bearing fruit, Salim grabbed the unusable spear with his right hand and lifted it up, palm level with the sky. Forming the program in his core, Salim made sure to keep his focus on the stick in front of him, trying to mentally command his spell to target the branch.

Breathing deeply, Salim evenly pushed a small amount of mana into the program with bated breath. The branch moved. Just enough that Salim knew that he didn’t accidentally jostle his hand, the system agreed as it chose the moment to reward him for his efforts.

You have cast your first self-made spell.

Event has been Logged.

You have gained a Level!

“Hahaha-ha!” Salim exclaimed in exhilaration at his success. He quickly opened his stats page to increase his supposed spell casting stats.

Lvl. 11

Stats

Confirm

Might: 20

-/+

Finesse: 21

-/+

Resilience: 20

-/+

Acuity: 20 (25)

-/+

Resolve: 20 (25)

-/+

Depth: 20

-/+

The headache was painful, but manageable, failing to kill his enthusiasm for the arcane he was so close to unlocking. Wanting to see how far he could take the spell, Salim reached deep within himself, using all the mana he could spare, stuffed the spell with as much as he could.

Whoosh.

The spear accelerated out of his hand and bounced off a nearby tree, startling Fallon, who twitched at the sudden noise. Salim pretended not to notice as he walked forward and picked up his shoddy handy-work, checking the wood to see if anything warped or changed. Noting no differences, from what he could tell, the impact was practically identical to him throwing the stick.

While his magic probably could be beaten by him throwing the stick with his increased [Might], it was still progress, being able to telekinetically throw sticks had woken up his inner child. Slightly regretting all his mana on the spell, Salim decided to turn the branch into a stake since it wasn’t long enough for him to use it as a spear, so he got back to shaving. As he whittled, this time, he made sure to keep an eye on his work while he spun ideas of alternate spells he could use.

Thoughts of blasting wolves and bugs away with the flick of a finger filled his mind as he thought about focusing his stats more on magic than the general spread he had originally planned.

If I learn more about magic, it’ll help me when I die and come back, he reasoned to himself. But on the other hand, what if I get caught without any mana? His logic argued.

So caught up in his own world, he let out a small yelp when a cold hand touched his back; whipping his head over to Fallon, their eyes dilated, standing way too close for comfort. Pushing himself backwards, Salim noticed that they were pointing at the evening sun that fast approached its destination in the west. Nodding in thanks, he moved over to a more covered area where he could rest for the night, brushing aside a few leaves that had fallen throughout the day.

Sitting around and burning time before night arrived, Salim decided to check on his skill progress to see what had changed.

Skills

Arcane Shape (Class)

Lvl. 2

Take shape the forces of the other world.

Arcane Eyes (Class)

Lvl. 3

See true, the world beyond the veil.

Reinforced Channels (Class)

Lvl. 1

The lifeblood of a mage.

Learned Mind (Class)

Lvl. 2

A hungry mind is a healthy mind.

Arcane Navigation (Innate)

Lvl. 1

The mystic arts will guide you.

The progress was slow-going, but he didn’t mind, his progress with magic was directing most of his attention. However, he unfortunately had the feeling that his luck with magic would run out soon, as his push spell was as basic as they come. Although he wouldn’t give up, especially when he had all the time in the world

For the first time in a couple of days, Salim let himself think back to the offer he had made with Fallon: his body in exchange for… letting them play god? He hadn’t been thinking straight will all the information they had dropped on him, most likely intentionally. He looked over at the river where Fallon was standing, unmoving almost like a statue, staring at the starry sky.

If Fallon is able to create life, actual genuine sentient life, then what does that mean? They did say I was all alone, and I can’t think of a good reason for them to lie. Playing god feels so wrong, but, would it be so bad? What could I even do to stop them, I’m nothing. Salim was fairly sure that she would be able to create something, his memories of being hunted down by the thing were still vividly fresh.

It did concern him that the only thing he had seen them create was an eldritch abomination that stalked him in the middle of the night, but no one was perfect. He struggled to just survive catching fish. Helplessness filled his head as the night sky seemed to close in around him, leaving him trapped.

He tried to calm down, breathing in and out, channeling [Arcane Eyes] to distract himself in the glowing energy flowing through the forest, the subtle brown hues offset by the glowing green of the leaves. After what felt like a long while, Salim felt his heart slowing down as his eyes fully adjusted to the darkness, insects buzzing as the noise filled the blank space in his brain. Finally able to calm down, he tried to logically think through the problem.

He can’t do anything against Fallon, not that he had a reason other than nebulous revenge for what they did before they gained awareness. Deep Breath. While the idea of them messing with his body made him uncomfortable, he wouldn’t be using it and all it would do is piss them off, if they even could get mad. If they did succeed in creating ‘sentient life’ then he wouldn’t be alone, which would be potentially good.

Headache increasing in intensity, Salim decided to deal with all the ethical questions of having sentient life sown from his corpse later and finally got to sleep. His eyes were heavy as his stomach growled from a day without food. Laying his back against the soft dirt, he could almost call it comforting as it just felt so real, visceral. Closing his eyes, the last thing he saw was the leaves of the canopy above, protecting him from burning moonlight above.