CHAPTER 9

  Perched comfortably on the broken log, the setting sun warm against my face, I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, a and dispelled my tumultuous thoughts and willed my HUD to show in my vision. Immediately, I saw a green bar along the top of my HUD showing my health at 100%. Directly below it was a purple bar, also at 100%. This I assumed was my Mana pool or Font. I willed it to the bottom of my vision. I now had the two bars within sight at all times. I thought about my combat log and a blinking cursor hovered over the bottom right of my view. I activated it and my Combat log appeared.

  I looked at the last entry:

  I closed it with a thought, and willed my character sheet to show skills. The list was long.

  … and so the list went on. I noticed almost all had scores between 6 to 10 with the highest being 12 for Improvisation. There were a few highlighted headings which opened submenus when I looked at them. I decided they were best left closed. Way too much information. I could see why Major Stone had decided not to go through all these skills with me. It was a laborious list and there was a lot of crossover. The one thing I noticed was that magical specialties were greyed out.

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  Hinting that they would only show clearly once I had accomplished some magic. After seeing Raúl’s effortless vanishing act, I had little doubt we could do magic here, but I was more than a little skeptical that it was possible in real life. Could a simple brain adjustment really open a human’s magical potential?

  I decided to try something. Going to my Magical skills view, I looked again at the five different magical types. There was no clue how to use them, no button to press or gesture required. So closing the sheet I instead willed it to happen.

  Breathing deep, calming my mind, I willed a fireball to issue forth from my palm and out into the distance. I felt… I felt something pull at me, like a gentle tug, and then I smelled something burning. I quickly opened my eyes, to see the remains of my fireball landing in the reeds about 20 meters in front of me.

  “Yes!” I shouted in exuberance. The excitement of my achievement too much to contain. I realized abstractly that perhaps my new body had more testosterone than I was ordinarily used to. I would have to check my emotions. My HUD showed that only a fraction of the Mana bar had disappeared. This time I tried to do it with eyes wide open.

  Disappointingly, it was more like a sparkler than a fireball, but it was something. I kept at it. My frustration grew, it was a lot harder than I had anticipated. Each cast was like a conflict of belief and logic. Logic dictated it couldn’t be done, but if I believed it enough, if I allowed it to happen, then the sparkler fire flare happened. Almost subconsciously triggered. If I actively tried to fire, like take aim and pull the trigger, it felt like I was shooting a dud and nothing happened. I hoped that it wouldn’t always be like this, but I was relatively happy that I had achieved some success.

  By this time the sun was close to setting, and satisfied that my alone time had been productive, I went back to the beacon and touched it, willing myself back into my body.