Charitybelle and I ate breakfast and strolled to the library together the following day. I pointed out each section and presented some of my favorite books.

  After milling about, I showed her my work area on the fourth floor.

  She watched me grid a sheet of parchment but soon grew bored. “Why don’t they create a stencil or something to automate this? This is going to take forever.”

  I mimicked Fabulosa’s southern twang. “You fancy sword-swinging gals are too fast for us clerical types.”

  Charitybelle playfully slapped my arm and shook her head.

  I shrugged. “Mr. Fergus taught me to grid them this way, so that is how I do it.”

  I returned to my work while Charitybelle searched for books with maps. She stayed longer than I expected and found a few regional charts by noon but no continent-wide maps.

  “Did you learn anything else?”

  Charitybelle wrinkled her nose. “Not much. It’s hard going. I spent the past hour looking for scientific topics before realizing no science exists. Instead, they label everything under natural philosophy.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Everything unproven belongs in philosophy.”

  “Besides the terminology, I can barely read anything. It’s so hard to tell the difference between these letters. It takes time to recognize each word. By the time I reach the end of a sentence, I forget how it begins. But I haven’t given up. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Charitybelle bid me farewell and promised to meet me in Formal Hall for dinner.

  Once I learned the technique, I didn’t need to concentrate to align everything. Despite the welcome distraction of Charitybelle’s company, I increased my output to eight pages. Having a chatterbox like her sitting beside me passed the time quickly. At this pace, I would finish in a few days. Mr. Fergus checked my work occasionally, and the lack of corrections encouraged me.

  Charitybelle spent the next couple of days perusing the stacks while I worked. Her visits to the library never lasted longer than a few hours, but we always saw each other in Formal Hall in the mornings and evenings. The others continued adventuring in the countryside and spent their nights at the inn.

  After I finished ruling parchments, Mr. Fergus taught me the basics of lettering. He handed me a sheet of vellum, a quill, and a bottle of watery ink. He showed me how to wash the ink off the vellum, so I wouldn’t waste parchment while practicing.

  Inking on vellum presented more obstacles than parchment. The smooth surface pronounced errors and irregularities, but learning how to work the slippery sheet became part of the challenge.

  I practiced my vertical strokes to make the letters as uniform as possible. The silverpoint rules I’d made with the wire helped me align the letterforms when I graduated to parchment.

  Mr. Fergus spent the days with me, correcting misaligned strokes. He policed uneven spacing and ensured my ascender and descender strokes didn’t vary in length. The key to consistent lettering involved a consistent grip and angle on the stylus.

  Maintaining a steady hand challenged me, but after a week, I didn’t need anyone sitting behind me. I practiced the alphabet, learning one letter at a time. I switched to alternating letters and discovered it was much harder to maintain consistency. After mastering letters, I worked on letter spacing and then word spacing. Finally, I assayed the art of estimating a line’s length to avoid crowing letters or breaking the margin.

  Lettering dominated my routine for the next few weeks, and the workdays ended when I’d lost the light.

  PinkFox and ArtGirl joined us at Formal Hall one night, and it felt great to catch up. The latest news revolved around the gang breaking barriers between players and NPCs. They’d become regular fixtures at the pub and made many local friends.

  I smiled when I saw them. I admired the wear, tear, and mud on their outfits. “It’s great to see you guys again. I see C-Belle every day. She comes to the library, looking for maps of the continent. She tells me you’re getting to know the NPCs.”

  PinkFox nodded. “Yeah, we’re always on the lookout to find monsters.”

  “Charitybelle and I have learned a few things. Ogres, giants, and dragons dwell in the southern swamps, but it all looks high level.”

  ArtGirl tilted her head toward her friend. “We’re more interested in things nearby. Pinky and I have been pumping the locals about the region.”

  PinkFox nodded. “We learned about the other cities on the Grayton River—the main water channel leading to the port of Arlington. The big cities bully neighboring villages but rarely war with one another.”

  ArtGirl bit her lower lip, and she tried to remember something. “From what we hear, the threat of monsters in the continent’s interior stops people from attacking one another. We’ve got goblins harrying cities in the western continent, and the eastern half has orcs.”

  I nodded. “I read about goblins raids from the Bluepeaks and orcs coming from the Doublespines.”

  PinkFox jumped in. “But if you ask the locals, their biggest problems are business-related. Trouble always comes from Arlington—the West’s only port town. Since all the big cities are on the Grayton River, traffic flows through Arlington’s locks and canals, and its tolls are too high. Arlington’s taxes warp everyone’s economy. Prices for local goods don’t make enough money, and imports from the East Coast are too expensive.”

  ArtGirl waved away the issue. “But that’s their problem. What we care about is monsters in the continent’s center. Everyone avoids it, so we figure that’s where the action is.”

  Everyone had gained more experience. PinkFox and ArtGirl advanced to level 4, while Charitybelle remained at level 3. The gang's running joke was that my level 0 made me a virgin. I could have pointed out that weeks of effort and only reaching level 4 seemed too slow, but I held my tongue.

  Their lack of progress came from a scarcity of new quests and monsters. They spend entire afternoons hunting for a single fight. As much as my gameplay had stalled, theirs wasn’t exactly in high gear.

  The following day, a system alert surprised me. While practicing my lettering, I received my first skill acquisition message.

  Even without the mention of magic, I admired the message with pride. Players earned skills—and gaining them required commitment. The Book of Dungeons, though a stingy game, rewarded merit. A progress bar showed the percentage of how far I needed to reach the next skill rank.

  Redoubling my efforts on the vellum, I lettered the alphabet, practiced words, and calculated line lengths. The work helped me develop an appreciation for the subtlety of the letterforms. By the end of the first day, my manuscript creation skill had reached rank 2 and progressed to 85 percent of rank 3. Seeing some light at the end of the tunnel energized me, making the work less tedious.

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  I arrived late for dinner with the news.

  The girls showed polite enthusiasm and genuine amusement at my enthusiasm. After my disclosure, they recited new skills appearing on their character sheet—survival, slashing weapons, blunt weapons, piercing weapons, ranged weapons, dodging, and stealth.

  I tried not to feel dismayed by their adventures. But when they mentioned making ranks in light magic, I stopped the conversation by palming the table. “Wait—light magic? How are you learning light magic?” I searched their faces to see if they were joking. They weren’t.

  ArtGirl waved her hand. “Relax. It’s not what you think. We’re just casting heals and our cantrip, Heavenly Favor. It ranks up your light magic skill as you use it. Higher spells like Rest and Mend rank it up a little faster.”

  I looked at her in disbelief and double-checked my character sheet. “But I’ve experimented with cantrips and never got skill ranks off them. My skill list doesn’t include magic.”

  PinkFox grinned at my confusion. “They rank up faster in combat.”

  ArtGirl shrugged. “I’m only rank 3 in light magic.”

  PinkFox chimed in. “Yeah, I’m rank 3 too. Fab is up to 5 on primal magic. She picked up Ice Bolt when she leveled to 5 yesterday.”

  My befuddlement confused them.

  PinkFox comically mimicked my expression by opening her eyes and mouth. “Why are you so surprised by this?”

  “And you’re saying Fab is now rank 5, on her own, without a magic tutor?”

  PinkFox leaned back as comprehension dawned on her face. “Oh. Wait, I keep forgetting you’re still at level zero. Patch, you honestly have to start playing the game. Two things happen when you level—you get better stats and one power point to spend on a spell or combat ability. You don’t need a tutor.”

  I waved my hands. “I know all that, but the interface doesn’t show how casting spells improves skill ranks.”

  Understanding dawned in ArtGirl’s expression. “Ah! That’s right, I forgot. The interface hides how it works. We didn’t understand it until we started grinding through monsters. It’s a chicken and egg issue. You don’t get magic skills until you spam them enough to unlock the skill. In combat, rank-ups come faster. And only after it’s unlocked does it show your progress to the next rank.”

  “Do you mean I could be at 99 percent to gaining rank 1 in light magic and not know it?”

  Charitybelle nodded. “Yep. The interface hides it until you reach rank 1. I didn’t figure it out until the event log reported that I’d gained a skill rank in light magic from casting Heavenly Favor. Getting a skill unlocks its description, and only then can you see how everything works. Crimson probably doesn’t want to overwhelm newbies, but I think the lack of interface creates confusion. It’ll take you longer to rank up magic out of combat, but your interface will unlock magic skills once you’ve spammed your cantrips enough. That’s what cantrips mean—they’re spells that unskilled people can cast.”

  Misunderstanding interface functionality commonly plagued gamers, but players usually learned how everything worked from one another. But The Book of Dungeons played unlike other RPGs. I couldn’t chat with friends or check forums to find where monsters lurked. I couldn’t read tutorials or watch videos of professional gamers to see strategies.

  And the contest fostered aberrant behavior, like me staying on campus. Issues like these wouldn’t be an issue in regular play, so it made sense that Crimson would hide parts of their interface. I growled. “I’d experimented a lot with the cantrips, but apparently not enough to gain a rank.”

  The game’s quests quickly petered out, and monster hunts rarely produced significant experience. Aside from this major misunderstanding, I’d missed little by staying on campus and helping Mr. Fergus. Missing a few weeks of spellcasting wasn’t fatal in the big picture, but it annoyed me.

  Charitybelle twirled her finger as she explained. “Your rank in magic determines your spell damage, and casting spells increases your rank. It’s a little feedback loop.”

  I couldn’t help but ask another question. “You mentioned Ice Bolt. What’s that?”

  PinkFox answered. “It’s pretty neat. Fab pulls moisture from the air. There’s this quick puff of fog around her hands, shooting shards of ice at multiple targets. It’s good against groups of weedy monsters. When Fab pulled a group of giant beetles with Ice Bolt, RIP had difficulty getting monster aggro off her. She’s picking up Scorch when she hits level 6. It sets things on fire.”

  Charitybelle changed the subject while I digested the news. “Speaking of magic, have you guys found any magic items yet?”

  ArtGirl nodded. “We got a steel-reinforced leather helmet that gives +1 stamina yesterday from a wandering gnoll mercenary. It was our first item with a green rarity rating. The gnoll was big, but we took him down with none of us dropping below half-health. RIP and I already have something in our head slot. Pink picked up a shield, so Fab took it.”

  I spoke to no one in particular, circling back to the topic of spells. “And Fab reached rank 5 in primal magic with no tutors or books?”

  ArtGirl shrugged. “It just takes combat practice.”

  Charitybelle rolled her eyes. “Or a whole lot of spamming.”

  The nonchalance in her voice made me inwardly laugh at missing what I’d been searching for the past few weeks. All this time, it had been under my nose. I echoed her words. “It just takes practice.”

  The girls refreshed their drinks and conversed about preparing for a hunt.

  After my meal, the noise in Formal Hall bothered me, so I excused myself. “I need to go. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” After everyone wished me goodnight, I fled to my room.

  ArtGirl called after me. “Have fun spamming!”

  I collapsed on my mattress and rubbed my eyes. Know that it led toward something, I dedicated the evening to grinding through cantrips.

  Hours later, after repeated casts of Heavenly Favor, my character sheet gained a new skill, celebrated by an update window.

  Had I known spellcasting counted as a skill, I would have been spamming magic earlier and more often than I had been. I must have been close to rank 1 and not known it. I cursed the interface for hiding it from me and turned my thoughts toward the other schools of magic.

  Minor Hex and Shocking Reach required an enemy target. I dressed and ran outside, not caring about the late hour.

  In the dark, I gave up scanning the ground for insects or rats to assault. As close as I came to reaching rank 1 in light magic, targeting vermin might take all night.

  Inspiration hit me, and I ran to the empty academy yard. When I reached a target dummy, my mana pool had returned to full. I let my offensive spells rip. After emptying my mana pool, I waited for it to refill. After hours of casting, a new skill alert gave a similar message.

  I regenerated some of my mana and cast Shocking Reach at the target dummy again, hoping the popping electrical discharges and odor of ozone weren’t disturbing anyone.

  The skill progression in my interface showed that out-of-combat casting increased my magic skills, albeit slowly. I began my journey to the second rank in primal magic. After expending the rest of my mana on subsequent casts of Shocking Reach, my progression reached 20 percent.

  I quit attacking the dummy. Zapping it made lots of noise, and people wanted to sleep.

  Next, I tried Minor Hex. The spell made less noise and eventually elicited another game prompt.

  The thrill of realization made me heady, but the domain of death magic creeped me out.

  This bad boy from New Jersey didn’t want to fall back on his ugly ways or be seduced by dark influences. Even though Baldrick, the academy’s illusionist, suggested I use Minor Hex on the pilfering rats, something about him unnerved me.

  Each Minor Hex cast ranked the skill a few points toward rank 2 of dark magic. Throughout the hours of the morning, I released the spell repeatedly until I hit the next rank.

  An alert sounded, and I checked my interface.

  I focused on Dim’s description and learned it acted as the opposite of the traditional Light spell. Its name could have been Black Light. Dim made Stealth easier, which made sense because dark magic encompassed misdirection and shadows. It also represented the magic of death and lies, and I wanted nothing less than to generate bad karma.

  Having a dubious reputation in one world was enough for me, so I stopped ranking up dark magic.

  I strategized as I returned to my room. I could cast Heavenly Favor throughout the day, but progressing in primal magic required an enemy target. Spamming cantrips would become my new routine. I wondered if there might be something portable, like a voodoo doll or something on which I could sharpen my skills.

  I cast Heavenly Favor on myself before collapsing onto my sleeping pallet and fell into unconsciousness.