Lyura left first for the airport. Lis and Mahya were busy at the puter, looking food pce to work, ahe day.

  For the first couple of days, I didn’t know what to do with myself. After spending so much time with good friends, suddenly being alone was tough. I wandered around Lleida a bit, but didn’t even feel like buying anything. I wasly down, just lonely. Rue picked up on it a ging to me, lig my face, rubbing his head against me, reminding me I wasn’t really alone.

  God, I love this dog.

  After two days, I realized I o snap out of it a bay assigned homework. I headed to Madrid, booked a hotel, toured the city for a couple of days, and theuro my studies. I delved into the book Mana structs for Spell Creation and studied in ear. My study sessions were brief and insistent because of all the other things I had going on, but I had already covered about half of it. It took me a week to finish the book and awo weeks to do all the exercises and practice creating the basia structs. The simplest forms were an orb, a cube, a tube (whether small for a dart ger for more plicated spells), a mesh, and a shell.

  The shell and mesh were the trickiest sihey didn’t have standard shapes. The shape of the shell was ti upon the spell it was meant to hold or the obje which it was embedded, whereas the shape of the mesh depended oem or area it was meant to influence.

  Another plication of the mesh struct was that all area-of-effect spells needed an open mesh; however, a mana struct couldn’t have open ends because it would cause mana leakage, leading to the colpse of the spell. You couldn’t just “close” the edges together; that would short-circuit the spell, making it colpse. Instead, you had to build a plex ttice at the edges with a single, tinuous line of mana that “closed” all the mesh lines, sealing the spell. It was like weaving with geometry, as the mana ttice had to have precise, repeating measurements.

  The hardest part was that most embedded mesh spells needed a shell, but the two would flid interfere with each other. I had to learn to bahem perfectly to keep them stable. This made me realize that all this magic stuff was fasating, but way more plicated than I’d initially thought. My initial thought about magic was, “Hey, it’s magic. You wave your hand, and everything you want to happen happens.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case—it had ws and rules like a plex teological device that I o follow.

  Bummer.

  Once I got fortable with the basic shapes and could create a simple open mesh, it was time to move on to the step. Before diving in, I toured the city some more, stocked up on food for my future journey, and visited the Prado Museum—couldn’t miss that.

  Despite having the mana dart, I couldn’t apply it to my css because of the super annoying “no double be” rule. So, I started building offensive spells. I figured I’d start with the cssics: fire and ice. There robably a reason those two showed up so often in the books I used to read.

  I didn’t have any fire mana handy, but I had an idea. I rented a one-bedroom apartment with a firepd burwo logs from Tuo first, the mana released was wood and nature, but after about two hours of burning, it verted to fire mana, givihe aspect I needed.

  In the middle of my fire experiments, Rue approached, his usual heavy paws thudding against the floor. Suddenly, his voice shouted into my mind, making me wince, “No! Uand!” The frustration in his tone was unmistakable.

  “What don’t you uand?”

  “TV.” He huffed, his tail flig in irritation.

  “You don’t uand the TV?”

  “Yes! No! Uand!” His ears fttened, and he pawed at the floor.

  Curious, I went over to the TV and saw it showed a el in Spanish. “Maybe we find something in English?”

  “No! TV! No! Uand!” Rue barked and shouted mentally.

  I was looking forward to the day he would start speaking in full sente normal volume. Trying to uand him from a single shouted word retty challenging.

  I bought him Local Adaptation: Spoken Language—another 5 points gone—and uood why Lis called it the “Starting Package”. It never ends. I spent the 500 mana for Spanish, and he went back to his show.

  He must’ve spent too much time with Lyura; she ied him with her TV obsession! At least he could ge the els with telekinesis and didn’t need me to do it.

  I got bay fire experiments and focused on the asped burned my hand.

  Ouch!

  The ime, I was smarter. I built a mana mesh around my hand, like in one exercise, and tinued fog on the fire aspect. Although I caught it once, I still o study it more deeply. After another half hour of trial and error, I finally had a fme in my hand. I had to keep feeding it mana so it wouldn’t go out, but there it was—a fme I’d created!

  I WAS A REAL WIZARD!

  I just sat there, admiring my fme, captivated for a solid ten minutes. Finally, I called out, “Rue, e see!”

  He trotted over and leaned in to ihe fme. Without hesitation, he s and immediately started sneezing, his whole body jerking with eaeeze.

  “Bad! John!” Rue shouted, his tone acg.

  A chuckle escaped me, I couldn’t resist. “I’m not bad, John; I told you to look, not smell.”

  “Bad! Friend!” He insisted, his eyes narrowing as if to show he was serious.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “ime, don’t sniff fire. But look, I created a fme with my magic! I’m a real wizard!”

  He shook his head, shouted, “Strange!” a back to the TV.

  It was time to move to the stage. I filled a bucket with water, created a somewhat thick dart struct, filled it with mana, applied the fire aspect, and pointed my hand at the bucket. The dart just sat there on my palm, not going anywhere.

  Huh?!

  No matter what I tried, it wouldn’t budge. The only thing that worked hysically throwing it into the bucket. Clearly, I was missing something.

  As I began cheg through Lis’s books, I ran into a snag. I’d paid the mana to learn the spoken and written nguages of some of these books, but I hadn’t actually read the nguages to learn them; I’d just paid the mana. So now, I had to read a page or two of each book the title and figure out if it would help me.

  Unfortunately, none of the books I’d paid the mana to uand had the solution I needed. So now I had to spend a thousand mana on eaguage, read a page or two, identify the title, and move on to the book. After 8,000 mana, I still had found nothing useful.

  I o up my regeion. Looking at my wizard spirals, I remembered I fixed oo 95% but still had an old o 93%.

  Maybe that would help?

  Unraveling the spiral was fast; building a new one was harder. But finally:

  Sed Spiral pletedQuality: 95%

  Cheg my regeion, I saw it went from 7 mana per mio 8 per minute. Not much of an improvement. Then I remembered the mana levels had risen.

  So maybe not an improvement at all?

  I built another spiral, and this time, it was an actual battle—I didn’t know why, but each spiral got harder to create, and the difficulty jump was signifit. After I fihe third, I khere was no way I was attempting a fourth; I’d definitely fail.

  Third Spiral pletedQuality: 95%

  My mana regeion rate increased to 12 per minute.

  Needing something to do while my mana regeed, I sat at the puter and started looking for workshops. I o refill the points I spent on Rue.

  Pael and Sangria Workshop with Dinner and Drinks10 Tapas 2.5-Hour Cooking CssFmenco Css ExperienceWorkshops were a lot more fun with friends.

  Sigh!

  After anht books, I still didn’t find a solution.

  Latin Dance & Salsa Css Experienique Traditional Cooking Css of Sardihercraft Workshop in the Rastro of MadridAnht books—still no solution.

  Private Bachata CssVelázquez Tech Museum + Paint your Menina WorkshopStone Carving in Cercedil/MadridSmall Group Make Your Own Bird Feeder Workshop in CercedilYes! Success!

  After three more books, I finally found A Aspects for Spell Creation. I also had another 9 points—my total was back to 150.

  I celebrated by t the Royal Pad cheg out the Royal Colle for ara fee. The day was Sunday, so I went to the El Rastro flea market to see what I could find. It was huge and in the historiter of Madrid. Initially, I took Rue with me, but when he saw the crowd, he wao go bae to watch TV. He was binging on some cop show in Spanish.

  After returning to the market, I wandered around the stalls and bought quite a few things. At some point, my red light started blinking, but I didn’t want to stare into space with all those people around, so I waited until I got bae to check it.

  Level up+3 wisdom, +3 perception, +2 luck, +3 free pointsProfession: Mert Level 7

  My lowest stat, not including Luck, was Agility at 37, so I added the points there. I agreed with Lis; we needed all the stats.

  I got bay studies and was halfway through A Aspects for Spell Creation when my phone buzzed. Lis’s name fshed on the s, and I answered with a quick swipe.

  “Are you still in Spain, or have you left for Italy?” His voice came through the line, calm and straightforward as always.

  “Still in Spain, in Madrid.”

  “Fly to Toulouse airport in France, rent a car, and drive to Balma. Call me when you get there, and I’ll give you further dires,” he instructed.

  “Why?”

  “We’re doh the projed want to show it to you.” There was a hint of excitement in his voice.

  “Okay, see you in a couple of days,” I said, doing cartwheels in my mind. I was super excited since I missed both of them.

  “Rue! We’re flying to see Lis and Mahya,” I called over the noise of the TV.

  “Friends!” he shouted back.

  I o practice talking to him telepathically. It would at least save my throat. He was bsting the Tv at an insane volume—he liked to hear the gunshots loud, and I had no idea why or how. I always thought dogs’ ears were sensitive.

  I booked a flight for the day ao bed, excited to see my friends soon.