“Run around the field and don’t stop until I tell you to.” Barti barked from where he sat. Looking over at him in surprise, I noticed that my Chisa Katana sat on the table behind him. The blade gleamed in the training room light. “While Mindi might be great at training someone in magic, I am your general trainer as well as your weapons instructor. As we get deeper into training there will be more and more times that you will have multiple teachers instructing you at the same time. NOW RUN!”

  The echoes of his voice chased me as I took off. That combined with my surprise at his choice to join in my magic training caused my concentration to falter and my spell thread to snap. “Get that spell thread back up,” Mindi’s yelling made me miss the sweet and soft woman from earlier.

  Going from a run to a light jog, I worked on doing just that when Barti yelled at me again. “I didn’t tell you to stop running.” With a sudden, sinking feeling, I realized what they both wanted from me. This training was going to drive me nuts. Slowly, but surely, I remade the thread and snapped it into place. It was stable for all of ten seconds before something on the floor caused me to stumble.

  “Get the spell back up!”

  “I told you to run, not do a drunken stumble!”

  Fucking hell. One of them was bad enough. The two together were going to drive me into an early grave. Then again, that didn’t mean much when I could just come back. Maybe that’s why travelers learned faster. They didn’t have to worry about death being permanent.

  Around and around I ran. Thread after thread broke and reformed. As they broke, I forced myself to form them faster, earlier, efficiently. While I wasn’t all that talented, my speed increased just from the sheer amount of practice I was getting. On top of that, the spell was becoming easier to hold whenever the invisible and shifting object tripped me or when someone smacked the back of my head with something.

  Panting and drenched in sweat, I dropped to the floor. My muscles shook and refused to move, let alone run. “Is he dead?” One of the girls asked. If I had to guess, it was Mindi given where the voice was coming from.

  “No,” Barti responded. “He just needs a few minutes to catch his breath. I sometimes forget just how weak new travelers are. What was that, two hours of running? Didn’t he do better last time?”

  “Last time he wasn’t having to hold a spell in his head. The constant mana loss would have had some effect.”

  “Just how small is his mana pool that it would be affected by such a simple spell?” These guys didn’t care that I was here listening to them beat me down, did they? As I sat there, something changed. It felt like a blanket was suddenly ripped away and everything around grew more real. Moments later, a notification popped up in the middle of my vision.

  Newbie Protection has worn off.

  Well damn. There went the starting buff. In the corner of my eye, my mana bar practically stalled out. I was pretty sure that my regen had just been cut to ribbons. And here I was thinking that training was hard enough before.

  The moment my muscles stopped screaming, I groaned and rolled over. “Looks like he’s ready to get back to it.”

  “You’re right, though I don’t think running is the way to go,” Barti called out to me from wherever that evil elf was standing now. “Give me some pushups.”

  “Form a mana thread and thread it around your whole chest this time,” Mindi said in a calm tone before going back to her stern, commanding tone as she continued. “Do it WHILE you are doing pushups.” Fucking hell. These two just would not let me do one thing at a time.

  Instead of wasting my time on doing both at the same time, and failing, I focused on my pushups first and started to pump them out. The rhythm my body fell into was enough to let me focus on my mana without pissing the elf off. This time, when I visualized my sphere of mana, I found that it looked hazy. The light and warmth coming off of it was dulled. Almost as if it was a fire running low on fuel.

  Given that what I was seeing was my mana and the bar hovering at the edge of my vision showed just over half a bar, I was running quite low when compared to every other time I had seen it. Not that that would stop me from doing as I was ordered.

  I used every bit of mental determination and grit I could muster to form the thread and weave it into the shape. I ran the thing straight down to just below my belly button before circling up. Keeping just below the skin as I moved to just below my neck.

  The sweat I felt pouring off of me could have been from the pushups or from the mental exertion I was under as I fought to keep the thread solid. Finally, though, I managed to run the thread across the areas I needed and returned to the sphere. It had visibly dimmed and only grew worse the moment I tapped the thread into it.

  Mana flooded out of it like water does when a main is broken. I watched as my mana bar sharply dipped. The thing dropped below a quarter before slowly going back up as the mana made its way back into the sphere from the other side. Finally, it stabilized just below where it started, though it did start to decrease as the spell took hold.

  I didn’t realize until that point just how sore my chest muscles were. The moment the spell went to work, the muscles loosened and seemed to heal at a rapid pace. Someone looking at me as I worked out would have thought I had just found my second wind rather than anything to do with magic or a spell.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Took you long enough. Though next time I would recommend weaving the thread through your body rather than just wrapping it around under your skin. You need the mana to get to all the muscles, not just those on the surface.” Mindi said as a weight settled on me. While I felt the additional weight, I didn’t strain under it like I thought I would. “You will find that these spells will help you with recovery as well as strengthening various muscles.”

  “Can I do this to any other part of my body or just my chest?” I asked through gritted teeth. Hey, just because I wasn’t straining as much as I thought I was didn’t mean I wasn’t straining at all. She had added enough weight that I was sure could crush me if I dropped the spell.

  “Sure, you can do the same thing to every part of your body.” It sounded as if she was thinking about something as she answered from somewhere above me. Suddenly, I felt another weight settle on me. Given the soft tapping of two somethings on my side, I had a feeling she was sitting on me. “The spells aren't all that efficient though so it is best to only use them during the moments you need them. And before you ask, yes you can combine them all to get a general body fortification spell. Too bad the spell eats mana like there is no tomorrow.”

  “Didn’t you promise to explain a few things while he worked out?” Barti asked Mindi showing that he had been paying attention and remembered what I had forgotten until now.

  She sighed, “I did but he was already having issues focusing on two things that I doubted he could have paid attention to my talking. Now, what was it I was going to explain first?”

  Barti didn’t answer her question, probably seeing if I recalled the original conversation or had a different set of questions in mind. I thought back and asked the first question that came to mind that was related to the topic we had been talking about. “How does one get skills related to pulling in mana faster?” Here is to hoping it is something I can learn fast to help with my pitiful mana regeneration.

  “That’s an easy one and there are many skills related to it. The most commonly used one is meditation. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t already have it.”

  Had I gotten that skill? Mentally I called up my skill screen and sure as shit, the skill was there. It even doubled the rate at which mana regenerated while meditating. It wasn’t the only skill I had gained during this training period but I would come back to them in a minute. I had to focus on mana regeneration first. Everything else would still be there later.

  “There are also other skills that you may or may not stumble on on your own.” She continued, “And before you ask, I will not be teaching the ones I have to you. As you can imagine, any skills related to increasing a mage's mana regeneration are highly coveted and thus protected.”

  Damn. I guess it made sense. I would just have to experiment with various methods as my Mana Manipulation skill increased. “What are runes? I mean you showed me one and told me that they can be used to cast spells but that doesn’t tell me all that much.”

  “In essence? It is the language of magic.” Her voice was filled with reverence. It was as if she was speaking of her god or something. “With the right runes, one can make a spell that can do anything they want. The only limit is what runes are known to them.”

  Oh great, yet another thing I had to learn. Only this time it was a freaking language. I had issues learning Spanish in high school. How was I supposed to learn something that sounded even more complicated?

  “Lucky for everyone, we don’t need to teach you how to read the language.” I briefly stopped at the top of my last pushup to wipe off my brow. That piece of information was a gift from the gods, even if it was odd given how realistic this game was supposed to be. “It is the only system or language like this. Want to learn to speak another language? Study. Build a house? Hire someone or build it yourself. From what my professors taught me, the system will guide you in doing these things but not nearly as much as with the runic language.”

  Mindi stopped to take a deep breath before continuing with her rant. “There are two ways to learn a rune. The easiest way is to have someone show you it and tell you what the rune means. This is how you learned the fire rune. You can also find random runes lying around. They could be in spells or etched into objects. If you focus on one such rune, you have a chance to identify what the rune means. On top of that, if you are really lucky, the gods or the system might gift you with a spell that uses it. Though don’t count on this as a way to gain spells.”

  Other than my heavy breathing and the sound of my heart hammering in my chest, the room became silent as she finished. Seeing an opportunity to ask another question, I asked about something I had seen on the skill shop page. “Are there other skills that I can get to increase my control over an element?”

  To my surprise, it wasn’t Mindi that answered, but Barti. “There are some skills that will alter how you interact with any given element. Skills like Fox Fire, Gaia’s Growth, Poseidon’s Palace, Heaven’s Mercy, and Demonic Devastation to name a few. Each will alter the element they coincide with in one way or another. Gaia’s Growth, for example, will alter earth-related spells to be more effective when it comes to anything plant-related.”

  “And how does one go about getting one of these skills?”

  “From what various elvish researchers have found,” now wasn’t that a thought. People who lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years researching one topic. “is that it depends on a combination of your personality as well as your elemental affinities. It isn’t that it is rare to have one such skill. The issue is finding out which element a person has the skill linked to.”

  “Now hold on a minute,” Tindi yelled from wherever she was.

  “That cannot be right,” Mindi yelled from above me.

  “…Never have I heard…”

  “…Said that it was the elemental god blessing…”

  Both girls spoke over of each other as they tried to argue with the elf. Their voices were so loud that I couldn’t make out more than a few snippets of what they were saying. Barti must have done something because both girls just suddenly stopped talking. “Us elves have a more complete record than any other species, save the gods. That coupled with the fact that we have the time to find our specific element means that each of us has done so. For instance, my element is Air. Specifically Fluttering Flicker. It focuses on the speed and control aspects of air over everything else.”

  “I thought you were just fast. You mean to tell me you have been using your magic every time I went to hit you?” Tindi sounded like she was a bit angry at this. She likely felt cheated given the fact that she wasn’t able to do the same.

  “Nope. My elemental skill level is high enough that the air near me is nearly a part of me. It is enough that the air itself tells me if and when something is near me. All I have to do is dodge. No mana required.” The elf sounded bored.

  “So if I said that I was already offered one such skill, what would you say?”

  “Depends on which one it is. Some of the more common ones linked to fire would be Pheonix’s Flame, Scorched Earth, Solar Flare, and Dragon’s Breath. All of which have their good sides and bad. Which did you get offered?”

  Wait, didn’t he talk about Fox Fire when listing out random elemental skills? A bit confused, I answered him, “I got offered Fox Fire.” The room went silent for a second time. This time, I didn’t think it was because they were waiting for me to ask another question.