Ignis’ First Firesday of Harvestfall, 1442, Tidebreaker Watch, Silvergale Strand.

  Now that everyone had the water they asked for, Vaelith remembered she had yet to summon Zyra’s requested magical bread.

  “I’ll… need to consult my grimoire for Create Food,” she sheepishly said.

  Orion pouted. “Aww, really? And here I thought you were going to keep blowing my mind!”

  Ryssa rolled her eyes and shook her head at Orion. Then her shoulders visibly relaxed.

  Sorry to disappoint, you two!

  Recalling how much of a struggle it had been to lift her grimoire earlier, Vaelith decided to resort to magic this time.

  If that works, it’ll be so much better…

  So Vaelith gently placed one hand on the spine of the book sitting in her satchel. She imagined encasing it in force, then gingerly lifted it with her magic. It slid out of her satchel and floated upwards effortlessly.

  Success!

  Guiding it with her hand, she nudged the book slightly to her left. She kept it suspended in mid-air and then opened the tome, flipping pages with an invisible hand until she located the right ritual.

  Mesmerized, Ryssa silently shook her head in disbelief, watching Vaelith effortlessly maintain three distinct spells.

  With a deliberate movement, Orion stepped closer, and then nudged her leg with his elbow. “You ever seen anything like this?”

  Ryssa swatted him on the head as she laughed nervously, shaking her head. “No… Of course not. Didn’t think she’d keep shattering my expectations like that.”

  Tracing the diagram in the air by following the instructions on the page, Vaelith concentrated on the less familiar ritual. Her brain drew connections in her mind between the two rituals; how they differed, where they matched. She committed it all to memory, not merely reading, but studying the spell.

  Focus…

  After she finished casting the ritual, Vaelith wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, her fins tingling as she did. She let out a sigh as she gently lowered herself to her feet and stowed her grimoire back in her satchel.

  Finally over…

  Reciting an unfamiliar ritual while simultaneously maintaining her spells had been incredibly taxing, leaving Vaelith exhausted. But that had not been the biggest stressor. Under the weight of her party’s expectant stares, her hand trembled the entire duration of the spell, each slight movement a testament to her anxiety. Unlike the water ritual, she had only used this one once before.

  To top it all, Vaelith had made a last-minute decision to experiment with the ritual. She had recalled one specific part of her instructor’s lesson: “Focus on the result.”

  She had wondered how much she could influence the result. Instead of some almost stale, hard bread, could she do better? So she had pictured a tasty, fresh-out-of-the-oven loaf. But she had not stopped with the appearance of the food; in her mind, she savored the rich aroma, the escaping heat as she tore into it, the delicious flavor, and the soft, yielding texture.

  Next time, I’ll see if I can make it whole grain instead. Perhaps try a different shape, like a baguette instead? Later, though; my experiments can wait…

  She offered Zyra the freshly summoned bread, an aroma of recently baked goods wafting into the air. The guardian accepted it and took a few tentative sniffs. She took a small bite out of a corner and chewed slowly, obviously trying to judge the taste or quality of the food. She swallowed, an eyebrow raised in puzzlement.

  Orion grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he searched his tall friend’s face for any hint of criticism. “So, boss, does it pass the taste test?”

  “Yeah, dude. It’s fine? It actually tastes more than you’d expect out of summoned food.”

  Ryssa sighed. “Seriously, Zyra? Did you have any idea the girl you randomly ran into yesterday could do all those insane things nobody else can?”

  “Nope, dude. She just popped up in front of me yesterday. I was about to log out when I saw her.”

  Zyra faced Vaelith.

  “Thanks for the grub. And don’t mind them, dudette. Wanna get on with the levelling now? That’s why we’re here.”

  Vaelith fidgeted with her amethyst necklace, the cool feel of the gemstone a welcome distraction.

  Oh yes, please. Anything to take all that attention away from me.

  The weight of the pendant at her neck reminded her of Kaelyn’s words. More valuable than the gift itself; the permission to be seen.

  Once again, she heard Instructor Daren’s words echo in her mind, “You don’t let yourself shine.”

  Both the priestess and her instructor seemed to believe she could do so much more, that she should not be afraid to be who she was.

  I need to try to make them proud.

  Vaelith nodded, a look of quiet determination on her smiling face.

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “Alright, Ryssa. Get us in.”

  “Fine,” Ryssa said, torn between drilling Vaelith for more questions, or just returning to a world she was in control of. “Time to get started. First duty—beach clearing.”

  Ryssa approached the dutywarden, and they exchanged a few words. He pointed toward the beach, and she nodded.

  “Alright, the clock’s ticking now. We’ve got plenty of time, but I just accepted the quest, so a bunch of mobs have spawned over there, just for us.”

  Vaelith was familiar with the concept of instantiated content. Enemies spawned specifically for one player or a group. Often, they would be invisible to people outside of the group, or impervious to their attacks, depending on how the system worked.

  Ryssa pointed down the hill, a rocky beach at the bottom of one of the great cliffs upon which Luminara was perched. Zyra started walking in that direction, with her typical slow and steady rhythm, the sound of clanking armour following her as she did.

  “Zyra will pull all the monsters and I’ll keep her alive. Orion, you explain to our new friend how casters handle fights like these, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll teach her the ABC of caster DPS. Don’t worry.”

  Ryssa took off, quickly catching up to Zyra, and started walking next to her, her sacred staff behind her back.

  The small anthropomorphic bunny nodded his head and adjusted the hood of his cloak. He then took hold of his fire-attuned magic rod with both hands and for the first today, actually looked threatening.

  “Mages are so lucky, you don’t need to carry a weapon around.”

  He looked Vaelith over from head to toe.

  “What stats does your amethyst necklace give you, anyway? That’s not really a caster item, huh?”

  Orion started walking, glancing behind him to make sure she was following.

  As she stepped behind him, Vaelith lifted the necklace to bring it into her view. She read the attributes that showed up in a floating window as she inspected the item. “Dexterity, Vitality and Critical Hit?”

  “Well, the crit will help you a little. Vitality’s only important if you’re going to take damage, and Dexterity isn’t a caster stat, so it doesn’t really help you. Where did you get that?”

  Orion started deftly hopping down a steep incline off of the hillock upon which Tidebreaker Watch stood vigil.

  “It was a gift. Someone bought it for me because it matched my eyes.”

  Orion nodded, turning back to look at her when he reached the middle point of the incline. He gestured with his rod for her to follow.

  “Well, if you like how it looks, you can always take its appearance and replace any other necklace you find using the visual armour set feature later. For now, it’s better than nothing.”

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  Vaelith found a spot near him that looked like it would make a good landing and, channeling some of her magic, blinked over. She felt the familiar electrifying surge of mana before casting the spell, and tingly sensation rippling through her skin and scales after she appeared near him.

  She titled her head. “Visual armour set?”

  Orion stumbled backward, his feet slipping on the loose gravel as she appeared beside him so unexpectedly; a gasp escaped his lips. He lost his footing, starting a precarious downhill descent that menaced to turn into a tumble the rest of the way.

  A sharp gust of telekinetic energy suddenly caught him mid-tumble, suspending him for a second before gently bringing him to the bottom of the incline. There, the spell gently lowered him until he was barely a feet floating above the ground.

  Taken aback, Orion stared wide-eyed at her. He cautiously rolled himself off the invisible force she had used to save him from his moment of disgrace. Moments after he set his foot down, Vaelith smiled, reassured. She then blinked next to him.

  Orion dusted himself off, throwing a sheepish grin her way. She lowered her hand, still feeling the faint tug of magic fading from her fingertips. Vaelith felt a swelling of pride; this time, she had not hesitated.

  Small win, I suppose. But now isn’t the time for self-congratulations.

  “Ah. Thanks, Vae. That wouldn’t have been my proudest moment. Can you imagine? First death on record: fall damage.”

  “Maybe you would have earned an achievement for that? First player to die from tumbling down a hill on the server.”

  They both laughed at her joke as they followed in Zyra’s and Ryssa’s footsteps.

  When they got closer, Zyra already had a swarm of little sea creatures swarming around her, harmlessly ramming themselves against her giant shield. Vaelith raised an eyebrow at the absurdity of the enemies attacking her. It was odd, to say the least, to see creatures like hippocampuses or sea urchins floating in mid-air, outside of water.

  Amused at the sight, Vaelith decided the oddest bit was not how they survived outside of water, but how they kept attacking Zyra relentlessly. She knew seahorses were carnivorous, yes. But they usually attacked much smaller targets, ones that could fit through their snout. Seeing their attempt to body check an enemy hundred of times their weight was hilarious to her.

  She shook her head, smiling. “Videogame logic.”

  Orion grinned at her comment. “Yeah, it’s best not to think too hard about some details like that. But hey, let’s focus on the fight. You ready for the ABC lesson?”

  She nodded.

  He raised one finger. “Rule number one for casters: Always Be Casting. Watch.”

  He turned and starting chanting a spell, whirling his rod as it accumulated red particles at its tip. He kept at it, bringing more and more energy until, after about three seconds, a ball of fire shot from his staff at high speed, flying towards one of the sea urchin.

  The small enemy took some serious damaged from the fire spell, but did not immediately fall dead. Because Zyra was holding aggro, the monster kept wailing on her instead of turning to attack Orion.

  Vaelith was familiar with aggro mechanics in video games. Enemies would usually go after the player they hated the most. As a simple rule, whoever did the most damage would be on top of that list, sorted by total damage. Healing also counted towards that—Whenever Ryssa healed any of them, the enemies would build some aggro from her healing spells. A healer could easily peel threat off of a tank if the latter was taking more damage and required more healing than the amount of threat they could generate with their actions.

  Because their role was to keep threat, tank classes broke the general rule for how aggro worked. For balance reasons, those classes inflicted lower damage than damage dealers—if they dealt the same amount of damage as damage dealers, but also took significantly less thanks to their armor, nobody would play damage dealers.

  Since aggro is based on damage, and tanks do lower damage, it meant the game developers had to create a feature to allow their to do their job—which is to keep enemies attacking them. Therefore, most tank classes get a threat multiplier baked into their abilities and attacks. An ability with a quadruple threat modifier meant that if it dealt ten points of damage, the enemy would treat it as if they had lost forty points instead.

  Tanks also had a specific abilities known as stances, which they could toggled on or off as needed. Every tank had a stance which multiplied threat even further, often by a significant amount. This way, they could usually get the attention of enemies without having to deal an equivalent amount of damage.

  “Okay, why don’t you finish the one I started?”

  Vaelith nodded, placing her left hand on her satchel and the right hand in front of her. At the distance they stood, she could not use Telekinetic Blast, as it was a powerful, single detonation in at a short distance. However, she was in range for her Telekinetic Blows spell. From the description, this one was a series of continual attacks, like a volley of condensed mana.

  Locking on the wounded enemy, she started casting the spell. Over the next two seconds, five nearly invisible force projectiles shot out of her hand, one every half a second.

  The missiles flew, following slightly chaotic arcs from her palm to the enemy, making a high-pitched shriek as they flew, and landing with satisfying crunches as they impacted against the enemy. The feeling of energy flowing through her grimoire in her satchel to the other hand was electrifying. She felt a surge of power, a crackling energy, coalesce in her hand just before unleashing each projectile. As much as she had used her magic for practical applications lately, using it for combat certainly gave it a sharper, deadlier vibe. This was not the telekinetic force that she used earlier to catch Orion. It was magic that existed to bring ruin to her enemies.

  The charred sea urchin staggered backwards as each of her projectiles slammed into it. The last two missiles knocked the creature further and further away as it died, its corpse flying limply in the sky. It landed a few meters away from Zyra; the body convulsing violently before disintegrating into dust.

  “Congratulations! That was your first kill, right?”

  Orion gave her a thumbs-up, the gesture a silent affirmation that made Vaelith’s cheeks flush crimson with embarrassment. She certainly did not feel like she did anything worth congratulating; his spell had shaved about seventy-five percent of the enemy’s life, while each of her projectile only took ten percent off each.

  She nodded. “In this game, yes.”

  “Alright, so Z is still holding five enemies steady. Why don’t we each pick one a side and race to clear this pack?”

  “Okay? I’ll start from the right, then…”

  Orion immediately locked on to the next urchin and started chanting his fire spell again. Vaelith picked the monster the farthest to the right, a small seahorse, and released volleys of Telekinetic Blows.

  Orion was still in the middle of his second spell when Vaelith’s target collapsed under the tenth missile. By the time he finally unleashed his second spell, which turned his first target to ashes, Vaelith was already halfway done with her next enemy.

  I’m winning…?

  It took Orion two more spells to fry his second enemy. And that had given Vaelith just enough time to take down the remaining two monsters.

  Three to two!

  The crashing waves echoed against the cliffs as the battle ended, the bodies of their targets littering the beach, slowly flickering out of existence like dying embers. Vaelith relaxed her stance and breathed out. She had enjoyed this little competition, and marveled at the precision and power behind her magic spells.

  Orion gave an appreciative whistle. “Well, you’re doing pretty good. Kill count, you got me, but DPS wise, I won.”

  Vaelith blinked in surprise. “Wait, what?”

  Orion nodded. With the flick of a hand, he made a window appear in front of her, reporting the total damage dealt during the encounter. A damage parser. “Yeah, if you count raw damage dealt, you only dealt eighty-eight percent of my damage in this battle.”

  How does that add up? I did the last twenty-five percent of the first enemy, and destroyed three of them by myself—that adds up to three and a quarter enemy. Meanwhile, Orion handled two by himself, and the first seventy-five percent on the first one—which adds up to two and three quarters..?

  Zyra took a second to look behind her, making sure everyone was safe. Satisfied, she set off towards the next pack of enemies at her usual slow pace.

  Ryssa approached, glaring at Orion as she explained. “That’s why damage charts can often paint the wrong picture. A lot of Orion’s damage was overkill—thirty percent of it, actually. Your channelled spells hit fast and often, so as soon as something dies, you can target another enemy and keep doing damage that matters. Don’t let the Big Number Syndrome get to you, Vaelith. We got enough of that out with the small guy. Parties work better when we cooperate, not compete.”

  Vaelith was familiar with how players online can get competitive about doing good damage, as it is an easy way to measure success, similar to how grades sometimes do between students.

  She nodded as Ryssa spoke, her words sinking in deeper than she had expected. It was not about doing the most damage or having the flashiest spells. It was about fitting into the rhythm of the team, each part moving together in sync. But a part of her still wanted to prove herself—to be noticed, to be worth something more than just the new girl. She just had to find the right balance.

  “With both of you focusing on the same target, we’d clear the enemies faster. Your spells could shave off half the health while Orion’s blast finishes them.”

  Ryssa started walking after Zyra, gesturing to Vaelith and Orion to follow.

  Orion stepped closer to Vaelith, whispering conspiratorially after Ryssa walked farther away. “Want to up your damage? Pre-cast. Time it so your spell to land as soon as Zyra hits. That’s how you boost uptime—learn to predict the pace of your tank, and start casting your spell before they run in.”

  As soon as she finished saying that, he rushed forward, moving past Ryssa and into his spell’s firing range before Zyra engaged them. He immediately started chanting his spell.

  Not wanting to be outdone, Vaelith blinked next to the small burrovian and, following Ryssa’s suggestion to focus-fire one target, launched a barrage of Telekinetic Blows on the same enemy.

  She felt the familiar thrill as the first burst of energy shot from her palm. She was eagerly expecting the release of the second bolt of her spell when the iconic crunching sound reverberated as the hit landed on one of the shelled creature.

  Suddenly, all the sea creatures shuddered—and turned. Not toward Zyra, as they should have. Toward her. Vaelith’s heart stuttered. She had hit them too soon, too fast. Her eyes widened as the swarm darted forward, their beady eyes locked on her.

  Her heart raced, her fingers tingling with the magic she had not meant to unleash so soon. How many times, in her life as Jason, had she drilled into her stubborn students that haste makes waste? In this world, mistakes like this could get people hurt, not simply get a poor grade or lecture from your teacher.

  As the sea creatures kept surging toward her with a ferocity she had not expected, Zyra’s hammer swung in a wide arc, smashing into some enemies pushing past her shield and between her legs. “What the hell, dude?!”

  Her voice was sharp, not just with frustration, but with a flash of concern. She did not spare her a glance—her focus was on keeping the creatures at bay—but her tone made it clear: Vaelith had messed up, and now Zyra had to scramble to fix the problem.

  Vaelith’s breath caught in her throat. This was not like blinking across the city’s streets or filling water barrels—this was real, immediate danger, and she had just broken the most important rule. Her fingers twitched, her Telekinetic Blows spell fizzling as she lost focus. The creatures were closing in fast. What if she could not react in time?

  “Oh. Shit…”

  Orion glanced over at Vaelith, his expression teetering between amusement and something else—was that guilt?

  He didn’t mean for that to happen, right?

  Her stomach twisted as she realised that in trying to keep up with him, she might have just got them both into trouble.

  She had forgotten that her spell has no cast time, so there was no reason for her to pre-cast. Vaelith had simply tried to follow in Orion’s lead to maximise her damage. She had wanted the group to recognise her efforts, and to do her share of damage. But she had screwed up. Zyra was pissed and had shouted at her. And worse? She had a small crowd of enemies charging straight at her.

  Vaelith, you idiot. What were you thinking?

  A Realm Reforged Again is a game, and they care about the practical results. Summon Food is meant to lower downtime, by summoning food to heal your injuries. But Vaelith takes it further than that. If a player puts extra effort into a spell, why shouldn’t they get better results?