I hack, sputter and cough, staying above the water purely on my experience from swimming and playing around in water. My drenched shorts do nothing but hinder me, and without the warmth from my magic, the slightly colder than comfortable water quickly makes me shiver.

There! Having gotten most of the water out of my lungs, and having turned my flailing into something something more controlled, I expend energy to not only stay afloat, but to move towards the cliff.

My hand slaps against a suitable handhold on the rock, and I can finally calm down, still coughing out water every other breath. I start moving along the cliff, to a place I can actually climb onto dry land.

I crawl out of the water, and with a powerful cough, eject what is hopefully the last of the water from my lungs. Then I roll over onto my back and start [Meditating].

After regaining control of my mana, I warm myself while pondering about what just happened. I’m pretty sure I reached the surface, no I didn’t, I pulled an air bubble from the surface. And then…

I lost control of my mana, but why did I revert to my human form? I thought only the Mist Djinn needed continuous mana, but maybe I was wrong. Actually, now that I think about it, only the Wolfkin form seem to not require any mana.

Why did I lose control? Was it because of my mental state? It was probably because I ‘let down my guard’, so to speak, when I finally had a breath of fresh air.

“Haah.” I let out a half sigh, half deep breath. Crunch? I tilt my head. Oh, it’s one of those [Pink Fluffy Rabbits]. It stays for a heartbeat before hopping off. With this amount of rabbits, I reckon the local ecosystem should be decimated. Or maybe those things only eat magical plants. I guess we’ll know in a month or so.

I sit upright, then pull a ball of water from the lake. Good, I can control magic again, and my mana has regenerated quite a bit. I stand up and, after dipping into the water to wash of the dirt that stuck to my wet shorts, lift myself up by a small inverse whirlpool.

I cautiously move forward. No good, the Wave Lord form is much better, so I take on that instead, then surge over to my backpack. It’s still there, but there’s someone looking at it.

“That’s mine!” I say. Well, it’s hardly indoor volume, but if I really want to be loud, I can easily beat that. They look up towards me, and while I would say they go wide-eyed at my current looks, I can’t tell from over here, so it’s just an assumption.

Partially to show off(okay, mostly), partially because I get a strong urge to do so in this form, I dive beneath the surface, bringing the obligatory bubble. Good, it seems like whatever happened earlier was a fluke.

When I resurface, I am a few meters away from the shore, and moments later I revert my form, foot landing on dry rock. Cold dry rock. I dry myself with a combination of basic heating magic and [Hydrokinesis].

The people who were inspecting my bag, a pair of young women in jogging gear, look me over, seemingly not sure what to make of me.

“So this is yours?” The short blonde asks, hand sweeping over the backpack and bags around it.

“Yeah.”

“We thought someone had forgotten it, but there’s a phone and some keys in there.” The slightly taller girl explains, brown eyes going from the bags strewn around to me.

“Wait, are you the guy who made that video?” She continues.

I furrow my brows, “What video?”

The blonde chimes in. “Oh, you’re the guy who made the magic video!”

“You mean the [System] 101 video?”

The blonde’s eyes practically glows. “Oh my god, that’s so cool! Are those flowers for magic? Are you gonna do that thing,” her face scrunches up, I can practically hear the gears whirring and clicking inside her brain.

“Alchemy?” I help her out.

“Yeah!”

I nod. “I want to try, at least. I also want to catalogue them.”

Having people recognize me at the street, so to speak, for the video… I didn’t even show my face, not my human face, anyway. The video must’ve really taken off. More than it already had, that is. Dang, I’ve forgotten to check on it, the views must be double or maybe even triple digit millions… Probably not, but I am SO glad I always turn off email notifications.

The girls left after asking a few questions and in turn answering some of mine. I want to explore the water dungeon, but I’m gonna need a more reliable way to breathe underwater. I suppose I should also tell the military about it, in case monsters can emerge from there, and also finish my gunstaff and learn some utility spells.

In fact, I have one type of spell I can try right now: Defensive magic. Specifically, I have two spells in mind. One is what is often referred to as magic armor, mage armor or mana shield. In other words, covering oneself in a layer of mana that can disperse and/or absorb attacks. The other forming an actual shield/barrier with magic.

…

Hmm, I have no idea if this ‘magic armor’ would do very much. I do think it would help against other magic, but would need another person to test it. Barriers, then.

Now, if I can make the mana materialize and get physical properties, that would be one way to do it. It’s also likely to use stupidly high amounts of mana without training, so let’s start with a small square barrier. I send out mana, start drawing in etheric mana, the condense it in a small, square area. When I think I have enough, I will it to become solid, and it quickly forms a small, translucent, purple square.

Ability unlocked: [Conjuration]

That’s not quite what I meant to learn, but I’ll happily take it. And equip it. As always, both learning and equipping a ability grants me a something, a knowledge of sorts, on the ability in question and how to better use it.

With that aid, I quickly form a bigger, but less dense square. Good. How about making it harder, more solid? It deepens in color, rapidly draining my mana. Stop! This is expensive on mana, as I suspected. Ah, but after I have formed it it doesn’t take much to sustain, in fact I can sustain it purely by etheric mana.

Can I take back the mana? Good, good. It’s not a hundred percent efficient. Maybe half? No, a little bit more. Sixty percent, maybe. I get the feeling that will improve as the ability levels, and that [Mana Absorption] also helps. Synergizing skills are great and all, but I feel like I get more and more skills I need to level. I guess that’s a luxury problem…

With a magical push, I move the barrier, then enlarge it. Ah, it went almost invisible. I should give it more mana, and keep drawing in etheric mana. Let’s try to reshape it, how about hexagonal? That works too, huh. If I shrink it to the size of my upper body… That’s a good size.

Let’s make another one. I start by gathering mana in a sphere, a seed, and when it has gathered enough, expand outwards. Perfect! It’s a bit slow, though, taking a few seconds to fully form. And while I can retrieve a good portion of the mana, it’s not very efficient.

I play around a bit, making various shapes and sizes, and find that I can make them super efficient by spreading the mana out, instead of making a ‘seed’, and have the ‘cloud’ of mana pull in etheric mana to properly materialize.

It takes even longer, of course, and I seem to have lowered the etheric mana level here by constantly enlarging and strengthening six of these hexagonal barriers. In a smaller space this might just completely drain the area of etheric mana. On the other, hand, outdoors, or in a place with dense etheric mana, it works pretty good. Even moving around with the barriers works pretty well. Beehive Barrier, go!

I have a bit more time before I should go home, so let’s go check out the insect dungeon, which might not actually be a proper dungeon. From what I heard, the police completely cleared it out, but if the insects somehow respawn or other monsters have entered, I’m quite confident in my ability to run away. The shields only make it easier.

Wand out, {Etheric Orb of Light} hovering over my shoulder, one shield behind me and three in front, in a V-formation. Aside from the wand, the rest of my gear is pretty clunky, so I left it back home. But this should be more than enough for a cave that should be empty. I enter the cave.

Inside I stop for a moment and strain my my senses, largely enhanced in this Wolfkin form. Can’t sense anything unexpected. I do sense a tinge of Decay, as well as… the Aspect of the Spider? No, that’s not quite it. It could be from the large webs that cover parts of the roof and walls. I send out some of my mana, but nothing reacts. Let’s go, then.

I stop at when the path branches off to the right, some twenty or so meters in. I create two more lights and send them down each path. The path in front snakes forward, leaving me unable to look around a bend, but the one to the right leads into a somewhat big room. There’s nothing there but more of that cobweb stuff. I suppose I can try to harvest some on the way back.

Since there’s nothing there, I ignore the room and keep walking. It smells a bit unpleasant, but it’ll help me learn to ignore smells, a good skill when taking on forms with more sensitive noses than humans. It might carry over to other senses as well.

Looking around, it seems that the ‘dungeon’ is definitely not a ‘true’ dungeon. There’s a small room with small alcoves in the walls, but that’s the end of it. There’s a good bit of ashes around, and judging by this half-burnt cobweb, it’s from burning the webs.

Time to return, then. I quickly go back the way I came and enter the web room. I’m not sure how sticky it is, so I shape one of the shields into a rod and poke the web a bit. From what I can tell, the conjured material have the properties of something between a metal and a crystal.

The web doesn’t really stick to the rod. How about other parts? Doesn’t seem like it. Well that was a bit anticlimactic, though I suppose not all spider silk is sticky, or rather, only the parts for trapping prey are sticky. Besides, the insect monsters didn’t exactly look like spiders.

I gingerly touch a strand with my hand. It’s not sticky at all. In fact, it’s kinda like a fine rope. The thickness, too, is about the same my fingers. I grab the thread with both hands, carefully at first. Then I pull apart with all my strength. Granted, even with the increase from abilities, I’m not terribly strong. The web holds fast.

How about cutting it? I take out the woodworking knife and try cutting the string. It’s quite tricky, since I have to hold it with my other hand, otherwise the whole web is just pushed by the knife. After exerting more force than should be necessary, I only cut a couple strands of the string. This doesn’t work.

I sheathe the knife and put it back in the back. Then I take the fold-out saw, and start cutting through the web, right next to where it is connected to the cave wall. The saw seems much better at this, though this thread is damned resistant. Eventually, I saw through the final strands.

What am I doing, I have magic! I follow the thread to the nearest branching point. Right, how should I do this? Let’s try turning the conjured rod into a very fine blade. I turn it around in the air; I feel like I will bleed from from even slightly touching that edge. Let’s cut through the thread, then

Now that was significantly easier. It loses a bit of mana to the thread on touch, but the blade is pretty dense, since it was condensed from one of the barriers. Speaking of which, they seem highly efficient now that I’ve formed them. I haven’t used any mana aside from what little I need to move them. If they lose mana on touch though, they would likely weaken from taking any sorts of attack.

Now that I have a method, let’s grab a bunch of this thread. I can just wrap it around something. On that note, let’s turn another of the shields into a rod.