They weren’t lying when they said express delivery. I thought it was just a marketing campaign, but the Magic Shop did deliver even faster than they announced, so I picked up my package at the laundromat before driving home. Absorbing the crystals replenished my reserve of MertiPoints, which now sits at a comfortable six hundred. The MertiPoints are always welcome, but I used Mana Crystals to allow MERTICORE to run the Mana system.

I select the MANA_001, and the app takes me to another window, which prompts me to choose a catalyst. I grab the staff I got from Mary and focus on it. It doesn’t take long for the unique ID of the staff to show up in the program. It scans it for a moment before confirming that the weapon is compatible with the system I’m trying to emulate.

Now, this is the moment of truth. I select yes, and the staff disappears from my hands. I just hope that the Mana System will not be full of hidden microtransactions like MERTICORE, but my intuition tells me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

***Virtual Machine Finished! Run? (Yes/No)***

***Warning! Due to current hardware limitation, only one Virtual Machine can run at a time.***

I shrug at the alert. It doesn’t matter to me. Where would I even find another system? Mana is the most widespread as far as I know, so finding a new system and enough materials for MERTICORE to learn it is hopeless and has no benefit for the time being.

Time will tell if I’m wrong, but it isn’t like I have a way to upgrade myself; I already tried.

I select yes, and my vision flickers for a brief moment before becoming normal again. But I feel something slightly different. It’s when I notice the brand new blue bar at the corner of my vision. I bet this is a Mana bar, as cliche as it sounds. I focus on it, and a new window appears on my ethereal laptop.

***VIRTUAL MACHINE***

***MANA_001***

***MANA LEVELS : 42/42***

***SPELL LIST***

The interface barely deserves to be called that. The text is in a black terminal, and I have to use my keyboard to navigate the bare-bone menu. I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting something fancier, something similar to a full-blown game-like system from novels. Instead, I have something that looks like software from the seventies.

I stifle a sigh. There is no point in complaining. Instead, I open the spell list. With any luck, there are a few spells in there- and it’s empty. I somehow expected as much. After all, why would MERTICORE give something for free? The Object Editor was the only free app in the entire store, a store that contains thousands of them.

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter as I grab the heavy magic manual. I have no idea how I should learn spells. I admit that I had a sliver of hope that I would just need to touch a spellbook to understand its contents. But that’s not happening. Instead, I have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Somehow, all my efforts to integrate the Mana system feel like a waste. I still know fuck all about spells, and-

Oh! That’s interesting. The letters on the manual are shifting in front of my eyes. The mystical gibberish flickers and turns into a soup of pixels before reorganizing into a neat list of functions. There are a few MERTCORE ones, but the rest is from the Virtual Machine. There’s stuff like MANA_001.Energy_Gather() for instance. I have no idea what it does, and I don’t care for now. This unexpected development also tells me that I can make custom spells. I lack the proper knowledge for that, but my dream of teleporting around seems to be slightly closer than before.

However, I shouldn’t get too excited. My Mana level looks a bit low compared to the Crystals I absorbed, and I have no idea how efficient the spell I just copied is. It’s supposed to make a small globe of light appear near me, and the ethereal construct should be able to follow me around before disappearing a minute later.

I double-check the contents of the text editor before running the file as a script. A notification appears in the terminal of the Virtual Machine, saying that the script ‘MageLight.mert’ is now in the Spell List. My jaw drops when I turn around and see a ball of pure light floating above my left shoulder. I poke it with my finger. It feels slightly warm to the touch, and it’s similar to poking through jello. The feeling is unique. The apparition has no actual physical body, yet I can somehow feel its presence on my finger.

The light then disappears like it’s supposed to. That minute flew by since I was too busy poking at it to notice anything else. I glance at the Virtual Machine, and all elements of wonders are gone. This little light show consumed ten Mana.

“That’s not good,” I say to myself as I fall on my couch and lean back. What should I do? I might be able to optimize the-

I’m a fucking idiot. MERTICORE is the best when it comes to optimizing things. That’s how I got it in the first place. I run an instance of MERTCORE.Debug() on the script and compare the results with what I copied from the manual. The one from the manual has a lot less content compared to the file generated by the Debug method. However, there’s barely any reference to the Virtual Machine in the new script. It doesn’t take long for me to piece the puzzle together. MERTICORE replaced several magical functions with its own, which are slightly more grounded in reality.

I run the new script, and the light appears in the same spot as the last. However, this floating light is brighter and whiter. I also can’t feel any weird texture like the first orb. The construct then vanishes from existence after a minute, and a smirk creeps on my face as I glance at the Mana levels. This time, the light only used two Mana.

That’s an improvement! But if a light costs ten Mana, then what would a teleport spell cost? MERTICORE already made it clear that I can’t affect coordinates for the time being, so I doubt the optimization would do me any favors.

I cannot help but sigh. The road ahead of me is going to be a long one. But I guess it is obvious. Teleporting does sound like it would require a lot of energy.

Now that I think about it, why are spells costing Mana? MERTICORE doesn’t need anything to run. I take a glance at the old MageLight script and thoroughly read the lacking documentation that came with the Virtual Machine. The vague, and often empty descriptions of the methods don’t help me understand the Mana system any better, but it doesn’t stop me from making assumptions. My assumptions are just that, but I believe that they are pretty reasonable.

To put it simply, I believe that MERTICORE and the Mana system operate on different axioms altogether. MERTICORE seems to fully utilize the physical world, often to a ridiculous degree. Take the 10mm MERTICORE. It seems impossible considering the current technology, but it is theoretically doable with ‘normal’ materials. Of course, I don’t doubt there are things hidden in my bullets that would revolutionize the way we approach physics, but that’s not the point. Even the self-replenishing cartridges are explainable with logic.

Technically, you could create matter with a massive amount of energy. So I guess MERTICORE is using a variation of that to provide me with infinite ammo.

To summarize, MERTICORE stays in the boundaries of reality. However, Mana doesn’t give a shit.

Do you want to create magical shields out of thin air with a snap of your fingers? Who cares, just dump Mana. Do you want to summon a demon? Lol, just use a shitload of Mana.

Okay, I might be exaggerating. But it summarizes how Mana works. The Mana system doesn’t care about natural laws. Instead, it bends reality to its will by expending a varying degree of Mana. Of course, this is all a hypothesis, and I could be very wrong. But I think the Mana cost is proportional to the adverse effects the spell has on reality.

Creating a fireball might cost a bit, but not much. However, creating a miniature supernova out of nothing will violate a lot, if not all, laws of physics. It would require a lot of Mana to allow that phenomenon to exist.

So I’m stuck with a system that has to obey the laws of reality while wizards can bribe reality into doing what they want without any repercussions.

Somehow, that train of thoughts doesn’t fill me with confidence.

I let out a huge sigh as I stare at my ceiling. Teleporting sounds like something that reality would not like at all. Is my dream of teleporting even feasible? For all I know, even the magical world cannot do such a thing. It might be a fool’s errand, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I also might be able to achieve what I want to do by mixing MERTICORE and Mana like I previously thought.

The cost of doing such a thing might be enormous, but it will not stop me.

Now let’s make a plan. What do I need to do now? Ideally, I would look into ways to upgrade my Mana reserves along with my MERTICORE hardware. But I first have to prepare for the future assault of the magical twins I robbed.

When I put it like that, it sounds like I’m the bad guy.

I shake my head. They had it coming. Who would threaten and assault someone at first sight? Granted, I acted like a dick, but that doesn’t warrant their attempts at frying my brain. I doubt they’ll listen to me if I explain why they are unreasonable, so I better prepare for their assault. I have no idea if they’ll have backup this time around, so better prepare for the worst. Any second I waste by not doing anything is going to help them, so I better act now before it’s too late.

The first step is to make my house a more defensible area. I won’t go as far as turning my home into a bunker, but I have nothing to lose by reinforcing the structure of my house. I fire up the Object Editor and upgrade everything I can before clicking the accept button.

“Fuck!” I exclaim, but it’s already too late. My entire home lights up for a second. I was so busy planning that I completely forgot about that! I grit my teeth. Now, the wizards are definitely going to come here. A house-sized light bulb is not that common, so I probably triggered a dozen alarms already. At last, I should be safe if I stay inside. My house is so sturdy that it could probably survive an airliner crashing into it.

What about destructive spells? I don’t want to think about it. I hope the mages will be reasonable and not burn down the whole neighborhood, but something tells me that I’m asking too much.

My armor should allow me to survive…probably.

I did everything I could for static defense, now let’s see if I can’t use more active means of stopping the wizards. I recall a couple of Wifi cameras I got at a job some time ago. I never got around to installing them, but having a good view of the perimeter around my home will help me predict the moves of the mages.

The setup took me longer than expected. I now remember why I got these cameras for free. They only had ‘some minor defects.’

Minor defects my ass, just getting them to connect to my network took me an hour and a half. But, I powered through the tedious setup and used a good old instance of MERTCORE.Debug() to round things up. Now I have an ultra high-fidelity view of everything around my home.

Sadly, my stash of useful gadgets is empty now. Or at least it doesn’t contain anything useful for my situation. I don’t have anything like a sentry gun in my closet, and I doubt a bunch of buggy smart-watches is going to help me fight angry spell-casters.

I have to improvise. I remember that I have a drone somewhere. I got it as a Christmas gift some time ago, but never really figured out how to make it fly straight. I might be able to use it as a suicide bomber, or I could strap a gun with infinite ammo onto it. I shake my head, definitely a bad idea. I can barely control the thing as it is. It isn’t an issue of the controls not working. The problem is the operator; he is a clueless idiot. And that can’t be fixed by MERTICORE.

I don’t want to cause collateral damage by making an exploding drone zip around and crash into a nearby home.

Maybe I could set traps? I recall that my friction and slow-down trap worked well against the sisters. I doubt they’ll fall for it again, but it can’t hurt to try. I lower the friction of the surroundings of my home and thicken the air. It should slow them down even it is doesn’t stop them.

I might also try to freeze the wizards. And I mean that literally. Sadly, I can’t modify the temperature of the air because of that damned Hardware Limitation. It’s not too much of a loss anyway. I should aim to be as non-lethal as possible. The wizards are angry at me now, but I just stole some money. They would react in a very different way if I massacred their agents.

Of course, I’m not delusional. I’ll defend my life if it comes to that. I’ve never killed anyone before, but I should be able to press the trigger if I have to. I took classes to prepare myself in case I ever need to shoot someone. Of course, that was just theory. I don’t doubt that killing someone will take a toll on my psyche.

But I’ll do what needs to be done. Speaking of personal defense, shouldn’t I use something a tad better? I glance at my handgun that did destroy half of a building with a single shot. It should be more than sufficient, but it never hurts to be prepared. Indeed, handguns are generally weaker than long arms when it comes to power.

And what if the wizards send demons? I’ve played enough Doom to know that the best weapon against a beast from hell is a shotgun.

As luck would have it, I already have a great shotgun. And I’m about to make it even better.