Conjecture #5: Since the “natural disaster” was clearly as unnatural as…well, as unnatural as people on Earth disappearing every 90 minutes thousands at a time, it was likely that it would reoccur at roughly the same time each night. From the phrasing of the related mission, this would happen every night, but hopefully not more than once.

In other words, I and everyone else who was still alive should now be safe from meteoric incineration, if nothing else, until tomorrow night.

I’d been exerting myself, but I wasn’t sleepy. However, I was getting extremely hungry. And the moon hadn’t risen yet, so I was far from the only person heading back into town, though far more people, native and Taken, were leaving the city altogether.

Well, if stealing is permitted by the Tower, maybe it’s time for a little more.

I wandered the dark streets of Bront City for a couple hours until I found a wealthy district. My plan was to target a place that was relatively well off, but not so wealthy that they were likely to have have live security or magical anti-theft devices or something. Also, it should be somewhere that no one was around to observe.

Eventually, I settled on a place that seemed to fit the bill. As for how to get in…time to try another experiment.

This time, I simply imagined the front door unlocking. I close my eyes, concentrated…and in a few seconds, I heard a click.

I was right. Affecting things that already existed in non-impossible ways was much easier than radically altering something that already existed. The stunt had only cost me 2 stamina.

I went in as quietly as I could, which was actually genuinely quiet thank you very much.

It was dark inside—time for another experiment. This time, I imagined myself, that I could see in the dark, just a little bit. It worked, and I made my way through the house, trying to figure out where valuables might be kept and staying away from any bedrooms. If the valuables were in the owner’s bedroom…well, I was SOL and I’d try another place.

Eventually I found a drawing room. This was the last place I was going to be able to check—my pseudo-night vision was draining about a point of Stamina a minute. But a large painting immediately caught my eye.

Oh please. Don’t tell me…

I tugged at the painting—and it gave, revealing a safe. It unlocked with a key rather than a combination dial—which was fine by me, because it was less complicated to imagine unlocking. Another use of my special power later, and I gazed upon a pile of silver coins and even half a dozen gold coins that had been separated out.

I started filling my pockets—not with all of them, but enough to hopefully fill my needs for food and shelter for the duration of the Tutorial, and maybe buy a mana potion if those existed here. I left enough that the owner might not even notice they’d been burgled—or at least, might first assume a servant or somebody had been getting their fingers in the till. In the end, I took 20 silver coins and a single gold coin.

I left the house and returned my vision to normal. Between the second unlocking and maintaining the night vision, I was half-dead tired and just as sleepy.

I made for the first inn I could find, paid 3 silver for a room and a meal in the morning, and fell into bed.

The next morning, after the meal I was owed, I paid for another night and more meals and went back to my room—to try another Imagination experiment.

After the clothing incident, I was leery about trying to imagine something appearing from thin air, but I thought just maybe, if it was something small and technically completely mundane in nature…

A few minutes later, I walked out of the inn feeling considerably better than I’d walked in, with 10 points of stamina remaining and three gold coins in my pocket.

Shoplifting, burglary, counterfeiting…wow, I hadn’t even been in the Tower for a full day and I was working myself up a proper rap sheet. Would I find myself in such desperate circumstances on every floor?

Only an hour into Mana Bolt practice, my Guide spoke up again. “My, I am impressed. You should have a sufficient understanding of your mana to release it from the Tower’s control now. From here, you should be able to refine the way you cast your spells to do so more effectively. In particular, you should be able to reduce the casting time quite considerably.”

Then, the Guide told me how to reach the hidden menu screen to release my mana from the Tower’s control. I switched “Release Magic” from OFF to ON.

I felt a strange tingle—and completely unceremoniously, the Tower Guide vanished. “Oh. Okay then.”

I started practicing Mana Bolt on my own. Without the Tower holding my hand for it, it took me a few hours before I was able to cast it again. However, in the process I discovered that I could “prepare” a Mana Bolt and hold onto it more or less indefinitely as long as my concentration wasn’t broken.

Even so, it would still be best if I could simply cast them quicker. But it was getting on in the day. I was getting hungry, and I was starting to think I needed to move on to my most important Imagination experiment. After that experiment, I planned to sign up with the army to fight the wolves, and I figured the sooner the better.

I suppressed the temptation to copy more gold coins after eating at the inn—I needed my stamina at full for this. This time, after heading back out of the city I headed straight for the nearest woods. There seemed to be no shortage of woods in any direction in this place, but I still had to pull some pretty nimble moves to get past the wolves nearer the city.

Once I reached the woods, I immediately got to work. Bit by bit I collected twigs, dry grass, even leaves, and when I had enough, I cleared a space a few feet in diameter of grass or other flammable forest materials, and arranged the dried plant matter in a pile inside.

Then I concentrated—and imagined the pile bursting into flame. After only a second, there was an audible whoosh.

“Yes! It worked!” I hadn’t the first clue how to build a proper campfire, so what I had gathered burned out in a very short time, but what was important was that I had literally set it on fire with my mind. It hadn’t even taken a full point of Stamina, either.

With the first part of my plan complete, I decided I’d better keep practicing Mana Bolt today after all, and volunteer to fight alongside the town soldiers tomorrow. They’d be more likely to accept me if I got something resembling actual skill.

I didn’t know how long the Tutorial lasted, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t terribly long. But since I planned to acquire not just one, but hopefully several thousand wolf kills in one fell swoop, that shouldn’t matter unless it didn’t even last for four days.

By evening, I had managed to reduce the casting time of Mana Bolt to roughly 3 seconds. I almost headed back into the town immediately, but caught myself. I found a spot where no wolves were paying attention to me and waited.

Sure enough, the moment the sun completely set, another meteor-cluster-bomb thing fell on the city. Now I went back inside, and quickly found a new place for a hot meal and a room. I was starting to get to know this city quite decently.

I copied a few more gold coins before going to sleep, for a total of 6. The next morning, I planned to head straight to the army garrison post to volunteer to fight alongside the NPC forces.

I say planned to, because as I got close, I started seeing a lot more weapon and armor shops—and a display item in one of them caught my eye.

A polished and rounded wooden rod, topped by a dark blue glassy orb. Could it be? A real magic rod?

Well as it happened, I had a way to find out. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I knew if I concentrated hard on an object, I could it.

Common

Magic Attack Power 15

A magic rod crafted by an apprentice mage as a test to move to the next level of study. The previous owner has long since moved on to bigger and better things.

Slightly improves casting times.

I got the shop owner’s attention as quickly as I could. “Excuse me, how much for that rather handsome mage’s rod on display?”

The bespectacled NPC of middle age answered me. “Oh that? One of our more unusual items, I admit. Been holding onto it for years. It’s rather ordinary as such weapons go, but it’s quite well made. Got sold to me by another traveler at the time, but it’s not good enough for any of the city’s nobles who use magic, and too high quality for an army mage.

You do look like you might be able to use it, but I’m afraid I can’t let it go for less than five gold.”

Was this my weirdo luck in action? Even back on Earth, I’d noticed I was actually a fairly lucky person. Good things would happen to me every so often—nothing amazing usually, but little things would come my way more often than your average joe. And on the few occasions I played gacha games, I never had too hard a time getting the ultra-rares I targeted.

And what I appreciated even more was, I would have bad luck sometimes sure, but it never ended up so bad that it actually devastated me in any way. Now, this sweet item just fell into my lap, and even though it took every coin I’d gotten using what I was now calling my Item Duplication Glitch technique, the fact was that I HAD made 5 gold coins.

“I’ll take it,” I said, carefully bringing out the duplicate coins for him to count—the original coin was placed in my other pocket all along. I didn’t want to run afoul of any “copy of a copy” nonsense.

“You’re serious about this, young man?” he said as I held out my hand.

“I’m serious. It is most of what I have,” I admitted, “but as the first proper mage’s weapon I’ve owned, it’s too good to pass up. I almost feel like it was meant for me.”