I was outside the city limits together with Redax and Andrius. We came out here so that I could attempt to apply the new knowledge I’d gained from the study sessions I had with Andrius over the past two days. Andrius was obviously here to assist with any last-minute questions I had, while Redax simply tagged along. The silent Asphon had become somewhat of a staple every time I left the city.

“Now remember, it is vitally important that you take your time and carefully construct the matrix. After all, you won’t get any system support on this spell.” Andrius reminded me. “Or, well, not as much. That passive skill you have is just unfair.”

He was, of course, referring to my magical singularity skill. I had told him all about it and he was equally amazed and annoyed at the knowledge he had gained. On one hand, the skill was simply amazing, no doubt about it, but on the other hand, it made things so much easier for me than it would ever be for him. Or anybody else without the skill, really.

One key thing that I learned was that everybody could do magic if they tried hard enough. As long as you could control mana, which pretty much everybody could, you were able to construct a spell matrix. There was no need for the system to give you access to the spell, as long as the exact spell matrix was known, anybody could cast any spell they damn well pleased. But doing it this way came with massive downsides, namely the increased casting time, as well as the danger of having the whole thing blow up in your face.

Apparently, the system was providing a lot more assistance when casting spells than I could ever have thought possible. Merely having a spell in your spell list completely eliminated the chance of the spell failing. And, the higher you leveled the spell, the more the system aids you with the construction of the spell matrix. This was the reason I could rapid-fire my spells like I did. For these two reasons, 99.9% of magic casters stick to the spells the system gives them. While it was convenient to be able to cast whatever you wanted, the downsides were too harsh to be viable in actual combat.

For this first experiment, we decided that I would change a rune for the magical bolt spell since it was the easiest spell to train with. The rune would simply change the shape of the spell from a round bolt to something like a javelin. Due to my void javelin spell, I already had practice with the required rune, which made it a perfect place to start. Now, every other person attempting what I was about to do would study quite a bit more than two days before doing it. I, on the other hand, felt confident that I could pull it off.

With the aid of the passive skills my skill tree provided, as well as the magical singularity passive, I should be able to do this much without issue. Since I’d recently learned about the fact that EX-tier skills usually had some hidden functions as well, I was curious to see if there might be a hidden effect that would help me with this kind of spell casting.

“Alright, I will now begin the construction of the spell matrix,” I announced out loud, causing my two spectators to take a few steps back.

If anything went wrong, the negative effects shouldn’t be too bad since magical bolt was a simple spell. At worst there would be a tiny explosion, barely even mentionable. On the other end of the spectrum, incredibly complex spells could have all kinds of unpredictable effects when they misfired. The best example of this is whatever the guys in the memory of this planet attempted. When that spells went tits up, every living being on the planet had been transformed into monsters. Monsters that, before this historic event, apparently didn’t exist anywhere in the expanse.

After taking a deep breath, I started constructing the spell matrix. I noticed almost immediately how different it felt to do so without the system guiding my hand. For starters, the underlying structure that the runes were placed on usually got completed instantly by the system, making my sole job to correctly place the runes and charge them after. Now, I needed to create this structure before doing anything else. As it was a task I was wholly unfamiliar with, I struggled with it quite a bit. Technically, this was the most important part of the matrix. If I got this wrong and the slots for the runes were off by too big of a margin, the spell would fail.

Still, I felt like doing this wasn’t as hard as Andrius had described it to me. He had described to me how his own experiments went with casting spells in this manner and his accounts were painting a higher level of difficulty. Again, my differing experience could most likely be attributed to my unique skill set. I struggled for a few minutes with the structure, taking extreme care to construct it perfectly. After that came the placement of the runes, which was comparatively extremely easy. After all, I’d been practicing my runecraft for the past year.

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Still, since the system wasn’t helping me I felt that it was a lot harder to draw the runes accurately. If I had to compare it, one would be like drawing a complex shape by following a pre-drawn sketch, while the other would be completely free-handing the drawing off of a vague recollection of what the shape was supposed to look like. Another few minutes later I’d placed all of the necessary runes and it was time to charge the spell with mana.

Before I did so, I checked the matrix twice over in an attempt to spot any inaccuracies. After confirming that everything looked right, I started charging the spell at a painfully slow speed. The spell only needed a scant few MP but I added every single point with utmost care until the matrix flashed. I flinched, thinking that the spell was about to blow up, but it was merely the usual flash letting me know that the spell had been fully charged. Of course, I could overcharge the spell if I wanted to, but that seemed like a stupid thing to do in this situation.

I cast the spell, nervously looking above me as the spell came to life, the usual magical bolt appearing as a javelin above me, ready to be fired. With relief in my heart, I let the small spell fly, roughly aiming at a collection of rubble some ten meters away from me. As was befitting of the basic spell, it barely managed to send some stones flying, the shape of the spell mostly inconsequential, probably even detrimental.

I heard clapping behind me and upon turning around saw Andrius and Redax approaching me. Andrius was the only one clapping while Redax simply tagged along. “You succeeded on your first try, how vexingly impressive,” Andrius said as he came to a stop a few steps away from me. “I timed you at six minutes and eighteen seconds.”

“It’s almost funny how long it took to cast that simple spell,” I said, aware of the fact that I could’ve probably bottomed out my massive MP pool if I really wanted to in that time.

“It is, but I hope you’re aware that most people don’t manage to successfully cast their first unassisted spell, no matter how long they take” Andrius crossed his arms. “It usually ends up with the spell blowing up in their face. Granted, since most try it with magical bolt it is more funny than dangerous, but the fact is that they still failed.”

“It felt a lot easier than you described it to me,” I admitted. “I think my skills and mutations had quite the effect on my attempt.”

“They probably did, and I’m still annoyed at that,” Andrius threw his hands up. “How is it any fair that you simply get to be really good at this simply because the system likes you.”

“Life’s not fair,” Redax interjected, doubling the amount of words he’d spoken today.

“It sure isn’t,” I agreed. Magical singularity was a skill that gave me such an extreme power boost that calling it anything other than “unfair” would be a lie. “But I’m happy that I succeeded. I think that, with a lot of practice, I could actually get pretty decent at casting spells like this. Maybe even make it viable for combat, or maybe just for attacking out of stealth. Of course that would require that I learn a ton of complicated spell matrixes and know them by heart…”

“Sounds like an arduous task,” Andrius shuddered at the prospect of having to commit a complicated spell matrix down to the tiniest detail to memory. “But who knows, maybe your cheat skill will help with that.”

“And if it doesn’t, I’ll meet with a skill expert in a few days, maybe he knows a few skills that could help me with memorizing,” I made myself more excited about the meeting I was to have with the skill expert, committing the question to memory. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. Do you mind if I give it a few more tries?”

“Knock yourself out,” Andrius said, sitting down on a nearby piece of rubble, Redax going to stand behind him, silently observing. “I’ll keep timing you.”

“Thanks.”

I turned around and started constructing a new matrix. I felt the same kind of resistance as I felt on my first attempt, but since I was less nervous thanks to my success I was a lot more confident. It was a tiny bit easier to construct the spell this time around, even if I only shaved off a few seconds from my previous time in the end. I continued to improve my time over the next two hours, my two companions patiently staying by my side as I got marginally better at casting the simple spell.

All this heavy mental lifting was exhausting and I couldn’t help but feel tired after sending out my latest magical javelin to terrorize some rocks. I watched it scatter a bit of rubble, barely managing to stay awake. It took me a few minutes of groggily standing there before I realized something had changed. The desire to sleep was washing over me in waves, making it hard for me to stay awake. I turned around lazily, regarding the two Asphons behind me. After a few seconds of staring at them, I could finally get myself to tell them about my predicament. I’d told them about the potion, and we all knew this moment would come eventually.

“I think I’m going to take a nap.”

And then, everything went black.