All the next morning as I focused on editing the podcast file I'd been sent for work, I found it hard to keep my mind from drifting off to thinking about rune patterns and their potential applications from the game. I hadn't quite finished the beginner course because I'd gotten too distracted making things for the house rather than completing the course projects, but in terms of comprehension I was pretty much there.
All that was left was just to finish one or two tutorials and submit them to the system so I could complete the quest and unlock the next course material. It really did remind me of the time I spent coding and engineering for my high school robotics club, so it felt strangely nostalgic to be working my brain in that way again.
In Next Life I'd mainly focused on making figurines of popular players and NPCs using the in-game modeling system. Actually it wasn't all that different compared to how the Material Transformation Alchemy went in Magia, so if I wanted to I could probably pick up that trade again, but I didn't really have that much interest in doing it all over again.
I loved games, because I got to try out new things that I ordinarily wouldn't. Carrying things over from one game to the next, would kind of defeat that purpose.
Just as I was about to break for lunch, a window popped up in my periphery vision as a call came in from Flowrider. My apartment with my Mom was a little small, and my default seating posture was the kind of back-break contortions that would murder even a 20 year old's back, so I tended to work in a full-dive work environment so it wouldn't affect my physical body.
"Flow, what's up?" I picked up the call as I marked my place in the audio file and went to save and exit.
"Heyyy, how's it going? You in Magia right now?"
"Nah, today's a work day, I was just wrapping up for lunch."
"Oh, so diligent! Aren't you self-employed or some such? Can't take a few days off for a new drop?"
"I already took yesterday off. If I let myself go too long without working I'll lose my momentum and start procrastinating everything."
"Fufu, fair enough. Speaking of! Where did you start!? Me and Nekki ended up in the Revalian empire, but apparently there's two starter towns here so we're still apart for now."
"I'm some place called the Greyrock kingdom I think? Have you heard of it?"
"Ummm, haha, can't say I have, lemme look up the in-game map…oh, ok, here it is, yeah, uhhh, that's pretty far from us actually."
"Does the map feature give you a global map?"
"Huh? Uh, yeah, wait, don't tell me you haven't even registered with the Mage's Tower yet!? Isn't that like the first thing anybody does?"
"I got some weird kind of special start. My intro NPC apparently has some beef against the Mage's Tower and told me not to register, so I haven't yet."
"Intro NPC? That's pretty wild, though, like no one's against the Mage's Tower. They're kind of like the Adventurer's Guild but for mages—quests for chores and shit as well as like monster subjugation. Ooh don't tell me there's some corruption storyline where they're like the secret shadow government pulling the strings behind the world powers or something. That'd be so cool!"
"Hmmm, yeah, I don't really know too much yet, but it's good thing I'm a crafter then, it'd probably be a lot harder to get by without normal quests and stuff if I was combat-oriented. Speaking of—Monsters? I haven't seen any yet, is it just that I'm in a safe area or something?"
"Maybe? I don't know. Have you just been in town? I mean monsters tend to be in the woods and stuff where people haven't developed, but honestly I haven't seen any yet either."
"Uh, no, my special start's in the woods. I haven't even been to town yet. Hmm, I don't know, maybe I just haven't explored enough? I've only really gone back and forth to the stream."
"Seriously! Starting in the woods and you haven't even found any monsters!? What are you doing, just sitting at your desk studying??"
"Hehe, uhh, pretty much, yeah."
"Oh my god Star you're the worst. This is a video game, right? Key word: GAME. This isn't a magic bootcamp or anything."
"But aren't all our abilities down to studying and stuff? I mean it's not like there are leveling systems…You're a Spirit Sorcerer, right? What have you been up to so far?"
"Uh, well, there was the registration, and then they had an intro class at the Mage's Tower… I contracted my first spirit, made some new friends, and then we tried to use our spirits to track down a lost dog, but they did NOT know how to tell one dog from another, so we were basically running from one stray to the next, one time they even led us to a particularly fat cat.
"And thennn we were all feeling pretty chummy so we did some sparring back at the Tower, I nearly killed a guy named Hopscrest hehe. And then we wrapped it all up by going out to get some yummy food. By the way the starter town I'm in—Vairdale—crazy cool. It's still kinda empty at the minute because they built all this housing and stuff for the players and we haven't had a chance to move in properly yet, but the whole atmosphere was like a festival—streamers, lights, food stalls and peddler stands everywhere, and players all running around like it's their first day at school. I mean, your special start sounds cool, but you're really missing out, you know."
"Huhh, that does sound cool, but I'm alright. Fairs and the like aren't really my jam—too many people, noises, and sensations. I'm sure I'll get to check out the starter cities when they're a little more developed, but for now I'm pretty happy studying my runes in the forest."
"By the way, does walking around doing quests really help you with your magic? I would've thought it'd be more of a magic school situation when we first arrived."
"Nah, spirit sorcery's pretty easy. I got a contract with a water spirit and then it's just like 'water ball' and the water's there and I can do whatever with it either with my hand or just my will. Maybe I'm abnormal, but it's pretty natural to me. Plus, they say that spirit sorcery just gets better the more you do it, or, like, the more familiar you are with your spirit and the spirits around you, so quests are actually kind of the best way to go unless you just do straight combat training."
"Speaking of, are you doing more combat-oriented this time around? I thought you were pretty attached to the role of a crafter."
"Eh, I'm whatever for now. I'm planning on going into cooking later. I've heard there's something called 'spirit cooking' which is supposed to be beneficial for magicians, and it'll probably be a good way of making money in the starter towns since they're short on NPCs, but for now I'm just kinda going with the flow. I'll look more into that stuff when I feel like I've got my feet under me a little more."
"I guess we're kind of opposites on that…" I looked off into the illusory sky of the work program for a few seconds. "Well, anyways, I should probably get going, I need to grab lunch, and get some more work done before I can get back to Magia."
"Alright! It was nice talking."
"Yeah, see you Flow."