...May Bring Unwanted Attention

“Huh? What the…”

“So that’s… Hey… Crowly? You in there? Helllllooooo? Crowly?”

“...Do you see it, Danielson? ...Do you see it, Anders?”

Callie gave a small grunt of annoyance. Don’t get her wrong, Crowly was one of the best searchers to work with, being kind and respectful and always giving Callie enough space that she didn’t want to fry the living shit out of him. But goddamn, did his mystical talk get annoying at times. She swore that Crowly could give Morpheus a run for his money in long winded speeches about mystic shit and destiny. Thank the gods that Brett was at least here to make these scouting missions not completely impossible to deal with.

She turned to Crowly, sarcasm dripping from her voice, “Oh yeah, I totally see it. I somehow see something that only YOUR power set allows you to see. So glad I managed to do the impossible thing of switching the magic I was born with to something completely different.”

“Callie, seriously, calm down. You know how he gets.”

“Shut it, Brett. I just want to be able to enjoy one meal without him going all ‘Oh look at all the pretty colors of magic’ on us. If I could make requests, I would also ask that you manage to not be so enamored with his mystic speeches that you get us ambushed.”

“Oh fuck you! If I recall correctly, it was YOU who-”

“Oh don’t you even fucking start, you little brown nosing shi-”

“Quiet. Both of you. Quiet and look.” Crowly closed his eyes, placing his hands over both Callie and Brett’s eyes. After a surge of mana and a spell, despite the murmuring of protest from Callie, Crowly opened his eyes, tapping into his Seeker magic. His eyes glowed unearthly white, and beneath his hands both Callie and Brett’s eyes matched that color. Their vision became one, and they saw the world as the Seekers saw it. The world before them was a vast landscape of wild, untamed mana with those of concentrated mana burning brightly in a sea of magic. Callie may have found using Seeker magic annoying, and felt a little hijacked to be **** to take part in someone else’s spells, but she always had a small sense of wonder and awe seeing the world as a churning sea of mana. It was equal parts amazing and awe inspiring to see the world like how the gods must see it.

‘Focus, Callie. Let’s get this over and done with.’ She cleared her throat, giving her head a shake. “Alright, alright. What is so important you HAVE to show us, Crowly?” Crowly turned to look at her, causing Callie great levels of discomfort. It was a rather unpleasant situation to look at one's own mana through someone else’s eyes, like listening to one’s own voice. Despite her obvious discomfort, Crowly did not allow her to look away. Her body squirmed, the shape of her body filled with energetic, chaotic mana symbolic to that of her lightning magic.

“Impatient, aren’t we, Anders? You are so much like your mana. Untamed, wild. You should learn to be calm, or one day it wi-”

“Yeah yeah, I’ve heard it before, Crowly. Just... can we just finish this shit and move on?”

“But of course. Are you ready, Danielson?”

Crowly looked over to Brett, saving Callie from her feeling of discomfort and giving it to Brett instead. His mana was cool, calm, rigid in its formation while still having a bit of fluidity at his core. How befitting for an ice mage.

“Yeah, I am,” Brett said, the discomfort in his voice muted, but still there. Crowly nodded and looked up, staring off into the distance. He seemed to be scanning, trying to find something in the sea of mana, but could not seem to find it. Instead, all he saw was the equivalent of background noise to a Seeker; just humans with weak, unusable mana pools being nearly invisible to a Seekers sight.

Callie was about to remove Crowly’s hand, really not wanting to do this. However, it was then that Crowly gazed at what he wanted to show to Callie and Brett, hidden inside a school only a block or two away. It was then that Callie and Brett saw something they would not easily forget for a long while.

Callie was rather familiar with what different people’s mana looked like. She had worked alongside Seekers long enough to have seen many kinds of magic on many kinds of bodies. She had seen almost all kinds of elemental mages, enchanters, Seekers, even a few that seemed to be blessed by gods. But this… this was new. This mage’s mana was similar to any young mage, in that it was wild but weak. It was simply a large pool of mana that hadn’t gained shape of definition, like a puddle on flat ground. This mage, however… their mana glowed brilliantly, like that of a light in the darkest of nights. It shone with astounding, untapped power, and what little mana had started to form into a defined magic was… breathtaking. This mage’s mana was forming rings spinning around the mage, made from random symbols of lost languages. The symbols did not hold their shape long, at least, the ones in the rings around him. One symbol sat in front of the mage, the rings seeping mana into it. This symbol burned almost as brightly as the mage, looking like a K but without the vertical line. She did not know what the symbols meant, nor what kind of mage she was looking at. She could tell that whoever this mage was his mana pool was deep and the magic he used was weak and immature.

“Now do you see?” Crowly said with a grin.

Callie grinned, her sight returning to normal as Crowly removed his hand. She stretched her arms, sparks of electricity flying off her body. She looked over to Crowly and Brett, who grinned back. Brett’s arms started to frost over in anticipation and Crowly's strong, scarred fingers drummed on his knives at his sides.

“Brett, Crowly, it looks like we may have just found the biggest break of our lives. I think it’s time we head to school. We got us a mage to kidnap.”

John felt absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt wonderful! Not only did his idea work, not only did he learn Runic Magic, not only did he level up as well… But apparently he managed to awaken a dead form of magic as well, and the creator of this game system seemed to be proud of him! John didn’t know much about this person, but pleasing the person who could apparently smite him seemed like a good way to be going.

Achievement Unlocked: A Bit of an Ego Boost
Don’t think this will be a running theme, Newman. But you are smart enough to know that pleasing the almighty is a good thing.
+1 Stat Point.

Aaaand he just got rewarded for being decently aware of his situation. So far, John felt like he had a pretty good track record. However, before he did anything else, it would probably be prudent to take a look at what he got and what he CAN get, as he had yet to choose his award for learning Runic Magic.

'Alright, John, let's take a look.’

Firstly, there was his level up to deal with. It seemed that leveling himself up gave him 5 stat points to invest however he would like. Well, make that 6 with the one he got from the achievement. He gave his stats on his character sheet a quick once over, checking into each stat to see what it did as well.

‘Well… it looks like Intellect may be the most prudent choice, as it looks like my Runic spells are pretty expensive right now, but I’m nearly at 30 with that already. Wisdom will help my recharge time, so I can cast them faster. Then again, I wouldn’t say no to some additional Charisma.’ John looked over the stats again and decided to put one from his level up into Intelligence, giving him a nice 30. He put another three into Wisdom, pushing him up to 15. He then put the final two points into Charisma, knowing it would probably not be useful now but could be upgraded in the background over time. Plus…

John looked over to his phone, sitting on the table in front of him. He had always assumed he was just stuck with his less than average looks, either staying alone for most of his days or only ending up together with someone when he turned older and women’s standards of looks dropped. Don’t get him wrong, he understood looks weren’t everything. Hell, whenever he brought up this insecurity with his mom, she would always give him that response and mention how she fell in love with John’s father not because of how he looked but because of the man he was deep down. John would then always want to point out how the man “deep down” was a guy who abandoned him and his mother when John was young, but he never did. His mother had a hard enough time being a working single mom, she didn’t need John moping because of daddy issues on top of that.

John shook his head, as if trying to wrest the thoughts of his family situation from his head via ****. ‘C’mon, John. You’ve got magical powers to learn about. Stop moping about your dad’ His gaze went up to his next popup, this one giving him a choice on the item he wanted.

‘Alright. Surtr, Thor, and Ymir. I know one of those is a Norse god and the other two are Giants… I think. But it looks like a basic elemental choice. Fire, Lightning, or Ice,’ John thought, looking over his three options. All three sounded alluring in their own regard, and if he understood Runic Observe correctly, getting the rune stone would teach him whatever rune was on it. So it was all a matter of preference. Did he want fire, lightning, or ice?

John sat down in a nearby chair and thought it over. Ice would be nice, as it had both practical uses and battle uses if RPGs had taught him anything. An impassable lake becomes an icy field with just a simple frost spell. However, John wasn’t exactly prepared for the cold, and he had no idea if this Ymir spell was just a simple frost beam or a full out blizzard, and frankly, he did not want to take that risk. Lightning seemed pretty powerful but kind of weak in terms of practical use. Plus… well, John didn’t want to lie, but there was a tiny pyromaniac inside of him just screaming for John to choose fire. Sure, Kenaz was already a fire sort of ability and it would be smart to have a wide array of attacks, but that was less a fire attack and more a magic zippo lighter.

_‘I’m certain that I’ll find more runes, so I don’t think I will be locked into being a fire rune mage. And if I am… well, fire is pretty cool.’ _With that, John reached out and made his choice, and after a moment or two, the pop up window vanished, leaving behind on the desk a small stone and a book about the size of a laptop.

John looked over to the stone first, at least having a better idea of what this was. It was rather small, all things considered, only about the size of his palm. It was almost oval in shape and smooth, like a rock found at a stream. The runes, however, betrayed the power that lay within. John’s runes had glowed golden, bright like the torch they represented. These runes glowed orange and red like lava, with blackened rock near where they lay as if they were charred into the stone. There were 5 runes on it in total, and with a quick use of Runic Observe, John knew that they spelled out the name of the giant whose power the stone invoked: Surtr. With that use, John also had pictures flash across his vision, mages whose identities could not be discerned casting these runes saying various names and aspects of Surtr to properly invoke his power. He did not see the final results, for right as they were about to play, John was distracted by the popup window that appeared.

Rune Unlocked: Surtr- Flames of Ragnarok Form. 1200 mp to cast
“Surt travels from the south with the Scathe of branches. There shines from his sword the Sun of Gods of the Slain.” A Rune meant to tap into the fiery powers of Surtr, Lord of Muspelheim. Summons a powerful pillar of fire that can burn away nearly anything.

“JESUS FUCK!” John swore, seeing the cost. His own mana was not even a 10th of that, and it was clearly something far out of his league. He could barely keep his torch lit for a few seconds as of now, and was clearly not ready to summon the Flames of Ragnarok at a moment’s notice. He shook his head, pulling up his character sheet and placing the rune stone in his inventory. “Perhaps later.” Hell, the rune was so far out of his league that his character sheet had just a bunch of question marks where the level was supposed to be. He muttered to himself a few words of disbelief that this was his reward for just now learning Rune Magic before closing his character sheet and looking at the book in front of him.

It was a rather plain looking book, about the size of a standard notebook. It seemed to be bound in leather, and the most interesting thing about it was that its title and John’s name at the bottom looked like they were printed on in gold leaf. The book was titled with the same name as it was in the achievement, simply “Runic Glossary”. John pulled the book closer and opened it up, noting it was several pages thick. However, a quick flip through showed most of the pages were blank, with only the first few having anything on them.

Looking over the first page showed a table of contents, saying that page two had “History of Rune Magic”, but it also had a “WIP” next to that. The other two pages that had anything simple had the names of the runes he already knew. Flipping to page two showed all it had was a title, and nothing else.

“Well… this is… disappointing,” John said to himself. Even the rune pages were rather plain, having a large inscription of the rune and a small paragraph under it describing what it could do. In addition, it had some proper invocations written beneath that, but John already knew these invocations thanks to his Gamer powers. One quick motion later and the book was resting in his inventory next to the rune he could not cast.

“Alright. Well, Runic Magic learned and disappointing rewards gained. I should probably get back to cla-”

You have been **** into an Illusion Barrier by ‘Squad Gamma’. You may only leave the Illusion Barrier after all enemies are defeated.