This Does Not Look Good

John was jolted from his focus and turned his head to see a very angry Mr. Enkleman glaring at him from the front of the class, as well as having the rest of the class looking back at John with wide eyed faces. It was well known that Mr. Enkleman hated any form of disruption to his class but was also so self-absorbed in his lecture that he never noticed that his students were more focused on their phones or sleeping than focused on his lecture. It took a lot to actually disrupt an Enkleman lecture, and it appeared John and his flashlight hand had just managed to do just that.

“Um…Y-yes Mr. Enkleman?”

‘Shit… how the fuck do I explain my glow hand… Fuck fuck fuck fuck…’ John thought to himself

“Care to explain why you think it’s okay to have your phone out during class?”

“... What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy! Your stupid little flash on your camera nearly lit up the whole back of the classroom! Did you forget about the ‘no phones’ policy, or did you think you could hide it from me right under my nose?”

Well. Okay then. That was one problem dealt with. Thank god Mr. Enkleman thought it was his phone and the rest of the class had not cared enough to correct him. Now the next problem to deal with was that Mr. Enkleman liked to confiscate phones for the rest of the class period whenever he noticed them out, usually once every blue moon, while John’s phone was currently stowed away in his book bag on the other side of his desk.

‘Alright, John. Time to use your 7 charisma and bluff your way out of this and that sounded really pitiful in my head but lets roll with it.’

“O-oh, right. See, uh, sir… My mom just texted me that she was going to have to work late this week. And… she… uh… needed a picture of my out of school schedule! So I was trying to send her a picture but didn’t notice I had my flash on. I swear I would never have my phone out in class if it wasn’t a family emergency!”

Mr. Enkleman gave him a long, hard stare, as if the man were trying to look into John’s soul. John tried to put his most sincere face on and hope his good grades in this class (what grades the class even had) would be enough to give him a chance.

After a moment or two, Mr. Enkleman gave a grumble that vaguely sounded like ‘I don’t get paid enough to care,’ or some other old man equivalent of that. “Just ensure,” Mr. Enkleman said with a growl, “that you never have your phone out in my class again or I will confiscate it till the end of the year!”

“Yes sir. I promise. It won’t happen again,” John said calmly, the tension slowly leaving his chest. Thank god that John was good enough at story crafting to make something that seemed plausible, and that he could be focused enough to not be distracted by the giant glowing pop-up windows that now claimed his attention.

New Skill: Glow lvl1, 5mp to activate, 3mp per minute to keep active
Glow: Allows for you to direct mana into any body part to allow it to glow. Continues to drain mana while active.

Achievement Unlocked: Using your Head
You figured out how to make a new skill for yourself!
+1 Intellect
+1 Wisdom

Achievement Unlocked: That was Close!
You managed to trick a non-magical person into thinking your magic was just a trick. Don’t let this become a habit. Or else I may smite you.
+2 Charisma

‘Well,’ John thought to himself as he looked over the windows, ‘it looks like my little experiment worked, that I successfully made a new spell. But Jesus, all that effort just to get a hand glow trick. Plus…’ John looked over at his character sheet, checking what his mana was. It appeared that little forcing of a skill used almost all of his mana, most of it probably wasted based on how much it actually cost to activate Glow. ‘I think it would be even more costly to do anything more impressive. At least not without a little research. Also…. That smiting thing is a little nerve racking. Sure, I got my way out of that situation… but it looks like letting non-magical people learn about magic could result in some bad times for me.’

John sighed internally, putting his head down on his desk. It was hard to make new magic happen, there were rules he had no knowledge of, and the wrong word to someone could end up with him smited.

‘Smited? Smote? Smiting...ed? Off topic, John. Focus. You don’t even know if there are other magic users out there. For all you know, you are all that there is.’

… Eventually John sat up, shaking his head a bit as determination filled him.

‘Well, no point in moping that magic is difficult. Time to move on and make shit happen. First up, figuring out how to discover more powerful things. Like summoning fire or something along those lines.’

John reached down into his book bag, pulling out his overstuffed notebook. It was filled with notes from classes, ideas and sketches and random doodles from when he was bored, a few rough drafts of some erotic stories he wrote, and every handout from his classes making it go from a clean orderly notebook to something most people would consider a fire hazard. He thought it best to get down a few ideas and see if he could follow any of them during his next class when he had a bit of a free period. Just as he was about to start writing, he tuned into the lecture, to ensure he wasn’t missing anything of note.

“... This form of magic was known as runic magic…”

‘Oh good, nothing of importa-... Wait… what?' John took a double take and, for once, started listening to the lecture.

“... According to legend, Odin first learned of Runes as a magic after hanging himself on the world tree for nine days and nights, and when he was about to die, he learned of runes and earned his life back. Vikings believed that these runes could be used as blessings of protection and valor, to calm storms, to create fire, and to heal people of illness. These are shown in Viking poems and skalds, such as in Egil’s saga which was in the required reading for today.”

John dug into his notebook, looking around for the handout that would have been given as required reading. After a few minutes of searching, he found it in between a NSFW sketch of Ms. Summers and some biology notes. The reading had both the Norse runes, at least as close as could be found, as well as an approximate translation. He put that in the front of his notebook to look at later, and quickly went back to taking down notes again.

“The runes were used in many forms, sometimes as a single word such as alu, which either is a spell to keep evil spirits at bay or talking about ale, which would have been used in the spells. Sometimes composite words were used, such as lina laukar f, which combines the idea of sacrifices used alongside what the spell may have been trying to do, that being about livestock or riches. Lastly, these could be used in long sentences, such as on The Eggja Stone. Reading over that stone’s translation will be your homework for tonight.”

‘The… Eggja… stone…’ John wrote down in his notebook, having kept up well with Mr. Enkleman’s lecture. John wasn’t sure if this was a false lead or if this would be worth something, but it couldn’t hurt. Hell, if someone else already had a form of magic that was actual magic, John could simply follow in their footsteps to get his start. John was hoping that Mr. Enkleman would give out some more information, but the teacher had already moved on to the main topic of the lecture, that being the history of rune translation. With that switch of topics came the standard amount of excitement of an Enkleman class, so John went back to tuning him out and looking over his notes instead

‘Runic magic…’ John could recall things about runes in a few fantasy books he read and in some video games, but in all honesty, he had never thought much about it. After all, drawing the letters of dead languages does not exactly scream “Awesome Magic”. But this lecture might have just given John a new outlook on the idea of runes. Mr. Enkleman had a tendency to focus on the most boring aspects of a subject, perhaps in a secret tactic to make his students fall asleep and give him less work to do. But… If the most boring things that Enkleman could come up with regarding rune magic were stopping storms and healing the deadliest of diseases… Who knew what the upward limit on runic magic could be?

John’s eyes drifted down to the margins of his notes, looking over the random sketches he did when he was bored. His mind began to fill with possibilities of what he could do with his magic. He could be able to summon pillars of fire, freeze entire lakes over, summon and quell storms with a simple few strokes. Create creatures with a wave of his palm… Create people with a wave of his palm. Create horny, sexy, loving people with his palm.

John’s mind began to race as his pants began to tighten. This could be the best thing to happen to him ever. He looked down to his notebook, and noticed a small pop up window had appeared over the page.

New Quest: A Symbol is Worth a Thousand Words
Learn how to Cast Runic Magic
Rewards: 1 New Item and 1 Rune Stone
+300xp
Accept/Refuse?

‘Time to make some magic’

John looked at the clock and then back to his teacher, who was now on a tangent about how Vikings got their horns in modern media.

‘Time to make some magic… in twenty-six minutes.’

Quest Accepted