There were about a million things I was waiting for some sort of update on. Anything important from Sir Kalman in my old world, or hopefully some contact with trusted mages. The situation with the batch of vampires we’d just begun to deal with. The world with magical girls I was just going to have to call Earth II. All of the stuff involving Bunvorixians and both Earth and Celmoth. Maybe something with Rodentia considering we might have sort of found one of her lairs- though I wouldn’t necessarily be involved if something came up.

  And I also had a lot of tests I had to do with magic. I was still less than halfway from level 41 to 42. I could feel my progress vaguely slowing, as I needed to face more powerful villains to maintain even the same level of daily experience. Such opportunities didn’t simply show up every day.

  Technically I could begin investing in a single spell now if I wanted to test what large quantities of points accomplished. But there were other things I’d not yet tried since Rositsa’s call had slightly interrupted my schedule.

  I wasn’t planning to try to push myself into what I had determined to be negative mana again. Long term side effects weren’t certain yet. However, following that some spells had felt weird- like my use of Fire Shield. I didn’t know how else to describe it. So I was going to test it. Casting every spell I knew even once was just about two hundred points of mana, and that was ignoring the different forms of the combined spells.

  Given my base mana capacity, I needed twelve hours of regeneration. It would be more than a full day’s work, though I could shorten that with active mana recovery. That would also help train Mana Manipulation, hopefully.

  With no better idea for how to start, I began at the top. Storage, which I used frequently and Midnight used all the time, was immediately off putting when I used it. It could have been my imagination, but I didn’t really feel like I was in full control of what I was doing. But maybe that was normal, since spells usually just worked.

  Firebolt was worse, maybe. Shocking Grasp, which I had used quite frequently, felt a bit better. Maybe it was just a matter of practice? I never really tried to be good at Storage. Was there a difference between storing five or more pounds of stuff and storing that same amount of stuff well? Was there good Storage aside from how it became more efficient and powerful with upgrades?

  The next spell confused me. Grease had the least number of upgrades of everything I had used so far, but it felt the most like I was in control. I used it frequently, but not every day multiple times per day like Force Armor. Which also didn’t feel quite right.

  Nothing exactly felt bad. I wasn’t straining to cast the spells. I just didn’t always feel like I was controlling them as well as I would like. But nothing had any fewer than five upgrades, which indicated a certain level of mastery. After Force Armor came Mage’s Reach, which was pretty fine.

  Translation was… definitely firmly under my control. I could doubtless tell it not to translate my speech or incoming words, or alternatively I could actively boost translation of something new. But was that actually more flexible than anything else on the list before it? I didn’t think so. The difference was there, but it was just beyond the edge of my understanding.

  “I don’t get it,” I told Midnight. He was casting along with me, though his total pool was lower so either I would get ahead of him or we’d just be relying on regeneration at some point.

  “I don’t either,” Midnight said. “I can feel your emotions about it, but I don’t feel whatever you’re talking about.”

  “Hmm. Is it a problem with me?”

  Midnight shook his head. “I wouldn’t jump straight to saying it’s a problem. You’re just more magically sensitive. And the actual one with the class.”

  “We need a third party,” I said. I texted Jerome, to have him try out some things. Haralamb, too. With Bolster, we had four mages to experiment with.

  Our portal power trainee was the only one I could interact with in person, so we got her feedback first. “Everything seems fine? I’m definitely in control. I’m more in control of the things I’ve trained with more, obviously. Like Enhance. Haste is up there, but I’ve been trying not to rely too heavily on that one. I’m not really feeling whatever it is you’re talking about.”

  Unfortunately, I was the mage with the most experience so this didn’t really prove anything. As I envied Bolster’s ability to get experience just from using her magic, I continued my tests. She agreed that going through all of her spells was a valuable thing to do every once in a while, so Bolster continued to do the same.

  Haste- or Alter Time Flow- was one of my most upgraded spells and didn’t feel like it was as controlled as I wanted. It was my first combined spell on the list, and I thought whatever sort of mastery that demonstrated should have meant something more, but apparently not. The weird part was that I could easily control the amount of mana I used and the boost, so whatever my brain was telling me was a lack of control simply didn’t make sense.

  Having spent some extra mana messing around with that particular spell, I was closer to matched with Midnight’s mana capacity. Since casting a spell took several orders of magnitude less time than recovering the mana necessary, we weren’t in any rush. Thus, I carefully observed Midnight’s uses of magic as well. From the outside, I couldn’t get any feelings and just as he noted about me, our connection didn’t really transmit the feeling.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I barely even used Disguise, but it felt a bit more natural than everything else. Familiar Bond wasn’t something I could use actively, so that was difficult to test aside from merely having Midnight present. Size Shift was surprisingly ‘good’.

  I continued down the list until I hit Water Breathing. I had to think the most about that spell, but casting it placed another strong weight on a theory that was developing. I didn’t want to jump the gun, however, and carefully took notes.

  When I got to Water Blast, I was pretty much certain. There were a couple things that I didn’t test because it was impractical- including Alter Portal, since we didn’t have a ton just sitting around. Multicasting and Assistive Familiar Casting were used with cheap spells for the sake of science! Or magic or whatever.

  I took in everyone’s assessments before asking the final questions.

  “Everything feels like I’m completely in control,” Bolster said. “That’s what all this training is for, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. I merely wondered if we had the same internal definition of control.

  Setting aside Midnight whose answers were by definition my own answers, I asked for one final set of data. It wouldn’t cost anyone any mana, so it was pretty easy.

  Jerome had reported similar things to Bolster, and when I looked at the upgrades everyone had I got my answer. Maybe not a completely useful or correct answer, but something I had suspected was relatively confirmed.

  The sample size might be too small to say for sure, but at least personally I could say I felt more in control of spells with greater natural upgrades. Or perhaps control wasn’t even the correct word. After all, spells didn’t tend to do things I didn’t want them to, and that was even more true with overall level up upgrades.

  “What’s the word…” I muttered to myself. “Automatic.”

  That was my ultimate feeling about things. When I had more upgrades from points, things felt more automatic. I had the control, but it was more like I picked the settings and it happened. Using a spell that leaned more towards natural upgrades was more interactive and thus in a way more difficult. But that difficulty brought something with it. Whether it was something good or if it just existed was unclear.

  I shared my speculations with the others. Bolster just shrugged. “Do you think I shouldn’t spend my points?”

  “Automatic isn’t bad,” I said. “Probably. It’s good to have reliability.”

  Alter Portal wasn’t a spell I had purchased with points, just a thing I learned to do. Because of that, it only had natural upgrades. Was that why I was able to push it beyond all reasonable levels? Beyond safe levels? I certainly couldn’t help but think it was connected.

  It was dangerous, but also not. Bolster and the others were training and would pick up a bunch of natural upgrades, but they would also get used to only pushing to a specific limit. I might need to emphasize that now with the potential dangers, but other than that it didn’t really matter. Jerome certainly practiced, but he wasn’t terribly likely to end up in a perilous situation where he had to cast anything in a rush.

  This phenomenon wasn’t necessarily limited to mages, so aside from Jerome and the portal power trainees I needed to contact Sir Kalman and of course Ceira and Izzy.

  Why didn’t anyone say anything about this? I had some ideas. I didn’t like them at all. Considering the potential danger, I could for example come up with excuses to not let people unlock their full abilities because of potential danger. If people only used magic automatically, they would be safe.

  Except that was garbage. People still needed to be trained to understand the spells they had. Teaching them to not go beyond certain limits set in place wouldn’t be that unreasonable of an addition. They could add ‘don’t try to use more mana than a spell is supposed to support or than your pool is supposed to have’ to the list of things like ‘don’t use Firebolt in a library ever’. The latter was so obvious I didn’t know why anyone even needed to hear it, but apparently some people did.

  If secrets were kept to protect people, then what about those who stumbled through a portal and the risks we bore? Alright, so it took a significant amount of time to get to a level where anything had actually happened, and a particularly overbalanced ability. Before that, my fatigue limit had always worked. And running out of mana. The worst thing I could have reasonably expected would be hitting my head when I passed out. Technically, that was a serious concern, but I knew how to deal with such things.

  Midnight remained by my side as I pondered. “That’s a pretty big revelation, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I liked it more when magic was safe.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments.

  Midnight flicked me with his tail. “There’s no way that’s actually true, is it?”

  I sighed. “I liked it when other people were safe,” I corrected myself. “I don’t even know what to do with this. I mean, aside from nothing. If it wasn’t for you I might screw around with this stuff, but I could really mess things up for you.”

  Midnight rolled his eyes. “I like it when you are safe. So if you’re only being that way for me… I guess it’s acceptable. Don’t forget about your other friends though.”

  “It’s totally normal to want to improve yourself,” I said. “Nobody gets upset with athletes when they get hurt.”

  “... Do you know anything about sports?” Midnight asked. “Because lots of people get upset. Friends, family, fans… financials?”

  “You can just say coaches and team owners. It didn’t have to be alliterative.”

  “It was going so well, though,” Midnight said. “Anyway, being careful with magic is just as important as taking care of your own body. So I’d like an official agreement that you’ll not screw around with this stuff. Even if you get really curious.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. “I won’t push myself beyond the accepted limits of magic.” I paused. “These accepted limits of magic.”

  “Or anything else that hurts you,” Midnight said. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  What a good friend. Everyone should get their own Cat Buddy, even if said buddy wasn’t actually a cat.