Magic Made Simple

Chapter 20: Shedding Insecurities

Before I had left the arena, I'd been stopped by some of the organizers and asked what item I'd like to be crafted for me as my reward. After thinking about it, I'd written down a description of what I had in mind and handed it to one of the organizers. They looked a bit confused reading through it, but told me that they would have it ready in two days for me to pick up.

I went back to floor one after that, already knowing exactly where I had wanted to go. The outpost I had originally helped to create was currently throwing a party. I'd heard some whispers of it in the past few days, but I had just ignored it in favor of focusing on my training.

Right now though, I didn't care much about training. What I needed more than anything else right now was something to keep me grounded in reality. I needed to not be dealing with life or death battles, overly complicated chain floors, or anything else related to the system right now. I needed something to remind me of home.

When I arrived back on the first floor, the first thing I heard was music. It was simple, just a drum beat with a few wind instruments playing in harmony, but it all worked to create a comfortable atmosphere. The music sounded like it was coming from all around, probably the result of a skill- no. I needed to not think of anything like that right now.

Ben was the first familiar face I ran into, as the case so often was. He greeted me with a smile and a wave. "River! Glad you could make it. I honestly hadn't expected to see you show up. Don't you have a dragon to defeat or something?"

"Very funny." I say, smiling back.

Something about the tone of my voice seemed to tip him off to my poor mood, and like any good friend his cheery attitude immediately dropped as he took on a much more serious expression. "What's wrong?"

"Nothings wrong." I say. "I just needed a change of scenery, and this is exactly what I needed." I gesture all around to the party.

Ben opens his mouth to say something, then stops. He seems deep in thought for a moment before speaking once more. "Can we go for a walk real quick?"

I raise an eyebrow, but agree. "Sure."

We walk away from the party and out of the outpost. It was a bit jarring when the music suddenly stopped coming from all around me and instead began sounding like it was coming from the distance, but I had quickly gotten over it. Once we are far enough away that there is nobody who can hear us, Ben speaks again.

"Okay, what's actually wrong?" He says. "And don't lie and say nothing is. I've known you long enough to know when you are lying."

I want to come up with some lie or excuse, but he was right. I was not the best liar. I sigh and respond, not looking directly at him as I do. "Are you afraid of me?"

My question seems to have taken him completely off guard, and he takes a moment to respond. "Why would I be afraid of you?"

"Because I am strong. Because I could knock down a tree with just a punch if I wanted to. Because I could destroy that entire outpost right now if I really wanted to."

He doesn't take what I say seriously, despite the threat posed by my words. "Because I know you won't do that."

"But other people don't know that." I say. "Other people might see me as a threat or start treating me as some kind of monster. Somebody to be careful around. I don't want that."

"I don't see what your problem is." Ben says, shrugging.

I frown, looking at him for the first time. "What do you mean you don't see what my problem is? People are going to be afraid of me."

"I think you are overestimating how many people would see you that way. Anybody who sees somebody for the power they wield and not the person they are sounds more like a cult member than a normal person."

"How do you know that? What makes you think people are just going to ignore the overwhelming difference between me and them?"

"Have you actually met anybody yet that treats you differently just because a number on your stat sheet is higher than on theirs?"

"No, but-"

"Then stop assuming the worst of people. I can tell you that people aren't going to treat you differently. I can tell you that because despite all this power you say you have, you still don't treat anybody else differently. You haven't snapped and attacked anybody out of anger, nor have you tried to intimidate anybody into doing anything. I'm sure eventually there are going to be some assholes who do that crap, but the important thing is that you don't. That's just not who you are. People are more perceptive than you think. They can tell you aren't a bad person."

I finally stop spiraling down the rabbit hole I was falling into, and take a moment to think. After almost a minute of silence, I speak again. "Thank you."

"No problem. Now cheer up and let's go back to the party. I know a few people who've managed to ferment some mushrooms they found on floor four, so what do you say we go and have some drinks?"

"You know I don't drink." I say. "Not that I'd want to drink booze from cave mushrooms anyways."

"Well then, as one of the few sober people present, what would you think about trying to make fireworks made of magic?"

I was about to tell him that I didn't feel like using magic right now, but stop before I do. As much as I hadn't been expecting it, he had turned my mood around and helped cheer me up. When we get back to camp, I walk straight to the middle of the camp and point my finger up into the air. After about 30 seconds of constructing a mana formation in the tip of my finger, I unleash it up into the sky.

My mana conversion skill had really put in the work on this one, and in collaboration with my mana-festation had managed to make something more complicated than either of them could have accomplished on their own. The pseudo firework whistled loudly as it flew high into the air traveling at great speed. As it reached roughly 200 meters into the air, it detonated with the familiar boom of every other firework I'd ever seen. Sparks of mana that burned themselves away glowed as they spread out in all directions. A minute later, I fired another, then another.

The cheers that came from those around me and the requests for different colors were too much, and I couldn't help but smile the entire time. Maybe I'd been right about some people fearing the power I had, but right now it seemed that not a single person cared that I was essentially firing missiles into the sky. They were happy, and so was I.

The rest of my night was spent showing off what my mana could do, creating kites and paper airplanes that glowed as they flew through the air, with some people catching them as they went along. Some people were even making a game of it, seeing who could catch the most. Later in the night I even took a half hour to make a ten foot long recreation of a dragon, using all my focus to make it move in a vaguely dragon-like manner.

Several system notifications awaited me by the time the party was coming to a close, but I didn't read them. It wasn't out of resentment like it had been before, but because I simply did not care about them right now. I had more important things to focus on, like making glow sticks of mana for everyone to wave around. I couldn't make very many at once, but I had inspired a few of the crafters to make a few of their own, and they had supplied everyone else with glow sticks with their far superior creation skills.

Overall, it had been a complete waste of 12 hours that would have been better spent training for the fight I had in just three days.

I don't regret a single second of it.