The next day the five of them walked back out past the barricade, the morning stretching ahead of them with lazy potential. Their weapons were carried in hand, having made the decision to keep them close rather than in their storage. The plan was simple: test the limits of what they could do with magic now that they understood it better, maybe try to expand their magical arsenal.

  "Right then," Paul said as they moved across the grass, "what's everyone actually planning to try?"

  "I want to see if I can get my Spark spell to do anything other than light up my hand," Lee said simply. "Maybe I can get it to actually fire like it's meant to. Not sure why it isn't yet."

  Paul nodded, already rolling his shoulders. "I'm aiming for bigger impact; same move, more power. If I can get Ember Blast to go up a notch then that's a solid weapon we can use. At the minute it kind of reminds me of those experiments you see in science class, where the teacher lights paper on fire and it flashes."

  "Nitrocellulose," stated Ste.

  "Yeah, what he said," agreed Paul, pointing at Ste. "What about you dude?"

  Ste was already thinking about it. "I want to control the spread of my fog. Right now it just kinda spreads out everywhere and it's a bit wispy. But what if I could make it thicker and control where it moves? Maybe use it as actual cover instead of just something that looks kinda cool."

  "Yeah that's good," Liam said. "You could start hiding stuff like the traps you mentioned or use it as a kind of smoke screen."

  "Exactly. There's a few other ways I can think to use it. Like, what if it can be used in a precise location, not in a kind of spread? I could create a small wall of fog and snap it to someone's head, in front of their eyes. Boom, blind spell."

  Liam nodded, thinking about his own spell. "I'm trying to expand my shield. At the moment it's basically a flat wall, right? But what if I could make it curve? Like, turn it into a dome shape facing forward?

  Give us actual protection from multiple angles instead of just straight-on attacks. Also lets me better block attacks that would break a flat wall but slide off a rounded one."

  "That's a solid upgrade," Paul said.

  Parmo was already talking before anyone asked. "My slush balls are useless. They just sort of splatter. I want to make them harder and colder. Get them to actually impact something with force, and then freeze whatever they hit. Make them an actual weapon instead of just cold water."

  "Yeah, that's similar to Paul's idea but with a different element," Ste said.

  "Yeah, exactly. Something with bite."

  They reached a spot about halfway across the field and naturally began to spread out. Not far, just enough space to work without the risk of hitting each other with stray magic. No one needed to organize it. They just spread apart, careful not to stray too far away.

  Lee stood with his baseball bat in one hand, closing his eyes and imagining the spark in his fingers. The memory of it came easily; the spell activating, the rush that followed and the smell of ozone in the air around him. He focused on what he wanted, harder this time. Trying to push it outward instead of just letting it exist where it was.

  His fingers sparked. Faint at first, then stronger. The electricity built, arcing and crackling between them. He visualized it shooting forward, a bolt of pure lightning leaving his body and striking something distant.

  Nothing.

  The lightning remained trapped on his fingertips, powerful yet inert. It stayed exactly like always. He tried again, pushing harder with his intention, imagining the spell's shape as it launched outward. A bolt of electrical energy, straight and fast as a bullet.

  Still nothing.

  He kept trying. Different approaches. Different mental images. Thinking of it as a projectile. Thinking of it as a weapon. Thinking of it as pure energy meant to travel. Each attempt felt like pushing against an immovable wall.

  After about twenty minutes of this, he walked back toward the group feeling oddly drained. Not tired exactly. Just empty. Like something inside him had been used up faster than it should have been. He shook it off and headed to regroup with the others.

  Further to Lee's right, Paul was having better luck and worse luck simultaneously.

  He stepped forward and punched the air with a sharp grunt. His fist ignited and fire burst out in a bright flame, twisting off his knuckles and scorching a mark into the dirt.

  "Right then," he muttered to himself, shaking his hand out. "Let's do that again."

  He tried again. The second cast felt the same as the first. Same flame, same power, same scorch mark. He'd been thinking about it differently this time, trying to be more intentional with what he wanted; more power, a higher heat from his flames. But nothing changed.

  He tried a third time, then a fourth. Each one identical to the last.

  By the fifth attempt, frustration was creeping in. He was putting effort into this, thinking it through, being deliberate about what he wanted. Why wasn't it different? Why wasn't it stronger? He kept trying, casting over and over, each time expecting something to shift.

  But nothing did.

  After about twenty minutes of this, a creeping nausea had been building, settling in his stomach. His head felt slightly fuzzy. It wasn't bad yet, felt more like a warning than anything. He tried one more time anyway, pushing through the discomfort, and the fire erupted like before. But the moment it dissipated, he had to bend over, swallowing hard against the sickness rising in his throat.

  He straightened up slowly, breathing carefully, and made his way back to the group. The nausea wasn't going away. It sat there like a reminder he might want to relax a little. A message that he'd probably pushed too hard.

  Ste was different. He wasn't trying to make his fog stronger or bigger. He was trying to control it.

  He laid out a circle of pebbles, with a bear trap drawn into the dirt in the centre. His aim was to hide this marking from sight. He cast his spell. The fog wanted to spread, that was its nature. But he was trying to tell it to stay. To concentrate here. To thicken here instead of dispersing everywhere.

  The first attempt, the fog just spread as it always did, billowing outward in all directions.

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  The second attempt, he tried to imagine it as a barrier. A solid thing that blocked view of the trap beyond it. The fog listened initially, the cast having it spread in what could be described as wall-like, but quickly went back to laying thinly on the ground. It then continued to spread and disperse.

  He cast again and again, each time trying different mental approaches. Thinking of it as a shape, as a container. Thinking of it as something he was sculpting rather than releasing.

  By the tenth cast, he started to understand how the spell responded to his intention. When he thought "wall," it tried to form more like a wall. When he thought "thick," it got marginally denser. Each attempt quickly going back to what was natural. Understanding how it worked and actually controlling it were two different things. The fog still went where it wanted to go.

  He kept casting. Eleven times. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Each cast taught him something small, a new way to think about the spell, a different angle of approach. But none of them got him what he actually wanted. The trap remained visible through the fog no matter what he tried.

  By the time he walked back to the group, he understood something though: this wasn't going to happen today. This was going to take continuous effort. Anything from days to a week before he got where he wanted. This was a completely different skill from just casting a spell.

  Liam was trying to change the shape of something that didn't want to change shape.

  His shield spell was a wall. A flat barrier of force between him and whatever he was trying to block. Now he wanted it to curve. To become a dome of protection for him and his friends; something able to protect from more angles at once.

  He visualized the dome before he cast. Imagined it forming around him, curved and protective.

  The shield appeared as a flat barrier.

  He tried again. Same visual in mind, same purpose.

  Still flat.

  Again.

  Flat.

  He didn't try different approaches or try to change his thought process, he just cast the same thing over and over, the way he'd do reps in the gym. He'd make an attempt. Fail. He'd try again. Each one identical to the last, each cast a barrier between him and the imaginary threat in front of him.

  By the time he saw his friends moving, he felt tired and his focus was slipping. The shield still appeared flat. But Liam wasn't frustrated. He understood something fundamental: if he kept doing this, eventually it would work. Effort accumulated. Repetition built strength. That was how everything worked.

  He made his way back to the group, he wasn't crestfallen or down on his luck. If anything this just made him want to try again. He'd get it at some point. There may have been no visible progress so far, but he wasn't discouraged. This was just the beginning.

  Parmo had the hardest job, or at least that's what he'd decided about thirty seconds into attempting it.

  He wanted his ice spell to form harder. To hit with impact. To actually be a weapon instead of just an irritating wet slurry.

  He started casting. First attempt, the ice formed but didn't solidify the way he wanted. It was soft, slushy. He'd imagined something harder, denser, but the spell didn't listen.

  He tried again immediately. Same result.

  Again.

  And again.

  His hyperfocus kicked in. That tunnel vision where nothing else existed except the problem in front of him and solving it. Cast after cast, each one identical to the last. The ice formed. It was soft. It wasn't what he wanted.

  There had to be something he was missing. Some mental trick or angle of approach that would make it work. He just had to find it.

  He kept casting. Five times. Ten. His hands were moving on muscle memory now, routine taking over. Cast, watch it form wrong, frustration spike, cast again.

  By the twentieth attempt, a creeping heaviness had settled into his chest. His head felt fuzzy. He barely noticed. He was locked in, focused entirely on the problem.

  The ice still wasn't harder.

  Twenty-five casts. Thirty.

  What was he doing wrong? There had to be something. Some detail he wasn't thinking about correctly. Some approach he hadn't tried yet.

  By the time he noticed his friends moving in his peripheral vision, the heaviness in his chest had gotten worse. His body was telling him to stop, but his brain was still spinning through possibilities, still trying to crack the code.

  He cast one more time, acting on pure autopilot at this point, and finally stepped back. The spell formed exactly like it always did. Soft and useless.

  He made his way back to the group feeling wrung out and frustrated. Whatever the trick was, he hadn't found it yet. But he would. He just needed to figure out what he was missing.

  They gathered back together with the idea that five minds are better than one. The forest stood off a short distance away, the leaves of trees swaying in the morning breeze.

  Lee was the first to speak. "Yeah, so... that didn't work."

  "What didn't work?" Liam asked.

  "Getting my spell to actually fire. I've been trying for ages and it just won't leave my hand. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if the spell just doesn't work that way."

  Paul nodded slowly. "I got mine to cast, a few times at least. But..." He swallowed carefully. "Something felt off. Like, each time I cast it, I felt sick. Not tired. Sick. Like nausea. Got worse the more I tried."

  "Why'd you stop?" Ste asked.

  "Didn't want to push it further. Felt like something was going to go wrong if I kept at it."

  Liam was nodding. "Yeah, I felt something similar. Not nausea exactly, but like... strain? I was trying to change my shield into a dome shape and nothing was working. Cast it maybe twenty times, each one a failure, and by the end I was just tired."

  "I kept trying the same thing over and over as well," Ste said. "My fog control didn't get any better but I did notice slight differences as I cast it. It always went back to the same thing afterwards though."

  Parmo was quiet for a moment. "I tried doing both at once. More power and changing the shape of the ice. And yeah, the sick feeling hit me too. Feels pretty bad, it's like something's sat on my chest. More discomfort than a sick feeling though. I don't even know if I was getting anywhere."

  They stood in silence for a moment, processing what they'd learned.

  "We should eat something," Liam said finally. "We've been out here for hours."

  They all brought supplies from town, sat waiting in their inventories. Water bottles, sandwiches, some of the fish that had been caught locally and prepared. They pulled out what they had and started eating casually, more out of habit than hunger. The food seemed to help settle some of the weird feeling, at least a little.

  "So none of us got what we wanted," Lee said between bites.

  "Not really," Paul agreed.

  "We all hit some kind of wall though," Liam said. "Like, there's a limit to something. I just don't know what."

  Ste was thinking out loud. "The sick feeling... that's gotta mean something. It's like our body's telling us we did too much."

  "Too much what though?" Parmo asked.

  "Casting," Paul said. "It's gotta be. Like, magic has a cost, right? We always knew that from games and stuff. You can't just cast infinitely."

  "Mana," Ste said. "It's gotta be mana. That's the only thing that makes sense. We cast, we use mana, when we run low, our body tells us to stop."

  "Yeah, but we don't have a mana bar or anything," Liam said. "The UI isn't showing us that."

  "Yet," Ste said. "Maybe it will once we understand it better."

  Parmo was quiet for a second, then a thought popped into his head. "Wait. Okay, so if we're working with a mana pool, and we all hit walls today..." He paused, thinking. "We're like level one, right? In League, you can't cast your ultimate until you level up. You don't have the stats for it. Maybe that's what's happening here. We're trying to cast big spells or mess around with modifying the stuff we have when we've basically got starting stats. We're trying to run before we can walk."

  "That actually makes sense," Lee said slowly. "My spell won't work because it's too big for my mana pool maybe? The force lightning in Star Wars is way more OP looking than what I can cast. Paul's getting sick because pushing harder costs more than he has. We're all hitting limits because we're trying to use spells that are too expensive for us."

  "Yeah," Ste agreed. "Or maybe we're trying to change stuff with the spells that are more advanced than we're ready for. It's like the advanced settings are off until we achieve enough control of the basics."

  "So how do we level up?" Liam asked.

  "Experience," Ste said. It was obvious once he said it. "We cast more. We practice more. That's how you get better at anything. More reps, more experience, and eventually you're stronger."

  "So we just... keep doing this?" Parmo asked. "Keep casting until it gets easier?"

  "Yeah," Paul said, and there was something in his voice that sounded like hope. "That's actually it. We just need more experience."

  They looked at each other, and saw the same understanding dawning in their friends' eyes. They'd been frustrated five minutes ago, confused, hitting walls. Now, they had something to aim for. A next level, a new path forward.

  "We're gonna figure this out," Lee said.

  "Yeah," Liam agreed. "We just need to—"

  The leaves exploded.

  The goblin came bursting out of the treeline like violence incarnate, shrieking, its grey-green skin twisted and wrong. Its eyes were wild, unfocused. It moved with desperation and hunger and rage all at once.

  Everyone froze.

  For a moment, there was nothing but the goblin's ragged breathing and the wind through the grass.

  "What the fuck is that?" whispered Parmo.