The cabin was quiet except for the soft clicking of a camping kettle and the measured rhythm of five people breathing in unison outside. Dawn washed the treetops in a pale gold; mist clung to the pines like gauze. Beneath that hush, deep under the bedrock, the world pulsed with a faint current they had learned to sense — mana.

  Sean, known in the game as KuroUsagi, was sitting cross-legged on a flat stone, palms resting loosely atop his knees. He let the cold seep into his skin and the thin air cool his thoughts. Then he began the sequence again: the breath, the focus, the minute of attention that the Myriad Elements Method required.

  Gradually, faint black motes flickered into existence around his forehead, swirling and dancing in a fragile orbit. On the third cycle, he felt it — a taut film stretching thin, then parting with a soundless pop he sensed more than heard. Instantly, the motes funneled into his orifices, and something deep within him shifted. Sean knew this sensation well; he had experienced it once before in the game. It was the process of awakening one’s inherent elemental affinity.

  A warmth bloomed behind his sternum.

  Am I advancing… to first-stage Initiate Attunement?

  He knew it before the thought finished forming. He didn’t dare to move a single inch, maintaining his posture as though it were made of glass. Carefully, he guided the weak trickle of mana as the technique instructed, infusing it into his body into the pattern he had practiced countless times in the game.

  Moments later, Sean’s entire body shuddered. Muscles in his face twitched as mana coiled through the air around him. Sweat beaded and rolled down his brow, his neck, his limbs. He felt himself swelling, like a balloon on the verge of bursting. Then, just as suddenly, the pressure subsided, and his body settled into balance.

  At last, he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. A sense of profound transformation flooded every corner of his being.

  “I… have advanced.” Sean flexed his body, feeling a familiar power surge through him. Just like with his in-game avatar, he now sensed the ability to channel infused mana within his body and shape it into a spell model to cast magic.

  The sensation was exhilarating.

  He wasn’t dreaming… was he?

  Sean pinched his cheek and winced at the sting. It wasn’t a dream at all!

  He wanted to scream with joy right then and there, but managed to restrain himself, remembering that his friends were all deep in meditation.

  “Still… to reach the first-stage Initiate Attunement in how long…? About less than a month. Isn’t that far too fast?” He couldn’t help but frown.

  To begin with, what was his mana aptitude on Earth? In the game, being at the superior glimmering grade, his mana aptitude was among the highest of the players. But this was because, as the headmaster once explained, his incubated body there was of the highest possible quality. On Earth, however, there was no reason his body should possess the same aptitude — the odds of such a coincidence were vanishingly small. Worse, Earth lacked both mana and elemental particles, conditions that should have made practicing meditation techniques even more difficult and slow.

  Sean was certain that, while the secret method he had obtained from the Magus inheritance made practicing meditation techniques possible on Earth, it shouldn’t have been enough to let his progress rival even the players with the lowest mana aptitude. True, he already possessed the comprehension and knowledge from countless classes in the game, along with the firsthand experience of breaking through before, but could that alone explain this pace?

  “I really can’t make head or tail of this mystery,” he mused.

  Maybe he was simply an exception, and the others would need far longer to reach the first stage. Since he had been the first to discover that magic could be practiced on Earth, it only made sense that he would also be the first to become a mage.

  Regardless, he should be happy that his progress was so swift. While waiting for his friends to finish their meditation, he slipped away to test his magic. Casting spells on Earth carried a slightly different sensation than in Seraphia, yet the fundamental rules of magic seemed to remain the same.

  “{Shadowy Grasp}!” Sean chanted. A tendril of shadowy darkness burst forth from his hand, coiling around the tree before him and lifting it off the ground. Yet after only two seconds, the tendril dissipated into thin air, causing the tree to fall down.

  Despite having reached the first stage of Initiate Attunement, Sean couldn’t sustain the spell for more than a few seconds. The elemental particles on Earth were simply too sparse. Even if he advanced into the second or even third stage, this situation wouldn’t change much; unlike infused mana, elemental particles could not be stored without a medium such as a magic tool. How troubling.

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  Well, no matter. Being able to wield magic on Earth at all is already a blessing in itself, he thought.

  Once he finished his experimentation, he logged into Magus Academy Online to resume his routine of gathering merit points to fund his avatar’s meditation since he had an oath to fulfill.

  ***

  In the following days, Sean watched as his friends reached first-stage Initiate Attunement one after another. As expected, the first to succeed after him was Marceline — better known as Butterfly in the game. It was no surprise; even without the Crimson Mystic Giant bloodline she possessed in Seraphia, her mana aptitude in the game had always been higher than his.

  Patrick was the second to break through, followed by Kaede, known as Scarlet. That left only one person still stuck at the threshold and broken through…

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Jason, whose username was ChickenSmackdownLevel99, exclaimed in frustration as he failed to reach first-stage Initiate Attunement.

  “Well, you can’t force a breakthrough…” Sean said with a sympathetic shrug. “Your mana aptitude is the lowest among us, after all.”

  Indeed, Sean had already confirmed that their mana aptitude in the game directly corresponded to the rate of their progress on Earth. He hypothesized that since mana aptitude and elemental affinity were tied to the soul, and their souls remained the same across both worlds, their aptitudes would naturally carry over. Of course, this didn’t mean the results would be identical, since their in-game avatars still differed from their Earth bodies.

  “Wait… I think it’s here.” Jason closed his eyes once more and sank back into meditation. Minutes passed in tense silence before a ripple of energy coursed around him. His shoulders straightened, his breathing steadied, and a faint mana fluctuation appeared from him. He had done it — first-stage Initiate Attunement.

  Patrick let out a triumphant laugh. “Well then, that makes all of us. Congratulations, team. I even brought a party popper in my bag just for this occasion.”

  “Why not pop your lung instead?” Marceline said dryly, though the faint smile at her lips betrayed her usual boorish attitude.

  They shared a quiet moment of satisfaction. Each of them had crossed a threshold that, until recently, they had thought impossible on Earth.

  Sean leaned back against the cabin wall, letting the cool wood steady him as he sipped from a steaming cup of coffee. Just then, a soft chime of notification echoed from his smartphone. Pulling it out, he saw the sender’s name: the game’s promotional manager, CyberWarlock.

  CyberWarlock: “Hey, Kuro. Are you there?”

  Sean quickly typed a reply. “I’m here. Do you have something to tell me?”

  CyberWarlock: “That’s right. I have a mission for you. I want you to construct a nexus gate on Earth.”

  “Pfft!” He sputtered, spraying coffee across the ground.

  “Gross,” Marceline commented, not far from him.

  What the heck? Is he insane? How am I supposed to do that? Sean’s frustration was only natural, considering that even achieving the first-stage Initiate Attunement on Earth had already been a monumental effort.

  Though he wasn’t entirely sure what nexus gates entailed, he knew enough to recognize that constructing one would be daunting even in Seraphia. On Earth, where magic resources were nonexistent, the idea was absurd. He couldn’t possibly fabricate something from nothing… could he?

  KuroUsagi: “You must be kidding, right? How am I supposed to make something I don’t even know how to build? And where would I even get the materials?”

  Should he walk into Walmart and casually ask if they stocked materials for building a dimensional gate? Yeah, right. They’d probably point him to the DIY aisle, sell him duct tape and plywood, and laugh him out of the store for asking such a stupid question.

  As Sean sent the message, he took another sip of the coffee.

  CyberWarlock: “Simple. I’ll send the materials from here. Oh, and I want you to take over your country’s government.”

  “Pfftt!” Sean sputtered again, spraying coffee everywhere before breaking into a coughing fit.

  “Eww. If you don’t like the coffee, just say so.” Marceline creased her brows, a bit offended since she had been the one who brewed it.

  Jason tilted his head, watching Sean choke for the second time. “What’s wrong with you, Kuro… I mean Sean.”

  “It’s nothing. Sorry,” Sean muttered, wiping his mouth before glancing back at his phone.

  CyberWarlock: “I’m just kidding. Even if you reached third-stage Initiate Attunement, you couldn’t possibly pull that off without advanced mind-control spells and the like… and I’m certain you don’t have those.”

  KuroUsagi: “You’re insane… Was the part about sending materials from there also a joke?”

  CyberWarlock: “Nope. That part’s true.”

  But how in the world was Cyber planning to send those materials over? The whole point of building a nexus gate was to connect the two worlds. So, logically, the materials would have to exist here first before anything else could even begin. It felt a lot like putting the cart before the horse, which didn’t sound like Cyber’s style at all.

  Sean was about to ask him directly, but before he could, Cyber’s next message appeared first.

  CyberWarlock: “In any case, you don’t have to worry about the materials. What you need to do now is find the perfect location to set up the nexus gate. Don’t worry, I’ll be sending someone to help, and you know this person well. She will be contacting you soon.”

  KuroUsagi: “I understand.”

  For some reason, Sean had an inkling about who this person might be.

  CyberWarlock: “Also, several governments have begun investigating the game. I may need your help with that in the future. Ah, have you achieved the first stage yet?”

  KuroUsagi: “All five of us have just achieved the first stage of Initiate Attunement, yes.”

  CyberWarlock: “Good, good. That’s fast. Anyway, that’s all from me for now.”

  Sean straightened and drew in a deep breath after the conversation ended. He then shared with his friends what had transpired with the headmaster. Since they were already aware of his prior meeting, the news didn’t come as a complete shock. Instead, it stirred a ripple of excitement among them as they came to know of the possibility of real action in the future.

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