“Okay, what skills can I currently cast?” Jack asked, stretching out his shoulders. “Skill Sheet.”

  The shimmering blue screen crackled into focus before him, and he skimmed through all his skills. He let out a curse when he realized that he could only cast his Smoldering Fists class skill. Most of his earned skills were either passive, conditional casts, or Soul Fusion.

  As for his class skills, he thought it odd that he was given them at level 10, yet was unable to cast almost all of them.

  “Why would they let me gain skills that I can’t cast?!” Jack demanded of the System.

  Then he reconsidered Soul Fusion and rescinded his statement. It wasn’t that he thought he was wrong to question this, but that there must be something he was missing.

  “Could it be that I need a certain milestone of strength or durability before I can safely cast it?” he wondered aloud, shifting to stretch out the other shoulder.

  That was a worrying notion. Could he cast skills that his body was simply not ready to endure? He knew that this magic system required specific attribute thresholds to cast, and he assumed that they would drain that aspect of his being, but did that mean he could overdraw from his reserves?

  Jack was familiar with overtaxing one’s energy reserves. He did it all the time while training in boxing and MMA. It was a crucial aspect of a fight, in fact. You had to know your limits and push them in training to increase your potential. He was accustomed to that, but this world was different. Olric made it very clear that he could not ‘train up’ his attributes.

  So, if he used all of his available Strength stat, would he become too tired or weak to continue? Did it recharge passively? If so, how long would each stat take to refill completely?

  All these questions swam through his mind as he continued warming up his muscles. He stretched out his neck, rolling it one way, then the other. Heat started to gather around his body, and a thin wisp of smoke curled up from his clenched fist.

  “Breathe, Jack,” he reminded himself. “You can do this. Just experiment a bit. It’s fine. You’re probably not the first person to have to figure this stuff out with some good ol’ trial and error.”

  Jack lifted his arms and got into a boxing stance. “Okay, let’s cast Smoldering Fists and see what it does to my Constitution. It takes 5 Constitution per second to be active, so that means I have 4 seconds max. Let’s start with one second and see where that takes us.”

  Confident in his plan, Jack focused on his new class skill. And waited. He dropped his fists.

  “Crap, do I say it out loud, or is it a mental command? I swear, if I have to say, ‘Smoldering Fists: Activate’ each–”

  Jack’s hands burst into flames.

  “WHAT THE–” Jack shouted, holding out his hands like they were twin snakes.

  Orange flames wrapped around his fingers, his wrists, right up to his forearms. They didn’t singe or even char any part of his skin or clothes, yet he could simultaneously feel the tightly coiled heat contained within the writhing coils of flame. They reminded him of videos he’d seen of fire tornadoes. It shifted and rotated in tight spirals around his arms, growing brighter with each second.

  “Whoa,” Jack whispered, his panic giving way to overwhelming awe.

  This was his. His power. His skill. He… He was using magic!

  “OW!” Jack yelled at the exact moment four seconds passed.

  He fell to the ground, the fire extinguishing as quickly as it had emerged. The muddy soil instantly stained his shoulder and side as he struggled to catch his breath. His vision spun. Shakily, he managed to take in a full lungful, but it was like he’d just sprinted for a full minute.

  Jack was no pushover. Even before the System had transformed his body, he’d been fairly fit. This fatigue was like day one of working out after a year of eating nothing but Doritos. It was worse than breathlessness. It was bone-deep exhaustion.

  “So, that answers that question,” he wheezed. “Don’t zero out my Constitution.”

  He slumped onto his back even as the mud beneath him turned his blue tunic brown. He lay there for at least ten minutes. Finally, when he felt like he could breathe without dying, he rose to his knees. Wind tousled his hair and should’ve sent a chill across his body, but his blood was more than up for combating the cold. Instead, the wind merely invigorated him.

  Jack blinked hard a couple of times. “Okay, I can use that skill for three seconds, max, right now. As much fun as it would be to go limp noodle like that mid-fight, I’d rather keep my head attached to my body.”

  He rose to his feet and rolled out his neck and shoulders. “Let’s try that again, and this time, just use it for one second, so I can see how long it takes for me to recover the equivalent of 5 Constitution. Thankfully, this skill doesn’t have a cooldown, but I guess one is kind of built in, huh.”

  With a totally nonchalant grunt that absolutely wasn’t to mask his reddening face, Jack returned to his earlier stance.

  “Let’s try this again.”

  “Smoldering Fists: Activate!” Jack shouted.

  Instantly, magic flooded from somewhere deep in his chest. It spread through both arms in perfect unison. As soon as it reached his elbows, he felt a shift in the power. It spread, moving through his muscles and the pores of his skin. The moment the magic reached the surface, it ignited the air just above his skin. Then, moving automatically, the skill twisted the flames into a tight cylinder, ensuring none of the heat or flames escaped.

  This all happened in less than a heartbeat.

  As he watched, the fire took on the vague shape of gauntlets, completely encasing his fists.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  At the same time, he felt something clench inside of himself, like he was holding his breath. But it was deeper than that. And it was getting weaker at a prodigious rate.

  Is that my Constitution draining?

  “Deactivate!” Jack shouted, and the flaming gauntlets dissipated with barely more than a few wisps of smoke.

  He took in a shuddering breath and assessed all that had just happened. “That was… new.”

  Jack steadied his shaking arms on his hips and paced around the clearing. As he walked and gathered his strength, he went over all that he’d just learned.

  There is a reservoir for my Constitution. I can sense it. I’ll bet that I’ll get better at sensing exactly how much of it I’m using in time, but for now, I’ll keep track of the seconds.

  His boot scuffed against a pebble, and he kicked at it idly.

  The skill handles the nuances of the magic. At least right now, I don’t sense any of the control I briefly felt when fighting that orc assassin. I wonder if I’ll be able to achieve that if I level up this skill enough?

  Jack stopped his pacing, feeling that strange new reservoir in his chest return to full. He noted that it took about 2 minutes to fill back up.

  “This time, let’s see what happens when I actually punch,” Jack coached himself.

  He lifted his fists, and this time he imagined the smug face of that orc sorcerer who was responsible for taking his finger. Eyes narrowed, he called on the skill activation again.

  This time, he didn’t hesitate. His right jab was already shooting forward as the flames encased his arm. The moment his jab was fully extended, a burst of fire exploded from where his fist had just been.

  “Deactivate!” Jack declared and stared at the offending hand. “What did that skill description say?”

  He pulled it up and double-checked the wording.

  [Description: Wrap your hands in fire that burns through normal defenses. Not the roaring inferno you’ll command later—just concentrated heat that sears on contact. Each consecutive hit on the same target builds heat, making your punches progressively more devastating. Three hits in a row, and the leather starts to char. Four and metal glows red.]

  Jack whistled. “I thought that whole ‘building heat’ thing was just fluff text. I’m actually building up flames with each punch! Wait, why did it work when I didn’t have a target?”

  On a hunch, Jack raised his fists and shouted the activation even as he punched. Everything was the same as before. But when his jab finished, there was no burst of smoke or flames. No heat gathered in his left fist at all. He deactivated it again and grinned as he realized the difference.

  “I need to choose a target in my mind for the skill to work. Intent is apparently enough for it to recognize the need for the skill to function fully,” Jack concluded. “That’s awesome! That means I won’t have to learn how these skills work while in real combat, or run the risk of hurting whoever my sparring partner is.”

  With a nod to his progress, Jack flicked out his wrists and raised his hands again, dropping low and sturdy into his boxing position. “I have three seconds to work with, but I need four consecutive hits to maximize the power of this skill. That shouldn’t be hard at all.”

  “Smoldering Fists: Activate!”

  Jack threw his first punch, imagining the same orc sorcerer as before. His first jab exploded with energy, but he was already throwing his cross. It landed right where the orc’s head would’ve been, and a second, larger explosion rocked the air. Immediately, he could tell something was off. The gauntlets of flames encasing his hands felt preternaturally heavy. Sure, they glowed brighter than ever, but their perceived weight had increased tenfold.

  Struggling, Jack threw another jab. This one exploded brightest of all, but the internal feeling of fatigue was nearing a scream. He deactivated the skill, and his chest heaved as he recovered. Hands on his knees, he went over this new development.

  “Noted,” Jack gasped. “I can’t land four hits in three seconds thanks to the skill of increasing the weight and power of each strike.”

  Jack cursed. “How am I supposed to use this damn skill at level 10? What am I missing?”

  Angry, he rose to his full height and began pacing. A northern wind billowed through the clearing and carried with it the mixed aromas of fresh soil, ripe crops, and wet lumber. There was another, more pungent scent hidden beneath the others. It reeked of rot.

  “Right,” Jack said. “How do people do this? Either this whole system is rigged, or there’s a trick I simply don’t know.”

  He considered his options. “My boots give me stat boosts, so maybe that’s one way to compensate for the relatively low attributes I possess. There’s also the fact that this is a Legendary class, and thus legendary skills. If they were easy to master, everyone would be doing them, right? It must mean that their skill ceiling is just leaps and bounds above the usual. So, what’s a technique or strategy that I could use to bridge the gap?”

  Jack thought over every fight he’d seen and participated in. Most of the people in the slums had behaved at much the same speed and strength as he had, just with a lot more comfortability navigating their home.

  “No, that’s not it.”

  He replayed his fight alongside Olric. The old man had moved with incredible speed. Jack’s brow furrowed, and he cupped his chin in contemplation. Now that he was thinking about it, hadn’t Olric cast a few skills during the orc raid on his farm?

  “But he never spoke his incantations aloud!” Jack realized.

  That confirmed at least one of his theories. But it still didn’t explain how he’d moved so fast, or hit so hard.

  Jack then thought about his fight with the rotting kraken. There had been a few moments where he’d used supernatural speed and strength—from dodging the whipping tentacles to unearthing the crystal at the bottom of the pond. How had he done that?

  “Somehow, I tapped into my attributes, amplifying their qualities. But how?” Jack wondered and resumed his pacing, the smell of rot forgotten for now.

  He thought back to the sensation of the Constitution reservoir. “Is there a similar pool for each attribute?”

  It made a certain amount of sense to him, now that he was thinking about it. If his body could intrinsically gauge how much of a given attribute he was using, that would be incredibly useful—far more than merely having that information on some sort of HUD. Granted, HUDS (Heads Up Displays) were awesome, but he was glad to have something a bit more personal than numbers telling him when he was about to zero out his stamina or strength.

  “Let’s see if I can activate one on purpose, shall we?” he asked the wind.

  His eyes leveled on the closed barn about a hundred feet ahead of him.

  I have 8 Dexterity. Let’s see if I can use it to speed up my sprint to those barndoors over there.

  He closed his eyes and focused on everything that made a person faster—reaction time. Muscular responsivity. Explosive motion. It seemed to work, as he felt a new sensation course through his body. It was distinct from Constitution’s warmth. This felt like cool water racing along his skin. Energy sparked inside his arms and legs, and his mind cleared. Everything felt ever so slightly slower.

  “Let’s do this!”

  Jack, still focusing on the new pool of power inside of him, poured every bit of it into his sprint. He lowered into a loose approximation of a sprinter’s stance and then kicked off. He flew through the air. His boots bit deep into the earth as he raced toward the barn’s twin doors. He covered the space in what felt like fractions of a second.

  Surprisingly, his mind kept up with all the stimuli. He knew just where to put his feet, remembered to pump his arms, and could even feel small shifts in the air current. Nothing fancy, but he could tell when the restless wind buffeted him off course. He felt it all, his mind alive with the possibilities.

  He reached the doors and realized too late that he didn’t have enough space to slow down. He tried to dig his heels in, but that just caused him to flip awkwardly head over heels.

  “OH, SHI—”

  Jack crashed through the barn doors, and the stench of rot exploded around him.