Alexander mentally berated himself as he realized he was feeling a slight anticipation about getting home from work. He had detoured from his schedule and swung by a hobby store to pick up a microscope. While standing in the checkout lane he realized he was bouncing on his toes and forced himself to remain still. He was likely experiencing some effects of dopamine.

  “Classic behavior for addiction.” He muttered to himself.

  When he got home he set the microscope on his coffee table. Sitting down on his couch he leaned forward and folded his fingers in front of his face. He attempted to stare at the microscope with contempt. It only lasted for a second though. How could he stay mad at such a glorious machine? He intentionally waited for a few minutes to ponder his recent life choices, just to keep himself balanced.

  “This could become a research paper. I could submit it to a college as a recommendation for further study.” He rationalized. “It could change the way we fundamentally look at energy.”

  After thoroughly deceiving himself, he opened up the microscope. The wonders reminiscent of childhood hit him. He felt giddy to once again look at the tiny world all around him.

  Taking a dropper and glass slide, he sampled a drop of coffee. After placing a top piece of glass on the coffee sample, he placed his slide under the lens and locked it in place using the stage clips. He messed with the turrets to adjust the power of the magnification and fine tuned the condenser to get the appropriate lighting. After he was satisfied with his set up, he pulled out his cell phone.

  “Project name, Magic is just Science. Experiment one, Molecular reaction to prestidigitation. Today’s tests will be to discover if there are any unique visible chemical reactions when coffee is subjected to… to the prestidigitation.” Alexander stopped recording and sighed thinking of the reactions from a peer review.

  Finally he put his eye to the ocular lens of the microscope and focused in on the coffee droplet.

  “Prestidigitation.” He whispered with anticipation.

  As he watched he saw a quick flash over the surface of the coffee.

  “Shoot.” He swore. At least… Alexander considered it to be a swear.

  In his haste he forgot the reason he bought this model was that he could connect it to his computer and record it. After about a half an hour of downloading software, plugging in cables, and reading instructions. He was set up to try again.

  “That was simply set up. I am not counting that thirty minutes against my time…”

  He whispered the excuse to the empty room as if a shadow of his mother was watching him with disapproval. He adjusted his glasses and slumped into the desk chair.

  Not wanting to compromise the results of his research he put a fresh drop of coffee between a clean set of glass slides first. He hit the record button on his laptop and repeated his spell.

  “Prestidigitation.”

  There it was again! The flash passed in the blink of an eye and Alexander hit stop recording and played it back. Amazingly he was able to see the flash on the recording. After a minute he found a way to move frame by frame. It was surprising to see the flash was in fact a rolling pattern of light over the surface of the coffee. It was fuzzy but he was able to find a part of the frame that was focused enough to make out a pattern. It was a hexagon, an interweaving pattern of hexagons.

  “A hexagonal tessellation.” Alexander said with wondered in his voice, as a small host of windows popped up.

  ^

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  You have discovered a hidden principle.

  The Shape of Magic II

  Rewards:

  -1000 xp

  +10% increased proficiency to all spells you cast.

  +10% increased effect to arcane creations.

  Be aware that casting magic outside of the system established principles may cause unusual and unexpected results.

  Congratulations, you are now level 3!

  You have gained two levels in the intermediate skill Arcana!

  Arcana level 3

  You have 4 points to distribute to your Arcana skill tree.

  “Interesting.” Alexander's underlying excitement was underrepresented by his vocabulary. He took his time reading his notification as the notifications affirmed his research efforts. The system didn’t explain what a hidden principle was or its significance, but who didn’t like discovering something hidden? He denied any elation at being rewarded or leveling up. As those had no academic value.

  He messed with the microscope a bit more changing the samples to water and tea. After getting a few well focused recordings he looked at the clock and sighed. He still had one other Wizard activity to do and only ten minutes left of his hour. He saved and backed up the files before shutting his computer—then pulled up his status screen.

  Being decisive was something that Alexander did not often have trouble with. Normally there was a clear best choice after someone has done their due diligence concerning their options. He looked at his first bonuses from leveling up. He had three points that he could put into his basic stats. One per level up it seemed. An amazing reward he assumed for such a simple accomplishment. So he stared at his stats and pondered their influence upon his personal goals.

  ^

  Alexander Brewton - Human - Wizard (novice)- Level 3

  Level progression: 42%

  HP: 34/34

  MP: 52/50

  Stat bonus available: 2

  Strength: 10

  Endurance: 12

  Dexterity: 8

  Intelligence: 17

  Wisdom: 12

  Charisma: 6

  Luck: 10

  For Alexander, it really came down to intelligence, wisdom, or charisma. He would never leave anything to luck, and he was clearly already a mildly gifted genius. All excellent leaders needed wisdom to pull from. He was however loathe to put them into charisma as he had no desire to become a party animal. Unfortunately charisma had the numeric value of his greatest weakness. On any other day he would have placed them in wisdom and intelligence without hesitation, however the trend with super geniuses is that they often have massive blind spots when it comes to socially traditional interactions. He was not claiming super genius status of course. Just seeing how wide the gap became between general function and academic achievements. Most college professors would have trouble fixing their toilets after all, which depending on who you talked to is one of the simplest fixtures in a home. This weakness in charisma could be detrimental to his current assignment and his quest…

  “Assignment, only my current assignment.” He amended.

  With much chagrin Alexander decided that his future career at Congo was unlikely to go any further without improvement in this area. So he added two points to charisma bringing it to eight points and confirmed the distribution. Choosing to keep the extra point until he had a firmer grasp on the total effect changing a stat would have.

  He waited to see if he would feel that warm sense moving in his body, but nothing seemed to change. He did not know what he was expecting, maybe he would feel compelled to go to a bar and ask someone to dance or recite slam poetry at a speak-easy full of hippies.

  Well, with that little identity crisis out of the way Alexander next dove into the new spells available to him. There was a massive list of them, the majority of which were greyed out. So he began to familiarize himself with them early so he could better utilize them in combination with his selected skills. He had been looking through them for a few minutes when he heard a knock at the door. Alexander stood from his desk frustrated at being interrupted and marched to the door. As he placed his hand on the door he decided this could be a good opportunity to test his charisma. With that thought in mind he tried to relax and be more open to the interaction.