If I wanted to get good at space magic- a goal I had specifically because things I felt should have fused together didn’t- then I had to really practice it starting with the basics.

  I could transfer things into or out of Storage a hundred times in an intense training session, but I don’t think that meant anything. It wasn’t difficult. Could I even get better at it? I already had a total of 10 upgrades, which wasn’t necessarily the limit but training wasn’t good without difficulty.

  “Is it more difficult to transfer heavier objects?” I pondered, looking to Midnight for advice. He certainly used Storage more frequently than I did.

  “Everything is about the same,” Midnight said.

  “Is that so? What’s actually the largest thing you’ve tried to store?”

  “Uh…” Midnight took a moment to think. “A pile of energy drinks for that speedster, Sprint? Actually, that took me a couple uses to put in since I couldn’t really touch it all, but pulling it all out was easy.”

  “Yeah, that kind of just works up to the limit,” I nodded. “We should try single large weights.”

  For that, I took a short trip down a level to the gym. There, I found Meztli supervising as usual.

  “Hey, can I borrow a bench press bar?” That wasn’t quite the limit of Storage, but it was close enough.

  She frowned. “What for? They’re not very durable, and it’s better for any exercise to be supervised.”

  “Power testing. And not the destructive kind.” Unless something went very wrong, anyway.

  “Alright. I’ll mark it down,” Meztli said. “Make sure to return it at some point. Or at least let me know it won’t be coming back.”

  “I’m not going to leave it taking up space forever,” I said. “Should be back later today.”

  Power usage was restricted in the gym, though obviously not completely. Some people needed to exercise with their powers. There were different sections scaling from light to heavy, which was generally also how much power usage should be involved. Though there was a telekinetic training in the light section… just with a whole lot of individual weights.

  “Oh, Grasp,” I greeted her once I saw she looked over at me. I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her concentration. “Good to see you.”

  “And you as well mage,” she said. There was a few meter area marked off around her, and she was slowly moving different weights in different directions without looking at any of it. It was a combination of things from five to ten pounds, maybe twenty or so dumbbells in total. “Here for conditioning?”

  “Not this afternoon. It’s time for power training.”

  “Oh, using those floating hands?”

  “Actually, those pretty much replicate my own strength.”

  “... How odd.”

  It was a bit odd, now that I thought about it. Normally my magic was entirely separate from my body- ignoring the spells that enhanced my body. I added that to the list. That deserved some investigation.

  I grabbed a barbell from one end, then realized it wouldn’t quite fit in storage. Ah, whatever. It was only 2 points to expand the capacity and that was way simpler than carrying around magic tomes or my ammunition or just carrying the barbell through the halls and then dumping the stuff out in the training room. 2 points for 5 more pounds of storage capacity. That seemed like a significant quantity.

  The barbell was stubborn about going into storage, forcing me to use a whole point of mana just to be certain. That was already a valuable piece of information. The weight should have been fine, but I hadn’t tested the limits on wide objects. Maybe it was some combination of both. My staff was just about the same size, but far lighter.

  I found Midnight sitting among a large pile of stuff. There were tuna cans, but also bottles of water and other emergency supplies. It seemed that he had branched out. I explained what I’d just determined earlier.

  “I’ve never really tried to store any single thing with so much mass,” Midnight admitted. “So that might be it.”

  The two of us began to experiment, repeatedly using the magic. Storage had already been overbalanced towards point upgrades, and having spent one more I didn’t have that feeling of control. But I did have control, and I’d been able to manipulate spells plenty already. That feeling still didn’t seem to be precisely accurate. Maybe there was another word that would fit better than ‘control’, but I still didn’t know it.

  Midnight and I discovered something when it was his turn- which really meant he discovered it, I suppose. I had taken out the barbell and left it on the ground, and Midnight placed a paw on it. However, he couldn’t store it. “I’m using a full point of mana,” Midnight said. “It just won’t go through.”

  “... Is it stuck to the floor somehow?”

  Midnight pushed on it, and the barbell rolled very slightly. His other paw came down on top of the barbell a moment before it disappeared. “Well that’s a suspicious circumstance.”

  “How’s taking it out feel?” I asked.

  The barbell clanged to the floor beside him a moment later. “Pretty easy,” Midnight said.

  “... Why beside you?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t want to risk dropping it on my toes,” Midnight explained. That made a lot of sense.

  “My turn.” I picked up the barbell, holding it in front of me with two hands. I began to gather mana, and before I reached a full point the spell slipped away from me and it disappeared. “Weird. It was just more difficult than that.” We hadn’t randomly gotten a natural upgrade in that time- I checked. “What do you think, buddy?”

  As usual, he was quite insightful. “It’s about holding it, right? Whether you actually have it?”

  “Good call,” I said. The first time, I’d sort of been dangling the barbell. Having it steady in two hands certainly felt better. Feeling cautious about my toes as well, I released the barbell onto the ground next to me. Or at least, I tried to. It took that last bit to make it out. “Weird. That was a bit harder. Taking it out.” I paused for a second. “Was that because it was in my hands before?”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “Let’s find out,” Midnight said, flopping forward onto the bar, his head and neck just sort of dangling over it. The barbell pretty easily disappeared into Storage. I could tell Midnight hadn’t gathered a full point. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call that particularly more in my possession.”

  “But you also don’t really hold things with your paws,” I pointed out.

  “Can you crouch down?” Midnight asked. “I don’t want to squish my paws, but if I do I want you to lift the bar, okay?”

  I nodded, moving closer to help him just in case whatever he tried went wrong.

  I felt him gathering mana, but he stopped before going beyond the natural limit. He didn’t continue to gather, but sort of waited around like that for a few seconds before the bar appeared just below him- between his legs the long way. It clanged to the ground loudly.

  What had he been trying to do? I couldn’t tell that. “Does waiting save effort?”

  “Oh, no,” Midnight shook his head. “It only appeared that way. I was actually adjusting where it would come out, you see. Once it hit a point that fit the amount of mana spent, it did. I wanted it to be all the way on the floor, you see, but it only worked when it was right beneath me.”

  “Didn’t you just do that though?”

  “It was right next to me,” Midnight explained. “This was supposed to be between my paws with a bit of a gap there.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Since I was already crouched down, I tested a weird way of picking up the bar. Or rather, I didn’t pick it up but just placed my forearm along it. It happily went into storage. “Right, so. Greater physical contact works quite well.”

  That was useful to know. Releasing the barbell in front of my feet, basically touching my shoes, was easier than beside my foot. Because of the multiple points of contact, or because it was actually touching instead of just nearby and next to me?

  Having a cheap spell was great for testing, and the best part was that Storage wasn’t exactly weak. It just wasn’t any good offensively. “Ooh, I have so many ideas.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind that needs a target dummy,” I said.

  “Oh, so not about Storage,” Midnight said. “You should save that for later.”

  “You don’t get it. The kind that needs Storage and a target dummy.”

  “... Are you going to try to drop the barbell on the dummy?” He got it. “Inside an extradimensional space?” Midnight was ten steps ahead of me.

  “That’s… probably not useful. But we absolutely have to test that. Let me go grab one, and we can do both of our tests.”

  We pretty quickly went through a few things after I got back. I ultimately had to dump out everything in storage so that the target dummy- a fairly light one- and the barbell could fit. Unsurprisingly, nothing ‘dropped’ inside storage, even trying to make that the case.

  “Probably for the best,” I admitted. “Otherwise I would have accidentally squashed my books by now. Or set off my gun.”

  “Better to not,” Midnight agreed. “Now what?”

  “Mage’s Reach,” I said.

  Storing the barbell was about the same- as long as we weren’t outside the soft distance limitation. More contact was better, which was often just a firm grip- though pressing the hand around it along the length just kind of worked the same. Additional points of contact didn’t seem as important as total area or security.

  But picking things up with Mage’s Reach wasn’t as exciting as dropping them. But dropping them wasn’t as precise. I probably shouldn’t have started as high as I did. Midnight and I were well outside of the drop zone, but the dummy was perfectly unharmed as the barbell crashed into the ground.

  They were totally sturdy enough to suffer no harm from that… at any height a person could normally drop them.

  “... It’s a bit bent, isn’t it.”

  “That’s fine. It happens,” Midnight said.

  That was true. But I had promised Meztli no destructive training. Well, sort of. She had mentioned at least bringing up if it needed to be replaced, so she wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

  Midnight and I had used only a small portion of our mana so far. Storage was great. And a really heavy thing plus Mage’s Reach plus dropping it? That had serious potential to… break things we didn’t want to. But maybe I could get something better at dropping precisely.

  “Do you think I’d get experience for it?” I asked.

  “... I doubt we’d be able to get anyone willing to let you drop that on their head,” Midnight said. “Not that you haven’t already trained with.”

  “Durable people are the best.”

  Unfortunately, that meant that minor things likely wouldn't grant experience, so it would be more difficult to test.

  “Oh,” I said. “I do have one other idea how to use it in battle. It might even give experience.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Midnight said.

  “Taking things other people are holding.”

  “... I thought you said that was impossible?”

  “I’ve said a lot of things,” I admitted. “Sometimes, I’m wrong.”

  We had Midnight lay down on the barbell, and I managed to store it. Even with two hands on it, however, it cost about as much mana as it reasonably could.

  “It might be because I wasn’t actually in possession of it,” Midnight suggested.

  So I held the barbell firmly, while Midnight jumped on it. Yeah, he could have used Mage’s Reach, but dangling over it was funnier. And when he fell to the ground after storing it, it was still funny. He landed on his feet, obviously. On both his feet and my feet, in fact.

  He stepped back. “That was pretty difficult. But there’s one issue.”

  “Our bond?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll get someone,” I said.

  -----

  “So you want me to… hold a barbell,” Great Girl said. “Usually I expect something more exciting from your training. You didn’t really need to seek me out.”

  I wasn’t going to tell her she was the first person I ran into. “I know it’s not glamorous, but it should be helpful. You have a strong grip.” Actually, I could think of some things she’d be particularly good at already. “Just hold that firmly. Try not to bend it more.”

  “Aw, crap. Did I do that?”

  “Don’t worry, it was already like that,” I said.

  “Did you do that? I know you’re pretty strong, but…”

  “I dropped it from thirty feet up,” I explained. “Now keep that grip,” I said, reaching out.

  It didn’t work, perhaps because she had strong powers or because she was actively trying to stop me from taking it. Even at a full point of mana, it just didn’t work. So I gave it a tug.

  Obviously I couldn’t actually yank it out of Great Girl’s grasp. She was probably stronger than me at her natural size, and she was never her natural size. But I could slightly loosen her grip. Or her resolve. Maybe if that was shaken…

  I tried to pry a couple of her fingers off. Then my mana finally had enough of sitting around trying to be used and fizzled out. “Too bad. That didn’t work.”

  “What were you trying to do anyway?”

  “Use Storage to take it.”

  “That only works on unattended objects.”

  “Well, Midnight took it from me,” I shrugged.

  “That’s a cantrip, right?” Great Girl asked. “It would be pretty unbalanced if it could just do that.”

  “The lowest tier of spells, yes,” I agreed. “With 11 upgrades, though.”

  I was about ready to give up on that, when Midnight suggested something pretty obvious. “Now try with something smaller. And lighter.”

  So we did. We tried so many things, fortunately at minimal costs per attempt.