Eventually Mcgunkin and Gary roused themselves from their horrendous slumber, and the whole group was collected by the breakfast buffet. While Bobby waited for his companions to finish he had a different task, a highly difficult one indeed.

  A small evil toddler was making him play with her, and this wasn’t your average little girl who played with dolls, no, the first thing she did when he leaned down was grab his tie, yank it till it was almost strangling him and then hang off the thing as he tried almost everything in his power to survive and resist the urge to grab the terror and fling it as far from him as possible.

  “Hey, not the tie!” he yelped again, this time the creature finally dignified him with a response.

  “If wear rope round neck, why complain when rope pulled?” Maybel shot back with flawless logic.

  “Because it hurts, what would you do if I dangled you by your hair?”

  “Ask mama to cut it.”

  Bobby finally managed to seize the child, looking around he noticed a bin in the corner. Hmm.

  About two hours later they were back in the van, preparing to go. Gary and Michaela were in the passenger's seats, Mcgunkin was driving and Bobby had taken the opportunity to nab the hammock for once.

  “What did you want to talk about Bobby?” Gary asked him.

  “Oh yeah, I overheard some of the residents of the place talking, some guy called Black Beetle with an assistant or something, apparently there are factions around the city that we probably want to stay clear of, they sounded like the sort of people who might try and attack us.”

  Mcgunkin clubbed his fist into his palm, “Easy work.”

  “No, I don’t think so, if it's a gang of some sort then we would be severely outnumbered.” Gary said to Mcguckin. “What do you want to do?” He asked Bobby.

  “Well, I thought we might want somewhere to stay while we’re in the city and Mrs Borten said her niece runs a place not too far from here and would be happy to offer us lodgings in return for some help. It's called Algamoon, I checked with TODD earlier and as luck would have it there are three graveyards less than five minutes from the place, meaning that we wouldn’t need to do much travelling and would be less likely to bump into anyone.”

  “Well I don’t think I can add anything to that, it sounds like a plan.” Gary said. “TODD please set the destination to Algamoon.”

  “Please hold tight while I calculate the route.” The holo-satnav said cheerfully. “Destination is three quarters an hour from your current location.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Mcgunkin pulled onto the road and Gary grumbled “Is it me or is that thing becoming even more talkative?”

  Bobby snorted and closed his eyes to focus on something he had been delaying slightly; the other day he had had the idea of training his magic capacity by removing some magic from his core, waiting for it to regenerate and then forcing it back in. He hadn’t had time to try it out yet and he had a car journey to waste.

  He felt the magic crackling at the corners of his mind and tried pulling himself towards it. The energy seemed confused for a moment, then suddenly his perception was yanked sideways. Some part of his mind began to process what he was seeing.

  It was similar to soul perception, but far less defined, he could sort of sense the energy flowing around him, but he couldn’t get a clear picture yet, luckily he didn’t need to as he soon sensed a ball inside of him that was burning with magic brightly like a small sun. Although it didn’t seem to be creating the energy inside of itself, he could sense that flowing in from somewhere else. This must be my core.

  Bobby pulled on his magic and watched it leave the core and surround him. All of a sudden he was filled with the euphoric feeling that accompanied the action.

  Carefully he tried something he hadn’t attempted before, he pushed the magic from his perception. It worked for a moment, but then he felt some force snap and then suddenly the energy all dissipated and vanished.

  Curious Bobby pulled some more magic from his core, but this time he held it just far enough away that it didn’t affect him, but not too far that he lost control over it. Opening his eyes he watched the magic form into a ball between his hands.

  Something about its concentration meant he didn’t even need his third eye to see it, although he opened his third eye anyway to look at the small eddies of power flowing around. He did notice that keeping the magic in a ball took quite a lot of concentration and he could feel the magnetism that it seemed to have towards him.

  Bobby held the orb for quite some time, experimenting with trying to hold it completely still so it didn’t behave like a fluid and then turning it into small three dimensional shapes, with varying degrees of success. His experimentation even brought some gains.

  [Dexterity 13 → 14]

  Eventually he felt his regeneration return his core to full capacity and he decided it was time to try and force the magic back in. He let the magic return to him and then tried to push it back to where it had come from.

  The magic left his perception to return to its source, but he felt a resistance stopping it from going back in. Carefully he tried to push it harder and not much happened. No matter how he tried to push it back in gently, it seemed to not want to return.

  Out of curiosity he suddenly gave it a great push with all his might and it shot back in. There was a slight straining feeling accompanied by an odd ache, not dissimilar to the sensation he got after removing a piece from his soul. He noticed his core had stretched slightly bigger.

  Bobby didn’t call on any more magic after that and instead just watched his core, in case it began breaking or damaging itself. For a while nothing happened, then it began looking less stretched and he noticed the almost invisible walls getting slightly wider.

  A notification jumped into his vision.

  [Magic Capacity 10 → 11]

  Bobby smiled at the welcome sight.

  +++++

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