Reed was sitting on the ground in the field where he had trained with Mordhal, with an assortment of items laying about near his position. These items were a few pieces of metal of various sizes, some charred pieces of wood, a large bowl of water, a bowl of blood, some damaged leaves, some pebbles, and a wooden shield.
Reed had been practising as well as experimenting with magic, trying to determine what he could and could not do, and he had mostly finished.
He let go of a leaf, this one with a hole in the middle, the leaf fell, but stopped in mid-air, and slowly floated back up to Reed's fingers, which grasped it again.
He dropped it, and picked up a pebble.
He held it with two fingers, keeping it squeezed between his index and middle fingers as he concentrated.
As he stared at it, a very small, white coloured stream emerged from his index finger and wrapped around it multiple times, before thinning and disappearing.
He moved his fingers even further apart, causing the pebble to lose friction and fall, only to repeat what the leaf had done, and stop abruptly in the air, without any visible support.
He folded all but his index finger, as if he was pointing, and started to move his arm in a small oscillatory motion, making the pebble start to sway in the air much like a pendulum.
He picked up speed, and soon after, he was spinning the pebble in circles.
He suddenly stopped his motion, and the rock seemed to break free from the invisible strings as it flew a few metres and landed on the ground.
The Reed held his index finger up, and the rock shot back towards him.
He repeated this procedure multiple times, each with a different pebble, with differing speeds and lengths, before stopping.
He clenched his fist around it, and held it like that for a few seconds with his other arm pinching the invisible string directly below it, before dropping it, and summoning a book and pen from his storage space.
He looked at the pen for a moment.
'A gift from the system to this world.'
He spun it around, the uncapped it and began writing.
'Strings can auto-extend given slight concentration, durability slightly less than SLHBR thread , can apply push and pull effects, can apply sticking effect, test regarding telekinetic ability inconclusive, test regarding elemental effects currently unavailable.'
He stopped his writing there, then looked at the shield, after a second, the shield slowly moved upwards, than stopped after a few seconds, floating above the ground by a metre. It stayed that way for half of a minute, before falling.
Reed flipped two pages backwards, and began to add to an entry.
'Holds 10 for 20 minutes.' He got up, walked over to it, and placed a hand on it for two seconds, then pulled away and kicked it. He then moved backwards and stared at it, trying to calculate the amount of mana present inside the object that he had just kicked.
He opened the book again, and continued.
'Loses great amounts when attacked physically, more testing required.'
He turned to the biggest piece of metal, and sensed the amount of mana in it.
He moved his pen over to the next entry.
'Holds 10 for 35 minutes.' He attacked it as well, repeated the process that he had done with the wooden shield, before sensing the mana inside again.
'Loses large amounts when attacked physically, more testing required.'
He concentrated, and the piece started to move up, before slamming down as Reed lost control.
Reed clicked his tongue.
'Harder to control with TK with low mana, possibly due to higher density.'
Telekinesis, or as Reed had written, TK, was one of the newer magic that Reed had managed to discover while experimenting.
He had noticed that most of the magic he had learnt required intent, and imagination, so he thought about it, since magic required those things, then he could just 'imagine' about many other things, and use his will to enforce it to happen.
One of his multiple experiments led to him being able to imbue an object with mana, and control the mana to cause the object to move in accordance with his thoughts, giving him a sort of telekinesis-like power over objects imbued with his mana.
There were two more magic abilities Reed had managed to uncover.
The first being constructs, made of pure mana.
It had been actually quite simple for Reed to develop this ability, all he had to do was focus the mana to his will, and it did the rest. He could now create armour, furniture, weapons, whatever he wanted.
They did disappear very quickly, and did in little way function how regular versions of the constructs would, like with a pot for example. Unlike a normal pot, his construct didn't allow heat to pass through, making a pot construct useless.
He couldn't make them soft either, all his constructs were hard and unbending, so he couldn't make cushions or comfortable chairs either. But he was confident that he could get over that hurdle eventually.
The second magic he had experimented with, was gravity, or rather, anti-gravity.
With the advancement of technology, space became a popular way of transport, and Reed had experienced zero gravity multiple times, allowing to reproduce that feeling and apply it to his magic. And so, he learned gravity magic, though he only knew how to decrease gravity, he hadn't started on increasing gravity yet.
Aside from his own experiments, Reed had managed to learn two healing spells from the students, who had been quite happy to teach him, perhaps because it was the first time a teacher wanted to be taught.
Reed used the fact that he now knew healing magic to measure his regeneration, leading to the bowl of blood placed on the ground, there were two more bowls, put away in his storage space, because Reed wanted to know if there was difference between his regeneration when he was hungry, and when he had just finished eating.
The third bowl was just to confirm his findings.
And what he was doing moments ago, was experimenting with the fourth ability, which he named 'Mana string'.
Using mana to form a thin string, he could use it to grab objects, stick to them, push them, and pull them, making them very useful, and he still didn't know the full extent of the magic.
But that was enough for now.
Reed put away the book and the pen, dusted himself, and left.
'It's time for my combat class.'