Dave woke me up at midnight and I took over his spot on the watch post.

  After about an hour of sitting there and being bored, I started to consider what I could do to keep busy.

  I eventually figured it was time to figure out how elements and affinities worked.

  Removing the previous in and out Life-force ports I had in place for magic missile I decided to test something that wouldnt make as much noise as magic missile did.

  I carefully let just a small amount of Life-force into my hand and I started to play around with it. I considered how attuning it to an element might work. Eventually, I decided to just try forcing it into becoming an element.

  I decided to try the cliche fire element, focusing on the small strand of life-force in my hand again I just mentally told it to become fire attuned. As I sort of expected it didn’t work.

  My next thought was to think about what fire means to me. I imagined heat and consumption as my mental fire burned through the fuel it was given and pressed that thought into the Life-force. I was pleased when the Life-force took on a flickery red glow.

  Something bright also shined in my eyes, opening them I could now see that it was another box popup.

  Dismissing the popup I once again looked at the bit of fire attuned Life-force in my hand. Deciding to attempt something with it I pointed my finger away from me and imagined it coming out of my finger like a blowtorch.

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  Opening my eyes I could see a small gout of flame coming from the tip of my finger. Out of curiosity I brought my other hand up near the flame, not feeling any heat I got braver and stuck my pinky finger through the flame.

  It felt like nothing at all, I considered that maybe my own fire wouldnt hurt me but just to be safe I brought my finger near the wood bench I was sat at and was happy to see that before I even got close the wood started to smolder and smoke.

  It was at this point that my handy 6th sense told me something was wrong, like normal it took me a few seconds but I figured out what was confusing me. I had been playing around with my little finger torch for at least 2 minutes, and it was still going. There was no way the life-force I had attuned was enough to last this long. Looking at my hand mentally again I was pretty interested by what I saw.

  For one, the in-port on the back of my hand had reopened again, and secondly, the Life-force coming in through that port was automatically turning into fire attuned Life-force when it reached my finger.

  Looking a bit more in-depth it almost looked like the Life-force went through some sort of filter then became fire attuned. Looking even more closely at the filter I had a brain wave. I had complete control of my mental body, what was stopping me from putting up ‘automation’ like this filter.

  Thinking about the process a bit like programming I first made an ‘if’ filter. Mentally I told the filter to not let any Life-force past it unless I snapped my fingers at which point it should let exactly a quarter-sized amount through before closing. I nearly shouted for joy when I saw a thin ‘film’ of something form over my finger mentally. I decided to test something that could have great potential if it worked, I first created another filter to convert the Life-force to fire attuned Life-force. Then I created a final filter that’s purpose was to instruct the life-force into a small fireball that I could control mentally.

  I added a few safeguards like making it so I could dismiss the fireball by thinking ‘stop’ and decided to test it out.

  I opened my eyes and excitedly snapped my fingers. I nearly exploded with joy when a little ball of fire emerged from my finger. Mentally I commanded the ball to orbit my finger and it did just that. Saying ‘stop’ mentally the little ball winked out of existence and I physically jumped up in excitement.

  I was so excited that I missed a blue box popup that I noticed now.

  I considered the popup for a moment. It was extremely vague in comparison to other popups I had gotten previously, the one thing I could definitely take away from it though was that what I had unlocked was probably pretty rare.

  Looking up at the sky I could assume it was probably about 4-5 A.M. so I considered what I would do with the rest of my time on watch. Eventually, I decided I would attempt to increase my affinity with fire.

  I started to further consider what fire meant. I started with what I had used to get the affinity, heat and consumption but then I began to further layer more meaning on top, I better defined how fire existed, the actually chemical reaction (seemingly unchanged despite the popup days ago about some base reactions being changed) how oxygen was the fuel, I strengthened the image of fire in my mind until I could think of no more additions.

  Taking a look at my status screen I was pleased to see that my fire affinity grew to 56%, this also confused me though. I resolved to think more about what other aspects might influence fire affinity.

  At this point, I decided that I had done enough research for one night and I started to watch the forest for any movement.

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