The idea behind project-based learning was simple:

  It was common for young men and women in his previous life to sit through over a decade of formal education. They would sit for hours in factory-like classroom having facts and principles drilled into them, but upon joining the working world, they would be confronted with a simple fact:

  You could learn all sorts of theory and ideas through formal schooling, but you learned so much more on the job.

  Project-based learning short-circuited that. Instead of bothering with the theory, supposed facts that had a thousand extra complexities once implemented in reality, and principles that had never been tested, why not simply learn by doing?

  And so the Quartz of Barrier was Archmund’s latest "project.”

  The goal was straightforward:

  He’d seen the Ghost of All Granavale (ignoring the little voice in his head that thought of it as his mother) redirect powerful bolts of electricity and create an invisible wall that blocked all magical attacks. It had even cocooned itself in fire to melt a barrage of slag.

  If he could duplicate these efforts, he would be much more durable. An arrow to the face or knife to the back would still kill him, but a lightning bolt would not.

  It was, of course, unproductive to chastise himself for not having thought of his sooner. That ran counter to a growth mindset, and this was a brand new world and of course he couldn’t expect to be familiar with everything. Plus, over the course of the past week or so, he’d been charging up the Quartz to make sure it could support his weirder experiments. If he hadn’t built a solid foundation with his Ruby, he never would’ve unlocked the great and menacing power of the Infrared Lance.

  He really hoped this wasn’t cope.

  The next day, Archmund woke up to the annoying realization that he didn’t actually know how to use the Quartz to deflect energy, nor would he know if it worked unless someone was actually attacking him.

  His control over the Quartz was outright primitive compared to his Ruby. He tried drawing the Quartz to him and managed to levitate it above his palm, but if he tried floating it in front of him it fell to the carpeted floor of his room.

  The first few times he’d tried that, he’d assumed it was because he didn’t have enough magic stored in it or that maybe it was just inherently too heavy. But after sneaking down to the kitchens to compare the weights of his Gems, he had to concede that he just hadn’t practiced enough.

  So when Mary came to his room to do her reading for the day, he interrupted her before she could speak and led her to the apple tree on the hill. The sun was gentle in the sky, yet there was a fierce yet inconsistent wind that wafted the grasses back and forth.

  “Archie, what are we doing here?”

  “Try this,” he said, giving her the Ruby that he’d taken from the Ghost of All Granavale. Unlike his own, personal Ruby, this one was octahedral.

  “Wow, it’s huge!” she said. He winced. It was in fact significantly larger than any other of his Gems.

  “Point it down the hill.”

  He could feel his own magic in the Ruby, swirling and pooling, even if it was also distant, yet he still wasn’t used to the sensation when she added her own magic to it, gliding gently within and past his own, readily plunging into the crystalline channels of the Gem and manifesting as—

  An ember, about the size of a golf ball, spurted from the tip of the octahedral Ruby and flew down the hill. It landed in a patch of grass. Archmund ran down to it to stamp it out, but there was no need — it had sputtered out, quenched by the last drops of the morning dew.

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  “Do that again!” he shouted up the hill at Mary.

  “What?”

  “I said to do that again!”

  “Just so I’m hearing that right, you’re asking me, a peasant, to attack you, a noble, with a magic fireball?” she shouted back. “A crime worthy of death?”

  “I think you crossed that line already!” he shouted back. “Many times!”

  She smirked. Before he could react, another ember was flying right towards him.

  He raised his Quartz, gripping it with all five of his fingers, remembering how the Ghost of All Granavale had wielded it to split Mercy’s lightning into inconsequential little sparks, and he forced more and more of his magic into it as Mary’s fireball flew closer and closer, and the Quartz vibrated within his hand, screaming for release, even as the fireball drew closer and closer, and just as it was about to hit—

  A searing pain as the fireball hit the Gem head-on, undeflected, deforming into a cone of flame that enveloped his fingers. It dissipated into the morning air as quickly as it had came, but his fingers were red with a light burn.

  Mary rushed down to him. “I’m so sorry, young master—”

  “Don’t be,” Archmund said, gritting his teeth (which his dentists in his past life had emphasized was very bad for their long-term integrity). “Pain is a good motivator.”

  “Still,” Mary said. She reached into the pockets of her uniform and pulled out a durable-looking glove. “These are heat-resistant! Sto—borrowed them from the kitchens.”

  Archmund frowned. He pulled out his own Ruby and blasted the edge of the glove with his Infrared Lance. It smoked, glowing slightly orange with combustion.

  “I don’t want to be wearing one of these if it catches on fire.”

  “I doubt I’m that strong.”

  “Yet,” he said. “I bet you could do it if you weren’t afraid of hurting me.”

  Which made it a much more reasonable risk, all things considered. He could avoid permanent scarring on his fingers from training accidents, and Mary could go all out in her training.

  He slipped the glove on. Mary went back up the hill. She waited for his signal.

  He didn’t give it.

  Perhaps he simply didn’t understand the mechanism of the Quartz well enough.

  The Ruby followed an obvious physical logic. It made light. Light was electromagnetic energy. EM energy had different forms depending on its wavelength and could be focused and strengthened under constructive interference. Thus, Infrared Lance and Microwave.

  The Quartz of Barrier was actual magic. It defied obvious explanation. The Ghost of All Granavale had used it to split lightning and make barriers impenetrable to energy.

  How could such things function given his understanding of physical laws? Even if they were magic, he’d drawn out a hidden power of the Ruby by understanding the physical world.

  Destructive interference was the first thing that came to mind. In the ocean, two waves coming at each other from different directions or even just at an angle would collide, interfering with each other, breaking the force of each so that neither had any true power. The same applied to waves of light, energy, and the very quantum waveforms that composed all matter down at its root.

  (He had no idea whether quantum mechanics applied in this universe, but that wouldn’t be all that difficult to test. The double-slit effect was hard to formalize but easy to demonstrate. All you needed was a set of blinds — though it was a matter for later.)

  But a barrier that was universal, that worked on both arcs of superheated plasma and invisible infrared lasers and balls of fire? That spoke to something more fundamental or more innovative — something capable of adapting. Something that drew upon the realm of ideals as opposed to the realm of logical science. To embody and incarnate the ideal of “Barrier”, as opposed to generating one via constructing a medium that vibrated with the exact destructive resonance of whatever energy was hitting it at the moment.

  He was unsure which paradigm he was operating in.

  And yet perhaps he was overthinking it.

  The entire orthodoxy around Gems was that anyone could use them, even if only nobles could draw out their true potential. Therefore, if he just dumped power into the Gem with the intent of using it for its purpose, he would learn how to use it.

  All of his training with the Quartz had been trying to mimic that of the Ruby. Instead of generating shields and using the Quartz for its doom-driven purpose, he had tried to mimic the expertise he’d had with the Ruby.

  There was a lesson here. He was sure it would be important some time in the future.

  He caught Mary’s eye, and gave her a thumbs up. She fired.

  And he simply didn’t think.

  He held the Quartz in front of him and let his magic flow into it from that deep place in his soul. He ignored the sensations. He ignored his theories. He ignored his memories. He just let the magic flow.

  He ignored that there was a System that governed this world, and that his Attunement with the Quartz could be boiled down into a set of numbers. Because he’d mastered his Infrared Lance long before he knew that the System existed, and he’d done so from thinking really really hard. But before that, before he’d delved into his memories in desperation, he’d done something much more fundamental:

  He had practiced the basic skill of giving his all when using a magic Gem.

  And it had paid rich dividends.

  Mary’s fireball flew towards him. He was ready.