It is a rainy day out, lightning streaking across the sky as the thunder hits your ears. The droplets of water relentlessly tapping along your windows does little to stir you from your task, but the strange woman who showed up in the middle of your room certainly did stir and startle.

With a bright smile, the lady waved hello, wearing several crystalline accessories but more importantly having an oddly pointy uniform, as if she was cosplaying some crystal witch. Before you could properly react, you felt yourself freeze, her necklace glowing. For several minutes, she stared at you, before eventually you passed out...

It was a colorful sunny day when you awoke, though with a headache. As you looked around your house, you saw a hefty book, with a piece of some crystalline "rock candy". More importantly, there was a note.

I have observed you for a while, and I feel that you would make a wonderful addition to the few arcane scholars within this world. You may have many questions, such as "what in the world is happening" or "what in the world is happening", but I will not be answering those! Within this Grimoire is a lot of things to study. To prepare your mind for what is to come, there are some basic arcane spells that will help your mind wrap around magic. Once you master one of these six, you will be able to unlock the rest of the book's secrets and become an official Arcane Scholar! Or Wizard, I always preferred that, it's a cool title. Good luck!

P.S. Arcane Magic requires study and having pre-existing knowledge will really speed things along, the suggested knowledge is next to the particular intro spell.

You may pick one basic beginner spell. Each spell has three tiers. With 100 hours of study, you can learn Tier 1. With 1,000 hours of study, you can learn Tier 2. With 10,000 hours of study, you can learn Tier 3. If you have decent education in the suggested course, you will find it taking half as long.

If you want to play someone who is not you, then roll 2d6 to see what two things they are educated in, and reroll if they're the same.

Once you pick a beginner spell, you cannot pick another one until you learn Tier 2. Once you learn Tier 3, the rest of the book opens, and untold magical secrets will be at your fingertips. You will also learn spells 100% faster for every beginner spell you learn. This stacks additively.

Introduction to Magic (Extensive Folk Lore and Mythology):

Tier 1: You have studied what folk lore is true, and what is false. You know the signs of mythological entities and how to not be their next target. Aside from the knowledge of what folk lore and mythology is real, you can divide your chances of ever encountering another supernatural entity by well over a thousand. Alternatively, you could seek these things out, if you're prepared to face the consequences.

Tier 2: You have studied extensively on the general and basic protections any Arcane Scholar should know. You can make it so that you absolutely will not find anything supernatural, unless it was looking for you or you are one of the last humans alive. You also know how to perform a few basic tutorial rituals, including a spell to make a floating orb of light, a spell with weak telekinesis, and a spell that cleans things. You wont know how powerful these are until you get them, considering it takes 1,000 hours to figure that out.

Tier 3: You have cracked the history and knowledge of magic, along with the general practices and ideas found in most every Arcane Spell. Unlike other beginner spells, you learn spells 400% faster due to having learned this.

Table of Creation (Alchemy):

Tier 1: You have studied the basic, must know facts of how to safely create potions. You also have learned a tutorial potion that takes 5 consecutive and focused hours to create. This minor health potion will heal you, according to the book, "15%". You have no idea the specifics, but perhaps you'll find out as you read more!

Tier 2: Having studied the more advanced subjects, you now know an entire set of beginner potions. Each one taking one focused hour to create, you can create: Cure Disease Potions, which will cure disease. Stamina Potions, which will grant an 30 minutes rest. Wizpop, a type of non-addictive but fancy drug. Sleep Potion, which instantly puts someone to sleep with a lucid dream. Death Potion, which, while not 100% lethal, is a very potent and deadly poison.

Tier 3: You have studied how all of these more chemical and smaller aspects apply to magic, and have learned how to focus your skills into create life. While very crude, unthinking, and unfeeling, you can create basic golems that can do basic orders. Just don't trust them with anything delicate or precise, but if you need a hand in lifting things or someone to remember where the remote is, they can help. They're also good bodyguards.

Art of Runic Studies (Graphical Art):

Tier 1: You have learned how to have a completely steady and calm demeanor in any situation. Even if an actual Dragon was growling at you, ready to kill you, you could stay completely still and silent. Terrified? Absolutely, but not a nerve will shake. You also have perfectly memorized smaller distances such as centimetres and inches.

Tier 2: You have studied several runes, and how to create them. While theoretically anyone can draw these, they require such as precision that the odds of someone accidentally creating one are about the same as encountering a wizard. You have not yet learned how to modify the runes, and can only use the tutorial runes. Among these are runes that block all non-supernatural from coming closer, or runes that enhance the durability of items they're put on (put one on yourself), or runes that enhance the gain from exercise.

Tier 3: You have learned how to combine the runes as you desire, making runes only target specific individuals or to produce special and certain effects. Along with that, you have a perfect internal clock and sense of direction even without any magical runes embedded onto yourself or your clothing.

Personal Relativity (Mathematics):

Tier 1: You have enhanced your senses to their peaks, being able to see perfect details from afar or being able to hear something flying through the air. You have a constant near-perfect sense of what is around you at all times.

Tier 2: You have learned how to modify your relativity compared to other points in space, allowing you to shift around faster. To those looking at you, it'd look like you're blinking towards your destination constantly, like a game with a bad glitch. This will essentially double your running speed. You can pull or push others towards you as well in a quite similar manner, though it will likely freak them out.

Tier 3: You have mastered relativity, and can teleport and shift yourself and other things near instantly. Bullets, for example, would have been a problem before. Now, you can focus on them and shift their location elsewhere compared to you, making you safe. The peak of this power, however, is its ability to combine with other spells to send them further out. Knowing Personal Relativity will make your spellcasting a lot more efficient.

Focusing on the Mind (Psychology/Sociology):

Tier 1: You have observed and learned the ability to tell people's perfect emotional state, with great estimation at how they would respond to various things you could do.

Tier 2: You have learned... Something dreadful to most. A big issue for Arcane Scholars is that the human mind simply isn't large enough to store every spell, every bit of knowledge. Once one begins to learn the larger spells, they may just not have room in their brain for it. Thankfully, you have learned how they deal with this. Using several mental tricks and writings, you can now remember perfectly any detail. If your brain ever does overflow, you can replace any knowledge of your choosing instantly as long as you had learned that knowledge before. If you had learned something once, you can relearn it instantly. All it takes is looking at information on the subject.

Tier 3: You have learned how to steel your mind in the face of the Eldritch. Although you did go through a crazy phase and maybe lost a friend or two, you are now immune to any mental damage or trauma, being able to get back up from torture just as happy as getting out of bed: Both suck, but both you will bounce back from.

Imprints of the Past (History):

Tier 1: You have learned how to locate sites of great magical importance. Examples being locations of great and magical battles, or the creation sites of the most powerful artifacts that have existed on this planet. When at these magical locations, you can "watch" the happening of it, playing the events of the past like a ghostly video.

Tier 2: You can now do this to any location of any importance. Battlegrounds with many dead, burials for immensely popular figures, and more can now be observed by you. This section even has a guide on how to use this to view the past on the internet, so you can look at old and deleted posts by random internet trolls. Whoever wrote this seems to have been "writing it for the youngsters nowadays", in their own words. You can also pick up languages twice as fast, especially the older languages.

Tier 3: You can now remember the imprints of your own past. Should you ever forget any knowledge, you can instantly remember it. You can also replay memories as if they were happening in your head. Locations or objects that you have interacted with a lot or that are very personal to you are also tainted by your aura, allowing you to interact with them in much greater magical detail, such as any enchantments you may learn. As an added bonus, you can tell where they are at any time just by briefly focusing on them.

With this information in mind, will you become a great Arcane Scholar, or will the threats of age or work take you before you can learn the knowledge to power? What will you focus on first, and will you even try to become a grand Arcane Scholar, with all of the constant studying involved just to potentially fall to a bullet? Or will you enjoy life in the present, and pass on potential eternity.