I find myself in a medium sized town, exactly as I had planned it. If anyone leaves the town, they should find themselves looping right back into it. Next, I plan my next wish, this world has magic, but I need to find a way to teach everyone from school how to use it. "I wish that a different version of me will appear to everyone from school in their dreams, and show them how to use magic. I also wish that they will remember the dream, and how to use magic perfectly, but will not remember that it was me who appeared to them." Content with that, I wish myself into the dream that Katie's having to watch.
I find myself in a grassy meadow, with Katie, naked, talking to a shadowy figure in the middle of it. I glance down at myself and notice I'm invisible, then walk towards the shadowy figure, which must be how the ring interpreted my wish to remain unknown, while still teaching them. "So you're telling me that when I wake up, I'm going to find myself in a world where I can do magic?" Katie asks the shadow incredulously, "Yep," the shadow replies, "and you'll be stuck there until someone wins the competition." A confused look on her face Katie sits down on the grass, and the shadow follows suit. "So how do you win this competition then?" Katie asks. "You just have to be the last one who can cast spells." The shadow replies to her. "So, like, kill everyone?" Katie asks, and the shadow laughs, "Well you could, but that's not the ideal way. It would be just as hard to kill someone, as to transform them into something that can't cast spells, and those things, be they objects or pets or something else, could help you gain an advantage. As such, you'll probably want to transform people." The shadow gets up, then pulls Katie to her feet, "Time for some magic practice." The shadow waves his hand, and a duplicate of Katie appears. At the looks of surprise on both their faces, the shadow explains, "To practice, you need a target, and you also need to feel what it feels like to have magic cast on you, as such, you'll be both the target, and the caster. After practice, you'll both be combined so you have the experience of both." The two Katie's look uncertain, but they nod. "Alright you get to cast, and you get to defend." The shadow says, and splits them apart.
"So casting a spell is really simple, you just need to concentrate on what you want to happen, you'll notice your hands start to glow, then flick your hands at your target to toss the ball of energy. When it hits your target, the energy will be stored in them, and they'll have to fight the energy to keep from transforming. Let's start with something simple. You," the shadow turns towards the version of Katie he said was casting, "need to concentrate on transforming her. Let's start with something simple, we're going to turn her partially into a dog, a dog girl really." The other Katie starts to looks extremely nervous. "So to turn her into a dog girl, I want you to first imagine a regular, generic person, it could be her if you want, or it could be any person, just remember that the closer the first person you imagine is, the better the spell will work. Now imagine what that person would look like with dog features. So a snout, fur, dog ears, etc. You should probably choose a specific species, what type do you like?" "Beagle." She nervously replies, "Excellent," the shadow says, "So imagine her with floppy ears, a dog snout, and so on. Got the image in your mind? Alright, now imagine the first person turning into the dog girl." Katie's hands start to glow for a second, but then she sees them, and focuses on them, then they dim. "Almost," The shadow says, "You need to keep your focus, keep trying though, I'm going to talk to her for a second," the shadow gestures at the other Katie then walks over. "Alright, so when you get hit, you're body is going to start to change. What you need to do is focus on what you look like as hard as you can, you can resist the spell this way up until it completes, once it completes though, you're stuck unless someone else returns you to normal, you can't transform yourself. Now while she practices that, I'm going to show you something slightly different, you see, you won't usually want to just through the energy at your target, you'll want to distract them, or better yet, make them think about something related to what they're turning into. You could always just yell at them, but you have a more effective tool, illusions. Just concentrate on what you want to happen around you, and it will. Albiet, the change won't be real, but you can use it to make other mages easier to catch. It will be tricky to do this while also concentrating on charging energy to throw at them, but once you get the hang of it, it will make it way easier to transform others." The shadow watches as that version of Katie successfully makes a little spinning ball appear in the air, before darting back into the middle. "Alright, you, caster, charge the energy and throw it at her, you'll have to do this several times. You, defender, just last as long as possible."
I watch as Katie throws a ball of glowing light at, well, herself. Her other self grimaces, concentrating as fur rolls over her body and her face starts to elongate. She keeps her look of concentration on her face as the fur starts to retract from her body slowly, but then another light ball hits her. This repeats several times until, her concentration seems to have no effect. The shadow steps in, "You're completely transformed now, and you won't be able to get back unless someone transforms you back. We're not doing that right now though. I'm going to walk you through inanimate transformations. So when you turned her into a dog girl, you decided both what she looked like, but also other things too. For example, you didn't try to change her mind. When you change others, you can literally change anything about them, it's just that the more dramatic the change, the easier it is for them to resist, so the more energy you'll need to build up in them to make it so they can't resist. However, you can literally do anything. So when you turn someone into an object, you can give them extra traits which will be useful to you. It's just that those traits will make it harder to transform them. An item you might want, for example, would be a shirt that absorbed energy, thereby shielding you. For now, we're just going to do something simple. Try to turn her into a ring that allows you to teleport a short distance, you only want a short distance because a long distance will be much harder."
You watch as Katie hurls ball after ball of energy at her other self, and her other self begins to shrink curling in upon herself, her hands and feet fusing. A look of panic flashes across her other self's face as she turns golden and is unable to move. Finally, the last of her features disappear as she becomes a unmarked golden ring. The whole thing took maybe a half hour, maybe longer. The shadow picks up the ring and tosses it to Katie, "Here, put her on. You'll notice you can talk to her." Katie opens her mouth and hesitantly says, "Hello?" The shadow laughs, "Not out loud silly, think it. Now you'll notice that you can tell a few things about her, other than just talking to her. You can tell how much power she's routing to the object. The more experienced a mage is, the more energy they'll be able to channel without getting tired, you won't notice it here, but normally, you wouldn't have been able to cast that much consecutively. You'd need to rest for a while to get energy back. It's kind of a catch 22 though, since the only way to gain more energy, is to use energy. Anyway, that's the energy an object can draw upon to do any number of things. In addition to you being able to redirect their energy, specifically in this case because you made it so it could be used to teleport, they can use it to slightly modify their form. As a ring, this would take the form of being able to adjust their size slightly, which means if they like you they'll probably make it so they don't fall off, if they don't, well watch out closely for them falling. Anyway, they can also allow you direct access to their energy reservoirs, but that's their choice, so you might want to try and make them happy. Now try teleporting, the ring should have just enough energy to do it once." I watch as Katie disappears, then reappears a short distance away. The shadow walks over to her and says, "And with that, I'm off, you're going to wake up soon, good luck!"
I open my eyes and find myself exactly where I was before I made my last wish. I think for a second, then wish to be right next to Katie. I blink as the scenery warps around me, and I find myself in a small, cozy bookshop and I spot Katie on the floor. She's adorablely curled up on the floor, she looks so sweet, lying there. I decide though that it's time to start the game. I wish myself insubstantial and invisible, then I wish for everyone to wake up.