"Is mana just how many times you can cast spells? – I'm guessing, if this is anything like a video game, that some spells cost more mana than others."

"I do not know what a video game is but that is how mana works, yes."

"A lot of the features of this magic system are reminiscent of certain genres of games played on technological devices where I'm from."

"That's interesting. Reminiscent how?"

"People can get mana, people can level up using experience and get more mana, magical spells can be used and cost mana, you can sometimes get upgraded versions of spells that take more mana and you recharge certain quantities of mana over time, sometimes increased by things such as rest or meditation, and people go around fighting monsters that appear in the environment so as to get loot and improve their ability to, again, fight monsters that appear in the environment."

"...well, when you put it like that..."

"At least you don't have equipment menus where you can go changing what you wear? Instantaneously? And you don't get quests – oh wait no you probably do get quests, uh, this kinda makes me wonder if this is remarkably similar to a video game for some particular reason and if so if any people count as NPCs…"

"We do not change anything instantaneously, no. I'm not sure what you mean by quests—we have the pilgrimage."

"You don't, like, go to towns and have the local people run up to you and say things like 'five White Elements are terrorizing the nearby farms! Go clear them out and we'll give you these fifteen power spheres in return!'? I hope?"

"No, that's the Crusaders' job."

"Those are the typical video game side-quest things," he says. "Or, like, 'go kill X monsters to get loot and craft a thing for me to help my dying wife' or 'for my daughter's party' or something." Shrug. "You don't seem to have clear levels at least, because again, that'd be really weird."

"Sometimes people do ask for help—like in Kilika—but nothing like that."

Nod. "And you don't weirdly have some people who repeat the same phrase over and over, never age, sit in the same spot for eternity, always seem to have the same problem for their very same daughter each and every time even after someone solves it?"

Tidus looks at him funnily. "Nnnoooo?"

"Some games have quests and have an online component, and then a bunch of different people are in the same area and go doing the same quests, so really it looks like the NPCs just have the same problem recurring a bunch of times and also happening a bunch of times at once. NPCs being 'non-player characters'."

"We're not game characters."

"Yeah, you don't seem to be, but I was just checking you didn't have any other mechanics that were suspiciously similar to games I recognize."

Hey look more fiends!

Do they have clear elemental things he can exploit, or are they told to him, or are they ground-based so he can sink them?

Bit from column A, bit from column B...

Any from column C or D where he'd have to try to drop things on them or leave them to the others? Because the ones from the earlier columns, he can help get rid of them quite well.

Eh, teamwork.

Teamwork!

Fiends: dead.

Any spheres drop?