"Universe, I would like magic powers with which to heal my patients."

Nothing happens.

Helpless shrug. "I don't know if it wants more than that, or if it just won't do it."

"Well, let's come up with a plan. Have you looked at all the quests it gave you?"

"I just looked at the quests in the 'Others' category so far. It seems a bit early to try and do things in the 'World' category, and I don't want to try 'Ordeal' until I have a better idea what it is.' And picking 'self' would be selfish. 'And I decided to look at the 'self' category later."

"Well, you can at least see what they are, that doesn't commit you to anything. And then you can agree to the quests you're sure you want to do and start work on them."

This is pretty reasonable. What are the 'World' quests?

Quest available: Haunted by the Duolingo Owl

Study the wizardly Speech until you can use it fluently to cast spells and communicate with nonhumans. 

Success: 4,000 XP, Further Adventures of The Duolingo Owl quest
Failure: Severe limitation in your abilities as a wizard
Accept Y/N

Quest available: Everything Can Talk

Perform the meditation that the Manual will provide once you have accepted this quest, thus developing the frame of mind in which you can communicate with nonhumans. Communicate with at least three nonhumans. 

Success: 250 xp
Failure: Severe limitation in your abilities as a wizard
Accept Y/N  

Quest available: Everything Can Talk, But Some Things Are More Helpfully Talkative Than Others

Horses, marine mammals, and trees are all sapient. Talk to one member of each group.

Success: 350 xp
Failure: No idea what a tree would tell you if it could talk
Accept Y/N

"... apparently there is a wizarding language? And if I learn it and also a particular language I could talk to-- it says non humans and it definitely means at least animals and plants."

"Well, that one you should definitely accept."

"It makes it sound like I'd be a bad wizard if I didn't, so--"

Accept, accept, accept.

What are the 'self' quests?

The manual has helpfully popped up a box with a meditation description and a box with a language learning program, which he can easily dismiss. 

In the Self category:

Quest available: Massage

Give yourself a nice self-massage. 

Success: +100xp, Massage skill
Failure: Tense muscles

Accept Y/N

Quest available: Love Yourself

Normally you jerk off in five minutes because having a sexuality is embarrassing. To fulfill this quest, you must make at least a little bit of a production out of your masturbation session. Candles? Music? Making sure to select interesting pornography? Touching parts of your body other than your dick? Edging? Combining it with the Massage quest? Fantasizing about Wei Wuxian? Up to you. 

Success: +100 xp, Driving A Manual skill
Failure: Mild sexual frustration

Accept Y/N

Quest available: Clothes Make The Wizard

Buy yourself some clothes that make you smile when you look at yourself in the mirror. (HINT: Wei Wuxian may be willing to help! You may also wish to google information about 'color seasons.')

Success: +100 XP, +1 BOD
Failure: 'Fashion Disaster' status effect

Accept Y/N

Quest available: A Wizard's Home Is Their Castle

Make your home a cozy, relaxing, inviting place where you love to spend time. (HINT: Pinterest.)

Success: +200 XP
Failure: 'Decorating Disaster' status effect

Accept Y/N

Quest available: Take Yourself Out On A Date

Plan a date you would like and take yourself on it. Try your best not to feel self-conscious about eating dinner alone in public. No one is watching you.

Success: +100 XP
Failure: The One will arrange for someone to take you out on a date and they will not take no for an answer.

Accept Y/N

Quest available: Reading Is Fundamental

Read ten books, or an equivalent amount of text in shorter-form writing, that you genuinely like. Poetry counts three times as much as prose, due to its density. 

Success: +150 XP
Failure: 'Television Doesn't Necessarily Rot Your Brain' quest

Accept Y/N 

Quest available: A Journey of Self-Discovery Begins With A Single Step

Find one new thing you like that you didn't know you liked before.

Success: +250xp, +1 NOV
Failure: ???

Accept Y/N

Quest available: Fun Is A Basic Human Need

Identify no fewer than ten things you genuinely enjoy for their own sake and not to make other people happy. Make a plan to do one thing you enjoy each day. Carry out this plan for at least two weeks. 

Success: +500 XP, +1 LUV
Failure: Your poor self-care harms you in your battle against the Lone Power

Accept Y/N

Self care now having high stakes is definitely not panic inducing at all!

"It wants me to learn to massage myself," SKIPPING THAT ONE, ER DOCTOR OR NOT "get nicer clothes, make my house nice, go out to eat," because phrasing that as 'take myself on a date' is too embarassing "read some books, find a new thing I like, and do something nice for myself." At risk of imperilling the world. No pressure.

"Well, those all seem like good ideas. You can go to work tomorrow and bring in a cake, and then this weekend you can get a head start on those things and learning the Speech."

It is so many things, but at least for some of them he'll have... maybe not a lifetime, but at least a year? to try and do them all. "That's probably a good plan. --I could bake a second cake for you to take into work?" He does not say 'because you are more likely to run into sad people.'

...He should check what the Ordeal is.

"Yes. Excellent idea. Going to get in good with the nice magic entity so it gives me superpowers."

Quest available: The Ordeal

The Ordeal is a wizard's first brush with the Lone Power. Each wizard is a force for joy and love and pleasure in the world, and the Lone Power seeks to destroy them before their full potential can be realized. At its best, the Ordeal is the site of our greatest victories against the Lone Power. At its worst, people die. Not uncommonly, both occur.

In lieu of conventional success and failure criteria, the Manual presents the following advice: don't be afraid to make corrections. Don't be afraid to lend a hand. And don't look down.

This quest will begin automatically at WIZ 20.

... He's going to start that when he's closer to WIZ 20 and a) hopefully less likely to die and b) hopefully more prepared to die? And if he is extra lucky he may even be the force for joy he is meant to be.

"Hopefully it will work out?"

"Right. So I should probably leave you to study the Speech and bake cakes?"

"I shouldn't keep you too long."

She hugs Wen Ning. "You're going to do great."

He is now a wizard (of some variety?) who's tasks are objectively easy but he is still probably going to fail at. Oh, and even people of normal competence often die doing this.

...

He hugs her back.

And she departs to go nonmagically save people's lives at the emergency room.

... he has time. He can do these things one step at a time.

He can bake two cakes (and hope box mix counts for the quest) and study the Speech while they're baking.

And then he can take stock of what quests he can practically do, and the best order to do them in.

Time for some shaky definitely-not-panicked cake making!

A spell family has been created by a special action! Baking a cake has unlocked the spell family Cooking.

Info // Spells // Cooking

"Cooking" is a family of spells that makes your food, as it were, magically delicious.

Never Burns: Passive. Automatically reminds you when anything you're cooking is ready to be taken out of the oven, off the stove, etc.

Seasoning: Active. Gives the caster an intuitive sense for how to season their food in order to make it taste best. This skill only applies to spices, herbs, and similar, not to other factors that affect the taste of the food.  

And there is a series of words, presumably in the Speech, that allows him to cast Seasoning, with a thing he can press to hear the pronunciation and footnotes he can tap on for descriptions of vocabulary and grammar and how the spell can be modified for various more specific purposes.