"It's not about fighting monsters, it's about using magic while you're physically and mentally at the edge of your abilities - in a state where some people - not all people, some people stall out - are able to take in a little more of the magic they're using. Yes, we've tried drugs that make the heart race, they don't do it. It doesn't matter if the danger is real but it matters if you think it is.
I don't think it'd be a good idea to tell you everything that happened yesterday, but, uh, at one point I found myself restrained and helpless in a very fancy enchanting workshop where I had been left to contemplate what I had coming, and casting spells did not work to get me out of this at all, but six feet away, on the wall, there was a shelf of spellsilver. And I thought to myself, you know, I can't actually think of a principled reason you can't bridge that with a scaffold and use spellsilver that far away, except for how it'd be ridiculously hard and might mess up the spellsilver and there's usually literally no reason. So I did, and started transforming my armillary amulet -" she taps it "- into a weapon I could use to break out, except it would've taken way too long, the weapon I wanted is a three day enchanting project, but I thought of some ways to do it faster, and Abrogail let me at this for a while because it was funny and then went back to what she'd been meaning to do with me. And I don't specifically know that I levelled from that but it was representative."