I always knew generally what I wanted my first ability to be. To take things apart. Breakdown was that in its purest form. All it did was break something down into its working parts.
But there had been no excitement, no fun, no cathartic feeling of doing it myself. Toolkit had gone in a different direction, and had been even worse. If I really wanted tools I could just buy them. Sure I could put special abilities on the tools, but, meh. That wasn’t too appealing at the moment.
So my Wit should break organic lifeforms down to their working parts. What did that mean? Well I needed to define what a working part was. A simple one was organs. Heart, lungs, stomach, eyes, skin. Another were muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels.
My Wit should also not damage said working parts, as then they would not be working. That made a standard hack and slash combat ability seemingly impossible. Unless I set a condition.
Why not just create a non-combat related ability? Well ideally this one would be usable both in and out of combat. My Dream was to take apart living beings, to understand them, and to put them back together in fun ways.
It wasn’t as though I would have an endless supply of dead Nightmares to use whenever I wanted. I would need to hunt for the material.
As I thought through this I finished skinning the boar worm. I looked to Bliss who was rolling on the ground scratching her back. Keeping my Toolkit knife summoned for so long was starting to give me a headache, so I decided to end it there. I wouldn’t have done so normally, but my mind was filled with thoughts on my new Wit.
After cutting out a chunk of meat I let the knife fade and walked over to Bliss. She stopped rolling to look at me with sleepy eyes. Holding out the chunk of meat to her she sniffed it, then tool it in her mouth and started to chew it in the way an animals with only canines chews. Once she finished eating she started to lick the blood off my arms and knees. The boar had bled a lot, but hadn’t been drained properly.
Instead of getting up to leave, Bliss just laid back down and closed her eyes. Without thinking I laid down next to her, resting my head on her belly. She didn’t react other than to rest her own head on her paws.
So I took out my notebook and started to write my plan.
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Room Experiment
Name- Dismantle
Goal of Room- The ability to break down opponents and subjects to their working parts with physical attacks.
How?- My attacks will flow, guided along the seams of my subjects bodies and sever the connections to keep the working parts separate but whole. This means my attacks will not cut something like a tendon, but instead will cut the tendon away from the bone, or peel the skin off the body, or cut away the ligaments so the bones can be disconnected from one another.
Conditions-
Knowledge- I will need to have knowledge on the subjects anatomy if I am to guide the flowing force. This will likely be counterproductive for any Nightmares and animals that I meet for the first time as I will have little knowledge on them.
Accuracy- In order for my attack to flow through these seams I will first need to hit one.
Note- Outside of orifice entrances I do not know of seams on most mammal creatures, however I do know methods used to open them up for hunting and in hospitals. I will make their seams the typical skinning cuts used on animals.
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On the next page of the notebook I drew a simple picture of a human with arms and legs spread, and began to draw lines on the picture. It went from the center of the clavicles in the hollow of the throat down to the groin. Then from the center of the palmar side of the wrist down to the line I had made on the torso. Then there were lines from the top of the foot up to the groin.
After that I made a drawing of the back side of the human body, making a similar line from the base of the skull straight down to the asshole. Similarly to the front I made lines from the back of the hand up to the torso and from the heel of the foot up to the torso.
Then came the head, I drew a line that went around the bottom of the jaw up to the ears, and short lines from the sides of the eyes and mouth.
The idea was that should I hit one of these lines with my Dismantle infused blade then my Intent will run down these lines with my guidance and cut the person open, peeling the skin away without overly damaging it. I will also need to make diagrams for each part of the person’s body, the muscles, fat, bones, organs, blood vessels, so that Dismantle can run through those lines as well and preserve their form.
This is where knowledge on the subjects anatomy would be necessary as I would be guiding the Intent based on what I already knew. Right now if I had this Wit complete in my Dreamscape it would work decently well on any human, but something like a fish not so much.
But lets say I dissected hundreds, thousands of the boar worms, my knowledge of their anatomy would be so good I might be able to completely take them apart with a single attack. By being able to guide it I could also limit my Dismantle to only take apart certain areas.
Was this overly complicated? Yes, probably, but it was what I wanted. I want to feel and guide the Intent through the body and sever it.
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On the next page of my notebook I made a list of things to do for Dismantle.
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-Test method to see if I can feel Intent (Will likely need a test Room as I am not proficient with Intent manipulation)
-Brainstorm ideas for Room (Shape, material, meaning, design, function)
-Solidify the specifics of the conditions (And how to signify said conditions in the Room)
-Train with weapons (I suck)
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My headache started to slowly go away, looking at my watch I saw that I had been in the forest for almost three hours. It hadn’t felt like it, of course any time I was immersed in taking something apart time seemed to flow differently.
Bliss was snoring beneath me, so carefully I got up, getting ready to leave. Of course the big cat sensed me, opening one eye and snorting before closing it again.
I knelt down next to her and ran my hand over her head.
“Thank you Bliss, this meant a lot to me.”
The cat didn’t reply, so I left her with the flayed and gutted corpse of the Nightmare. There was work to be done.
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Two days later I was sitting in the training room alone, classes had just let out for the day and I was going to spend the rest of it testing the Room I had made to feel Intent.
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Room Experiment
Name- Senses
Goal of Room- To test to see if I can get sensory input from Intent.
Room- Half-Sphere, Mahogany Wood
Door- Curved to match shape of Room, Mahogany Wood
Exterior Design- Vibrant plant life emanating the smell of flowers
Interior Wall Design- A shifting landscape
Floor- a grassy plain with flowers similar to the outside
Interior Design- On several wooden tables are objects that will invoke one of the senses.
Item 1- A bowl of steaming ramen (Taste)
Item 2- Molten sulfur (Smell)
Item 3- A ticking watch (Hearing)
Item 4- A book on anatomy (Sight)
Centerpiece- A sculpture of a body (Touch)
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I actually was quite proud of this Room experiment. The wood was to give the Room a feeling of being alive and personal instead of the cool stone I would normally work with. I made use of the fact that things within the Dreamscape didn’t need to be realistic, and made the smells of the flowers and sulfur be more potent and the magical shifting interior wall showing a landscape of rolling grassy hills.
The ramen bowl tasted just like the best bowl I ever had, the one my grandmother made for me when I moved in and needed something to cheer me up.
The ticking watch was made to be felt in my chest, like when I would try and sync my heartbeat up to the second’s hand.
The book on anatomy wasn’t exactly thick, as it was still Room that was only up to my waist, but it drew the eye with moving figures.
The “sculpture” was not made of stone, but instead of flesh. You could feel its pulse, the callouses on the hands, the rough clothing on its body. It wasn’t a perfect human, it didn’t even have any gender markings, but it felt living when touched.
In front of me in the training room was a watch, a book, and a puzzle. Not one of my best watches, just in case there were some unforeseen effects.
“Senses, test one, begin.”
Focusing on the Senses Room I pushed out my Intent. Tendrils of white Intent flowed out of my hand toward the watch.
I could feel it moving. The slight feeling of pushing through room temperature air. The subtle scent of metal and sweat. The humidity from last nights rain. The sound of someone, me, breathing. However there was a problem, I couldn’t “see” anything with it.
I closed my eyes to see if that would chance anything. It helped a little, the sight didn’t seem to be working the same way as normal eyes, instead I could visualize where my Intent was and the shape it was taking. Was that because my object for the sight sense was a book?
It was only when the tendrils of Intent landed on the watch that I actually saw things. As the tendrils wrapped around and seeped into the watch a picture began to form in my minds eye. It wasn’t perfect, some ridges and bumps were more pronounced then in reality, but it had the general shape of the watch. There was also some color, but it was muted in comparison to reality.
More than that were the other senses. I could smell the leather of the wrist strap, taste the sweat that had seeped into it over time. I could feel the smooth glass of the case, the gears moving inside, the escapement rapidly going back and forth, its ticks thrumming in my soul.
It became too much, there was too much movement, too many smells, I could feel too much. A bolt of pain split my skull and I started to gag from the overpowering taste of sweat. My nose burned and a moment later I started to sneeze over and over again. My ears thrummed dully with each beat of my heart.
It took a few minutes for me to get a hold of myself. My head still hurt and even though I hadn't put the watch in my mouth I could swear there was a remnant of its taste.
“Test one, technical success,” I muttered.
I took out my notebook, Professor Pure had told me it was dangerous to write these things, but I hadn’t broken the habit yet.
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Senses Test Notes
Sight works differently than initially thought. It creates images in mind of things that my Intent is touching, instead of showing the surroundings. The images created in my mind were not perfect, but it did show muted colors. Further experimenting required to see if true sight is achievable.
Touch was much more sensitive than I had been expecting. Perhaps due to it being the centerpiece in the Room, or perhaps because of the limits of using ones fingers to feel things typically.
Smell performed as expected in the beginning, until there was too much stimuli and it became overpowering.
Taste did better than initially hypothesized, but also grew to be overpowering.
Hearing seemed to have an odd reaction it felt as though the sounds were traveling through my Intent in waves instead of my Intent only registering it.
When it became too much there was a backlash that spilled over into my real body. I do not know if this was just my brain tricking myself and my organs or if instead my sensory organs were used as a bridge to connect my senses to the ability.
Things to figure out
Was the overwhelming of my senses due to me being unused to the Wit or due to the Room not having a part that helps to process information?
Hone in the sight element, either to achieve true sight or the minds eye. I believe minds eye is the way to go for Dismantle but true sight is still a good branch of research to study.
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I looked towards the three items I had left on the ground. It would take me a while longer until I was able to take in all the information of those.