37 - Chapter 36 - Day 1825

Adya took a look at Thomas’s prone form. He was still passed out. Adya tried to think back, but she had not been aware of how long Jarel had taken to recover from his own formation change. Adya attributed it to that change, as no one had suffered an issue from being soul marked. Adya assumed that the extensive formations winding through the body would require some time to recover from. She planned to watch Thomas and any subsequent ones to understand the timeline for the change.

It would not do to implement the change in the field, only to be caught unawares if someone else came upon the scene. She already knew that the visible mark would melt away before being reformed. So there was a window where the process was susceptible to being identified.

That led her down an interesting path. She was supplying willpower and mana, along with the intent of what she wanted achieved. Somehow that was leading to the metal that permeated Thomas’s body to melt away then reform based on the new design. Could she perhaps learn the secrets of how that process happened and design a formation to create physical items.

For example, could she use steel, and a formation, with the requisite amounts of energy to convert it into a high quality sword? If the principles that were employed in changing the formations in her cultivator targets held true, and she could see no reason why they would not, then it should certainly be possible. The question was apart from the imparted design, mana and willpower, was there any other missing part to the puzzle. Also how was the intent used to hold and then imprint the design into the material. Another project for her to research.

Adya had to stop herself from getting distracted, she really wanted to learn telekinesis. So she thought over what she had attempted before, and realised why she had ended up with the imbuement skill. She had injected the energy directly into the quill. Yet, that was not what she was meant to be trying. So she revisualised what she wanted to happen. She had been trying to put the energy into the quill. It was the equivalent of sticking a fork into a piece of meat then moving the piece of meat using the fork as leverage. That was not how hands worked. They came from another direction and created a platform for the items to rest on. Then the platform was manipulated. With the visualisation corrected, she moved forward with the attempt.

She again started with mana. This time she did not just push mana into the quill, she instead tried to keep it separate from the quill, just created a bubble of mana that surrounded the quill. It used an insane amount to achieve the complete envelopment of the quill, with the majority wasted to the environment. If she could not improve the efficiency then this would be a technique that was only useful in an emergency. As she completed the envelopment, and continued sending out mana to maintain it, she started to try to move the entire ball of mana with her will. Slowly, ever so slowly the quill began to rise. It was wobbly, and lacked any form of control, but it was moving. She finally received a notification.

Mana telekinesis skill learned

Mana telekinesis is now level 1

She tried to use the new skill, it was not much better than her rudimentary control had been. She could see why the skill was so disdained. Still Adya was not discouraged. She soon started the experiment again, this time with stamina. She was purposefully leaving the willpower version till last.

The stamina version took much longer. The energy, while the same to control, was much harder to use to maintain the bubble. It was like stamina was like a live eel and Adya was trying to catch it with oiled hands. It took a significant amount of focus for Adya to manage the feat. She had Mai checking, there was no willpower included in this attempt. Was intent yet another hidden resource pool?

Finally as she managed to get the quill to move, she received the notification she had wanted to see.

Stamina telekinesis skill learned

Stamina telekinesis is now level 1

She took a few minutes to rest. She saw that Jarel was watching her attempts, yet started silent. “Did you have something you wanted to add?” she asked him.

“How are you able to do that so easily?” asked Jarel, quickly adding, “I am not trying to get anymore of your secrets, but it usually takes people a long time to even begin to understand how to do the exercise.” He did not want to face her wrath.

“I am good at visualisation.” she responded. She could not really blame him for asking, when she had effectively given him permission to do so. That did not mean that she would spill her secrets. She decided to respond with a believable answer. “It is much easier for children. If these exercises were taught from a young age, I think you would find the results very different.”

Adya went back to her attempts. She could also assume from Jarel’s reactions that it was highly unusual to gain a skill from a single attempt. He could obviously not tell that she was cycling through different energies and had already received the skill.

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The willpower attempt was by far the easiest of the three. Willpower reacted to her instinctively. It took on the bubble shape, with hardly any wasted energy. In almost no time the quill was moving, and with far better control. She received the final notification.

Willpower telekinesis skill learned

Willpower telekinesis is now level 1

This was followed immediately by the merger notification.

Mana telekinesis, Stamina telekinesis and Willpower telekinesis have merged into the skill True telekinesis

True telekinesis is now level 1

Adya was surprised by the name change, she expected the system to either call it energy telekinesis, or just telekinesis. She tried using the skill, and was extremely surprised. The skill did not use one energy type, but seamlessly blended all three to achieve the effect. The willpower provided intent to the mana, while stamina seemed to make it easier for the mana to interact with the physical. Combined the energy usage was far more efficient. Even at level 1 the level of control True telekinesis gave Adya was astounding. This also gave her a better understanding of the material of the quill itself. She realised that the reason everyone struggled was that you needed all three energies to get to the real skill. As she continued to examine the quill with the new sense the skill enabled, she received another notification.

Scan Detection, Regeneration Control, True telekinesis and Energy control have merged into the skill Environmental dominion

Environmental dominion is now level 33

Adya was shocked by the notification. This one change had merged multiple skills. Adya spent a few minutes working through the potential reasons. She realised that they were all different forms of energy control skill. Scan detection was the ability to notice someone else’s energy reaching you. Regeneration control was controlling energy within your own body. True telekinesis was the ability to surround another object and then use your energy to manipulate that object. Imbuement, the skill already merged into the energy control skill was the ability to insert your energy into another object. The original manipulation skill was the ability to detect and direct the base energies.

Now that Adya had an idea of why the skills had merged, she thought about what was missing. The skill had dropped a lot of levels, so the scope had increased, but what was she missing? She had covered control internal and external, imbuement, and perception. As far as she could see there were two more types of energy control missing.

She needed a way to pull energy from another object or person, and she needed to block the energy from another person or object. She tried to pull the three energies from the three types of stones in her storage. The energies responded but she received no response from the system. Maybe Jarel would be able to help her with her experiment.

“Jarel, do you have a skill that allows you to push mana into another person?” she asked.

“I do,” replied Jarel, wondering what she was trying to do now. He had seen her rapidly improve with the rudimentary telekinesis. He would dare not ask. He did not want to face her ire.

“Try and push your mana into me.” replied Adya. “I am going to try and resist.”

Jarel did not try to warn her off, just started the process of pushing his mana into her. His tier 5 mana should have made it easy for him to breach her protections, but he found it much harder. He had to actually focus to start getting any results.

Meanwhile, Adya started with trying to resist the mana, creating a shield to block the attack. Trying with the just mana was futile, though it did create a small effect. It was when she tried with all three energies that she started to make progress. It took some experimenting with a variety of blends to work out the optimum shielding formula. It was still hard to completely block the mana as it was a much higher tier.

Knowing that there was not much more she could achieve quickly, she switched from trying to block the mana to actively trying to draw it into her, while trying to take control of it. Again just mana was not enough. It took her trying different combinations of the three energies again to find a blend, with a much higher concentration of willpower, to start to seize control of the mana from Jarel.

She finally asked Jarel to stop and looked at her notifications.

Environmental dominion is now level 39

She guessed it made sense. She had only learned how to protect from mana, and not from stamina or willpower. There was a lot she still had to learn.

Jarel was left gobsmacked, how could a child with no core put up any sort of defence against a tier 5s mana. Even if the technique had not lasted, the fact it had any effect at all was shocking. Then once the mana had entered her body, he had lost control of it. He did not even understand how one would go about trying to seize control of someone’s mana like that. Adya had not brute forced it, but subtly took away the control. Had this happened in the middle of a fight, Jarel thought he would struggle to notice the effect. It would be stunningly effective in deceiving an enemy. How could he get her to teach him such a wondrous technique?

Jarel and Adya were both lost in their own respective introspections trying to work out the next steps required to reach their goals.

Adya had Mai start to use the new skill to test the range and accuracy of the control. She had Mai move a parchment to the other side of the room, then had Mai try to create a formation on the parchment. The next issue she faced was how to get feedback on what she was doing. Acting at a distance meant it was not convenient to see what she was doing, so errors crept into the formation design. She even tried the formation scribe skill, and still found the same issues, though it required some fine tuning to get the skill to run using the telekinesis skill in the first place.

She would need to look at how to see at a distance and at strange angles, before she could make full use of this new skill. Nothing was ever easy.

Just as Adya was thinking of solving the next problem, she noticed Thomas finally beginning to stir on the floor. She stopped her experiments and took on a relaxed look. It was time to learn why Thomas had been sent to find her.