Dei finally finished enclosing his imaginary gray room, and began trying to experiment with it. What could he make?
First he tried making a blade of grass, and succeeded on the first try: at the cost of it taking his entire presence and some effort from the main soul. When he studied it, he noticed it was an absolute perfect replica of a blade of grass, as far as he could see it. There was a chance it was because he studied them thoroughly a short while ago, for his [Camouflage] training, and the Skill took all the knowledge from that and applied it here.
‘Okay, so making any form of thinking life is out of the question, it would definitely kill me’
He rested until his soul was normal, then “deleted” the grass. It didn’t take as much effort, but a small amount of pressure was yet again exerted on him.
His next idea was to try and simulate something easier, a rock maybe. He knew rocks in and out, literally because of his tremor sense, and they were very simple.
He pictured a random rock he’d seen before, and rendered it. It popped into existence in the center of the cave, barely taking any effort on his part.
He was about to put himself into the simulation, so he could pick up the rock, but he realized how monumentally stupid that would be to try. Instead, he mentally picked it up, and the rock began to float. He shook the rock around, nothing really happening, then he threw the rock hard against the wall. The rock shattered, sending a few shards out and around the room. He noted that breaking the rock didn’t take any extra effort, despite him “creating” multiple smaller pieces as it would have worked with an actual computer.
He was going to clear the room, but had another idea. What if he could simulate certain conditions? Like wind rushing around the room. He would need something to be in the room so he could see it interact with something, and the rock was conveniently there.
Trying to create the wind pattern he’d felt in the caves previously, a light breeze began to pass through his imaginary room. Some of the dust created by the rock was kicked up, and flowed around the room. He also realized the dust was unnecessary to seeing the flow of air, as he was granted a supernatural awareness of the wind currents of the room. And understood exactly where they came from and went.
Unlike the rock though, these wind currents took a constant effort to maintain, and he was quickly forced to stop using them.
He checked his timer to see how long all of these experiments took.
[Since the Fall: 7/17/809 - 15:26:20]
‘Ah shit’ he thought, realizing that six whole hours passed. He hadn’t felt it at all, but suspected it the entire time. He just didn’t think it would be this extreme.
His reasoning stemmed from how if he wasn’t using [High Mind] intensively, his thinking would naturally speed up. The inverse of that would be if he was using [High Mind] intensively, it would cause his thinking to slow down back to human levels. If he pushed it further than that, to the Skills limits in ways he’d never done before, it would slow down so much that his mind would actually begin lagging.
He’d intended to check it right after the grass, but hadn’t noticed any difference and figured “one more test couldn’t hurt,” because it was just so fascinating watching the fake world interact with physics.
It hadn’t been the worst though, as six hours ultimately meant very little when he had more free time than he knew what to do with. His rations had still yet to be dented very severely, although he would admit that it was almost to a point that he’d soon have an estimate for how long he had left in the rations. It had been long enough for him to realize years would go by before he needed to actually hunt for survival though.
Putting that aside, he concluded that the “simulated world” aspect of [High Mind] was not worth it, and began disassembling the room. One wall at a time, he undid his efforts of the morning, watching the timer as he went. Each time he deleted a wall, the clock would tick forward by seven minutes, which was heavily concerning.
Once he was done, he once more checked outside using his [Tremor Sense], and realized he needed to start planning next week's excursion. The issue with that, though, was how he didn’t know what to attack. The Lorpee’s were the only reasonable low-hanging fruit he could find, and it would be years before their population became strong enough for him to gain noticeable experience from.
He started looking towards the different bugs around the area, wondering if it was possible to build up experience from them, and thought back to how the Lorpee’s gave experience based on their power levels. While they were hundreds of levels higher than him, they only posed small threats to him if they were alone.
Why would they give Achievements though? If the System didn’t consider them a big enough threat to gain more levels, why would it consider them enough of a threat to take note, and tell him he was on a road of “Slaughter.”
The best he could think of was intelligence. While it was true Lorpee’s didn’t pose a massive threat, he was physically a year old, and would normally have the judgment of one. Someone his age would supposedly have terrible judgment, and potentially die from picking a fight with the wrong enemy. The System wasn’t just taking note because he was young and killed something higher leveled, it measured how his intelligence was an incredible feat for someone his age.
The Achievement was given for picking smart battles, as much as it was about winning.
When he put it like that, he felt like he’d picked the hard road when killing Lorpee’s. The System would’ve given him the Achievements if he’d found a nest of bugs instead, and potentially given him something better.
Or would it have? He didn’t get a kill notification for that plant he ripped up, but it was harmless to him. Where did the System draw the line in giving experience? It was somewhere between “No threat” and “Will kill you.” Finding where that line was would be vital, as he needed to kill the weakest things he could.
He thought back to the Lorpee’s, and how they likely leveled up quickly from killing bugs; high-leveled bugs would be as much of a threat to them, as the Lorpee’s were to Dei himself.
Was it like a food web? Where plants generated experience, then herbivores took experience from plants, and carnivores took experience from herbivores?
In other words, Dei needed to become an active participant in the food web. He would need to slay things that were a human's natural prey, or even kill the plants humans would normally eat. The random weed on the side of the cave probably wasn’t edible, leading to no experience.
These rules were likely only for gaining experience from things weaker than Dei, as killing enemies as strong as him would be noteworthy enough alone to grant experience, but in order to build himself up to that level, he needed to focus his efforts into nutritional yet harmless things. If this wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be any way for experience to enter the ecosystem, as no creatures would generate enough experience to level up other creatures.
Assuming experience was granted similar to energy through food, bugs were the only consistent and safe way he could think of to build power. He would try killing plants, but wild plants were notoriously not very nutritious, even if they were technically edible. It would be a path forward though, and any path forward was one he had to take.
If any other chances similar to the Lorpee’s appeared, he would take it. Otherwise, it was going to be a slog to level using small pests. The slog would only start when he could use [Astral Projection] again though, so he ate a late lunch, and started his training.
* * *
[Since the Fall: 8/9/809 - 6:17:57]
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (15) -> (16)]
…
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (18) -> (19)]
[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (43) -> (44)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Pains (100) -> (101)]
[Total Stats Gained: +3 Physical]
[Pandora’s Box:
423/2000 Wrath
30/2000 Kindness
952/2000]
A month later, he realized just how much the levels slowed down as they went up. [Fine-Tooth Comb] hadn’t gone up even once!
It looked like from this point forward, all significant changes to his Interface would come from active combat, or more danger in general. He needed to leave.
His experiments with keeping one mind awake at all times also bore fruit, as it was getting easier. The biggest boost came in the form of more Soul mana, as he earned it even while “sleeping.”
When he split his mind and drew Visible Presence from the links in [Meditation], the rate at which he earned Soul mana didn’t increase whatsoever. It increased his rate of earning Presence, but Soul mana stayed the same.
By continuing to meditate while sleeping, he increased how much Soul mana he could earn by around thirty percent. He also finally tried mapping out how much Soul mana was produced by his Skill day by day, but realized that it wasn’t consistent. Each level in Meditation would earn one to one point five Soul mana per day of meditating. In other words, nineteen levels in [Meditation] would produce either nineteen mana per day, or twenty eight point five mana per day. The variable rate was hard to calculate, but he was pretty sure that was the range.
Dei decided to go for a Soul Strength of one thousand this time when forming his Projection. Not for any reason, just to keep it clean on his interface.
He also stopped trying to calm himself down at the frustration of being chased by the frog, as he realized he needed all the Mana he could get, especially Wrath. He would eventually need to use it as a boosting Skill, and having an excess could prove lifesaving. The production of Wrath mana was still slowly decreasing, but less so than before.
He got up, checking on his plants and eating a small breakfast. He realized that the Hanging Lilies were actually starting to die slowly, their HP decreasing, and he would need to find a way to replant them somewhere healthier soon. As it was, they were perpetually in a state of “drought,” as the lilies were always being held up by their steel stalks, and he thought that the damage was from the strain it put on the stalks themselves.
Aside from that, everything was in order, and he was ready to use his [Astral Projection] again. He had another idea to try this time, as weeks of doing nothing tended to cause the mind to wander.
What if he could leave one of his split minds in his body? If that wasn’t possible, what if he could send one of them back through the connection his [Astral Projection] had to his body?
It wouldn’t be a mind to train, merely one to keep him alive. He found it frustrating, having to save up enough mana to make a new body. He always waited a month, even though he knew he could Project at four hundred and fifty mana, because it made him stronger each time. He could keep waiting, becoming more powerful by saving up two or three months worth of mana, but he found that one month was the golden zone of “Im stronger than I was last time I projected” and “Holy shit, I need to leave the house now” as he progressively got more stir crazy.
He considered many times letting his Soul affinity progress more, allowing his mind to cope better with the loneliness, but he didn’t want to let go of who he was as a person unless he truly was becoming mad.
Ponderings aside, the mind he would leave in his body wouldn’t require a “full” mind, just one that could keep him alive, that way he would be able to Project for days at a time. He’d begun experimenting already, and found that he could imbue a smaller consciousness with “just barely enough” to feed his body and meditate, while the rest of his mind went off and did something else. It required around twenty percent of his current processing power, leaving eighty percent to its own devices.
He could knock the required processing power down to ten percent total if he didn’t want his body to meditate, but he thought the extra cost would be worth it to passively produce Soul mana while he was away. If he could last a full month outside of his body, he would be able to use another Projection without ever having to wait either. The tactic wouldn’t be perfectly efficient, as the small piece of his mind left in the body wouldn’t be able to meditate while sleeping, but that was a small tradeoff.
He finished with his garden, ate his breakfast, sectioned off twenty percent of his mind, and sat down on the grass, doing a quick review of his Interface before beginning.
[Name: Dei Grrata
Race: Human (Gem Dweller Variant)
Class: Prodigal Detector (Level 68)
Profession: Pondering Sage (Level 5)
Achievements: Void Walker, Soulspeak, Beyond Understanding, No Rulers Above All, Bearing the Burden, Slayer of Mountains, Cruelty of the Slaughter (II)
Contracts: Soul of the (IIIIIIII)
HP: 92/92
MP: 92/92
SP: 92/92
Stats:
Physical: 46
Mental: 44
Spiritual: 39
Magical: 45
Affinities:
Kindness: Mid-Rare, 58%
Wrath: Mid-Uncommon: 38%
Soul: Low-Uncommon: 58%
Inner Skills:
Kindness: Pandora’s Box (Contained) (50) (1405/2000), Call for Help (9), Good Samaritan (1)
Wrath: Pandora’s Box (Unleashed) (2), Growing Pains (101)
Soul: Astral Projection (4), Connection (1)
Mana: Meditation (19)
Confluence: Identify of the Stout Protector (50)
Outer Skills:
How About a Demonstration?, Fine-Tooth Comb (46), Vigilance (53), In Tune (1), Commune with the Universe (2), High Mind (44)]
Using the eighty percent he still had to work with, he began casting [Astral Projection], making an effort to keep the twenty/eighty halves of his mind separate.
The familiar feeling of Identity empowerment came over him, and he was separated from the main soul.
[Skill Leveled Up: Astral Projection (4) -> (5)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Astral Projection (5) -> (6)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Astral Projection (6) -> (7)]
As he separated from his body, he lost connection with his twenty percent mind as well. He was still aware of it, and could send basic messages, but his control over it had been cut off. If he’d left a full mind in his body, he suspected he would actually be able to talk to it, as harrowing an experience as that would be.
He resolved immediately to do his best not to find out what that was like, as the copy would likely have an existential crisis. He would leave all his copies with as little processing power as possible, and do everything he could to prevent them from forming ego’s.
That being said, he now had much more time to travel around as a spirit without having to worry whether he would remain healthy in his body. On top of that, a new plan opened up before him: reaching the cavern where the [Call for Help] originated from.
Originally, he realized that it would simply take too long to reach it in a single day if he didn’t go through the Bog cavern, as his [Fine-Tooth Comb] wouldn’t be able to properly guide him otherwise. Even if it could guide him, the maze of caves surrounding him would take too long to navigate, potentially starving his main body to death.
One of those issues had been solved with the new use of [High Mind], as for how he intended to navigate the caves?
He realized he was being a total idiot.
While it was true his Skill could only find up to two paths for now, there was more than one way to guide it. Before, he’d used broad terms such as “give me the most efficient way while avoiding the main cavern,” but that was too much, as there were likely dozens or hundreds of very similar pathways, and the “most efficient” would change frequently based on environmental factors. The reason he hadn’t run into such a thing yet while using [Fine-Tooth Comb] was because thus far, it was undoubtable that Bog Cavern would be the most efficient route to reach his destination. Along the shorter routes, Dei expected the path to be obstructed multiple times, where he might have to reroute.
Instead of immediately shooting for his endpoint though, he could do something easier: designating spots around the Bog cavern, then requesting a pathway to those spots, rather than just the cavern he intended to reach.
In other words, he would say “take me to Spot One along the most efficient path,” where his [Fine-Tooth Comb] would find the way, then say “take me to Spot Two,” and so on, until he successfully made a semi-circle around the Bog without ever risking losing his way.
With his guide taken care of and his body being fed, Dei could take all the time he wanted to make his way along the cave systems. While he was doing this, he would also try to find and kill bugs in order to slowly build up his EXP.
He started getting excited, as this trip was shaping up to be an interesting and efficient one. He might not need to wait much longer for a friend he could talk to! ‘Well, one that would talk back at least’ he thought while looking at the various beetles he’d spent some time occasionally bouncing ideas off of.
Finished with the Garden, he went to the edge of the barrier and pushed his way through, feeling with his [Spirit Sense] how a few disconnected places were revealed to him. In those places, he knew there was a single signature he needed to reach.
He’d already mapped out the circular path to follow: there were four checkpoints he needed to reach, and the fifth would be the [Call for Help] itself. ‘Which way to Spot number One in the most efficient route possible’ he directed his [Fine-Tooth Comb], and started walking.