Egosum stared out over the mossy meadows with a spark of joy running rampant through his mind.

He could see the future sprawled out over the vibrant earth before him.

Just outside the realm of reality, there were vernal pools housing the tadpoles, the sprawling city filled with every manner of amphibians, and the training grounds for training the most adept warriors.

“This place is perfect.” His companions glance over to his and then to the land before them.

“Suuuure. What's the plan then?” Cinera turned to the toad.

“We need to clear the place out and start making camp. Familiarize yourselves with the land and grow accustomed to it. After that, I will help you try and get your flight down. I have an idea .” He jumped forward and bounced off the ground like a trampoline.

The sight lines were clear for as far as he could see. It was a paradise.

Small bugs floated around the moss, searching for a place to rest or something to eat only for the cavernous mouth of a toad to snatch them up.

He channeled his Qi into the ground below him and quirked a brow in surprise.

It was controllable like normal muck would be, but it was still vastly different.

The familiar grains of dirt mixed together to form a mouldable mud were nowhere to be seen.

Only the decomposed and rotten remains of eons of moss piled over each other in an endless cycle were present for as far as his influence could reach.

He called for it to act on his whims and it dutifully answered. He could barely feel the cost of controlling the substance as the wetlands energy infused into it gave back nearly as much as he gave towards it.

It bubbled up from the ground and opened up a small hole for him to enter. As he walked through, the bubble closed off, trapping him inside.

He closed his eyes and felt the world around him.

He could smell the life and death cycle that took place every day.

He could hear the hiss of gas seeping through the strands of mass and the water trickling through everything close by.

He turned inwards, towards his Qi core.

It was bursting at the seams with energy. If only he had the ability to use it to his fullest capabilities.

His great master had set out on a journey to push the swamp edges further and further every day he was alive.

He used his unfathomable understanding of wetlands to grow it from a patch of lie and rot to a perfect home for millions of their kind.

He could tell the energy deep inside him was made up of his own understandings and lacked much of the nuance actual swamps help and he could see the strange energy that refused to enter him despite the purity of the wetlands that now surrounded him.

He was unsure what he was missing, but he knew it was vitally important if he wanted to revive his people’s goal.

He needed to grow faster, understand more tricks, and gain more allies.

All were vital components to growing this moss-laden landscape into a new civilization of amphibians.

His core pulse slightly, drawing his attention back from wandering his thoughts.

He moved his introspection closer but failed to truly close the distance. The core was his own, but it was clearly missing something.

He felt the rot beneath his toes and the faint ache in his leg from the wound days prior.

Every tooth from the horrid fish's mouth that made contact had readily punctured through his tough skin and cracked the bones

A faint sensation of muscles regenerating ever so slowly within his body became noticeable with the new isolation. The skin slowly regrew over the holes the enemy had gifted him and the bones deep inside ossified.

Even through wounds, he could feel his strength grow. It wasn’t through Qi and mental tribulations like it so often was. Now it was through suffering and challenge.

The fluid in his joints swished around as he curled every part of his body. His muscles tensed with power as he felt the parts he didn’t even know existed come to life under his command.

Two brown hands slowly moved to the front of his face. His eyes were held tightly shut but he could still tell where they were.

He could feel them grow closer and closer to his face, anticipating the moment of contact.

Just before they met, he made them stop. His eyes opened and he was greeted by two hands filled with the energy of the swamp. His own hands.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This was the realm of proprioception. The realm he had been chasing for weeks.

He knew where every part of his body was compared to the rest of him. He was more intimately aware of his own body now than ever before.

The aches in his body were no longer the uncomfortable reminder of a past blunder. Now they were mere signals that told him where the damage was.

He let his mind wander off inside his body, inspecting each and every point he could find.

He felt he poison glands that protected him during his fight with the orc tensed and relaxed with slight tremors. The muscles that kept them taught were practicing in case of another emergency that required its use.

The tendons in his legs were as tight as anything could be just waiting for the moment his legs pushed him off the ground.

He could feel the pulses of tension across his body as he made the slightest of movements.

His body was many machines under one mind’s control.

He drifted off into his own consciousness while thinking of the most abstract of his thoughts.

“Good day to you, Mr.Peak condensation realm cultivator.” Pangu’s voice bounced off his ear drums coalescing to understanding within his mind.

“It’s…so…distracting….Why?” Every tense of his tongue as he spoke stole his attention from the topic. The words he spoke came back to him just as quickly as they left him, jarring him once more.

“Hehehe. Yep, that is why this realm is such a kicker. You start to get close to passing it and then the progress distracts you again. If you didn’t blast through it in one sitting then you would have been stuck in your mind till you fell asleep for some guidance.”

The glee in his voice played in his ears like a mallet on a drum.

“How..Stop?” Words grew more and more difficult with time.

“Come on. You should know how. I told you that the things that made it appear like a swamp to you so long ago were just your mind playing tricks on you. Why would this be any different? I mean, how can you be in a physical version of your body inside of another physical version?”

The words dropped on his mind as he processed the words.

The mere act of thought was more of a challenge than he was happy to admit.

He finally comprehended what the patch of dirt said and, all of a sudden, his mind was back to normal.

All of the fine control and feedback loops were a thing of the past. He was no longer a prisoner in his own body.

“Oh thank the goddesses.” His metaphysical mind aches at the sound of his own voice.

“Thank them?! You should be thanking me!” His faux anger filled the air.

“Yes. Thanks Pangu. That sucked.” His response elicited a light chuckle.

“Yep. Really shitty stuff. I got stuck in it myself. Glad to see you fall into the same traps. Muahahah.” The dirt was thoroughly pleased with itself.

“You are a real bastard sometimes.”

“Yes, well that’s what eons of struggling will do to a person. Just wait and see. Now, the real issue at hand.” Egosum managed a questioning look before the dirt went to ramble away.

“The issue isn’t quite solved as of yet. I just reminded your astral body. We still need to work on your physical one. The first point you should think about is your other senses and how you activate them.”

“They come and go as you please, not the other way around. It is ultimately all under your control. This needs to be no different. The problem is that the initial concentration you need to flick it off for the first time gets absolutely wrecked by the new sensations.”

“If you had awoken like I had, on a battlefield, then this would be an issue. You could get stabbed like I was and that shock brings you straight out. The feeling of a sword going into your stomach is less comforting than one might expect but it works.”

“You will need a different source of distraction and I think I have a great idea. You are currently surrounded by the strongest source of wetlands energy than I have ever seen. It puts swamp planets to shame. If you can wake up and instantly change your attention to that then you have a chance.”

The wording threw him off.

“What do you mean I have a chance? Will I die if I mess up?”

Pangu began laughing his head off to Egosum’s dismay.

“Come on. What happens?” After a few moments of the raucous noise filling the air, the dirt calmed down.

“Nothing like that. You just get stuck in your mind for as long as it takes for you to pass out and then we can you can try again when you wake up next time. There are stories of some hermit dying of old age after being a genius in their youth.”

The voice grew raspier and more conspiratorial.

“The real kicker is that they were a young adult when they entered the realm in the first place. I still think he would have starved to death first, but hey.”

Egosum fought off the chill that wanted to run up his back.

“So it would be best to avoid that. The first time is a charm, right?” His hopeful tone was brutally crushed.

“Riiiiight. I am sure it will be. Not like you don’t have years of experience feeling for Qi like someone would normally have…. Oh wait, you don't! Hehehehe.”

“I hate you.” He covered his face with his hands and tried to focus his senses away from everything but Qi sensing.

He needed to be ready when the time came.

Right before he was ushered into the introspective mood in his coffin of moss, he had inspected the energy that made the sphagnum seem so ancient and strange.

It sat in his mind, clouded by the overwhelming actions that muddled his senses.

“This is gonna blow.”

Pangu chimed in.

“For you, it will. Worse kind of struggle in my opinion and I have had to force daggers out of my gut far more than a few times.”

The world began to shake and shatter.

The muggy clouds that framed this world were gone and all that was left were his sole memory of what to reach out for in consciousness.

-

He felt the scrape of his corneas against his eyelids. What should have been forgettable was already so overwhelming but he refused to open his eyes. He felt the muscle fibers tensing under his skin. The cacophony of motion was unnerving.

His intestines twisted and pulsed as it worked his waste lower.

He needed a way out. He needs to search now!

His Qi senses blasted out to the world around him.

It was blatantly apparent what everything nearby was. Just wetland Qi for as far as he could feel. It wasn't surprising or shocking in any way he could hope.

His heart began to beat in his ears.

The action was like a gong going off every second right beside him.

The feeling of Qi was slowly slipping from him. It was too familiar.

He felt little more than a connection to it in the same way he did for every body part that had come to life since his waking. It was just as connected but less distracting.

His heart began to beat faster and faster

He began to slip back into the spiral of his own body's machinations.

“Uwaaaah.”

“Huh?”