Completely relaxed and clear of any worries from a whole week dedicated to nothing else than his newly discovered passion of intent tinkering, Rune felt ready to start working on mastering a technique that didn’t look appealing.
Before doing that however, he decided to make a detour to the Dream to be ready for a whole month of focus on one thing, it was the minimal requirement for the technique to work after all.
As for if this walk in the Dream would be entertaining or not, it didn’t matter. He didn’t seek to control his dreams, he just wanted to sit back, let the autopilot do its work, and watch the result.
So he found himself a cozy place, created a legendary fluffy energy mattress, and cut off the connection between his ether soul and his awareness, willing himself to sleep.
…
“Stop beating your big sisters Lounae!”
A voice he hadn’t heard in a long time made him look away from his holographic screen, allowing him to see 4 little girls playing on the ground, and his mother, Florence.
“And do something Rune!”
He immediately stood up at that, and without a word went to separate the younger-looking Lounae from his twin little sisters, Victoria and Floria, who were only a few years older but couldn't do anything against her.
“She destroyed our farm!”
“She must be punished!”
Their childish complaints didn’t find any purchase as even the mother didn’t care and went back to do her own things.
It was overall a very peaceful scene, and the face of everyone was extremely detailed, allowing Rune to once again truly see his family, minus his father and his twin little brothers.
Though… There was an additional little girl on the ground, her back facing him, and she looked a lot younger than the rest.
The only reason Rune didn’t miss her was her long pure golden hair and wheat-colored skin, a person he didn’t remember at all.
Concluding a simple additional little sister due to what happened recently, he didn’t search for a deeper meaning, he was a spectator, a simple-minded spectator.
This dream didn’t contain much action, and it just kept continuing without ending, a blissfully calm room locked in a state of eternal playtime.
…
“Mmh! Ah…” Stretching and making weird sounds as he woke up, he procrastinated for an additional 10 minutes, letting energy fill all his needs and recharge his energy… With energy.
Taking his time, he decided to create a new note document to write all the dreams he went through, starting from the ones about his school field stage, then the Eclipse Arcadia, and now the 4 little sisters' garden.
Once he didn’t have any more details to add in any of them, he left his fizzy bed and went to the central living area to wake up with a good glass of energy-infused juice which he refrigerated with ice element until it became extremely cold.
“Ahhh, that’s life,” a content breath escaped him. His whole body and mind approved of his morning actions until now.
‘Let’s go.’
Rune stood up feeling ready and went to the mist dome. Having prepared for this moment, he set up an answering machine to not be bothered by anything, and just in case took off his connected lenses.
Once at the border to the mist dome, he updated the version to the complete 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stages intent, and using the path, he went to a place he prepared beforehand, a place where he wouldn’t be bothered by anything.
‘If they really need to contact me, they can just launch energy beams everywhere, I’ll be forced to know something is happening.’
As an additional measure, he put on true clothes, he didn’t want to be bothered by even the action of having to manage his energy to sustain his energy clothes.
‘Really… Who’s the son of a penguin who came up with this technique?’
Once he sat down, Rune started to regulate his breathing. In the best-case scenario, he would need a few days to reach G-Introspection initial immersion state.
As it was his first time, he didn’t want to go too deep and directly manipulate his subconscious and rearrange his cohesion specialty’s given effects, he only wanted to get a feel for what he read about the technique.
‘The power of your beliefs turned real. Pretty simple to understand. Warped beliefs are unstable beliefs, be careful of warping them so much you irreversibly see your own truth? That… Is somehow creepy.’
In a meditative state, Rune couldn’t see the passing of time, he felt his own body weightless, then the slightest wind turned into a tornado, battered by his imagination, he could only wait until the change happened.
When it happened, he immediately recognized it, because he ended up in a place that clearly wasn’t his ether soul space with his cloud of awareness.
It was the introspection entrance space, the most shallow layer of the introspection space, a totally empty space that represented the gateway to your most intricate secrets.
Once there, he kept his wits to himself and tried to get a feel for his real body, but the connection was distant and he returned with nothing.
Even his thoughts seemed sluggish as he tried to observe and remember this space.
Fortunately, all this was documented and he prepared his plan before coming in here, so he stopped being inactive and made his mental image walk forward towards nothing.
After what felt like an hour, he suddenly passed through something, and the space around him changed to being more liquid, he had entered the first layer of the introspection space.
His goal was the third layer so he continued walking forward, it didn’t become more difficult or stranger, it was just different. As he expected too, he felt like if he wanted, he could connect with the liquid darkness around him.
But he obviously didn’t, the second layer offered nothing he wanted, so yet another what felt like an hour passed, and he passed through another barrier, arriving in the same liquid darkness, but there were some sands mixed in it this time.
Here, Rune felt like he could connect with everything at the same time, yet, he didn’t do anything and just got a feel for the place, extended his hands, walked a bit…
When he felt like it was enough, he willed himself to exit and as an answer, a force appeared and expelled him in an instant.
Then he opened his eyes.
He was out.
‘No time indicator, pure silence, just go again and this time, connect with a grain of sand.’
He closed his eyes once more a few seconds after he got out, it was the most optimized way to do it.
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The feeling of weightlessness appeared, the wind turned into tornadoes, but it was a lot shorter and he arrived back at the entrance to the introspection space soon after.
The same sluggishness assaulted him as he started to walk forward, going from the entrance to the first layer, then to the second layer, and finally to the third layer.
Grabbing a single grain of sand, he limited his focus to only this single grain and formed a connection to it.
After the connection was stabilized, he called for this grain of sand to answer what and who it was and got a slight feeling of something being fun, like when he watched funny entertainment.
Cutting off this connection, he grabbed another grain and did the same process again, and he repeated it until he got to one that answered him with a slight feeling of rejection, the one he had when he just wanted to be left alone and was ready to say no to everything for that to happen.
Having found the one he wanted, he kept the connection to it and asked a different question.
Where are your friends?
Hundreds of directions were transmitted to Rune, they were everywhere, they were everything.
Where are your companions?
He got slightly less, those were the other rejection grains.
Where are your parents?
This time, only one direction was transmitted, but this direction held dozens of answers. It was showing him where his cohesion’s subconsciousness was.
Getting what he wanted, he once again willed himself to exit.
And he once again opened his real eyes.
Then he closed them again.
He was starting his third cycle.
…
G-Introspection, a variant of the general introspection technique used to subtly change one’s subconscious and adapt one’s personality.
Its functioning principle wasn’t to stop at the first layer and gradually interfere with the deeper layer from there, but to go directly at the source and artificially create new effects that would only exist for a few days before being erased.
Before this technique was publicized, only decades of focused effort using first layer, and rarely second layer, introspection techniques allowed for some rare determined and lucky chosen ones to create a growth mastery.
Obviously, such an amazing technique isn’t without its own lots of danger.
The third layer of the introspection space doesn’t touch upon shallow matters like surface thoughts and short-term memories anymore, but upon what defines the existence of someone, their personality, their long-term memories, and their subconscious.
As long as one isn’t too greedy for time, however, the true danger can simply be removed from consideration, after a large warping, take a break, don’t make artificial opposed effects, don’t touch the sensitive grains, don’t connect with more than one grain at one time…
With time, the technique called G-Introspection, short for “Growth Introspection” has been completely adopted, and close to no detractors existed anymore.
…
Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion
Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 4)
By carefully infusing health into your energy, you can directly give it the cohesive property only found in it, such manipulation can now be used at a practical level.
You have reached the point where you can perfectly find the most important cohesive property in your health, you can now infuse cohesion-based health in your energy at a ratio of 1 health for 1 infused energy, regardless of quantity.
Cohesion isn’t just a stat, it’s also a part of your being. You’re the only one who can discover more use to it, bend it to your will, and impose what you want this cohesion to be and become.
Current effects: Isolation, Rejection, Music, Water
‘The good news is that I don’t feel sleepy at all, so it’s not been a month since I started.’
After 20 G-Introspection rounds, Rune had already gone beyond the minimum proficiency requirement to start the arduous process of creating a growth mastery.
The last 4 rounds had proved that as he successfully found and warped some grains into becoming new effects for his cohesion infusion specialization.
But while the warpings he did before were weak and easily solved after a few hours naturally, this time he did a true application that should result in it existing for one day at minimum before vanishing.
‘Maybe for the heck of it, I can try the fusion? Strangely, I don’t think it’ll work…’
On a whim, he started to manipulate his cohesion to apply it in 4 different ways, thinking about creating 4 specialized masteries, then he meshed everything together chaotically without any goal.
It was the most primitive method to create a growth mastery, and Rune even wondered if someone succeeded through it.
The resulting cohesion mass was totally unstable and came undone in 5 seconds after he let it freely interact with the world.
‘Well, as expected…’
He didn’t even bother to think about why it failed, it was just an impulse.
Sending his energy into his pocket dimension, he retrieved his connected lenses and put them on, then he got down from his special place, a big tree on which he set up a comfy platform, and started to follow a path to exit the mist dome.
‘Only 3 weeks?’
Calculating the time from the moment he entered and now, Rune was happy to admit he overestimated the time he needed to do 20 rounds of G-Introspection by 1 week.
‘What are the chances the event is over? Near zero, right? Did the trouble-makers plan start?’
As he didn’t update the cosmic mist used in the mist dome, it still blocked every signal used to access the internet and he decided to let it be that way, making the mist dome, the first one to be set up in the training park, the ultimate mist dome.
Full of curiosity as to what changed over 3 weeks, he accelerated a bit and got out of the mist dome a few seconds later, re-establishing his connection to the world instantly and getting some of his usual news sites open.
‘Civil unrest unit!’
The name of the unit he should have gone to with the rest of the Undecided that appeared in multiple articles’ names was as clear as still water to him who was in the known.
‘Cooking Union, dead at its birth? Art Gallery project approved. Interview with an Abnormal. Further news about the prospect school, leaked subject of the closure speech…’
With a glance, Rune understood that he had much to catch up to, he also felt a sense of fulfillment at being only a spectator to all of this, and one that was an hour away from the capital!
‘Maybe I should start purging one slot now? This way I won’t have to bother about it later and in the end, I’ll have the certitude to be completely up-to-date? Sounds like a good plan after suffering through this session of G-Introspection.’
Now that he was done with mastering the G-Introspection technique, he felt completely free and apt at thinking sh*t about it, it was a mental technique he hoped he would never need to master more than this.
The state of having difficulties even forming coherent thoughts and fearing that simple mishaps or impulses would ruin him forever without a possibility of return was clearly worse than anything he had ever done before.
As he arrived at the living area with the goal to do a purge, he had an idea and checked the “to-do” list of the Undecided Training Park, and his idea wasn’t there, so he added it.
‘Not far from the living area, prepare a purge area. Maybe in the future, some people will want to find a completely safe and familiar area that is not a rented place to do their own purge.’
Nodding to himself, he found himself a corner of the living area, got a barrel of infused juice out, and started to purge one of his energy compression mastery.
‘I’ll also check my cohesion infusion every hour, this way I’ll get the time taken for my 2 artificials effects to vanish.’
…
“Nope, no chance, I’m leaving the moment my purge is done.”
“Sigh… I understand, well, here’s your pay for the first operation,” Hosirha extended his arm and touched Rune’s shoulder.
*Ding* You received 1 000 000 000 EP from Hosirha Sirmons
“Hum? One billion? So much? Is one billion EP so little nowadays?”
“If you don’t want it, you can exchange a part of it for benefits. Considering it was the first mission, the pay was a bit elevated, but you can expect half of it to be the base pay for any further simple operations you’ll do, with some bonuses when it’s… Not a simple operation,” he appeared a bit reluctant at expanding on this subject, so Rune didn’t try to dig more.
“Well, I think EP is just fine as a benefit, though you convinced me that if gathering EP was a problem one day, and it is a bit right now, then killing monsters will be a sub-optimal choice compared to working for the terror unit.”
Smiling at that, Hosirha completely agreed and tried to push him, “And considering your cosmic mist is an abnormal perception-interfering ability, you’ll probably be asked to join in a lot of operations. Anyway, when you have a bit of time, think about us! You’ll always be welcome!”
Still, Rune didn’t give in, “If there’s a massive operation, then I could have been convinced, but right now… Just no, I’m not interested, my own plan takes over the terror unit’s importance.”
The Cell officer responsible for the terror unit had tried all his plans, yet, from the moment he had begun to talk about how another operation was available, he had remembered that Rune Tudor was more of an adventurer than a terror unit member.
And now that he truly tried everything he could, he stopped pushing and bid farewell to the stubborn adventurer, he had to start thinking about what adaptations he would have to do to ease their next operation.
Maybe it was for the best that their main infiltrator wouldn’t participate, burning-will Rei had wanted to prove he could assume both roles at the same time, it would be a learning experience for him.
After he left, Rune only got 5 minutes to himself before someone else sat at his table.
‘Do I look like a drive-by? A confessional? A talking partner?’