February 20th 334 RPT – March 5th 334 RPT

Over the course of roughly two weeks, Imogyeran had cooped himself up in small holes, limiting his

contact to Dogogo and Dogogo only. Even Gondo and ‘Yun’ – who was getting extremely close to

evolving through her recent experiences – were not allowed access to his place until March 3rd.

‘Yun’ stayed secluded for two weeks longer to complete her evolution, while Gondo decided to take his

distance from the boy, because the burden of talking to him might be too much for Imog’s current

mind.

Imog however refused his wishes and forcefully dragged the (actually really powerful but shy) familiar

into his temporary shelter. The three of them spent a lot of time together in this secluded world.

After a while ‘Yun’ came back from her seclusion. Her evolution was successful!

Of course, this is to be expected due to the influence of both Dogogo and Gondo as well as the high

Stray consistency of Imog’s surroundings, but nonetheless it was a really fast evolution, when

compared to other spirits of her class.

Taking inspiration from her two elder brothers, ‘Yun’, who had originally been created as a spirit

symbolizing the coldness and solitude of a small breeze, focused on the essence of elements

themselves, in order to become a greater help to her master.

Her new name was now Yunran, a spirit commanding strong gales of support to support her family,

when she needed to. One could say that the last few weeks had been quite traumatic for the roughly 4-

year-old ‘Yun’, resulting in this evolution. Can a spirit’s trauma influence their rate of growth?

This is not a story to ask such draconian questions.

Anyways, Imogyeran congratulated Yunran with a warm hug and the family of familiars threw a small

party for her.

It was also around this time, that Imogyeran prohibited the spirits from calling him ‘Master’ or ‘Boss’,

because that sounds lame. If anything, he would prefer them to call him something like brother or

Imog.

Dogogo has always called him Imog, which means that nothing changed.

Gondo, who had previously avoided using honorifics or names to call people, decided to call him by

his full name Imogyeran.

Yunran just went with ‘brother’ for a while before switching, because both of them did not feel that

way of addressing him as appropriate. In the end, she mostly copied Dogogo’s style.

‘Aran’, who had already evolved and gotten a way cooler name, which is going to be revealed later,

just stuck with ‘big brother imog’ (all in lower-case), before timidly switching to along with his sister.

‘Aran’ of course was not physically present with the group, but using Gale-Cries previously and

Yunran’s currently, the group was able to converse over long distances. He, of course also heard about

the incident of Imog losing his mind (From now called the Imo-Zombie-Incident) and he was the one,

who proposed strictly sanctioning Imog’s exposure to the spirits from now on.

The proposal was discussed in the family and everyone aside from the person in question agreed to

limit Imog’s future exposure to Strays to a maximum of 4 hours in addition to two hours of exposure to

Animas. They went inside the boy’s mind and spent the next entirety of a month to, according to

Gondo’s knowledge and the bits and pieces of the Imo-Zombie-Incident knowledge, build limiters into

the brain of Imogyeran to artificially close off his empathy after a certain tolerance was reached.

Imogyeran was kind of pressured into letting them do all that, so had no choice other than agreeing.

It was also around that time, that Imog sent out Yunran in the form of a Gale-Cry to submit a message

to the Blueseva’s it was actually a two-way communication, which allowed him to see the people

present and even talk to them if he had wanted to. Of course, his message was extremely chlicheé

and not written with the appropriate tact and respect, but you could chalk that up to his 3-year-stay with

peasant, almost falling to his death inside a jungle for a year and a half and almost losing his mind and

just barely recovering emotional abilities such as social awareness.

Nevertheless, when Imog sent out Yunran for the second time and he heard all four people

simultaneously mutter the word “torture”, he felt really surprised and kind of a little hurt, resulting in

him ordering Yunran to make a mess out of Elise’s and Grandpa Esteban’s room with a note left behind

saying: “Ricardo was here” in Ricardo’s writing.

But that is neither here nor there.

There are around 255 days left until he needs to go to the annual Insigniae Magnae in Medalia, which

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

he, by the way, also forgot to attend to at the promised date with Kasim.

In all honesty, the reason he attended was mostly to find information about Kasim and his father

Kasanova Rojora to execute his revenge.

Truthfully, Imogyeran’s thirst for revenge was relatively low. He simply decided it would be a nice goal

worth dedicating some time to, because there was not much else in his life aside from that.

Imog began physically training himself with different methods.

Now is a good time to talk about physicality in Gaia:

Until now, we have seen most of the landscape of Estica in the eyes of a spirit-channeler.

A spirit-channeler works by communicating with the spirits using his mind as a medium.

The principle is the same as trying to tame a monster using a special type of food that makes them

stronger. What if, instead of giving that food away you were the one eating the food and getting

stronger?

Most people do not choose spirit-channeling, because there are plenty of better alternatives.

Aside from that, the principle of spirit-channeling is subtraction, while Gaia has not developed past the

point of addition. The science is not far enough to even understand spirit-channeling, not even the

spirit-channellers themselves understand how it works.

In today’s training Imogyeran focuses his training on becoming a Nuami, a person, that grows using

himself in an additive way.

In Gaia, there is a law of conservation of energy.

In order to utilize the energy of spirits as your own, you would need to consume your own energy to

make them do something. In other words, you play the role of a business scout trying to recruit able

workers. Your work as a scout, in some ways, is as difficult as the work a single worker, but you are

able to do a lot more with the hired work than alone.

On the other hand, there are the so-called geniuses and owners of a monopoly. Through being at the

right place at the right time with the right ideas and putting in a ton of effort, they manage to build a

giant business, that a scout could never reach, unless they found such a genius themselves.

This metaphor is a bit lacking in certain areas, but the essence is simple.

Utilize your own power in a way, that is the most efficient.

Instead of utilizing power to communicate with the spirits without a guarantee for success your own

body will never betray the efforts in your work, making people seek the path of a Nuami.

To put things another way: Why spent energy creating a natural firestorm if you could spent a quarter

or less of energy to strengthen your body to withstand the firestorm itself?

Why create wind to carry you through the air if you could carry yourself by flying without the air?

Why create a rock to go high into the air if you could simply jump really high?

Imogyeran himself is not that much of a fan of these linear thinking patterns. His background and

interest in artistic expressionism has made him seek the beauty of unnecessary movements rather than

be drowned in boring efficiency. Nevertheless, he cannot deny the fact, that right now, this is his best

way of getting stronger.

With that said, Imogyeran focused his efforts into meditation, while his family transported the young

man’s motionless body in the direction of Medalia city.

The process of becoming a Nuami focuses on realizing the power you use to persuade the spirits as a

power and repurposing it as fuel for your cells, bones, nerves and muscle tissues as well as your organs.

Imog had just suffered a chronic brain injury, so his thinking and experience with handling spirits did

not properly translate into his training as a Nuami.

Especially his inner turmoils and traumas posed a strong blockade, that stopped the energy from

flowing properly through his body. But you should not sell the boy short!

After one week, he managed to grasp the principle of Nuamiism and started cultivating his body at a

remarkable rate. He also did it without resolving a single one of his mental problems!

Using tips and tricks from his previously vast network of connections in the spiritual world, the boy

used his 9-ish years of experience and effort to his advantage.

His progress was going great and from time to time his family would give up a small part of their

cultivation to aid him in his growth.

Familiars themselves are born with the natural state of Nuamiism. Thus, they were able to cultivate

energy more naturally than any human and, after Imog reached a minimum level, they reinforced his

body with their own cultivation. It is simply common sense to strengthen the weakest link in a chain.

This is another advantage of spirit-channeling. Like the earnings of a Youtube-Account with a

dedicated fanbase, a spirit-channeler’s income is additive.

As a side-note, Imogyeran’s capabilities have vastly decreased since receiving the operation. The

symbol on his chest was now comprised of three golden scratches and 5 shallow red marks, almost like

amputated flesh wounds.

In Gaia, regaining something is oftentimes easier than gaining it for the first time. Maybe within a

single year Imogyeran can go back to the person he was before the operation. If he takes his time, it

might be two years. But Imog is currently not in a rush to to anything about it. Even though his head

must still be feeling really hollow from an absence of voices inside, the love and affection his family

has given the boy over the last few weeks and months was a better medicine than anything else could

ever be.

It was around June, that Imogyeran decided to take a break from his training. It was to retrieve his last

two family members:

It is time for the appearance of ‘Aran’ and ‘Raul’!!!

Well… technically ‘Aran’ has already had his appearance but…

It is time for the NEW appearance of ‘Aran’ and ‘Raul’!!!!

…

It is the end of June. In a random closed-off community within Estica, there was a master of fighting

with his bare hands. His fists were harder than steel with a heart burning like fire. Reflexes that made

even the nimblest of animals blank-eyed.

After 60 years of refining his art every single day… he got beaten up by a now nine-year old boy.

Late Happy Birthdays, Imogyeran!

To summarize, what had happened:

Imogyeran felt a little insecure without the backing of so many voices inside his head and decided to

visit the closest master of martial arts in his area. It just so happened to be this bald-headed old man

with really hard fists. Imogyeran might have been weaker than him by a lot, but with the help of Yunran

and Dogogo, the amount of internal energy (from now on called Lacritia in Leffejim’s language) in his

fists was just too high for a human with average talent to beat.

It was by no means an easy fight and Imogyeran got socked in the gut multiple times during their fight

but ultimately he was the winner.

Imog still decided to take a 5-day crash-course on fighting from the old man and did some

reconnaissance on Kasanova’s whereabouts and current level of strength.

As it turns out, the guy has not left Medalia village or at least he is still currently in that village.

Yunran is the one responsible for reconnaissance and her natural abilities allow her to remain

undetected as long as she remains outside a certain distance around Kasanova’s estate.

Since it seems, that Kasanova and his son have an intention of participating in this year’s Insigniae

Magnae, there is no need to search them out separately. Instead, Imogyeran hands the traveling duties

over to Dogogo and Gondo and takes on a journey worth a couple of weeks while doing his best to get

stronger. In all honesty, this is the way it always has been. This is Imogyeran’s life in a shell of water:

Transparent, straightforward and, in its own way, beautiful.

… Also, Imogyeran took a short detour at a certain wandering circus he came across to greet one of his

few friends in life. But the resolution to the Galatasa-Circus will be delayed until after his job at

Medalia is finished.

…