Knowing that this energy the Celestial's book had been helping me gather (well, 'helping' might be a bit of a stretch, truthfully, since it was kinda doing all the work...) was quite potent was an important revelation, and it helped me figure out that something this powerful likely was meant to serve a different purpose: Cultivation! As in, growing, changing, designing, and even upgrading something. And in this case, that something was me!
It didn't take long to design something new around the concept of the 'spark of electricity' I had been meditating on, and this time I based it around permanently giving me the ability to use an ability, or power, at will - which was a lot more in line with what I had seen the red-armored soldiers doing during the recent attack. After getting my thoughts together I sent the concept to the formless 'gift' I had just gotten from the Celestial. Right away I received a response; one CP would get me a 'small spark' version of a lightning-bolt-like ability, but it would not work at range (I would have to be essentially touching my target), although I had a clear sense I could pump more points into the ability to increase both the range and the power of the spark.
I tried playing around with different effects and limitations, and I quickly came to the conclusion that how well I understood the effect I wanted - including how well I could visualize the base principles and operation of the effect - would have a big impact on the amount of energy (CP) that it would require. For example, spending a single CP while visualizing simply sending a spark from one hand to the other would produce a very small charge; however, the if I used my knowledge of electromagnetism to picture using a voltage differential across my hands as the method to create the spark, then for the same amount of energy (one CP) the spark was nearly five times more powerful!
It was pretty clear that the more I knew about something, and the clearer I could visualize the resulting effect, the more efficient my usage of CP would be. I had no idea why this was the case, but at the moment it didn't seem to matter much why it was happening, only that I knew how to make the best of the situation. Maybe any theoretical blanks in my comprehension were being compensated for somehow, requiring more energy; or maybe that was just how this weird magical universe-qi-energy operated, and knowledge really was power!
Or, at least, knowledge unlocked power.
Wait, was this my 'path'? Knowledge is power, power is knowledge... hmmm. It was undoubtedly worth keeping in mind.
Either way, at this point things were looking a LOT like a real-life point-buy role-playing game, where my underlying comprehension of how any given 'superpower' would operate helped set the energy cost of the relevant ability. It was exciting and certainly a relief as if there was one thing I was good at, it was power-gaming the heck out of a role-playing game system! I absolutely loved optimizing character builds, and back on Earth would happily spend hours learning a system by playing around with different options and having fun with the numbers. I even used to operate a YouTube channel (with a modest following) where I would post build guides for various single-player video games. I was generally known as a team player, and my goal was that everyone had fun – therefore my favorite builds were typically well-rounded and designed around a specific theme rather than a weakness in the rules. That was part of the challenge, and what made it interesting for me. This time, however, it was unmistakably a different situation since my life was literally on the line, and I would have to be mindful that there were no second chances... unless I wanted to get reincarnated again. No thanks!
It was time for proof of concept! When I focused on actually going ahead with the spark ability, spending one CP for a very basic version, there was a deluge of information about what I must do to make the ability real. It turned out that it wasn’t as simple as just deciding to allocate my points, but I supposed that made sense: This was real life, not some kind of game, after all. Complex instructions appeared in my mind, and I began to follow them without hesitation - I had already decided to try this out, and there was no point in holding back now. The energy contained in the single point of CP had to be spread throughout my body in specific ways, but I will able to take my time and carefully visualize the energy as it formed overlapping patterns that were broken down into straightforward steps.
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Once I finished there was a final bit of feedback: Minor Shock was listed as '40% trained', and it would be fully usable at 100%. Interesting, so I had the ability, but I had to learn how it worked. In addition, I could tell that spending an additional 4 CP (which added to 5 in total) on the ability would upgrade it further, increasing the power while also allowing it to operate at a limited range. Alternatively, I was able to scrap the ability and salvage some of the CP spent, but the losses would be at least 30% of the original energy spent.
I returned to my body to see if I could figure out how to get Minor Shock working, but I heard Mom moving around the room and decided to wait for a more appropriate time. I was already pretty lucky that she hadn't tried to wake me up while I was busy, since I had spent a lot more time meditating than I had originally planned.
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The next few days went by quickly, and by the end of the week I was able to produce my little spark at will. Picturing the build-up of potential between my hands, and the resulting electric arc leap between them, was still pretty slow and took much of my concentration. I was getting better and better at it the more I practiced, but it was difficult to find a safe time when I could safely summon a little zap of electricity without freaking out my parents. My new ability was not very loud, yet each time I summoned it there was a faint noise accompanied by a brief flash of light.
*zap*
I had been mildly apprehensive at first since I wasn't certain that it wouldn't hurt my hands to have a jolt of electricity pass through them, but I had the impression that I would have been made aware of the danger if that was a possibility because I had a strong sense that only my hands were safe. I hadn't risked testing this anywhere else on my body yet, since even though I knew it wouldn't do me any serious harm there still might be a small mark or minor burn that would alert Mom that something was wrong. The last thing I wanted was for her to decide that I needed to be further scrutinized or watched for odd behavior since it was only recently that I had managed to allay her fears over how non-vocal I tended to be (baby babble just seemed pointless to me, and I knew it was too early for me to start speaking yet).
My most interesting discovery came on the third day I had access to the Celestial's gift. I was getting tired of having to meditate and enter my astral meditation soul-cloud every time I wanted to check on my ability (to see how close to 100% I was getting), and I had wondered if there was any way to access or view things while staying in my body – like how the message the Celestial had sent kind of just popped up into my field of view, and Mark had mentioned that he hadn't been meditating or doing anything special when it popped up for him as well. It seemed like a goal that was worth working towards, at the very least.
I spent the day with mom as usual, me playing and listening to her chatter away, her keeping busy around the house (it’s amazing how much dust gets in here), with breaks for feeding and walks to buy food or just get some air. From what I could see of the other families in our village, most parents just set their kids in a pen and left them to their own devices, or tied them to their backs and seemingly forgot about them as they carried about their business. Mother was a lot more proactive with me than that, which was both a blessing and a curse at this point (it helped me learn the language, and it was... nice having someone take care of me, but it left me a lot less time to work on my own cultivation related projects).
During my small amount of free time that day, I tried dozens of different ways to access things without resorting to a relatively lengthy meditation session, but nothing worked. No tingle, no mysterious feedback, and certainly no pop-up windows. Then, at night, when I finally had a chance to meditate uninterrupted, I tried to see what I could access while fully focused, but not fully sending my consciousness into my soul-cloud and disconnecting from my body. Again, nothing.
I finally had a breakthrough when I decided to try another track and sent my mind into my astral body, where I could freely access the soul-link and the bizarre feedback-information-system the Celestial had attached to it: I wished there was a status or abilities menu that I could easily flip through when I was awake – and suddenly I saw how to make it real. It wasn't all that dissimilar to when I tried designing the 'Minor Shock' ability (which was the name I decided on), but it required a lot less energy because it wasn't intended to affect the outside world at all; it was just for me, a visible menu system that would allow me to call up and display whatever I wanted. One strange quirk was that I wouldn't be able to alter how the menu worked while I was awake, so major changes would have to be done when I could safely meditate and access the soul-link. But at least the information displayed by the menu itself would automatically update in real-time, which was great.
Therefore I could, in effect, create a character sheet for myself!