Status, I thought, again. I had figured that trick out during my counting.

Experience: 1

Mana: 1/1.

Mana Regeneration: 1 per 24 hours.

I smile at the thoughts. I have an idea that there is more to this, more to discover, and it annoys cold thoughts. IT is a bit weird to think of a foreign entity in my thoughts as a thing, but put yourself in my position.

I wake up without much of a body, in an existence that does not sleep, can count insanely high (not like I have anything else to do), and is prevented by a sort of foreign thoughts, in their own HEAD MIND YOU; from enjoying a nice relaxing cussing.

Believe me, I tried.

This brings up another new point. There are holes in my memory.

Take my name. Charlie.

I remember clearly that this was not my name. That I in fact had a gender. I enjoyed it very much, with all the assumed benefits it carried. So at some time in the before I had a name, a gender, presumably also a body that was not rock shaped….

It was robbed of me.

I think of cold thoughts, and my thoughts are a pit of hate. Unable to remember basic cussing, I am forced to seethe, and cuss in the abstract. I Think about poop. Biting into poop. Take that, cold thoughts. How you like peeping on my own thoughts now. I enjoy my moment of hate. I do not know cold thoughts, or if cold thoughts is even real, but I hate cold thoughts. I wish all the bad things that could happen would happen to cold thoughts, and cold thoughts alone.

I notice that the strange thing is, I am not able to think potent profanity. I think rude concepts. Yea, take that, cold thoughts. You have not broken me yet.

I resign myself to rationality. The last interaction with cold thoughts gave me good advice, and confirmed my suspicions.

1. “24 hours”. PER 24 hours. That means, I am in a place that has roughly the timeframe that feels right. 24, that is 8+8+8. 3*(2^3).

2. 86.400. That is the amount of seconds in 1 day. A day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is 60 seconds. 60*60*24= 86400. So, the rate at which my stone can blink is once per second.

3. I am weird. It feels right for me to like doing maths, I am happy doing maths, (as much as I can be happy, given the circumstances), but I should not.

I can do maths. I remember being good at maths. Maths, I remember (But cussing and potent vulgar profanity seems off limits)is a language. No. Yes. Okay. Maths CAN be used as a language. THis helps me a bit.

For everything else, you need a body. Things function in relation. If I know 3 objects, I can start making assumptions. 2 objects, and it gets tricky.

So, IN comes math, and goes, you know what, you can use me. I only rely on myself.

Instead of having digits, and going, one digit and another digit is the same as two digits, maths goes, and is all, 1+1=2. The symbols stand in for the digits.

This is what is called self referential. If I spend the entire time here, however long it will be, thinking about things I don’t do, can ‘t do, or don’t have access to, I am in trouble. I prefer to think about things I can do.

I check the stone. IT has stopped blinking fast. I can assume that it is because higher level thinking in new concepts is more complex. One thought in higher level thinking is like a thought in lower level thinking. Despite it being more complex, it only counts as one.

That sets me on a nice basis. If I can think progressively deeper thoughts, I can get the count.

The more I think, the more the rock seems to grow. The more complex I am able to think.

I hesitate to make a relationship between complex thinking and growing. IT does not feel right, that just because I was small, I was stupid. I …. I felt like large did not necessarily mean smart as well.

So far, everything seemed to fit into holes that I could understand.

Everything except Mana.

It was not a term in maths. Mana was… weird. Weird, in the same way, like I was weird for maths.

It was time for logic. Logic I knew as well.

What could mana refer to?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I had to guess. What I knew about mana was very little.

Time was an easy concept. Time was a passage in between actions. Not everything can happen at once.

However, time was useless here. I could not take advantage of time. After all, I could not ….

I stopped myself. I COULD do something.

I went back and examined the flow. Flow, it seemed, was a constant. IF the drop rate of my setup was a constant as well….

I used my focus to draw a circle of stillness around myself, and waited. Examining it, and the drops gave me an idea of how far apart two drops were. That was a unit of distance.

Next, I looked at how much a piece of stillness reacted.

This gave me the observation that stillness, the second I no longer used it, became flow.

Flow….

I felt the speed of my counting diminish, and looked over to the drops, who were still falling as regularly as they had been. Only my counting seemed to have lost its speed. I reacted with the speed of desperation, and used my focus to dig a channel into the stillness. It felt awful. I almost breathed a sigh of relief when I felt the flow again, if SOMEONE (looking at you here, cold thoughts) had not taken residence in my head and ruined the experience of waking up without a body. .

So, now, the observation from before made sense. My rock took in flow, and turned it to stillness. Stillness was eradicated over time, and became flow. Too little flow, and I stopped working at full speed. I was content with that.

It meant, for better or for worse, the rock was me, and I needed flow. At least, until I figured out how to make it better.

I stopped myself.

Used up in activity…. Present everywhere….

What I called flow could be potential. Like…. IF I …. You know what, instead of being crass about it, let's stick with that. Potential. That sounded reasonably scientific.

Potential, I was reasonably sure, was work that could be done. For some odd reason, the concept of work made me happy. So, okay, we had a sort of measuring system going.

Work over the area of effect was potential.

Now, was potential mana?

Two ways were open.

One was to use up as much potential as I could. The second it dropped to zero, I would have my confirmation.

Two was the opposite.

Maximise the flow in an area. Make sure the flow is as big as possible.

Having no flow felt awful, (and I felt reasonably certain it would be a bad idea for too long) so I decided for the latter.

My first layout was a fort of funnel. A V shape to funnel flow into my rock. Progress. The rock did not move, but I felt a bit better. I stopped, and carefully wiped away the evidence of my labours. I start feeling average again.

Increase the flow…. I feel better.

Decrease the flow… I feel worse.

Okay. I had a system confirmed.

My stone was growing at a nice specific rate. The blinking, then the incremental glowing.

Now, if only I had the possibility of

UPGRADE LAYER ONE?

Cold thoughts?

I winced. I had to do something about the volume.

…

Okay, no answer. Let's assume it follows the same language I speak. Layer. That was a bit too abstract to make guesses.

Cold thoughts?

How do I address myself? Well, fuck it, to use one of the less potent profanities available to me, I had nothing better to do.

Cold thoughts, can you help me, define layer one, please.

No need to be overly rude, I thought. I wanted something from it.

LAYER ONE. UPGRADE. QUESTIONMARK.. YES NO .

I braved the loud and cold thoughts. Cold thoughts seemed a bit simplistic.

Cold thoughts, I need additional info. Will this layer one upgrade give me additional info?

I waited for a sec.

LAYER ONE IS NOT FOR ADDITIONAL INFO. LAYER ZERO IS FOR ADDITIONAL INFO.

I can upgrade Layer Zero?

YES.

How?

This time, the pause was longer.

LAYER ZERO UPGRADE?

I waited a second. The dialogue seemed familiar. Upgrade. To make it better. To improve.

LAYER ZERO UPDATE. PLEASE STAND BY.

…

DONE.

I tried the trick I had spent a lot of time Perfecting.

Status?

This time, something massive had changed.

“Name: Charlie.

Gender: neutral.

Level: 0.

Experience: 0/2

Mana: 0.001/2 “

Mana Regeneration: 1 per 24 hours.

I celebrated internally. IF cold thoughts had been within reach, there would have been a smooch. If appendages had been in play, ….

Okay, back to the drawing board. The Layer Zero update had done a few things.

* My rock now glowed less bright. In fact, it barely glowed at all.

* My perception was a bit sharper. More crisp around the edges, more detailed.

* If cold thoughts was not a liar, I had just spent Experience.

I felt happy. That was progress. I tried my luck again.

Cold thoughts, upgrade Layer Zero.

No response.

Upgrade Layer Zero Please?

No response.

I forced myself to focus. And found that I could not.

“INSUFFICIENT MANA. ”

Okay. That was new. I had heard that. I mean, I did not know what I had used to hear with, but it was… audible. At least to me. No longer cold thoughts.

Pleasure.

I went full out, and started to work again. I used my focus to create an intricate network of a channel, to guide flow to the rock, while I counted. When I reached high enough numbers, the blinking began again. Okay, so the number trick was only partially good. It provided a good long series of low complexity thoughts that caused the stone to blink. Keep the stone blinking for long enough, I would get an upgrade again.

I stop myself, and examine.

Hrm…. I can now differentiate between the past and the present. I guess it makes sense. I am upgraded, my thought processes are more complex. Not a bad thing, at all.

I note down, the layer 0 upgrade gives me a better definition.

On a whim, I shift my focus around, and find out, my rock, now a ball of stately largeness, a big boi, still is in the middle of an area that has nothing in it. Ah well. Something gained, something lost.

I bear the thought, until I get an idea.

I look at the rock.

CORE.

That is also new.

Core makes sense, though. Core means something in the middle of. My area is around the core. I can shift my focus around the area, but the core is in the middle. I think I can work with that. My Rock is now Core.

I rub my thoughts together, and resolve myself to counting. It’s not as if I have something else to do.

Upgrades , today's lesson, are good. Upgrades work by experience. Experience in upgrades makes upgrades possible. Mana is work. Maths would call it vector work. It can be put anything, and it just fucking goes.

Perfect. In a way, I would keep myself busy by building up a vector. A huuuge vector. Gigantic. Biggest you have ever seen. Raging vector.