Qi flowed through the stone like a sound wave. Noem tapped his fingers against the programmable material and blew out a heavy breath, then pulled back what he’d put into it. He’d been going about it slightly the wrong way. He’d tried to force a huge amount of Qi into the stuff to completely saturate it, but that wasn’t how anything worked. Dash only targeted the muscles it needed to work. Heavy Blow concentrated on his skin, and worked through whatever it needed to deliver a… well, a heavy blow.

The traces through the stone were equivalent to its muscles. Noem needed to ignore the stone itself, and focus on giving it the proper commands to make it do exactly what he needed. And nothing more. That would take a fair amount of experimentation, but the knowledge he’d hopefully gain would end up more than make up for the time spent. He needed to feel exactly how the matter responded to his Qi, how it responded to each individual skill, and how he could manipulate it without actually touching it.

“It’s a starting point, at least.” Noem said to himself and wrapped both of his hands around the stone. He glanced up at The Artisan, just in case she had anything else she wanted to say, but it seemed like she’d said her piece for now. “Alright, then, let’s try stuff.”

Noem completely stepped away from the still firing projectiles and walked around to safety. He pressed one hand to the slab and kept the other on the mass of stone he’d pulled out, and focused on the Qi he’d left in the slab. All the wasted potential that was washing away to join The Artisan’s massive network of Qi and control. The sensation was overwhelming, but in a way that Noem could understand. Like looking out over the horizon at the massive world he lived in, but was such a small part of.

The stone did absolutely nothing as he forced his Qi only through the traces that coursed through it. The equivalent of the stone’s muscle fibres, where the actual stone was the bones and whatever was responding to his Qi was the nerves. He needed to command the muscles to move the bone, and strengthen them wherever he needed them to be. His Qi was the signal. But he didn’t understand how that signal was transmitted and understood by the material.

“Maybe I shouldn’t think so hard.” Noem mumbled to himself. “Bonded skills are pretty much imagination made real, so maybe this follows the same logic. Or… maybe I need to tap into the stone’s brain. Which is either my brain or my system.”

He nodded to himself and took his left hand off the slab. “System, open and–”

Noem paused. His Qi was supposed to be able to connect with technology, which included his system. A single command sent through Qi would be a whole lot faster than a spoken voice command, and if he could summon things from his inventory without the shortcuts he’d built into very specific motions, he could expand his arsenal beyond the five or so things he had shortcuts for.

“Think of it like a skill. What do I need to do, how do I need to force my Qi to move, and what’s the perfect end result if everything actually works?” Noem swiped open his interface and tabbed over to his inventory. It was a mess of words at the moment, and all of his shortcut commands had been destroyed thanks to his relocation, but he knew what it felt like to use them. He could use that.

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Tingling Qi built up at Noem’s fingertips, and he pressed them together in a simple tent. The sensation passed between his fingers and amplified with every single loop, growing from its own power and into something that wasn’t quite applicable to his body. Which was exactly what he needed. He needed to completely distance himself from his Qi, so he could feasibly let go and force it through his system. Not just out of his hand and into the stone.

“Dissociation. That’s what I need.”

Noem built his Qi up until it was a mass of whirring power that coursed through him like a foreign entity. A hyperpowered version of Dash mixed with Heavy Blow that had more in common with a buzzsaw than anything else his body could produce. A deadly flow of Qi that he barely recognized as his own, which was perfect.

He focused on the stone in one hand and his system on his other arm. The entire quarry cavern was his inventory now, so with a quick tap of Qi, he registered the stone to be a recognizable entity. It wasn’t difficult, and even with the not-skill ripping through his fingers, his concentration didn’t so much as falter. Because it wasn’t a part of him. It was his power, his Qi, but in a form that was completely unusable for him.

His thumb snaked up through his fingers. All of his thoughts concentrated on the sensation of Qi, and of the system interface pressed to his arm. Two foreign entities he was more than used to using, and that he could now meld together in harmony. Just like his Qi and his body when he’d started out.

This wasn’t something brand new; it was an extension of what he’d always been doing. Forcing Qi into somewhere it wasn’t necessarily meant to go, and working through the bumps and setbacks until he was strong enough not to care. Noem smiled and snapped his thumb through the loop of Qi, then forced the buzzing mass of dangerous power down his arm and into his interface. He needed it to work like a digital signal. To give simple commands that, when put together, formed far more complex outputs.

Qi raged through his interface. The display fuzzed and crackled like it was under some serious interference, then cleared and glowed the marigold of The Artisan’s Qi accents. His system itself shifted and rearranged itself, shuffling tabs and already organized windows into something slightly different, yet wholly more readable. Sensations came down through the connection he’d jump-started with the intense burst of Qi, and somehow, Noem knew he was perfectly connected.

“Huh. First try.” He mused and sent a pulse of Qi up into his interface. As it carried no intent, it lingered in the space between digital signals before it died out and returned to his body. “Alright, so I can’t just give commands without anything behind them. Should’ve figured that out before I tried it, since it doesn’t work like that for anything else, but good to know. Now, how about…”

Noem filled a burst of buzzing Qi with the intent to summon a migraine grenade, then forced it up and into his interface. He felt it take root, and before he could react, the grenade appeared perfectly on top of his arm’s screen. Before it could fall to the ground Noem dismissed it with another intent-filled burst of Qi, this time almost reflexively, and the grenade disappeared in a flash of Qi.

“And I have to put a little more intent than just ‘give me the thing’, apparently. Or else it’ll just show up at the point the closest to the command.” Noem rationalized, then sent one final pulse of Qi into his interface. This one carried the desire for a migraine grenade plus the image of it appearing in his empty palm. A puff of Qi and a weight in his hand heralded his success.

He grinned and opened his palm to reveal a migraine grenade. Without anything visibly wrong with it. He pulled the pin and tossed it over the cliff, and a detonation of light, sound, and Qi proved that nothing had indeed been wrong with it. The first steps of control were lit. Wireless connection through his system interface was achieved.

All that was left was the hard part.