Lug went to the lake every day.

His body had healed surprisingly fast, as the Wise One had predicted.

He could use the reinforcement again.

As a result, he made ricochets with much greater strength.

His ricochets were laughable when he first started, but after only a few days he was able to send a stone to the other side of the lake.

The lake was very long, but only about a hundred meters wide.

It was on this hundred meters that Lug was training.

But he knew that this was only the simplest step.

Throwing a pebble away was not what he was there for.

It was necessary that he could make it return.

First, he tried to change his way of throwing the stone.

"There must be a technique, a law of physics that makes it come back" he thought.

So he placed a large rock on the other side of the lake.

He thought he could bounce a stone against the rock, so that it would come back to him.

It was naive.

Either he threw the stone too hard and it broke, or it sank just after hitting it’s target.

After several tries, he gave up.

He went to lie down on the grass that was growing at the edge of the lake.

The sun was still shining on the calm water, it was shortly after noon.

A light breeze caressed Lug's hair.

"How long has it been since I've enjoyed a moment of peace and quiet?" he wondered.

Immediately a feeling of guilt came over him.

"No, I have to make progress. I don't have time for this."

He got up and went to the water.

He looked at the lake, not knowing how to tame it.

As he looked around, his eyes were drawn to a ghost on a huge boulder, near the lake.

He was on a deckchair.

It was this ghost who had told Lug about the place where Linette Parnac had buried her picture.

He decided to go and talk to him again.

As he approached, he realized that he had a small umbrella that hid his face.

He had a red bathing suit, flip-flops were placed near him.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

He had the complete paraphernalia of the vacationer.

"Hello, all is well?" asked Lug.

The ghost looked at him by tilting his head, and didn’t say a word.

Lug decided to sit down next to him anyway.

The ghost, visibly annoyed, began to speak.

"Could you stop throwing pebbles? It's really loud!"

"Oh, sorry. I didn't think that bothered you."

"Yeah, right... Why are you even doing this?" asked the ghost.

"I'm practicing…“ Lug hesitated for a moment and then resumed. “Making the stone come back to me, somehow.”

The ghost laughed.

"Ahahah, the living are really stupid. It's not possible to make a rock come back to you," he said, wiping away a tear.

"Do you think it's possible to have a deckchair and an umbrella?" pointed out Lug.

The ghost looked around.

"Well yes, why?"

Lug didn’t reply.

He had spoken, somewhat casually.

But this absurd answer had, against all odds, given him a lead.

At that moment, Lug became interested in the materialization ability of this ghost.

"Why didn't I think of that before?" he thought.

He got up, and by densifying his psychic body, he began to touch the deckchair, then the parasol, then the flip-flops.

The ghost did not understand the situation, so he shouted.

"Stop, just stop! What are you doing?!"

Suddenly, Lug took off his shoes and socks to put on the flip-flops.

The ghost made a disgusted face when he saw Lug's bluish foot covered with wounds.

This intimidated him so much that he ceased to protest.

Lug had put on the ghost's flip-flops and tried to walk with them.

But the flip-flops were sinking into the ground and it had the same effect as being barefoot.

"No, it doesn't work..." he said, mumbling.

Then he went to take the parasol of the ghost.

He raised it and lowered it several times, as if to weigh it down.

After having done this several times, he put it back down.

"I feel its weight... But where does it come from?" he asked himself.

The ghost looked at the scene, dazed.

Lug put the ghost's things back as they were.

He then put his shoes back on and walked away, after thanking the vacationer.

"Materialization is a form of projection. The Wise One told me about projection. So the solution is here, I have to use projection to make the pebble come back..."

Lug was proud of himself, he felt he was on the right track.

He found a corner of grass, sat down with a flat stone in hand, and began to think.

"This is to densify my psychic body" he said, while densifying the psychic counterpart of his hand.

"This is to strengthen my physical body," he said, strengthening his hand slightly.

He made a small pause, by raising slightly his eyes, as if he was going to manually seek an information at the bottom of his brain.

"To materialize... Let's say... I have to visualize the result I want to achieve."

He closed his eyes.

The problem was that he had no idea what he needed to materialize to make his stone come back.

The only limit was his imagination.

But sometimes too many choices make it impossible to make a decision.

He spent the afternoon without trying anything.

On his way back to the cemetery in the early evening, he made a small detour to the military camp.

After all, it was the most impressive place in terms of materialization.

An entire camp of several dozen large red tents spread out over several hundred meters.

The winter sun was quickly disappearing on the horizon, so the camp had started to light fires to illuminate the surroundings.

A fire burned inside each tent.

The light coming through the fabric made them look alive.

The red looked organic.

It gave Lug a strange feeling.

Like he was being watched.

As if the tents could see him.

He moved away from them, too disturbed by the idea.

He waved to the two guards - he now saw regularly - and headed home.

"Something organic..."

The thought echoed in Lug.

He had succeeded in narrowing the field of possibilities.

To be effective, he needed to focus on a specific goal or idea.

He was beginning to understand that in his case, progress rhymed with mental discipline.

The more his training progressed, the more ways he found to become stronger.