Kryss turned away from the keyboard - the world remained the same as usual, so far as he could see. Same political BS, same social BS, same crime rates, ect. The only real uptic he saw was in his own stock accounts - he'd had a good day on the money front - at least according to the futures market, actual Monday morning trading wouldn't start for a few hours yet. Logging in to Etrade, he brought up his portfolio. Yes, the effect was there - he could feel a few stocks that he was drawn to or needed to get away from, so he had placed the orders for execution on market open.

Still feeling awake and energized, he started cleaning up the ritual area. He felt sure he had done about all he could with the current patterns he had made, and started with the books, picking up and sorting them back onto shelves. A few titles really stood out - "The Magic May Return, by Niven" and "The Great Explosion, by Eric Frank Russell" made him stop and think more about goals and consequences involved in what he was doing. Just picking up The Keys of Enoch made him feel confused and dizzy, while Illusions brought clarity - no wonder they had been balanced against each other, he thought.

Some things he just threw out, like the rose representing the Church of Divine Man (creating and destroying roses was their thing, after all), and bits of sage and mint. Most he filed away, like gaming maps, Reiki symbol patterns, all the gaming toys and figurines, and assorted collectibles.

Several times in the cleanup, he tried using Imbue, finding that its main effect was to amplify Awareness with regard to the target - i.e. a very basic diagnostic spell, which also seemed quite versatile. The more he used it, the more his "impressions" or "feelings" about the target solidified towards "knowing" details about it that would otherwise not be obvious. It even identified one of his game computers as having a nasty virus, but wasn't quite specific enough for him to fix it - yet. He also found out that frequent use blurred results and made him start guessing instead of "knowing". With his current skill, about 2 castings an hour was all he could expect optimal results from, and more than 10 made any results near-useless.

He also found that any target of Imbue remained "connected" to him in the back of his mind until he intentionally severed the connection. At last, cleanup mostly done, it was dawn Monday morning and he drove home. The cats, Shadow and Midnight, welcomed him eagerly - especially when he opened fresh cans of food for them. Then he ran a hot bath and just soaked for an hour - removing all the leftover gunk from his cleansing.

Laying down afterwards, he just relaxed, letting his mind wander. As he let go of direction and intention, he started to feel all the connections he had formed today - but they faded away when he tried to actually think about them. Relaxing again, he drifted off for a few hours, just letting things wash over him without trying to pick apart the details.

Waking up, the first thing that struck him was knowing exactly where his cats were. That wasn't exactly hard, as they were both in the bed with him, but the detail and certainty of that knowing was surprising. Still without opening his eyes, he again brought up his "Status" display. It was mostly the same, with a slightly larger red bubble and more tine lightning bolts. And there was a sub-skill to Imbue now called "diagnose". Using it on himself, he was momentarily flooded with information he just couldn't follow - some kind of full-body holographic image flooded with intricate colors, flows and patterns. Ok, well, he could tell this was a fantastic ability, but obviously understanding his body was far, far beyond him. Maybe start small?

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An hour later, he found that he could, somewhat, comprehend the "diagnose" of a single patch of skin maybe 1/4 inch across, and even that was stretching his mind with all the diverse life forms, cell patterns, blood flows, nerve endings, and so on. He would have to know what to look for and learn to only look at what was meaningful in order to make this ability useful on living things.

Happily, after he got up and did some basic housecleaning, he found that "diagnose" worked very well for spotting flaws or contaminations in and around ordinary household objects. When the mail came, he found it could also let him "see" inside sealed envelopes! That knowledge in hand, he decided to go shopping.

Arriving at his local Safeway, he could immediately feel energy flows around almost everyone and everything when he spent just a tiny bit of "mana" to actively observe. Most of it was faint and baffling, but there were certain currents or colors that had strong toxic feelings to them, and others that promoted harmony and drew him to them. He started making lists of the "best" feeling things, and another list of stuff to avoid. Strangely, some had BOTH feelings to them, which he assumed meant it depended how they were used or prepared. When he got to the meats area, he wished he could afford to tell people what he saw - about 20% were strongly toxic, even though a seemingly identical package right next to it might feel perfectly healthy. With eggs, about 5% were "bad eggs". Juices were much the same. Most processed foods were just "mild yuck", and tended to be the same no matter which package or brand you chose. Most fresh veggies were good stuff, but there were random strong toxins mixed in here and there.

After an hour and a half in the store, Kryss went home with a large load of "good" and "neutral" foods, including snacks to bring along to his evening gaming group meeting. While tempted to share some of his discoveries with his friends, he had very little real "proof" yet, and only 2 of the group were really long-term friends of his. Maybe the Thursday group, he thought to himself. Meanwhile, maybe he could learn some of what these energy flows indicated during the course of the game session.

Checking in on his "status", his red bubble had grown, and "Basic Awareness" was now "Basic Awareness 2", which certainly seemed to fit his improvement in how he could "see" and "feel" the energy flows around him. Also "Origin" now showed "Innate sensitivity" as a sub-feature, and it seemed to be a constant effect, not something that used mana or needed to be activated.

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Unknown to Kryss, a psychology grad student at the local university was looking over the day's Zener Card results - the usual "ESP test" indulgence his prof gave to first-year psych students. Today, they were showing a serious improvement spike, which meant he was going to have to look into who was cheating, and how. An 8% increase wasn't unheard of in statistics, but with over 200 recorded sessions, it was nothing to ignore.