"You OK?" Brent asked from the screen. "You look like shit. Did the breakthrough hit you harder than anyone else?"

In less than an hour, the planet had had a breakthrough, I'd thoroughly screwed myself up, had a hair-raising conversation with the alien, hopefully managed some sort of fix, and now Brent had called. Melissa answered as I was too busy trying to figure out what I'd done to myself.

But seeing as how the alien's original message this morning probably hadn't left anyone asleep all over the world, Brent being awake wasn't a surprise, I guess.

Brent looked a little haggard as he asked the question. I apparently looked worse. "Not the breakthrough." I started. My dantian still cycled, energy still flowed within me. "Did you catch the emphasis on the word energy?"

"Maybe? I honestly thought the house was on fire when the breakthrough woke me up, so I wasn't paying enough attention." Brent answered. "Did you understand more? Was it that bad?"

"I tried to ask back. And apparently haven't been using it enough, or something." I took a deep breath. "I broke something, or at least gouged a hole in my breakthrough. And the alien showed up to tell me how I was screwing myself over."

"What." Brent's voice nearly broke.

"Yeah, he showed up literally out of that presence you can ask about the world's soul." I answered. "He froze everything about my energy bleeding out of me, told me I broke the balance of my body and soul, then demanded to know how people all over the world were following my orthodoxy. Melissa showed him a tablet. He doesn't know what the internet is."

I laughed, a choked thing, at the face Brent was making. It was just as surreal on my side.

"He offered to fix me if I joined him, I told him no. He then vanished and I started breaking again. Melissa ended up helping me with pretty much the entire geode store we've got here and I think I patched myself up, but I have no clue how well."

"I'm going to have to find out who is panicking at the UN building and the White House now, but is there anything I can do for you first?" Brent asked, and I could already see him typing on his end.

"Right now?" I thought about my art of awakening, that I might have been able to do something different with it. Was that just a vestigial ability now too? "Nothing immediate, no. Maybe once you've got more time. Melissa did turn on the recorder, so we've got a few minutes clip of him I'll send to you. Whatever he was doing, we were the only ones actually talking."

"Alright, thanks. Get some sleep, or at least some rest. I'm going to have to cause some headaches." Brent looked like he was already about to start three other calls.

I nodded then hung up, then sent the video over.

"So now that everyone going to be panicking about the alien running around, what do we do?" Melissa asked from where she was sitting, watching me.

"Figure out what I did wrong and hopefully fix it." I answered with a resigned shrug. "Can you get Danny to cancel my classes or get someone else to cover them for me for a couple of days?"

"I'll cover what I can and get Danny to find someone for the rest, sure." Melissa nodded. "That's easy stuff. What else?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you. Or tell myself, at least." I chuckled a bit at my own joke. "Right now, all I've got is me and whatever pieces I'd talked out of the alien." I changed screens on the tablet, pulling up some notes.

I saw Melissa give me a long look. "I'm gonna go for a run then. Want me to grab breakfast on the way back?"

"Sure." I nodded, already getting in my own notes as Melissa left.

~~~

"Lighting my dantian, pre Gasp. When I yelled at him during the Gasp, making my second breakthrough. The first time I did the Art of Awakening, without even talking directly at him he talked to me. Asking about the Initiate's Realm." I listed off the few times I'd caught the alien's direct attention. "And tonight. Wasn't really a whole lot."

I thought back. "First time was basically congrats on not being on a false path. Second time was more exasperation on people in general. Third time was me walking a razor's edge. Last time was actual possibly useful information."

Preparing the body to energize the sleeping soul.

I tapped my fingers on the table. "Then saying tonight I screwed up my body and soul." I looked at my notes again. "That's right, I had that horrible migraine after I asked about the Initiate's Realm. I thought it was because of what I saw during that, but was it because I was at five breakthroughs when I did it? So, what? I did multiple different preparations or something?"

I cycled energy deeper and let it overflow, mentally assessing each breakthrough as my energy flowed through it, absently taking notes on my tablet as well.

The first was fine, no issues I could tell. The second breakthrough still had an imprint of energy against it, the result of shoving more than two dozen of the crystal geodes energy at my breakthrough to stem the energy bleed.

A little bit of energy passed through it to overflow into my body still, but it was a pinprick in the patch instead of the natural flow my other breakthroughs had.

Three through seven weren't messed up. Eighth... still overflowed into my body, still had the same backflow towards my dantian. But the energy itself seemed to lack nearly that same amount of refinement of energy it'd had previously.

I sighed and stood up, walking across the room. Cautiously, I overflowed specifically for that refinement and fed the momentum into Feathersteps. No difference in feeling there.

I stepped onto the wall and kept walking. So my specific momentum energy was still accessible. I stepped off the wall and reassessed. It had noticeably decreased though, even if it was rebuilding. I waited a few minutes as my energy slowly refined itself, stopping at that lower level again.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I grabbed the tablet again off the table and then fell onto the couch. "Two major problems then. The patch on my second breakthrough, and my energy not refining itself nearly enough."

No clue on how to fix the energy refining, but I had an idea on the patch. It was just uncycled energy, much like what the ELF idiots were doing to themselves because they refused to cycle it. Focusing on that patch again, I could feel the very edges of it being soaked in my energy, in my actual breakthrough. Cycling deeper as if I were building energy to try for a new breakthrough, I could feel the merger point between breakthrough and patch mesh a little more as my energy flowed faster and heavier, held internally rather than overflowing outside of me.

Hopefully it'd just be a matter of time to have the energy just become my energy again, instead of being a band-aid.

Then my body twitched in pain and I had to ease the cycling. "No forcing it then." I muttered. Instead, I just closed my eyes and concentrated on maintaining that general flow.

~~~

That evening, Brent swung by to check on me and give Melissa and I an update on what trouble he'd caused.

"Honestly, I'm glad you took video." Brent to Melissa. "According to every camera and sensor on the alien, he stayed where he was the entire time. He's still there, actually."

"What?" Melissa paused. "How the hell?"

"No clue." Brent slumped in the chair, scrubbing at his face. "Without that video, well, they'd still believe you two because it's not something you lie about, but it makes for faster belief."

"Great, so now he can be there and wherever else he wants to be at the same time?" Melissa asked.

"He already has been." I answered her from the couch. After spending all day riding the edge of how much energy I could cycle without hurting myself, I wasn't even sure how much I'd made a dint in that patch. Not to mention the exhaustion it'd given me.

Brent gave me a look. "How do you mean?"

"His 'august presence' is still here." I waved my hand around. "He noticed before when I did something without talking to him. The fact that he can apparently make a second body is scary as hell, but he's already capable of answering anyone, anywhere, who asks about the world's soul. The only place I haven't felt it is in the hidden forest."

"I hadn't thought of it that way. That's unpleasant." Brent noted.

"Speaking of things I've done," I sat up a little more, "do me a favor, Brent. Cycle as deeply as you can please. You're still third breakthrough, right?"

"Yes?" Brent answered cautiously, but did as asked. "There hasn't really been a need for me to push higher." The slow influx of energy into Brent gained depth as he cycled, pulling energy in faster even as his own overflow spilled out of him. "What are you testing?"

"Stupid things the alien said." I answered, watching the energy pull into him. "He mentioned people I personally awakened not being forced on my path."

Brent's energy slowed. "You want to try forcing me on your path? Also, aren't you hurt?"

"No, I don't want to force you onto my path. Especially if it's just another thing I didn't do but could have. I just want to know if you can do anything with my energy. I'm not going to do anything active other than sit nearer to you, so if that hurts me it's better to know now."

Saying so, I hopped off the couch and took a seat at the kitchen table with him and Melissa. "Keep cycling, tell me if anything changes for you."

My natural cycling was about a tenth of my maximum strength. A portion of that backflowed to my dantian again in the greater cycle, the rest overflowed into my body. Some of that overflow was absorbed by my body and the rest was the actual energy that left me to disappear into the greater flows around us.

Sitting next to Brent as he deeply cycled, I was basically in the eddies of energy he was pulling into himself. From what we'd seen and tested previously, one person's overflow didn't mess with another's cycling unless you were purposefully throwing energy to try to stop them. Even the testing with the people from Goodfellow a couple of weeks ago proved the same thing.

This time, however, the excess that was flowing off of me was getting caught up in Brent's cycling, pulling in with everything else.

"Huh." Brent said within moments. "I can actually feel your different energy as a separate thing when it cycles in. Though, as soon as it's out of my dantian and going to the first breakthrough it splits apart into air and water."

"Something else we missed then, huh." Melissa said, watching with interest. "Or is it just your technique taught him to pull from more than just one source of external energy?"

"Go for it." Brent offered and I got back up while Melissa scooted closer. Melissa had no issues ramping up to her maximum and pushing out over Brent's cycling.

He shook his head after a moment, confirming what we both saw. "Nothing extra there."

I snapped my fingers. "Damn. And I don't want to do any more in depth testing until I'm not hurting anymore either."

"It's an interesting trick at least." Brent nodded. "I wonder if you could supplement someone above what the earth's breakthrough level is with your overflow."

"You're not testing that anytime soon." Melissa interrupted. "You'd need to at least get one above the Earth yourself Brent, or we'd have to get someone else you've awakened Nicole. And that list wasn't very big."

"Did that reporter ever do more than ignite his dantian?" I wondered out loud.

"After you've healed. You said so yourself, Nicole." Melissa whacked my shoulder.

"I'll look into it." Brent offered, only to get a smack himself as well.