Jess, unsurprisingly, was not amused by Alex’s dramatic presentation, “How is that going to work with the uneven spheres?”
“I don’t know,” Alex shrugged, “I’m figuring this out as I go.”
“Good luck,” Jess replied, “Sounds like a pain to get right.”
She wasn’t wrong. There were a few immediate problems that Alex could see himself running into.
The primary one was timing. If he fully Refined one sphere but was still only partway through the others, what would be the result? Would the entire thing collapse immediately, or would he have a buffer of time to complete the others?
His earlier experiences might imply that it would be the second. He’d worked his way through a good chunk of a second sphere several times, after all. If that was because the instability he introduced kickstarted an eventual collapse, then he should have some time to work with. This was his ideal scenario since it gave him some amount of wiggle room.
The alternative was that it would immediately collapse, which would mean that he needed to balance how quickly he worked on each aperture. If the individual spheres needed to stay balanced, it shouldn’t be impossible for him to manage balancing them. The problem was that the spheres were already uneven, which meant that Refining them at the same rate wouldn’t actually keep them in sync.
Instead, he’d have to adjust how quickly he refined each component sphere depending on how well-constructed the main sphere was. The more lopsided the spheres, the more he’d have to change his pace.
There was a final option, which was that the individual spheres were less important than the overall structure. In that case, it was possible that the apertures would collapse when he was approaching the halfway mark. If that was the case, it was impossible for him to successfully refine an aperture.
That wasn’t worth spending too much time thinking about. It would quickly become apparent whether or not that was the case as he continued to experiment, as he would continue to fall short around the same point. If that happened, he’d have to just accept defeat. Refining an aperture all at once would likely be beyond him until he was already Tier 2. At that point, why bother with Tier 1 materials?
Of course, what was impossible with the poor apertures might be simple with the good ones. Alex had three apertures that were close to perfectly symmetrical to work with at this point, and the only reason he didn’t plan to use any to experiment was that they could all be turned into an aperture for someone in New Chicago. The macabre origin wouldn’t mean much to someone who needed the boost to keep up with the Path’s rapidly escalating demands.
If he could sell the aperture to some Neophyte, he’d take home a sizable number of credits. He doubted the Stirlings would continue to outfit them in the future when they became adventurers, so money would quickly become important. They’d been a great help so far, but their structured two delves a day life hadn’t really felt that adventurous.
“How are you gonna approach it?” Alex was drawn out of his thoughts by Anthony’s question, and he was a bit surprised that the healer had decided to distract Jess further.
He glanced over at the girl, but she didn’t react to the noise, so he assumed it was fine, “Well, I figure I’ll try it out and see what I need to work on. I doubt I’ll be successful on my first try, even if I spend extra time practicing.”
“Isn’t that just wasting resources?” Anthony frowned, “I get that we have a lot, and we’ll probably find more at this rate, but still. It’s not like we’ll be able to come back when we run out.”
That was a good point.
“What if I use my Minor Skill Guidance?” The words came out of Alex’s mouth as they popped into his head, “It’s not like working with my mana type and improving my control would be a waste.”
Generally, it wasn’t recommended to use your Guidance right away after tiering up. Anthony helpfully reminded Alex why that was, “You could, but you haven’t really pushed your limits at all as a Neophyte.”
Guidance was never truly wasted, but the conventional wisdom was that you should only use it after you had already gotten as far as you could without it. That didn’t mean as soon as progress slowed down, either. Struggling past a surmountable challenge might allow you to push through an unbreachable bottleneck. Alex and the others had been an exception at Tier 0 since they were rushing and didn’t want to waste the rewards, but they weren’t under the same restraints at Tier 1.
“You’re right,” Alex nodded, “Just a thought.”
Anthony shrugged, “I get the appeal. I could probably knock out a few Enhancements in a day or two if I used the Skill Guidance, but it’s just a waste.”
“I get it,” Alex said, “I already agreed.” He grinned to show that he wasn’t actually annoyed by Anthony repeating himself.
“My bad,” Anthony replied, “I’m around if you want to bounce ideas off anyone.”
Alex winced a bit internally, didn’t seem like his grin had gotten the ‘not actually annoyed’ message across, “No problem, man. You’re good. I’ll let you know.”
Having pushed Anthony away, although his friend didn’t seem angry with him, Alex was left to figure things out himself. With the Guidance plan discarded, he was left with doing things the normal way.
Practice.
Anthony had been right that burning through the apertures was a waste, but just empty practice wouldn’t get Alex anywhere fast. Without experimenting on an aperture, Alex couldn’t be completely sure what he needed to work on.
He could make a good guess, though. The best place to start was with his multitasking. Alex was decently proficient with controlling his mana to do more than one thing at once, but working on four things at once was beyond his Tier 0 skills.
He was almost certain he could do it now, after gaining a Mythic Baptism, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d pick up on it immediately. It could easily take days of practice, especially if he was just working on it freehand. The Academy’s training aids were quite literally worlds away, so it was the apertures or nothing.
Or was it?
The apertures weren’t the only items they’d procured so far on this planet. There were also plenty of mana veins to be found as well. Alex had to assume they were significantly less fragile, so he’d be unlikely to break them even if he did mess up.
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There was a chance that he would degrade the structure enough to make parts of the thread non-functional, but they could be separated without losing much value. Higher-tier crafters would be able to use them in arrays regardless.
“Anthony,” Alex spoke up, cognizant of the fact that it had hardly been a minute since his friend had shut down their conversation.
“Yeah?” Anthony asked.
“What if I practice with the mana veins? They’ll be more sturdy, and Refining them should make them more valuable.”
Anthony turned around, “That’s a good idea. I agree that they should be able to take whatever you put them through.”
Alex nodded his head over at Jess, the question implicit in his gesture. Would she care?
Anthony shrugged back at him, his answer also clear. Ask her.
“Jess, do you mind if I use the Mana Veins for practice?” Alex asked, turning to face her as he interrupted her meditation.
Jess opened her eyes again with an annoyed frown, “No, why would I?”
“Anthony mentioned not wanting to waste apertures, and I realized I’d kind of just assumed you were both fine with me working on the loot.”
“As long as I get the best aperture you manage to Refine, I’m on board,” Jess shrugged, “Anthony isn’t wrong, but I don’t care too much about lost apertures. We’re gonna run out of space in our bags if we keep on finding these gravesites.”
Alex hadn’t considered that but he decided not to use it to press for using the apertures to practice. He and Jess were both obviously biased in favor of Refining the apertures sooner rather than later, and Anthony’s point was still a good one. What if they didn’t find any more gravesites?
With that settled, Alex pulled several of the long strands out of his pack. Laying them down on the ground in front of him, they were almost hard to see thanks to their small size. The condensed mana stuck out to his Sensitivity, but the veins were so thin that it still wasn’t much.
Alex wasn’t really one for gestures when it came to mana manipulation. He resumed a lotus position, his hands remained on his knees as he called forth the mana in his body and got to work.
Immediately, he failed. The effort required to maintain four strands of mana outside of his body went beyond his expectations, and the mental strain broke his focus.
Undeterred, Alex tried again and was again surprised by how difficult it was to manage. Multitasking was a learned skill, one that he’d spent dozens of hours practicing over the years. Focusing on four separate tasks at once was near impossible with a human mind, but attributes went a long way.
He quickly began to adjust to the difficulty, but the control was nowhere near as smooth as if he was focused on just one thing. Instead of working on the Mana Veins, Alex took a step back. He’d lamented the lack of any training aids, but it seemed that he’d been a bit overzealous. He wasn’t yet at the point where he needed any items to push his skill.
Anthony had probably seen this coming, maybe he’d tried some Neophyte mana control exercises himself and struggled to adjust already? Regardless, he’d clearly been right to push Alex away from the apertures at first. For now, it was enough to just practice weaving mana about in the air.
Alex’s mana exited his body through his stomach, quickly separating into four strands marginally thicker than the Mana Veins in front of him. He worked to constrict the strands further while he created patterns in the air in front of him.
The only Neophyte mana control exercise Alex knew off the top of his head involved using strands of mana to create a simple braid. It wasn’t meant to stump anyone, but adding more strands could quickly cause problems. Most Tier 1s would be neophytes in truth when it came to controlling mana outside of their body, so the exercise was meant as a starter. It had the added benefit of preparing a Pathwalker to create Mana Veins in the future.
Alex’s attributes were high enough that creating a braid would be simple to the point of boredom, so he pushed himself a bit harder than was standard. Instead of a braid, he started creating different knots with two of the strands. Far from a pre-Arrival boy scout, Alex only knew two complex knots thanks to graduates who had suggested he learn a few. The real difficulty didn’t come from the complexity of the knots, though.
His challenge was tying knots while he directed the other two strands separately. He wasn’t yet confident in tying two knots at once, so the other two strands were moving around his head in wavy arcs.
Alex took a deep breath, but the strands of mana under his control didn’t stutter. He had cut off the mana he was feeding into them, forcing him to also focus on preventing the mana from slipping away. Doing so forced him to slow down, but he wouldn’t settle for second rate mana control just because he had enough mana to get away with being sloppy.
Time slipped away as Alex dove into his practice headfirst. Tying one knot soon grew easy enough to manage as Alex grew used to the mental burden brought on by multitasking. He sped back up as he went, but soon found that didn’t increase the challenge enough to stump him.
Attempting to tie two knots without slowing down again quickly brought him up short, and the mana under his control slipped away as he lost track of a strand momentarily. The mistake broke his focus, and he opened his eyes while breathing in once more.
Jess was still in her own meditative position, and a quick glance showed that she already had the beginnings of an Enhancement. Alex noticed a rune related to Toughness and figured that she was probably creating the healing Enhancement she’d mentioned earlier.
It made sense for the Enhancement to be on her mind if she was planning to create it herself. Impressive that she had the design memorized, but she had spent an extra day preparing for the trial compared to him. Clearly, that time hadn’t gone to waste.
Anthony nodded a greeting at seeing Alex roused from his focus. He was visibly bored but didn’t complain. Alex had spent more time as the sentry earlier, after all.
Having checked his surroundings, Alex took another breath and went back to his practice. He immediately jumped to weaving two knots, though his pace was less than half what he’d worked up to earlier. The rhythm he’d fallen into earlier quickly returned, and his control continued to improve.
This practice wasn’t really pushing his limits, thanks to attributes and multitasking training. Instead, he was just practicing to make use of abilities he already had. His progress was undeniably fast, but it was basically the soul attribute version of the training they did to acclimate to their attributes.
Once again, finding the limits of his attributes and pushing through any mental barriers proved to be one of Alex’s strengths. The initial mental strain he’d felt was actually around the same as what he felt now, even though he was working significantly harder.
Time passed, and Alex let it slip away. Training had always been soothing for him, and the introduction of Refine only reinforced that tendency. He let his brain take a break, focusing on his mana practice instead of the stress he’d been feeling.
Alex’s meditative state was nearly broken by surprise at just how good it felt to relax. Sure, mana control practice where you steadily pushed harder until you reached your limit wasn’t exactly resting, but he felt more relaxed than he had in weeks.
His mind didn’t really wander, but he let himself slow down a bit to just reflect on how high-strung he’d been. How stressed he still was, honestly.
The past few weeks of his life had been a disaster and an unprecedented blessing. He’d been forced to move so fast that he’d never really decided how he felt about some of the things that had happened.
That would have to come another time, he decided. Probably in a conversation with an Academy-trained therapist. If there was one that he could talk to regarding his feelings about New Chicago’s hero.
“Alex, it’s time to sleep,” Jess’s voice broke Alex’s state of mind and he opened his eyes to see her standing in front of him. Her progress on her Enhancement had moved forward a few steps, but there was still a good amount of work to be done.
The sky above had been dark for a bit, by now, and a quick glance showed that Anthony was already at least laying down.
“Did I miss you guys swapping out?” Alex asked.
“Yes, but unlike some people I know how to be quiet,” Jess smirked at him.
That wasn’t an argument he was going to win.