Awakening the next day there were no real new developments, his character as you would put it, had not really developed or built upon itself magically overnight. If this were a fantasy novel surely by now he should have a system, a solid understanding of what was going on or a ‘voice from god’ guiding his every direction to the inevitable harem ending. Instead here he was cloaked in fur with a small pile of weirdly shiny nuts and absolutely no clue what to do next.

The foreboding forest with its multitude of smells and ancient feel did not make him feel secure in his ‘figurative’ hole in the ground; but rather in a tree instead. He was also quite sure that the nuts themselves are slightly narcotic or at least the equivalent of 1 - 2 shots of espresso. Not that he minded the stimulus as the whole world slowed down and he could feel himself entering bullet time.

Far from being the only creature benefiting from the effects he also saw what caused the feeling of being watched yesterday. A giant bird like a cross between a woodpecker and a kingfisher he assumed; was cloaked in blue green plumage residing in the canopy along with him. The assumption came from the fact that it passed by and impaled one of his kin on another tree at such a speed he only saw a flash of blue and green.

Upon seeing that happen he promptly decided that stealth and staying out of sight was a good idea and the skill for becoming unseen was a godsend.

Continuing on his epic quest for more nuts to fuel his current addiction he scampered up a branch and plucked a few more, stuffing them inside his surprisingly roomy cheeks. Not only did they cause his energy to spike when consumed but they also seemed to fill the cool energy consumed from his core. Speaking of the core it was a ball of light if you could feel a colour or brightness as a sensation.

It was really weird; the feeling of sensing a ball of energy next to where his heart was and pulsing with waves of power, spectral tendrils reaching out to the skin from the inside.

There was also a need to make more sense of this situation. What did he want from this world? Was there a way back to where he came from? Did he want to go back? Should he carve a statue of a nut and pray to it every day? All these questions except the last one (which was a NO for now), didn’t really have clear answers at the moment.

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The most pressing issue and the one he had the most control over, was making sense of the energy flowing through his body. He sat down in his tree hollow and turned his senses to the glowing core within. Upon looking at it and really zooming in on the features its surface was like a miniature gaseous ball, a small collection of loosely held gas orbiting; something. The core was a bright spec smaller than a grain of sand; but the feeling it gave off was as if looking at a mirror, a reflection of the viewer.

If the core was a reflection of himself how could he change and manipulate it? It was a true reflection so must also reflect his skills and experiences that was why his desire to hide had triggered disconnection from sight and reality. It was a true manipulation of the core of energy based on the reflection of his desire. Desires and belief must reflect directly into mana and be imprinted into its actions, causing manifestations like a daydream appearing in reality.

The question became how far could he push this concept of reflecting himself on reality through the energy. If he could use logical thoughts to influence reality and structure them in a way that made sense to him he could achieve whatever effects he desired. As long as his belief was strong enough to reflect into the energy. What stronger thought and experience did he have than programming? something that he spent decades of his life doing.

Following this thought to its logical conclusion he imagined a logical section of code with methods to reflect and activate specific effects in reality like shape(), colour() and intensity(). He thought of the code function that would activate the effects he desired and named it illuminate(). If everything worked as intended it should create a ball of light 5cm in diameter with half intensity 1m from his face for 10 seconds at 0.5 intensity. He also did not see anything wrong with the function or any way it could go wrong.

In his mind he ran the function illuminate() and awaited its effects, fully expecting a ball of light. What he got was a small magnesium flare 5cm in diameter roughly 1m from his face that lit up the already daylight outside like it was night time and did not turn off for 10 seconds. If this was 50% brightness he did not want to see 100% because even with his eyes closed he was still blinded for all of 10 seconds as the light bled through his eyelids. The worst part by far was that it stayed 1m from his face no matter which direction he moved his head in; as if to add insult to injury.

Stars still swimming in his eyes he decided that staying in his hollow for the rest of the day and doing not much of anything would be for the best. If he was blinded by the flash of light then any predators would surely have seen the signal flare from outside, he hoped that they would not be smart enough to see an invisible squirrel.

It was at least some consolation that it was daytime and the light emitted would only exit from the tree hole in one direction.