Alexia

I end up spending the entire three hours playing boardgames with Astrid and Ethan while keeping some of my attention on the people outside of my booth. Also while trying to decide where I’m gonna let the dungeon open up at.

The people of Dimensional Block #108 – for the most part at least – spend the three hours making decisions about who to let into the Dimensional Block, what to do with the people who surrendered amongst the Authority Holders, and what they’re gonna do with the former Dimensional Block #105 territory. None of which affects me much, so while I listen just in case I hear something I actually care about, I spend more time focusing on trying to figure out where to let the dungeon open.

Eventually though, the three hours come to a close and I find myself reappearing back in my room, where I immediately return to training my Energy Manipulation.

Right. I need to finish getting Energy Manipulation to Tier 3 before the dungeon opens up.

Otherwise any EXP I’d get from the place would go to waste.

I nod my head at that thought before closing my eyes and returning to my practice. Using one of the methods the Architect taught me to manipulate the energy. Including using those threads, drawing them together into various little ‘energy hands.’ Hands that I use to draw in far more energy and interact with it.

He also taught me more efficient ways to use the threads to make ‘spells’ out of pure energy. Kind of like when I used to use mana before the Reset to make spells.

Just that I do it myself rather than using a spell circle. Unlike back then.

I take in a deep breath before letting it out. Then I focus on grabbing a bunch of energy and form it into various runes, using the language of the quantum beings. A language that was taught to me by the Architect that’s apparently a lot more powerful than just willing it to do something. Even if it’s slower and less efficient.

After forming the runes for fire, a large purple ball of fire appears in front of me, making me open my eyes to look at it.

“Sloppy,” the Architect states without even opening his eyes on my shoulder. “Do it again.”

So I close my eyes and pull the energy back out of the rune before beginning to redo it. Only for the Architect to say, “Do it with your eyes open. You’re going to have to learn how at some point so it’s best to get into a habit of doing so now. You won’t be able to shut your eyes in the middle of a battle when casting spells.”

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I grit my teeth at that, but agree with him. Might even be gritting my teeth because I agree with him.

“If you want to reach Tier 3 in the skill and therefore Tier 4 overall before the dungeon appears, you need to work on what’ll get you the most progress,” he says in response to my thoughts.

True…

Ugh. It just feels weird and uncomfortable to write out the runes and control energy with my eyes open. Like I’m focusing on two different senses of ‘sight’ at once. Which I kind of am in a way.

Uncomfortable or not, I do need to work on it. Because he’s right that I can’t just close my eyes whenever I try to do a spell in battle.

So I open my eyes and immediately slip up in my control on the energy I had in the ‘hands’.

Yeah, that’s to be expected.

I slowly form threads with the energy around me and my soul before equally slowly writing out runes. While making sure to keep my eyes open in the process, even if my eyes are just glazed over and I’m not focusing on anything in my sight.

“Just get used to keeping your eyes open first, then multitask,” the Architect says, telling me that what I’m doing right now is fine.

In the process of making the rune, I mess up several times, with each mistake causing the rune to make some other form of magic. Sometimes a ball of water that ends up dropping and splashing on the ground due to not having a proper anchorage to keep it floating. Other times a bolt of lightning that immediately rushes for the metal bed frame I’m sitting on, leading to it jumping onto my leg which is up against it and zapping me. Not that it hurts since I’m not using much power.

Eventually I manage to form the rune correctly, with the correct anchorage for that particular rune so that it stays floating where I want it to float.

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Now do it a hundred more times with your eyes still open,” the Architect says, almost making me slip up in my control. “Then repeat it more times with other runes instead of just the fire rune.”

I take in a deep breath before letting it out again. Then I slowly pull the power out of the rune before undoing the rune itself. And I follow that up by remaking the rune just as slowly as I did the last time, only to undo it again after I succeed.

That same process repeats several times over and over again, with me failing about a fifth of the time. But each time I repeat it, I manage to feel a bit more used to the process overall.

Still not particularly comfortable, but used to it at least.

Once I eventually hit a hundred times, I’ve decreased it to about a twentieth of them being failures. So I change it to a different rune and my success rate immediately drops by a large amount.

Ugh.

This really is a pain.

Imagining having to do this in the middle of a battle is not a pleasant thought. Because this is far harder than manipulating mana.

“Mana is made from energy in a way that it’s easier to use for System inhabitants, but it’s also weaker, there’s less that can be done with it, and it’s limited to affinity,” the Architect says, repeating something he’s told me more than a dozen times already.

I don’t respond.

Instead I simply continue repeating the same process over and over again.

Please let me hit Tier 3 soon…