Ozzy had spent an entire day working toward a single goal, and had succeeded in the end. While he knew this was a great accomplishment he didn’t feel particularly impressed with the day's labor. Nor did he feel tired in the least and wanted to make some real progress. Grabbing some more fruit to snack on, he got back to work. To start with he repeated his prior success in the same manner. Every single time resulted in the same instant snap and much stronger particles forming and remaining even after he released his will.
As he recreated the process he also kept an eye on the resulting particles he’d made so far. They stayed unified as he’d hoped, but that wasn’t all he saw. As he pulled in the energy from the fruit he was surprised to see not a single new domain particle was formed. Every little bit of the new energy was sucked up by the half dozen new particles. Which was odd as it was enough energy that he easily could have formed several hundred new ones and filled them till they had hit the density limit.
Continuing to create more he took a moment to compare the strengths of the new vs old particles. The old ones, when maxed, had an aura of ten centimeters which could stretch to twelve ish but it would increase the energy required to affect something at that distance. He used the most recent tri-cores he created as they hadn’t yet drained extra energy. These new .. trips.. Hmmm he liked that. These new trips had an area of effect approximately five times that of the single particles, ops maybe, or about half a meter . They also had something between three and five times the strength. Though its edge was far more fuzzy. The trip was able to effect things out to nearly a meter before they just failed entirely. Although after checking with the charged trips he found this had changed.
The more energy the trip absorbed the further out it was able to translate his will without increasing the energy requirement. It was also increasing the maximum range but at a lower rate. With that in mind he absorbed energy from some of the fruit and concentrated it into just one of the trips until it stopped accepting more. The resulting supercharged trip could move something out to and just past a meter without losing efficiency. Though, again its border had become much more abrupt. Just a few centimeters past that and it would become costly in energy to move things then cut off entirely.
With the little curiosity addressed Ozzy focused back on converting his ops into trips. He found that he could begin the process to form several trips at once. The more he attempted at once the quicker he began to feel a strain in his head. Falling into a rhythm he began to gain an instinctual feel for what he was doing instead of a strictly intellectual understanding of it. Which did increase the number he could bond at once. Despite the increase he was only bonding a few dozen at once. With their sand grain size and the vast size of his domain he was going to be at this for easily a dozen years at this rate.
Unless he wanted to remain locked away focusing on this for the foreseeable future with who knows what else was out there he needed to experiment again. Luckily he already had one thing he knew would affect the process at least in some way. First he needed to adjust the work environment though. Creating a membrane he pulled all of the trips inside and formed it into an energy impermeable version. This way the energy he would be testing with wouldn’t be gobbled up by all the new particles he had created.
Pulling energy from the fruit again he formed a mist of it around enough ops to create another few dozen trips in one go. Triggering the process he was able to see a difference right away. There was almost no pressure in his head this time. Despite having had the additional effort of keeping the energy in a shape he wanted and from coalescing into any new particles. Repeating the process with fifty was barely any different. At a hundred he could feel the pressure again but no pain yet. When he got to a hundred thirty he could feel a twinge of pain but it was minimal. While that was progress it still wasn’t enough. He had shortened the time required to a third, but when the time was still measured in years it wasn’t going to cut it.
Much of the delay was in setting each batch up. He was also investing much of his will into keeping the energy corralled and restraining it to stay in energy form. Having already worked to create a membrane to house his completed trips he did the same for the creation process. Though this was a much more complex construction. Starting with a large central chamber which he flattened enough that he could store energy without it forming into particles. He then created a hundred smaller cells on one side. Finally he returned to an observation he’d made so early on here he’d nearly forgotten about it with everything else that had happened. The membrane of the havens had intent already baked into it, and its pores and other structures could react to stimuli seemingly without input. For each and every cell he added a pore facing his membrane at large, and another facing the central chamber he’d created.
The next step was a difficult one but he eventually got it. He had to keep looking back and forth between the different haven membranes he had access to and comparing and contrasting the intent they were imprinted with. When he finally felt he understood enough he tried to impart a feeling of ‘pull in three particles’ to the outer pore. Which did result in it pulling in three particles. However it immediately pulled in three more, and three more, eventually making particles begin to pour out the opposite pore into the central chamber. Clearing the intent and setting the particles back in their place he checked a few more times to see how he could continue. Eventually finding he could refer to things inside a membrane he reframed his intent as ‘maintain three particles inside’. Which garnered him the desired result.
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After imprinting this intent onto every one of the outer cells outer pores he then turned to the inner pore on his testing cell and was able to create a similar mandate regarding energy. That being ‘open when energy inside is too thin’ resulting in it pulling energy from the central chamber as needed. Luckily most of this was more intuition than specifics. ‘Too thin’ wasn’t some hard coded value, but rather just his feeling for how much energy he wanted inside of the cell. It was only after testing, confirming, and copying the intent that he realized he had no way of getting the resulting trips back out of the cells. Adding a second pore to the outside he added the intent to ‘eject trips’. Which of course resulted in nothing happening. As the cell contained no tri-cores.
Triggering the three ops inside to bond he was happy to see the new pore do exactly what he had hoped for. However, this revealed a flaw in the first pore as it immediately sucked in the trip along with two ops to fulfill its own mandates. Which then resulted in the second outer pore again ejecting the trip. This time the first pore pulled in another op instead of the trip again. While that was technically fine he had no desire for a half assed solution. Recalibrating the initial mandate to specifically target ops he retested and was satisfied with the results. Giving the whole setup another round of adjustments and checks he began a larger scale test. Encompassing the hundred cells he created with his will he triggered the contents to bond and found that he barely felt any pressure again, which was a step in the right direction.
Though that wasn’t all he was after, barely a second later he saw what he was hoping for. Every cell was set and ready to go again with its resulting trips now outside, and new ops, and energy already prepped inside. Triggering two more rounds he was excited to see he’d again reduced the time needed by a third simply by automating the movement of particles and energy. Now he could expand into economies of scale and really break this down into something he could hope to complete in a more reasonable time frame. With actual progress made and his eyes barely held open he felt like he could go to bed satisfied with his accomplishments for the now two days he’d spent up.
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Ozzy startled awake to a few different sensory stimuli at once. The one most familiar to him was sound. Outside his shack he could hear the strangest noise he’d ever heard in his life. Well scratch that, he was pretty sure had heard something like it before, many times. Just not a few meters away from him as he was waking up. As the noise sounded suspiciously like a pig snuffling through the grass looking for something to munch on and intermittently emitting little grunting squeals. Though they were deeper and louder than he remembered. He groggily rubbed his eyes as he wondered what the hell was going on. Through his domain he was able to confirm that sure enough there was something pig like rooting around in his grass tiles. Though boar was much closer to the right description.
With the animal occupied and seemingly ignoring his shack he took a moment to sit up and take a sip of water to help with his raspy throat. The minor noises he was making were thankfully not noticed by the boar as it continued to search for a meal. Being locked on its goal allowed Ozzy to take a little more time to examine what was happening before taking action. Focusing back on his shock at waking up he could still feel the other sensation that woke him. Putting it into words was difficult for him. Initially it felt a bit like someone had given him a wet willy. He frowned and ‘thanked’ his siblings for even having that sensation to compare it to. With a little further narrowing down he was quite sure it was more along the lines of someone invading your space. Which reminded him that Vonder had said it was possible to tell when someone visited, even a connected haven.
Thanking whatever prodded him, probably his haven, he was glad to be awake and able to react. What action he should take was a little harder to determine. His instinct told him with the size of this boar it could smash through his shack as easily as he would walk through a sheet hung up to dry. That would be with a normal earth born non anomalous boar. Who knew what kind of strength this thing had, or even what form it took. There may be some ways he could figure it out while it rooted around outside. Sending an extension to the border of his haven he felt for new connections and found one immediately. As if the haven was screaming at him to deal with the intruder.
Reaching through he found another simple haven without any structures or furniture to speak of. It was also haphazardly shaped, the boar seemed to have entered and left wherever struck his fancy when he was hungry. Leaving gaps here and there in the tiles. The organizational challenges initially made the place look gargantuan. After some careful counting it appeared to be only slightly smaller than his own haven. Tallying the different types suggested that the beast had been able to travel down to the twenty fifth haven or so of a single line and just a few of two others. The numbers didn’t bode well for him being able to handle this monstrosity with any kind of ease.
Even as he watched it and pondered the high likelihood that this boar could obliterate him without a care he saw it rear back next to one of the trees. His eyes grew large and he froze as he watched it stretch up and up trying to grab at the fruit. While it was enormous and nearly long enough to reach it couldn’t quite get there. The boar quickly became frustrated at the fruit just out of reach and began bashing at the tree. Ozzy felt a little relieved that it didn’t immediately snap the trunk, but it was only a little consolation. As the tree quickly began to creak as the onslaught continued. Before the tree actually fell, or even showed signs of cracking, the fruit separated from the branches and fell to the ground. With its prize now accessible the boar turned back to the ground and began munching on the fruit.