Chapter 184 - Second Vision

To him, imprinting a vision was a solved problem. I just have to invoke the insights pertaining to the cause and effect of the vision and imprint them onto the existing shade in my perception.

This condensed articulation was a result of his first-hand experience crafting a vision combined with the myriad documents he studied in the vigil.

The only thing he had to keep in mind was to not imprint this second vision as its own new shade. Doing so would lock him into the fundamental of structure for his second shade.

Not what he wanted at all.

He had greater plans than that, which meant, this was going to be the second vision of his first shade.

He took a deep breath and closed his physical eyes, only to unfurl the inner ones. A sphere of huge proportions spanned his sight, surrounded by a dozen or so stars.

Ignoring all the distractions, he went straight to it and began the process.

One by one, he recalled each instance where he used Instability inducement, reminding himself of how he had amplified the flaws and destabilized many a structure.

His thought space lit up, the relevant insights glowing brightly as their radiance obscured everything around them.

After that, he focused on his understanding of the structure and its myriad nuances, linking instability's cause and effect with it.

Then came his comprehension of the same in shades of gray.

One after another after another of such recalls, a big chunk of the whole upper-north-western octant was glowing, shining like a beacon on the otherwise barren insight sphere.

In this deep connection with his insights, he observed another network that already existed, its white haze connecting millions upon millions of smaller insight nodes with each other.

He knew what it was. Stability Inducement, he thought.

This was how that small set of insights he'd comprehended on that fateful day inside the third rune had evolved. This was the vision he'd shaded his perception with.

From a small set of intentionally made connections between his limited insights, it had now become this massive, complex, and interconnected network of peculiar insights he'd gathered over time.

It was fascinating.

I essentially have to mimic this.

So, to recreate this ethereal bridge of insights between the ones belonging to instability, he concentrated harder. He invoked each and every thought and idea he'd come up with as a fake entropy manipulator who used the visions via Third Rune as a proxy.

New connections began forming between the insights he just amplified, and an otherworldly sense of calmness washed over him.

Akin to the precision of a seasoned tailor, he wove a thread through all the glowing insights—a path to instability. A subset that defined just how Instability Inducement should behave in different scenarios.

The nodes of knowledge he compiled grew in number with every breath, and that strange sense of calmness only grew deeper and deeper.

With every new insight pulled onto the network of instability, he felt their structure, their harmony, and very alignment with his personal perspective grow deeper. It was in almost perfect sync with all his being.

He lost the sense of time before long, and the only conscious thought that remained in his mind was to link. Link each and every one of the insights related to instability with each other.

To his surprise, there were many that overlapped between both the paths of stability and instability. One was covered with a dark haze, while the other was a mesmerizing white, segregating his thought space in an elegant dichotomy. Simply observing it caused an innate satisfaction to well up in him.

More…

So, he kept linking and linking and linking. Until…

It's time. He felt it. He'd hit the point of diminishing returns, and trying to recall any more insights only resulted in one or two new additions to the group after a long interval.

Let's do it, then.

Last time, he didn't have a thought space and had to hold all the initial insights fresh in his memory or risk failing the process. However, things were different now.

He didn't need to burden his fragile memories while simultaneously shaping his thoughts into an abstract sphere. He simply had to direct this plethora of insights towards his perception.

So, that's exactly what he did.

His perception, at its very core, was…Balance.

It was everywhere and nowhere all at once. All of his thought space was part of his perception, but it was greater than just that. It was on a higher dimension than the thought space but lower than the Everflux which housed his singularity.

It was hard to even put it into words when he wasn't actively unleashing it outside his body.

If he really, really tried, he would dub it as an abstract edifice of grays that he found impossible to focus on or understand. Heck, the details were so fuzzy he never remembered what they looked like after a second.

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According to his understanding of the matter, Perception was a higher dimension representation of the insights currently present in his Thought Space. Except, only the insights related to the imprinted vision—stability inducement in this case—determined its essence.

There was no concept of distance, quantity, or size here. Just the edifice that he knew to somehow be a representation of stability.

Typically, he never interacted with his Perception in this state. There was no benefit to doing so. He learned nothing, understood nothing, and almost certainly couldn't remember any of its intricacies.

But he had a different goal this time. To imprint his chosen set of insights into this higher dimension.

He needed no instructions on how to proceed. He had a very distinct idea of what not to do to accidentally ascend to second shade.

It was almost impossible to unknowingly commit these insights onto a new shade. Doing so would demand he begin from a new canvas instead of adding to the current edifice he felt.

So, without any hesitation, he mentally pushed the insights he'd picked toward the existing edifice instead of creating something new.

Swish…

An even more abstract change propagated through the edifice, and the thread he wove between the insights in his spherical thought space turned more and more corporeal in tow with it.

He tried to observe the change in his perception, but it was impossible to make heads or tails of just what was happening.

Soon, however, he felt it.

A hunger.

Unlike the previous time, where he'd lost himself to all the sensations and magic of shading the perception, he recognized it this time.

It was his perception's greed to assimilate. To grow.

Without his command, it began leaking out of his inner self, and tried to reach for his surroundings.

Vern, who was too fascinated by this turn of events, barely came to his senses in time as his perception tried to devour the structural insights from the very chair he was sitting on.

This is what Captain Akira was talking about, huh? Then, was this what caught the attention of that massive eye back inside the Third Rune?

Because he remembered the scene of devastation that surrounded him when he'd awoken after shading his perception. The aftermath had looked akin to a city ravaged by a cyclone, with Vern happening to be in the eye of the storm.

Not this time, though. He was neither very keen on scaring the hotel's tenants nor willing to accept any sub-par insights in his thought space. Especially not when a perfect resonance catalyst of structure fundamental was sitting right in front of him.

Directing his somewhat unruly perception away from the chair, he nudged it towards the knock-off Midra's cage.

In an instant, the perception latched onto it like a parched traveler to an oasis, and he visibly saw new insights stream into his thought space.

The newly expanded space in his personal insight sphere began filling up at a rapid pace as a random assortment of insights blossomed everywhere like weeds.

This…

A surge of new knowledge entered his mind, and while most of it felt incoherent, it came with a surge of power. The threads that depicted both his visions automatically extended to include many of the new insights, and he just watched it all in awe.

He was literally getting more powerful by the second. These new structural insights came from the knock-off Midra's cage which was probably a creation from eras ago.

An ancient feeling permeated him as the empty space of the upper-north-western octant became more and more scarce.

Heck, some of the insights even streamed into the adjacent octant—north-upper-western, the one belonging to cognition fundamental. Surely a side-effect of the cage's origins. Alas, it wasn't an amount to write home about.

Regardless, he was giddy with all these gains.

While he felt like he was close to the cusp of being ready to advance before starting the imprinting process, this settled it.

Now I can advance to the second shade whenever I want! He was more than sure this was the case. All the minor gaps in his structural insights were plugged by this assimilation. Just like that.

Heck, that wasn't even the end. This absorption made it so the octant of the structure was almost about to overflow with insights, forcing new ones to creep into other octants by the boundary.

If someone could see his face right now, it was sure to be sporting a blissful grin as he counted his immense gains.

He didn't need anyone to tell him that his visions' strength, control, and disruptive might had grown by over half of its previous capabilities.

This is…unreal.

He was unable to properly bask in the feeling of growth on previous occasions due to myriads of urgent situations, but this time, he savored it.

It was addictive.

Which was a good indicator that he had to calm himself down. While his chances of losing himself when imprinting a familiar vision were very low, they weren't zero.

So, he pushed a little to keep himself in check and sobered up but didn't fully forgo indulging in the power either. It was about striking the right balance, and he knew his limits.

In this half-lucid trance, his internal world changed by leaps and bounds as the new path weaving through the insights of instability grew more and more prominent until—

Thump. His palm fell down on its own as it lost the support of the cage which had decayed from inside out.

The catalyst was fully consumed, and he sighed in relief. Almost scared me there. He didn't want structural insights to spill out of their rightful place and pollute other octants.

What would have happened if I had to house all these insights in my thought space before it was expanded today?

There was only one answer. I would have had to stop midway. That would have been such a terrible waste of an artifact like this. After all, he couldn't shade another vision on a whim. It would require extensive study and planning.

Nonetheless, his perception, which had extended of its own will, began to recede, and he noticed it. A difference. Something had monumentally shifted the makeup of his whole perception.

He didn't need to waste time thinking through this. He knew what it was. It was the result of all his efforts today.

Instability Inducement is imprinted in my own thought space now! he cheered, snapping his eyes open as his fist shot through the air.

It worked! He felt it.

For the first time ever, a new connection emerged in his own perception. He'd become accustomed to accessing Instability Inducement by routing it through the Third Rune subconsciously, but now he didn't need to do that anymore—rely on outer power that could be taken away from him at the drop of a hat.

Well, not anymore!

He now essentially had access to two copies of the same vision, and he didn't mind it. Why? Because he wasn't going to touch the one in the Third Rune with a ten feet pole unless the situation truly demanded it.

Not like using it by two different methods was going to double its power.

He shook his head and relaxed. A myriad of anxieties always gnawed at the edge of his sanity, but the results spoke for themselves. The growth was real, and it did wonders to shut up the inner voices that double guessed every decision he took.

He had to be doing something right. Now, it was just a matter of keeping this pace up.

It was one step closer. Closer to having a foothold in this indifferent world.

It felt good.

.

.

.

He sat there in silence for who knew how long until his stomach growled and he remembered that his perception wasn't the only one that had to be fed.

Lady-above, I need me some sandwiches. This reminded him to check up on how the hotel and its tenants were doing. He still wasn't sure how the captains had resolved it all in the end.

Slapping his hands on the table, he pushed himself up, but that's when he noticed something peculiar at the corner of the window. A shape peeked through the curtains, and when he slid them away, he saw it.

It was a paper airplane.