Chapter 36 - Insights

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why is that thing not dying? One has eaten two shots while the other didn't even flinch at my bullet.

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I need to calm down.

He squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and sat down on the bed—completely ignoring the door that was buckling under the forceful blows, splintering crevices opening up all over it.

Zoning out his surroundings, he considered his options. I have about twenty seconds before that door gets hacked down to bits.

Okay. So, I was able to find some flaw in the lock outside, but either it wasn't large enough, or 'complexity' is just not the right outlook to find flaws in something as simple as a lock. But then what else would work? I don't have another hour to sit here and muddle through my options.

It was all because he wanted to know that fucking secret. What secret? That one can gather and unleash thoughts using Insight Sphere. What in the name of mighty cogs did that even mean?

But there must be something to it. The madman outside even said something about his thoughts being in there. With furrowed brows, Vern pulled out the glassy sphere from his pockets which looked nothing out of the ordinary—four vertical lines and one horizontal that divided it into eight octants. But what was he to do with it? He didn't have a Lumenscope with him to peer into fundamentals.

However, this reminded him. He had never tried to perceive an Insight Sphere with his Viewpoint.

Not wasting any time unproductively, he tried to assign a pitch-black to the thing, recalling its immense complexity. But then, something unexpected happened. The tones assigned to it…just disappeared.

Frowning harder, he repeated his action of assigning it shades, and it was as if his thoughts were swallowed by the sphere. His mind went adrift, and a sense of loss filled him. This…is this what he meant by the secret? That Insight Sphere can preserve thoughts?

Then, could there be any way to release those thoughts and use them to my benefit?

Instead of trying to find complexity in the sphere, he simply sensed it within his perception without meaning to shade it—and a feeling arose in him. A feeling that he had been longing for. It was like he was within a projection of Insight Sphere, peering at Fundamentals.

Just detecting it within his perception gave him the same sensation as when he started his sessions with a Lumenscope. He was right at the core of the Sphere—at the Void of Initiation, in that black empty space where ideas were borne from nothing. As usual, he got the feeling that logically comprehending the happenings in one direction will allow him to make progress. But there was more here, exceeding the norm.

Typically, the sense of direction within projections came from the kind of logic one encountered as they followed an insight. For example, if every new insight he came across had to be comprehended using ideas related to destruction, then that would mean he was moving towards the lower-south western octant, the domain of Chaos Fundamentalists.

And based on similar loose concepts, one could reorient themselves to the direction they want to further explore in their domain of their choice. But something was different this time. He 'felt' his own thoughts of 'complexity' that had just vanished, coming from one specific direction.

However, that wasn't the end of it. There was more. Two other directions held some different kinds of thoughts. Thoughts that weren't his own. One was diametrically opposite to his, while the other was somewhere in a direction between both of them.

But will any of this really help me resolve this situation? Wouldn't I be better off just shooting them through the door while reloading in safety?

However, he quickly realized that these options weren't exactly mutually exclusive. He could still shoot blindly if this didn't work.

But traversing towards those thoughts of complexity, which he had just instilled in the sphere, wouldn't give him any edge.

A change was necessary to escape this dire predicament. So, he picked the direction that was in the middle of the two opposing thoughts and began traversing the fundamentals. Navigating the early sections of fundamentals was easy.

The Void of Initiation was the genesis ground where concepts bloomed out of nothing. As long as one continued comprehending the next idea based on assumptions from prior sections, one can build up on those insights and continue progressing in Fundamentals—even come across something not known by mankind.

For Vern, he had more than mastered the first few hours of insights in five octants. And luckily, the one he was moving towards happened to be in the lower North-Western Octant. If it had been an octant he had no clue about, it'd take him over three hours to reach those hidden thoughts. He didn't have three minutes, much less three hours.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

But one can traverse Fundamentals at the speed of thoughts if one used their previous insight—and he did just that. The usual ideas of this octant filled his senses as his mind swam through the fundamentals, thoughts cascading in a logical fashion.

From nothingness, particles coalesce. Particles form matter. Matter, by nature, adheres to conservation. Conservation invokes protection. Protection cultivates maintenance. Maintenance implies durability. Durability suggests endurance. Endurance births resilience. Resilience favors adaptation. Adaptation breeds transformation. Transformation yet holds essence, an echo of inheritance. Inheritance implies perpetuity. Perpetuity intertwines with preservation. Preservation, a dance eternally enshrined within existence.

Veering from a simple cluster to a symphony of preservation, he moved, traversing the fundamental to the profound. And before he knew it, he approached what he'd like to call a cloud of foreign ideas. They were quite consolidated and seemed less abstract than Fundamentals.

BOOM

The moment his thoughts progressed towards that cloud, it was as if an explosion went off in his mind—ideas flitted past his perception, and his brain, which was fatigued and scared, had a surge of vigor imbued in it. Thoughts generated in his mind at an unreal pace, flooding him like a whirlwind.

It was like those fabled moments of infinite insight that Primal Fundamentalists talked about, where each second allowed him profound insights on whatever he set his mind on.

CRACKK

Drunk in pleasure, he almost let himself think through all his unanswered questions when reality came knocking. The axe tore big chunks out of the door before its gleaming head fully appeared in his sight. The wielder then turned it sideways and began wrenching as the wood came apart in patches.

Damn! Almost fucked myself over.

His heart which had started beating out of excitement, calmed down, and he found himself back in control. Instead of solving random problems, he needed to find some way to overcome this situation. Fight or Escape were the only two options available to him. But he had to figure out the exact details of what to do.

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Not even a moment passed by in this state of unparalleled clarity as millions of combinations ran through his mind, and he found the answer.

This is transcendent! Just what kind of thoughts are stored within this Insight Sphere?

But these were not to be wasted like this. So he exited this trance—abandoning his progress of Fundamentals, and dropped the sphere back into his pocket.

Finally, with a plan in hand, Vern got up from the bed and sought to use his new idea on the door in front of him. Opening his right eye, which still gave him a hazy view of the world, he perceived,

Integrity

A simple word. But the amount of thoughts he had gone through to come to this conclusion couldn't be less than a few hours of brainstorming with his notepad. It was one of those things that seemed obvious once you knew about it, but until then, you were left trying to retrofit hundreds of variables to suit specific needs. In this case, it was to adapt the idea of composition to balance but in a broader sense than complexity.

But that transcendent state had its own limitations. He had hoped to find some way to outright eliminate his opponents, yet he came up with nothing. He couldn't think of any valid flaws within the bodies of his enemies that would trigger that notion of instability in his mind.

It was as if his thoughts were accelerated—but that was it. He was still limited by the information available to him. No outlandishly smart ideas came to him to eradicate his enemies.

However, this should be enough to get out of this predicament. Integrity was actually an even simpler method than Complexity to look for flaws. It was much more vague in nature and could apply to a wider range of objects. Though it would probably come along with worse efficiency.

So without lingering any further, he shaded the lock of the door in front of him. In terms of flaws, there were a few odd scratches on the latch and the bend that it had developed from all that pushing. He shaded the latch closer to black while giving the rest of it a white to depict its greater integrity. Then he focused hard on that bend and considered how it could be the flaw.

And as expected. That notion appeared in his mind—not as faint as before. So he guided his thoughts towards that notion, and a crack appeared in his perception. A crack that grew wider by the second and…

SMASH

The axe wielder and the other one who was scratching the door with his nails came crashing down as the door swung open unexpectedly. Ready for this, he didn't give them a chance to reorient themselves and jumped over the two men, exiting the room. One was a burly man with unclear features, while the other had two holes in his pale body that bled black blood in small quantities.

"EYESS!"

The smaller one tried to grab at his ankles but failed due to his awkward position, and Vern passed right over them, bolting towards the main door. Already clear on what to do, he repeated his earlier actions and used Instability Inducement on this main door with Integrity in mind.

Clack

A short sound resounded from the door, and Vern raced towards it with all his dexterity, avoiding the obstacles to the best of his capabilities while maintaining the speed.

However, right when he was at the foot of the staircase, something appeared in his peripheral vision, and he felt his eyes drawn toward it.

A silhouette was descending the stairs, short highlights of light from the window drawing an outline of a woman. Two glowing red orbs floated in place of her eyes which seemed to radiate blood. Inadvertently, when he peered into them, a chill went down his spine, and the hall of era-old wooden furniture became covered with blood and gore.

His heart disagreed, but his brain knew—now wasn't the time to stop.

He completely ignored this feedback from his eyes, tore his gaze away from those uncaring pupils, and rammed his shoulder into the gaping maw that extended out of the door. This time, he didn't bounce back and instead felt the door swing wide open, and he barely caught his footing on the steps outside.

Not daring to take another glance back at anything inside, he charged through that path of sculptures which looked like bleeding cadavers, and cut right through them. Shoving open the huge iron doors dripping with blood, he felt his vision return to normal as the dark sky greeted him illuminating Duke Armen's castle.

But nothing stopped him, not even himself, as he continued to make distance from that building, dashing downhill.

He only stopped when his lungs felt like bursting, right next to the bridge back to Mosaic Miles.

What the fuck was that? Those pupils…that sight. Just who the heck was that?

Taking mouthfuls of breath, one after another, he regulated his heart, which was miraculously still pumping blood and hadn't failed him just yet. Dropping down on the ground, he leaned onto the tower of the bridge and sat there as the passerby looked at him suspiciously.