Chapter 10
The way back was without any problems, everything except us seems to have fled the mountains. Fleeing the cold. As we neared the town we pass a forest, I decide to get some firewood and take the soldier and a cow with me. His rifle could come in handy if we find some wildlife in the woods, I need the additional proteins to make the modifications my soul calculated, I already used them a bit on my left arm, using some of my reserves.
The results are amazing, but they showed me some new problems, my tendons aren't strong enough, which I can still handle by strengthening them, but the bigger problem is my endurance, I will have to increase the number of mitochondria in my cells and optimize my circulation. At some point I will have to completely “upgrade” my organs.
As we find a suitable tree, Jeff , the ex-soldier, whose name I finally learned after awkwardly asking, I guess I missed the introduction round when I finished the forge setup, stops me as I want to take my first swing at the tree. He leads my attention to a recently used wild path, following the tracks we find some deer and are lucky enough that the wind blows our smell away from them. A quickly aimed shot from Jeff kills one off them on the spot. He is really good with his gun.
I still hurry over fearing that the quick regeneration isn't limited to humans, but my fears are unfounded it seems that the limited processing power of a deer isn't enough to guide the regeneration.
When Jeff catches up to me I show him how to drain the soulmist from a body. We quickly drain the blood and bury the innards. We return to our grazing cow and begin to fell the tree. It does take us an hour to fell and removing the branches. We lead our cow back to the track we took before and continue our way home, now with some timber with us.
We arrive shortly before night falls. We release our trusty ox and let the meat rest for the day, although we skin it now. Then we join the others, talk a bit and eat. Soon we hit the hay.
The following ten few days we further scavenged the houses in the suburbs, for food, clothes and mattresses. We also processed the wood and finally gained a stable stock of firewood, not that we need that much, since everybody sleeps in the same room.
We also visited the mall again getting some more water filters. But we need to find a solution to a smelly problem, the canalisation doesn't work very well when there isn't someone or something processing the refuse, besides it run dry since there isn't much need for it.
Searching around we find a building centre that once sold biological cesspools. Lending a bagger we start the construction of an outhouse. But since warm water is still hard to come by we decide against the construction of a shower, a bucket of warm water and a rag have to suffice.
The mornings are reserved for my training and teaching session. Everyone is free to join, but my only steady vic... ehm volunteers are the six that directly asked for my guidance. Jeff, Rick, Maria, Tom, Patrick and Susan. Jeff finally begins to get a grasp on the soul-sense, but it exhausts him greatly to feel only a couple of meters away from him. At the moment I can permanently feel a radius of 10 meters around me and see further if I limit myself to a smaller sphere of vision.
At that note Emelie seems to have an absurd affinity to the soul-sense, with her still quite average soul, average for survivors of the storm of course, she can permanently scan a area of 5 meters around her. But her vision lacks depth, she can only see objects bigger than a centimeter. With one exception, soulmist is much clearer to her than everything else.
Maybe I should teach her how to manipulate energy with the mist, maybe everyone had a special affinity. Considering that I though about some tests to determine them. Manipulation of energy is pretty easy to test, we just need to test if someone can heat water or ignite some paper. Body manipulation is a bit harder. The best way would be through constant training it seems, which isn't a bad idea anyway.
Anyway we need a more effective way to collect soulmist, not everyone can hunt like me or Jeff. The problem is the reach, we can only manipulate soulmist in our immediate surroundings, and the backflow to fill this void is simply too slow.
Remembering my experiment with the ignition of paper I try to form some tendrils and reach out. When I got quite some room covered I start to drain the soulmist. Its way faster than before, but its quite taxing, I try creating some supports between my tendrils.
Immediately the strain lessens. Once again I begin to channel, but am interrupted by a lot of foot steps coming towards my direction. “Oh thank god its only you, did you know how it scared everyone to feel a stream like that. I though a second storm is coming but then I felt that the source must be close.” Jeff said, while helping me out of my sitting position.
“I tried to find a way to strengthen the soul faster and it looks like I succeeded. One has to cover a bigger volume, construct a net or 3 dimensional grid.” I reply, “But for that you have to train how to send soul-tendrils out of your body.”.
“Hmm didn't try that yet..... Hey guys let's get back to work, it was a false alarm anyway and spread the news.” Jeff says. The group disperses as quickly as it formed, I guess I should warn them beforehand if I want to experiment with the soulmist.
As I wake the next day, I warn everyone and declare one of the empty offices as a meditation room. Dumping the morning training I begin my meditation, I once again create my grid of soul tendrils and begin to suck in the soulmist. Then I focus on my body and check the progress of my muscle modification. Three-quarters are still normal, I just didn't get enough proteins to maintain and enhance my body.
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Then my attention is drawn towards some not assimilated soulmist in my innards. After some short analysis I find out that it is the food I ate, could I also replicate mass by manipulating energy-bound soulmist?
Searching for the familiar pattern of sugar I soon come across it. It took me quite some time but I finally get it right, I can create my own nutrients and the drain isn't so bad either, I probably could automate it for a wide variety of proteins, vitamins and other stuff I will need.
But my soul can't support all three of the current tasks, I will have to choose, but before that I need to scan some food. To do that I walk towards the kitchen. I get quite some curios gazes and stare when people see me meditate with a potato in my hand, I hope it won't start a weird religion.
After I deemed my repertoire of scanned nutrients adequate, I begin to separate another part of my soul while shrinking the part that searches for modifications. At this point, I have to explain something about the soul-sense, the reach isn't determined by how much of your soul one uses for it but by its density. That means that even though I passively use much of my soul, as long as I have enough to create my soul-sense it won't be impaired. Using my body to its fullest is similar to that.
That means without loosing my capability to heal myself and fight, I can provide my body with the nutrients it needs. I don't have to eat anymore, but while I do so I won't be able to strengthen my soul nor search for modifications for my body.
With that I can travel as far as I want. I could search for other survivors and settlements. But for now I begin to create loads of nutrients, so that I can finalize my planned body modification.
I needed two days to do that. After I finished I finally leave my meditation room. As I meet the others I get a lot of worried looks and questions, but I reassure them all that I am fine. After a quick meal, to keep the appearance of its necessity, I walk towards our training field. It is just the place we designated for training, nothing special.
At the edge of it stands the car with which we arrived here. I go towards it and test my strength. I can't completely lift it, the grip is just too bad and it is a bit too heavy. But lifting up one side of it, while the other remains on the ground is still quite impressive.
Satisfied with the changes I gently let down the car and turn around. I am greeted with a collection of opened mouths, which belong to the people that watched me. The first one comes over asking how I did that, but I simply replied that it is out of their reach right now, but that I will write down some training manuals on how to do it.
That is something I have to do in order to leave without completely stopping their advancement. Even though this “settlement” has a good vibe, someone has to leave and find other people, we are simply too few to rebuild a civilisation. Who has a higher chance to have success than me?
Although I am valuable to this community most of my commitments can be done via books, even in the smithy I am exchangeable, I just have to write my knowledge down, the rest is experience anyway. But my ability to manipulate my body is different, if I would have to teach it to someone, not only would I have to teach them a lot of basics about the function of their body, I also would have to wait for his or her soul to grow, hoping it has an affinity for it.
If I use my time till spring efficiently, I will be almost inexhaustible. I will be the ideal scout.
The following three months I prepared everything for my leave, it wasn't hard to explain my intentions to the family and the farmers, that decided to settle down in the vicinity, they couldn't stay at the depot since their cattle need more grass than it can provide, but they want to settle at the urban fringe, there where also thoughts about staying together and moving with everything to a different location, but if they do that they plan to leave me a note.
I wrote a lot of books and manuals in the time, so that they could advance without me and discover their own techniques. I also intensified my training with Jeff and also forcefully fed him as much soulmist as he could handle, so that he will be able to defend everyone. I didn't sleep in that time, at least my soul didn't.
I can meditate while sleeping, I don't need my brain for that. At this point I was able to support 3 major programs. My standard setup consists of the nutrient program and the image of my body, for healing purposes. Additionally to that I switch between soul strengthening and body research.
When spring came my body had changed completely, if someone would do an autopsy and research parts of my body, without ever seeing it complete he would doubt that I was human at all, maybe even that I come from earth.
It was a tearful farewell, especially the children couldn't hold back their tears, since I always would take me some time to teach them something new. But everyone knew that if I have to go, we may be able to survive with this generation but what about the next and the following? We are simply too few.