I attempt for the thousandth time to move. At the start, I could barely move a centimeter, now using my strength for a moment is enough for about 10 centimeters. I could concentrate on going all the way, but I found this type of training to be most effective.
With all my power I send a strong pulse willing myself to move forward. And I gain quite a bit of momentum, but almost as fast as I gain momentum, I lose it. Like jumping on a high gravity world.
Something that seemed to be the obvious choice is to either make it not have gravity or changing the point I’m attracted to, and while both seemed just at the edge of possibility, it would be like going from Argentina to South Africa on foot. Possible, but mindboggling in scope.
So my focus was on improving my metaphorical muscles and coordination. The precise timing needed to move was just as important as raw power. Although the exertion from all pools was strange in this place, so different from the material world, delaying one of them even for a fraction of a second was very detrimental. Especially on the initial impulse.
That is how I spend a lot of my time. Hundreds, thousands of attempts, until I feel confident. At least confident enough to try and find out how close I’m.
After deciding I assume a sitting position and attempt to meditate. It may be strange to meditate as I was already meditating, but I go for it. I spend a few minutes until I can no longer feel any exertion in my muscles from the previous attempts. It is probably there, deep down, but this is as close as I will get in quite a while.
I leave my sitting position and stand and spin, pointing my head in the direction of the closest light. All my movements are fluid and take no effort. While I don’t move my center of mass from the middle of this place all movement as if I was standing in space. Not even air resistance is a thing.
After a moment I pull my legs in as tight as I can, touching my chin, and stand still for another moment. I didn’t need to, given the nature of this place, but it was still too new to me. Moving my body was much more familiar than anything else in this place.
I reach out to all my pools but ignore the mana plate. I still had plenty of mana and failing or succeeding would be a fraction of a second, not enough time to pull on the extra mana. In the future with longer travels that could change, but for now, power density was more important than energy density. It’s closer to a 20-yard sprint instead of a 10-mile run. You don’t stop in the middle of a sprint to eat drink or even breathe.
The moment I connect to all my pools mana, vigor, stamina, and health I push with all my willpower. Every iota of my being goes into accelerating towards the goal. At the same instant, I extend my whole body and the largest impulse since I got here sends me in my way. Unlike the previous times, I keep the maximum effort for a few moments instead of just pulsing it as before.
For a moment I’m uncertain about reaching the goal, but after this fraction of a second it takes me to cross this small distance, my right arm, fully extended barely brushes the tip of my finger against the light sphere. With exhilaration and a deep connection to the Aether surrounding me, I feel as the system sends me a few prompts, but being inside my soul I cant’ read them yet.
In another moment, I feel gravity take hold and accelerate me at dizzying speeds back to the starting place. Not that I actually get dizzy, it is just gravity, if you don’t hit anything, or have stuff around you to tell you of movement you won’t even feel it.
After having managed to reach this first light, I’m quite pleased with myself. A moment later the light fades away and all the others get a little bit closer. I focus on moving myself, only for an instant like when I was training, and the result shouldn’t have surprised me. The acceleration moving me back to the middle of this place is just as before except for a single parameter. It is stronger. Not a lot, just a little, but it does mean I would probably only be able to go 80 or 90 percent of my previous distance If I tried again. Even completely rested, the full distance would still be out of my reach.
After only a moment I leave my soul to look at my system messages. As usual, I skip all the superfluous stuff and go to the interesting prompts.
You have upgraded your Kinetic Meditation skill to Deep Meditation. Deep Meditation – You can when entering deep meditation increase the bonus of your resource regeneration based on your concentration.
You have increased Deep Meditation Level: +4 Levels. Deep meditation Lv. 39
You have unlocked the first node of your soul. This node is related to your inner world. You can now send objects outside of your quest Items in the inventory. Size follows this formula: Chosen parameter x Level x Special Stat x (Special Stat II/10) = Diameter of Inner Space Possible primary parameters: Level Lowest stat * 2 Highest skill * 0.9
I chose Lowest Stat * 2 given it is the best choice, for now. After a moment the next prompt shows up.
Inner world: (18*2)*10*35*1=12672 mm of diameter
I’m happy the lack of a second special stat didn’t stop me from obtaining access to this place. If it had counted as zero it would take a while to make use of it. Without any fanfare, I enter this space and I’m not entirely surprised to find it completely empty. While it feels not too dissimilar to my soul space, there is a tangible quality here. I float with my avatar here for a little and try to leave, while still keeping awareness of this place in mind.
I grab a handful of dirt and send it to my inventory. I feel as this space almost imperceptibly shrinks and something show-up not too far away. I try finding it, and while from the perspective of standing in the inner world it is strange, I can feel the handful of dirt just like I felt my book on the first day. Being able to look through both inside and outside the inventory, I perceive much more. The small bit of dirt seems like it is perfectly wrapped in a pocket space just for it.
I then repeat the experiment on another handful of dirt sending it into my inner world. This time there is no further change to space, and the dirt just floats around. I try imparting it with a little momentum, and not entirely to my surprise, it floats away until it touches the edges of this sphere, where it stops. I take this small handful of dirt out and give it a good look. Not seeing anything wrong with it, back in it goes.
With no gravity in this space, there are advantages, but there are also a lot I wouldn’t be able to do. So creating gravity in this space is the next step. Simply imagining it changing is all it takes, but I feel a slight mental pressure resisting the change. I push more and more until the feel in the air is about the same as normal gravity. At this level, the mental pressure trying to revert things back to ‘normal’ is strong enough it would take concerted effort to ignore it, but it is also not too onerous.
After pondering for a few moments, I start to cycle aether around me. Learning the intricacies, and getting used to this faster seems like just the thing. And cycling Aether in this way is also good training. By now the thinnest strand I can wield is about half of when I got here, and even the range has increased a little.
All those thoughts are filed away for later. Adding air to the interior space is the priority now. To make the process easier I let go of the gravity. As with the dirt, adding air takes a bit of concentration, but it only while drawing it in. Once it is inside, the mental exertion is no longer there. I concentrate on filling it up to normal atmospheric pressure. As I do it, a few experiments and ways of doing it comes to mind. What follows is just nature taking its course.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
I find is that the easiest way, for now, is to take ‘chunks’ of air from around me, as close as possible but not overlapping with my body. Though with some concentration I improve on the method by drawing a rough sphere from around me, while purposely avoiding the ground, myself, and anything within an inch or two of my skin.
The sphere is almost filled, mostly with this simple method, when I have another idea. I fail the first couple of times, so a change in approach seems appropriate. With significant concentration, even if it is not too draining, a small portal appears before me. The size of a finger with air rushing through at incredible speeds. I sit and try to meditate while holding this small portal open, and manage to keep it open for about a minute.
When it collapses, I laugh a little. It is not a mentally exhausting thing to do, at least not while keeping the portal small, but it is like juggling. It uses the brain and muscles in new ways. All the new sensations and ways of using this new ability significantly curtail my efforts.
After some calculations, I conclude the portal is not a good way to fill my new world with air. Even at the start with the maximum pressure differential, a 3cm squared hole at the speed of sound would only add about 100 liters of air per second. I was almost finished, and that would only lower the efficiency. The Idea however doesn’t leave me. An even smaller portal formed, not even enough to pass the core of a pencil through.
It will be a decent mental workout, and the possibilities an actual portal would open up were intriguing. Next, I think about adding more to this little space. Sure, I could just make it into a storage space, but the possibilities were too interesting to not explore.
Light seems the next logical step, though don’t ask me how this logic works. All it takes is me willing to be light and the place is illuminated. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, less than gravity. I’m also glad it was not quite as intricate as a portal. I try a couple of different things, but another idea comes to me.
Drawing light from my surroundings. This step ends up taking me well over an hour. At first, I can barely do it, but like within my soul, there is an instinctive knowledge that comes with each action. From trying something, you learn a lot about it. At least if you are listening to your intuition. And I was listening.
Drawing light from the outside was a strange experience that even taught me a few new facets of the system and myself.
It is not an inherently difficult job, just unfamiliar, like passing a ball at a weird angle with your arm behind your back for the first time. The first couple of tries, the ball may go wildly, but after only a few minutes, you get passable results. And so I go from not managing it at all to decent proficiency in an hour.
The process is not like taking all the light in a sphere and sending it through, if you do that, all you would get is an extremely brief flash. A flash that is gone so quickly, even a high-speed camera may not pick it up. I try a few ideas, but what ends up working, in the end, is simply mentally delineating an area around me and continuously drawing all the light out of it and into my inner world.
The results are nearly perfect inside, what happens outside is however quite intriguing. The system simply generates more light, so anything behind the area I delineate just gets new light. This is a strong indicator that the system did not put us in a real world, this is like a simulation or a place like my own inner world. When it detects some mistake, it doesn’t ignore it or try to understand it, all it does is generating more light. Following this though, I instead modify how I draw light a little. I form not an area, but a volume, and after finagling a little as the system adds light I take it away from this small box. In the end what I end up with is an area hundreds of times smaller, that absorbs the same amount of light. After some thought and testing a little bit, I go back to the original form.
It is interesting and all, but if I have to rely on this way to get light back on earth, the box method will be of no help.
The last thing to have available for now is soil, and although I’m standing on top of good soil, there were a few spots with even better biomatter. I remember a stop only a mile from here that has exactly what I need, and without any fanfare, I start running in that direction. Running as fast as I can, without worrying about getting tired. I use pulses of mana on a few spots and my speed is even faster than last time.
I get to a spot with a few herbs, something resembling mint, and get a few to chew on. Space is enough for me, almost ten meters of soil. With care, I start to start the process of drawing it all in. As I keep the exercise up, my attention goes to the small seed on top of my eye.
Don’t worry, we are going to get you access to somewhere where you can properly grow. And after I get my class, space will be plentiful.
----------------------------------------
The sun was already fairly strong and high as it hit my leaves. On any other day, this cycle would have comforted me, as the sun lets each of my leaves draw water and sustenance all the way from the ground. But this time was different. For many seasons, there is an attack at regular intervals. The sun is already high in the sky and today’s attack hasn’t come.
I spend every single moment I can preparing, just so my chances will improve, even if it is not by a lot. Sometimes the strange creatures above delay a little, but never this much.
On the ecosystem above, animals and critters alike can also feel something different in the air. For the thousandth time, I think of the myriad of changes happening. The ‘SYSTEM’ is such a different entity than any other. The very thought of words was anathema to me until recently, as I’m further integrated into its machinations, and this foreign Aether attaches itself to me, I can draw on more mana, more vigor, more of all my resources. I can grow faster and the biggest change is my very mentality.
Thinking in abstract terms has always been anathema to me, now it feels almost natural. Concepts that would have taken my friend weeks or months to explain are now internalized almost instantly.
As the sun reaches its peak and barely starts to come down. A plethora of enemies enters my perception range. Hundreds of bipeds pass the first saplings running at a full sprint to the center of the forest. Over a hundred of them are magic users. They cast fire fields around them trying to cause as much damage in their passage without slowing down too much.
In the front, another 150 of the biggest humanoids charge through all the obstacles clearing a path to the main force. Of familiar green, slightly smaller than my friend bipeds. Goblins, the strange word swirls around in my head, and I prepare to meet this new threat. With a little knowledge of their composition, I plan as best as I can how to react to their arrival.
Smaller animals like squirrels and rabbits head behind their trail throwing sand everywhere to reduce the damage of the fire. My trees and saplings are getting more and more resistant to fire, but magical fire does not behave quite like normal fire, and if we can put out even smaller fires faster, the damage would be minimized. I could conjure water to do the same, but the process, would invariably use mana, and I need it to combat these foes.
As they are approaching the middle of the forest, they encounter the larger force defending the grove. This group has not only increased in strength but also in numbers. Almost 2000 bigger animals compose it. It’s mostly made up of wolves, but there are quite a few monkeys, deers, and even a few buffalos.
There were also almost a hundred of the larger flying races, that now had grown bigger than ever. A few masing almost as much as the wolves weight before the system. Albatrosses, owls, and eagles played high-speed support to the earthbound animals.
The biggest wolves get ready to meet the charge in their usual way. By entering their formation in what looked like a frenzy, but was a concerted effort to maximize the chaos. And in the chaos, the wolves' instinctual pack mentality thrived much better than the disparaging condition of these new enemies. It was like different people who understood how to cooperate but had never done so together were thrown together to fight me.
What I see however when the wolves enter their formations is dismaying. They are not a well-knit group by any means, but they are not complete strangers to each other eighter.
I do my utmost for a good while, but while it does save most of the injured animals, it is not enough. Their concerted effort in finishing off each of the wolves as they fall instead of spreading the damage is much more successful this time. Hundreds of thousands of insects, mostly bees head in on the blind spots of the casters and help where they can, but even then, we lose more than a tenth of their total number, along with almost 300 Earthbound animals.
With the big part of the combat over, I focus on finishing off each of the dozen scattered enemies trying to escape. Sorrow fills me, as the biggest life loss since the system’s arrival happens in front of my eyes.
As the day goes by, it is clear that not only their coordination made a difference. Though that was obviously a factor, their strange metal implements are all a little more resistant to damage and can inflict a little more damage. With my great range of perception, I could also notice the mages. They were not more powerful beyond the slight expected increase in raw strength, the very instruments they yielded focused the power they exerted better.
Although I could not speculate too much on how they thought, given how different our very existences were, it was clear they came in much better prepared. Looking over the metal implements and sticks wielded by the enemies strewn open the ground I take each one to my storage place. Vines spread slowly across the ground dragging all of them to a place near my oldest tree.
Perhaps it is was time to learn. Learn of how these implements worked, and even if they only helped in me casting fire magic, I would just fight fire with fire.
Come back soon my friend, I need you. You would be so suited to all this stuff.
For now, all I could do was focus on what I did have available.
Learn, Grow and Understand
Learn, Grow and Understand
Learn, Grow and Understand