Mike blearily opened his eyes an indeterminate number of hours later with a pressing need to relieve himself–something that had become less and less foreign to him as his body aged. It was only when he began sitting up that he realized it wasn’t a full bladder he was experiencing, but a full inner world. The Energy Sucker had been hard at work as he had slept, and his core was surrounded by a very dense layer of energy.
A smile split his face at his success and he chuckled aloud, “What better way to start a morning than leveling a few skills?” After a brief pause, continued in a somewhat less chipper voice, “Well, eggs and bacon with a slice of homemade bread and some raspberry jam might be better. Or really anything other than wurm meat at this point. Still, I’ll take whatever success I can get.”
Needing a pick-me-up, he decided to level up the skill he had been avoiding for several weeks, Unflinching Meteor. Last time it had nearly killed him to level the skill, but he was far more prepared now.
“And after that, I think I will level Rock Tunneling so I can build out a proper kitchen.” he concluded with a smile, his plans cheering him up enough to take his mind mostly away from bacon.
Things went much smoother than they ever had before. He activated the skill so that it glowed brightly to his mind’s eye, before coating it in a thick layer of his energy stores. Having now leveled his skills this way more than ten times, he was often able to predict where cracks would form, proactively filling them in before any problems arose.
A notification announced that he had been successful, and he was about to check it as a way to celebrate his victory, when the giant Energy Sucker symbol appeared, rapidly stealing his energy at a rate visible to his internal eye. In his eagerness to upgrade skills, he had forgotten that this occurred every time, and a surge of anger at the unwanted intrusion caused him to attack the invading System. It was hard to say what he did, as this was all occurring in what was, as best as he could tell, an imaginary world that existed within him. All he knew is that his energy heeded his call and battered against the symbol that had formed. It sputtered for a moment, seemingly shocked at the attack, before it began to consume even faster than before.
Gritting his teeth, Mike directed the energy to destroy specific parts of the symbol–he didn’t know if or what this symbol was connected to, but from experience, he knew where to leave the symbol incomplete to cause the most pain.
“Chod’te preč!” he yelled internally at the symbol as he attacked, falling back on the few Slovak words he had learned from his time spent there. They had the benefit of sounding like he was swearing, without actually doing so.
As soon as the first pathway was fully severed, the symbol disappeared completely. Mike was happy to note that he still had just enough energy left to upgrade Rock Tunneling, which he decided to do immediately. He stood ready to fight back with the last dregs of his energy as the skill finished upgraded, but to his amazement, the symbol didn’t show.
Without the invasion, for the first time ever he was able to notice how the symbol had changed slightly upon Leveling Up. A slight curl on one of the edges was all it was, but he noted it nonetheless.
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Unable to see what was happening in Mike’s inner world, as that would reveal the sacred cultivation symbols embedded into the System which the Hive guarded with jealousy, Sector Assimilator and Junior Administrator watched patiently as he simply sat there, until a warning appeared.
“Warning! Warning! Anomaly is actively retaliated against energy recuperation systems. Enacting self-preservation sequence 88b: kill switch.”
“No! Abort! Override!” Sector Assimilator yelled in panic, not wanting his free access to the most valuable knowledge in the multiverse to be destroyed so easily.
“Are you sure you want to override energy recuperation for anomaly XCV23?” the screen prompted.
“Yes, override” Sector Assimilator said in a relieved voice, they had made it on time.
“Authorization needed for override, please provide verification.”
“Gaah, are we not signed in? Why does technology never function the way it is intended??”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Oh, it looks like Cadet Gerrofilius is still signed in”. Junior Administrator helpfully supplied.
“Tsssk. Well then quick, let’s resign-in and fix this before the anomaly dies trying to fight the System’s powers.”
Tentacles flew unceremoniously about as they hastily rectified the situation, just managing to shut off energy recuperation right as Mike cut the symbol’s pathway, saving his life and procuring them additional time to learn from his unique ability to see cultivation symbols.
The two cousins gave each other a high-tentacle before turning back to the screen, eager to see what would happen next.
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Mike blew his nose into his raggedy sleeve to get some of the rock dust out. Though his upgraded skills allowed his hands to move through the rock as if it was little more than sand, it didn’t prevent dust from coating his body and entering his eyes, ears and nose.
“Hard work is good work, and it always comes with a cost” he said, repeating the mantra his father had taught him.
Over the past couple of hours, the kitchen had slowly began to take shape. It was small by most house standards, but tall enough for him to stand up in. By the light of cosmic water, he could make out the booth-like table and benches he had created in one corner, as well as the countertop, which was complete with a basin for water to sit in and a space for an oven. He had enough meat to last months still, especially with the foxes subsisting solely on cosmic water, so the kitchen was solely for his personal edification and enjoyment. He could probably live on just cosmic water as well if he learned how to Level Up with it.
He had purposefully carved the kitchen back towards the opening of his tunnels, so that he could create a chimney for the hot air to escape, which was what he intended to do next. The problem was, while the kitchen was closer to the plateau's outer-face than his bedroom, it was still a good ten feet of rock before he could reach open air, much further than his arms could reach, and he needed to keep the chimney narrow so that it was hard for birds to see and, more importantly, too small for giant man-eating, angry birds to enter.
Sitting down on his new bench, he began thinking through the situation in an attempt to problem solve. He had promised himself he was going to be better about problem solving with the mechanics of his new world in mind, and to that end, his thoughts led him to think about the fractals that made up his skills. If it was the fractals on his hands that made it possible for his hands to so easily dig out solid rock, couldn’t he just put those fractals on a piece of equipment to get the same result? Enlivened by the prospect, he created a small shovel out of Quicksilver, before painstakingly carving the symbol onto its surface. He wasn’t surprised, although slightly disappointed, when nothing happened.
Remembering his nephew complaining about spending hours of time digging through code to find a single mistake, he went back over his work, slightly enhancing some of the lines before trying it again. When that still didn’t work, he recreated the shovel anew, this time making the symbol larger so that it was easier to work with. But this still didn’t work.
Frustrated, he turned inward to once again look at the symbol that he could draw in front of him with ease, only to realize his very glaring mistake: the symbol was 3D. Some parts of it were deeper than other parts. Some channels went behind others. This wasn’t a simple two dimensional drawing, even though that is what he had been trying to create.
With this new knowledge, he spent the better part of the night tracing the symbol to perfection before trying it again. Still nothing happened, and he threw the shovel away in anger. If there was one thing that made him angry, it was when an inanimate object didn’t behave as it was supposed to. Didn’t it know that he was its master? Shouldn’t the hammer not hit his finger when he was aiming for the chisel?
Regaining control, he bent to pick up the cosmic water lamp so he could stow it away for the night, only then realizing his final misconception: his skills took energy to function, so why would a symbol on a shovel work any differently?
Pouring a bit of water on the symbol, he watched as the light increased dramatically. This time, when he went to dig, the shovel parted the stone easily.
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“What a pupach! Using the sacred symbols of the multiverse to carve some stone?” Junior Administrator snorted in derision.
“Clearly he has no idea just how valuable these symbols are.” Sector Assimilator agreed with a sneer. “All the better for us.”
“Indeed. Progression never seemed so easy.”
After a few minutes of silence, Junior Administrator ventured to ask what had been bothering them for the last several hours. “So we won’t be held accountable for the loss of the cosmic water? I know at the academy we learned that it is one of the most valuable resources put into an integration, and without energy recuperation, the System isn’t recycling any of its energy. That won’t reflect badly on us?”
“Ah, my young cousin, you are thinking about this through the eyes of a subordinate, rather than a leader. For starters, the System is still recycling any of the energy he is wasting when using water to shovel dirt. The only thing it isn’t recycling is the excess energy he is storing within himself as he works to upgrade his skills. Which we won’t allow to go on forever. Once he stops giving us easy access to the sacred symbols, we will enact Phase 4, and blame any energy loss on someone beneath us. Maybe Cadet Gerrofilius since they were the ones signed in?”
Slightly mollified, Junior Administrator got back to copying down the symbol on the shovel. They didn’t understand what it meant fully yet, but in time, they definitely would.