Noah woke up with a feeling of painful fullness like last time. With irritation he sat up, the headache not completely gone either which compounded the negative feelings he experienced. “Bloody hell, is this automatic filling of my core going to prevent me from being able to get a good night’s sleep?” He complained, sitting up to think about it. “Would make sense. That piece of shit god would throw something at us to help us while not giving enough information to avoid pitfalls.” he grumbled.
He returned to sitting cross-legged and thought back to his core. The feeling he got from the spiritual container was full of the energy he used to empower himself, but the core kept producing energy, putting a pressure on the container he couldn’t stop. He was once again distracted with an errant thought, this time about wishing for a teacher to guide him through the beginning like a proper tutorial.
He attempted to have the energy push out of his core like he did when he would temper himself, but the energy wished to return to his container after he let it go. What was the difference between his energy and ambient energy? Its not like the core changed its properties since this effect happened before he got his core.
Deciding that just getting the energy out of his core and worrying about it when he had more time to think, he would once again begin the refining process he began last time. Taking fragments of energy and pulling them up to his brain. Just the change from the last time he did it was great. It was easier to keep a hold of the energy and subsume it into his mind, he even felt the energy reinforcing his mind instead of disappearing.
His headache not disappearing did hinder his ability to work though, and once he was empty, he had improved his mind once again, but the headache was bad enough that he could only rest. This rest had a dream though, one he remembered. He was fighting the last goblin, spinning to take off its head, when the axe sliced his stomach apart, causing the feeling of his guts to start forcing their way out of him.
The nightmare caused him to wake mentally worse for wear even if his headache was gone. Panting he would stand up in the bonfire room and stretch out, hearing his back pop a couple of times, he realised how much he was cooped up in the room. “Time to figure out my next task. Better than sitting here and growing lethargic.”
Noah moved through the four rooms that were everything he knew of this world quickly, coming upon the table that was the only decoration for the door room. Upon the table rested a piece of wooden board with carved runes he could tell was… whatever text he had been introduced to that gave him the knowledge of core formation.
“That was so complex and deep. I wonder if there was more to learn from it if I could just look at it again?” He mused out loud… then again. Just an immediate glance at those runes caused his mind to be so consumed with it that he would have jumped off a cliff if he wasn’t careful… so being wary about the information runes was far more beneficial to him.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Bringing the board closer to the light so he could read it, he found this one was as profound as it seemed to be hastily carved. That led to a small divergence about his wonder at being able to instinctually tell how badly written the runes were. He could still understand the runes though, and he was glad he learned a bit about energy manipulation, as the knowledge contained in the runes he was reading seemed to include the instinctual feelings he got from manipulating energy.
[Congratulations, you have unlocked a valuable and foundational skill for the world you will soon enter: Truetext comprehension. Make sure to learn more about Truetext and be warned, it relays truth, if you cannot handle it, the truth will make you lose your sanity.]
The popup was new, but after he recovered from the shock of the text, he gave a small nod. He got the inkling of what this said from his casual reading of the Truetext, but knowing this was basically eldritch writing, it allowed him to more accurately fit how Truetext worked in the scheme of the world.
The board he was currently reading was discussing how to manipulate energy to read the intent of the text. All written text other than Truetext seemed to have an intent when they are written, and so those who can manipulate energy can learn to read languages just by using the written word as a cipher.
Knowing what his next trial was he began to re-read the explanation of the technique, needing to use his energy to make a formation in his soul that he could feed energy into to get the result he wanted. It took him around 20 re-readings of the board to understand enough from what he could tell… the feeling of Truetext seemed so different from normal writing that it threw him off guard.
The next… he couldn’t tell how much time he attempted it, was dedicated to trying to get the energy to fit into the formation displayed in the text so he could imprint it to be useable later. The problem was that somehow a 2d image was tougher than 3d images in his mind. The amount of mental effort it took to create just fragments of the formation pissed him off, and soon he stood up in irritation. “First technique I learn and its something complex like this. Will this be all of my techniques?” He called up to the heavens… well the roof of the cavern… he wanted to blow off some steam.
The problem he quickly realised was that he couldn’t. There was nothing to do here other than train and think to himself. “Fine, if all I can do is train, then I’ll make sure the final trial will be quick.” He promised to himself.
He then summoned his sword and moved into the stance that kendo players always made when they were practising. They did it so it must have some use for improving swordsmanship right? When thinking about it, Noah could only think that it helped steady your slash. So many slashes in the same direction making sure there was no wobble, change in direction or change in how one pointed their blade. It was meant to make the slash as effective as possible, and he would strive to reach that until he found a better training method for swordsmanship.