Willow
Following Pop-Hopper Scrawling, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
“Look, all I’m saying is that it has to be more of a part of who you are than, ‘I’ve always wanted to be able to!’” Willow answered Kent with a bit of exasperation. As they roughly followed the ‘map’ they’d found in the pop-hopper camp, they’d been discussing the marvelously mystical multiverse’s mystical secrets.
As the only one of their group who had magic, Willow naturally felt her input should carry some weight. Which was why she was beginning to feel ever-so-slightly miffed at Kent for insisting that because some “data packet” explained the basics of “cultivation” he thought he had a better idea how to get his own awesome magic powers going.
“The guide says you have to have a strong conceptual and personal understanding. I’ve obsessed over all of the details. Mind magic is definitely going to work!” Kent’s voice had risen a bit in volume, not that there was anyone around who cared enough to scold him.
Willow rolled her eyes, “I’ll bet you all of my R2-EBs that what the packet means by ‘strong conceptual and personal understanding’ is way more complicated than ‘prominently features in your fantasies’.”
Before Kent could argue back Naomi broke in from in front of the squabbling pair, “Why don’t we just test both?”
“I can’t split my focus like that, or it’ll definitely fail!” Kent answered, “The manual says–”
“Yeah, I know, you read it to us, we know what it says too.” Naomi’s voice sounded less annoyed than Willow thought she might, having listened to them argue for almost a full half hour by this point. Either she was good at tuning annoyances out, or she was a freaking saint. If two people had bickered going in circles for as long as she and Kent had, she’d lose her ever loving mind. She suddenly felt a bit guilty, despite - or maybe because of - Naomi’s apparent lack of annoyance.
Naomi continued after glancing back to make sure neither of them were going to interrupt her own interruption of Kent. Willow shot her two thumbs up to show her support for her cutting Kent’s silly ‘the manual says’ off.
“There are two of us who need to unlock our own internal dojo or soul nexus, or whatever you want to call it. I want magic too, after all. You do it like you think the instruction packet says you should and Willow can tell me what to do.”
A few moments of silence passed before Kent answered lamely, “Ah… Yeah… That works.”
Willow snickered a bit. Seeing Naomi was looking back again for their reactions, she shot the other girl a wink. She grinned as she thought she caught a slight blush on their leader’s cheeks.
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The second pop-hopper camp looked much like the first. It had taken less than half a day for the party to find it using the map. They had taken a day of ‘down time’ for everyone to rest up. Willow had fully meditated for the first time since dying and had found it extremely effective in speeding up her mana generation. Or rather, mana conversion as Kent’s cultivation primer packet had called it. He had to read it to them because the UICI wouldn’t let him share it directly in any way. It said they each had to buy the stupid packet.
Apparently, what she had been thinking of as her mana being generated was actually quite a bit more complicated than that. All mana was created by converting ambient energy which the packet called ‘potentia’ into a mana aspect. That was about as far as the packet went into the mechanics, but it was interesting to know.
The day they remained at camp had been pretty nice, actually. Besides a few hours of meditation, it had given Willow time to continue to think about her yet unnamed aspect and insight; not to mention giving more thought to her ability rather than just taking it for granted.
Maybe I needed more down time if I’m still getting distracted so easily… Willow forced herself to concentrate on the camp again. Their plan was similar to last time, but with some distinct modifications.
First of all, she had a rough stave in her hand similar to the ones Naomi and Kent carried. Second of all, she wasn’t going to be moving around and trying to see things better which had gotten her spotted last time. Third of all, she wouldn’t be hesitating and letting them group up into their stupid build-a-hopper form. All in all, it was the same plan but better.
She heard her signal. Kent’s only slightly shrill war cry. She grinned, pushed herself off the ground with an explosive push-up and rushed down, forgoing her own war cry to hopefully take the enemy off guard. As a bright fire of excitement over the upcoming violence blossomed within her, she realized something. Ah crawdaddies… I forgot to process why this feels so good and figure out how to not… Oh well, no time right now!
This encounter felt much more similar to her initial beat down of pop-hopper kind than the most recent one. She swept through them like a farmer through wheat. A farmer with a long blunt stick instead of a sickle. A farmer who popped her crops rather than carefully harvesting them. A farmer who had to dodge and weave to avoid his crops striking out in retaliation. A farmer who - Okay, comparing a slaughter to a harvest is maybe a bit dumber than I originally thought.
The entire assault took less than five minutes, with all of the pop-hoppers laying dead. Most of them with popped heads. Willow grinned at Naomi and Kent like a proud ma’ma. She saw both managed to kill two each! There had been fifteen in total, but still, they’d never fought before. It was good, they were growing!
For some reason, they both had a far-off look though, “Uh… Guys, you okay?” She saved a hand in front of Naomi’s face and she blinked, coming back to the world.
“Yeah, sorry, the feeling is just really… weird. Good, though. Really good.”
“It’s a rush. Similar to how an opioid I had to take at one point made me feel…” Kent joined their conversation though his eyes were still unfocused. He cleared his throat and shook his head, “I don’t think killing stuff is supposed to feel like that.”
Now that they’d pointed it out, Willow had felt weirdly heady after each fight. She had chalked it up to something similar to the adrenaline and dopamine from a good fight, but stronger due to the actual life and death nature of it. With barely a thought, Willow found herself looking in on her little dojo and was surprised to find a thick mist churning and flowing around the room. Focusing on it, she found that she could easily direct the energy.
Experimentally, she pushed a small bit of it into her little sketch-like avatar. She watched with interest as details began to rapidly fill out. The impulse to shove all of the energy directly into her avatar to improve her unnamed maybe-time aspect was powerful, but she managed to suppress it.
Instead, she relayed to her friends what she’d found, switching her focus back to the waking world. It was odd, she could ‘see’ her inner world and the real world both at the same time, but focusing on both was… Difficult. It was something she’d practice later.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“So… You can make your aspects, what, stronger?” Kent clarified after she explained what she’d done and its result.
“Hmm… Maybe just more rather than stronger? Like I expanded the amount of mana it can hold. The amount of detail on my avatar seems to correspond with my maximum amount of that aspect’s mana I can hold at any given time. When it’s full it very very slowly increases all by itself, but it looks like this free energy can be used to speed that up significantly.”
“So it’s xp” Naomi threw in dryly.
Willow nodded emphatically, “Ooo, yeah! Good analogy!”
“Well… If it’s xp, then you should be able to ‘level up’ more than just your mana pool. Can you increase your physical attributes? Like your strength?” Kent was flicking his pointer and middle fingers against his thumb as he thought.
The thought reminded Willow of the very small amount of generated, converted, mana that seemed to flow out of her dojo. The dojo itself, according to Kent’s information packet, was probably what they termed a ‘soul nexus.’ Though the packet was a bit light on details for them to be entirely sure. She was planning to look on the market for a better guide using her R2 currency later.
Doing her best to keep part of her focus on the external world, Willow directed another small stream of the floating energy out of the window. When it reached the window, it changed. The clear pane suddenly became a beautiful stained glass piece of artwork. It reminded her of some of her favorite artworks in a stained glass museum she’d gone to with Vash and James back on Earth. This one depicted herself, or rather her body.
It was rather surreal, as although it was artistically styled, it was a shockingly detailed image of her entire naked body. More than just naked, multiple layers of colored glass depicted each and every layer and part of her body. She could see her skin, connecting tissues, muscle, tendons, veins and arteries, bones, marrow, and everything else. The longer she looked, the more she could see. While she wasn’t sure whether it was due to this being her visualization, or something else, she was extremely grateful it wasn’t depicted with 4k quad-A gaming resolution and realism. She would definitely have puked.
As it was, it was almost natural to direct the stream of xp energy into the glass and guide it to strengthen her muscles. Specifically, she focused on improving her twitch muscles for faster and sharper movements. She could feel the change. She didn’t instantly feel stronger. In fact, she felt suddenly worse as a deep ache reminiscent of her first couple years training in earnest with coach as a teenager set in. She knew this burn all too well, it was the feeling which came the day after an extreme workout.
Shooting Kent betrayed puppy-dog eyes, she relayed the result of the experiment. She almost laughed at the Kent’s innocence as he started blushing as soon as she mentioned the mural of her naked body. She’d have to remember his reaction for later teasing. For now, she was more interested in figuring out everything this tentatively named ‘xp’ could do. Before she continued her own experimentation, though…
“Hey, can you guys feel the energy inside of you? Maybe you can use it to improve your bodies, even if you don’t have a soul nexus thing setup yet?”
That got Kent excited. For some reason, he dropped into an awful sukhasana cross-legged position. He sat like a kid doing ‘criss-cross apple sauce’. She almost scolded him on reflex for his horrible form but stopped herself before she could distract him. If it helped him focus, then she could just bring it up and show him how to do it properly later.
Naomi didn’t follow his example, but did close her eyes and looked like she was concentrating hard. Since they were both suddenly occupied, Willow returned to her own introspection. She tried pressing the energy into the walls of her dojo, which caused the walls to become an ever-so-slightly cleaner. She honestly couldn’t imagine a more neat and tidy space than her dojo, for which she felt an odd sense of pride.
Curious to see how her soul nexus could possibly become more clean, she put a little more of the energy into it. She noted she was down to about half of the mist and also reminded herself that she’d never noticed such mist before, so it had to disperse after a certain amount of time. Either that, or she’d somehow been subconsciously using it to improve aspects of herself, but she didn’t think so.
As she put another 10% or so of the xp into her dojo’s walls, she didn’t notice any change in the cleanliness of her space. Satisfying once and for all that it was as perfectly clean as anything could possibly get. Instead, she saw the faint outline of a door which looked something like a mostly erased pencil outline suddenly become a bit thicker. A bit less faint. So it seemed the next part of this aspect’s representation within her soul nexus would be to add another room, which absolutely made sense to her.
Again tempted to pour all of her xp into one thing, Willow resisted the trigger-happy demon sitting on her firing hand begging her to ‘doooo-eeet’. Instead she quickly ran through all of the additional tests she could think up.
She directed a bit of xp into her ability. She wasn’t sure what it did, since it was one of the things she could neither see nor feel very well. However, the energy definitely entered the ability. She would simply assume that it did something worthwhile.
Next, she pressed a bit of the mist out of the window and into the outside of her dojo’s wall. Her eyes widened as she felt something like vertigo wash over her for a moment, then it was gone. Curiously, though more cautiously, she formed another thin stream of mist and repeated the test. This time expecting the sensation, she realized it wasn’t vertigo so much as motion. Like being inside of an opaque elevator which started to move unexpectedly. The discomfort immediately vanished, leaving only the slow sensation of odd movement as she fed a tiny but constant trickled through her window and into the wall. When she thought she’d put about as much into the outer wall as she had into her dojo’s internals, she stopped and considered her next experiments.
She only had somewhere around ten percent of the amount of xp she’d started with when she increased her disciple aspect. That would probably only be enough for two more tests at the most. She could use less, but she didn’t think she’d be able to feel any changes that little managed to make.
Alright, what all do I still want to test? I want to see if I can speed up my mind by directing some xp to my brain. I want to see if I can improve my organs. Can I improve more abstract things about myself? Could I make myself more creative? How about better able to empathize with people? Could I improve my ability to sense mana that isn’t mind? What about potentia, could I make myself able to sense that? What about specific parts of my dojo? Can I specifically improve one aspect rather than just pushing the energy into the entire building?
After a minute of thinking, she realized that she had lost a bit of xp. She’d actually been watching it this time, so she saw it kind of… Vanish. She wasn’t sure where it went, or why. The lost energy definitely wasn’t doing anything to help her, though.
The knowledge that she was on a tight timer helped her make a split second decision. She sent half of the remaining xp into the window of her dojo specifically. To her delight, it worked. The window itself changed slightly. While the window had previously been almost entirely flush with the wall, with barely any sill underneath, it was now significantly inset. The sill beneath the window was now deep enough to use as a book shelf. Great, so one hypothesis confirmed! I can absolutely direct the xp. hyper-specific portions of my soul nexus.
The next thing she tried was to improve her brain, but specifically whatever part of her brain let her think faster. She directed the energy to the window, which changed into the Willow stained glass masterpiece… And was immediately stumped. The energy seemed confused. Energy can’t be confused. That’s stupid. Don’t tell me this xp has some kind of mind? Or isn’t allowed to be used for mental enhancement for some reason?
After trying to come in at different angles, Willow eventually got annoyed enough to entirely stop shoving it at the window. Instead, she just mentally SCREAMED at the xp, make me think faster! Which immediately worked. Instead of going to stained-glass window though, the xp shot ‘upward’. Or rather, she pictured it as upward, though the direction was somewhat less than she could describe accurately with only three spacial dimensions.
What the energy actually did was came straight at her. Not at any of her representations, but at her. She’d have flinched, actually she did flinch, but everyone was too busy doing their own thing to notice. Despite the odd sensation of a mental representation literally breaking through the fourth wall of her imagination, she grinned. Because it had worked. She had immediately felt her mind speed up. Not to any extraordinary degree, but by enough to be noticeable. And in a fight? This tiny boost is already a game changer against someone with the same speed, strength, and skill as me.
Having spent all of her xp, Willow checked on her companions and then remembered where they were. She laughed awkwardly, “Eh, guys, you think we should have moved away from all the dead bodies before doing this?” Kent was sitting in what looked like a highly uncomfortable crossed-leg pose literally less than a meter from the arm of a pop-hopper corpse, while Naomi and her were both standing near enough to easily kick dead limbs themselves.