Jonah
Several Kilometers from the Nearest Known Dead Body, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
It appeared that taking a day off after tackling an enemy camp was becoming a bit of a habit. After defeating another group of… What had the kobolds called the things… jimble-grimbs? After defeating the jimble-grimbs at the second camp, the group had been less tired than following the first. He’d honestly expected to push on to the next X on the map the following day. Then Willow had walked Naomi through some kind of meditation and it had resulted in the girls cuddled up in front of the fire. They’d been there half the night with Naomi alternating between softly sobbing and sleeping. Jonah had taken it upon himself to keep watch as long as he could. At this point, there was an actual risk of being stumbled upon by something dangerous, after all.
Sighing and stretching, Jonah forced himself through the flap of his shockingly modern tent. He wasn’t surprised to find Willow up and doing what appeared to be an absolutely grueling workout. She was sprinting an entire lap around the camp, which Jonah would estimate was probably about two hundred meters, then she’d drop and do a push-up. She’d leap out of each push-up, perform a jumping jack, followed by a set of high-knees, then a literal backflip which ended with her landing in a push-up position and restarting the process. She’d go through the insane modified burpee routine ten times; then take off in a dead sprint around the camp again.
When Jonah realized he was frozen half way through his tent flap he picked his jaw off the ground and finished exiting. He picked up his pack, which was sitting just to the left of his tent’s entrance. While he wasn’t surprised, that didn’t mean he wasn’t impressed. Stunned, really. Every time he watched Willow exercise, or fight, or do most anything for that matter, it was an experience. As he’d fairly quickly learned, the the energetic woman never did anything half-heartedly. While he’d probably classify Willow as somewhat distractible when relaxed, she was anything but when she’d decided to do something.
He forced his eyes off of Willow’s leaping form, wondering briefly if it hurt to jump like that without a bra. He immediately shoved that line of thought away. Why the jumpsuits they’d arrived in had no underwear, he didn’t know. But it was distracting in more ways than one. Shaking his head fiercely, Jonah firmly walked out of their little clearing into the forest proper to begin searching for more wood and maybe some berries or something. Since they were going to be staying around camp and not immediately heading off to the next jimble-grimb camp, it would be a good idea to supplement the supplies the kobolds had sent them off with. They’d had enough rations to last the three of them eight days. It had been five days since they departed.
As he passed between the relatively thin trunks of the feather-branch trees, he kept his eyes out for anything edible in the foliage and thought through his plan for the day. While Naomi had Willow immediately help her meditate to try Willow’s idea of forming a soul nexus the previous evening, Jonah would be working on creating his own today.
The information packet on cultivation he’d read through, several times now, hadn’t said anything about meditation being required. It explained that he needed to have a deep understanding to form an insight, he could then use that insight to form mana aspects. It had been light on the details of exactly how to go about any of that, so he’d have to work it out himself.
How Willow had apparently done it already, from before even exiting the tutorial, he wasn’t sure. The introduction to the packet had noted that people who had mystical backgrounds in their tutorials tended to have a range of slightly easier to greatly harder time than people without when forming their first insight. The reason, it claimed, was the bad habits and incorrect beliefs they would have formed. Apparently, people with mystic training sometimes were so set in their incorrect understanding of something that they’d be entirely unable to form the insight they wanted. This was what, internally, Jonah was worried about. Though while arguing with Willow about it he’d put up a strong front, Jonah was actually very concerned that he would be forever barred from forming an insight which would let him use mental magic.
He stopped his somewhat aimless wondering upon finding a tree with a vine climbing it, packed with berries. The kobolds had given them a list of berries that were safe to eat and these matched the description of one of them. It was shocking how much more variety this seemingly one-note forest actually had, when he actually paid attention. He pulled his pack off and rooted inside until he found a small collapsible basket that each of them had been given to help transport any forage they found. He put his pack back on, then began filling the basket and returned to his thoughts.
It wasn’t that he wanted to read peoples’ thoughts and force them to do anything. He didn’t want to be able to dominate or control people… Well, not really. What he did want was the ability to control his own mind. He’d been obsessed with the idea of directly changing how his mind worked for a long time. Pretty much as long as he could remember. He wanted to fix all of the failings of his all-too human mind.
If he had his way, he’d have a perfect memory. He’d have absolute recall of anything and everything he wanted. However, he’d also have a way to control what he recalled at any given time. He wanted his long term memory to work something like a database. He would search for what he wanted and boom, just like that he’d remember. Beyond just memory, he wanted to improve the analyses run in any given situation. He wanted to be able to explicitly define how his ‘instincts’ should react to different possible events. He wanted to think faster. The last one, at least, he now knew was possible no matter the mana aspects he ended up with - just by using the ‘xp’ from killing jimble-grimbs and possibly other things.
His desire for mental magic was even stronger now that he had the UICI. Since it was apparently integrated directly into his mind whether he wanted it not, he also wanted to directly connect to it. Removing the barrier between mind and magical machine. He had already imagined how incredibly useful it would be to be able to just interface with the UICI on-demand without the need to think commands at it. Who knew? Maybe the so-called gods who had designed it hadn’t ever considered a type of mana directly interfacing with the UICI, therefore letting him entirely bypass some of their restrictions and systems. Maybe he’d be the first successful UICI hacker. The idea was… Appealing.
Grinning as his imagination ran wild, Jonah took the last few berries. Having collected enough breakfast for himself and his companions, he turned and started heading back toward the camp. Briefly noting that having so many entirely untouched berries hanging from those vines was a bit odd. Shrugging the thought off, he continued on his way.
He found himself distracted for a moment by the simple action of walking. That was the other reason he was worried about his insight. The packet had mentioned needing to be focused completely on the insight he was trying to form. While he knew mind magic was for him. After all, he already knew exactly the path he could take with it… While he knew all of that, the fact that he could walk around, run around, swing a stick, whatever, it was incredible. He’d thought maybe he’d get used to it and the sheer joy would fade. That hadn’t happened so far though, not at all, far from it! Every day he found himself distracted from whatever he’d been intending to think about, distracted just by experiencing things most anyone else would just think of as normal.
Given how incredible having a whole and functional body was, he’d even found himself considering trying to form an insight related to his newfound physical capabilities. He could maybe fly, or run even faster than Willow, or lift mountains. The possibilities were quite literally endless, so far as he knew. His thoughts kept circling though, because at the end of the day he knew the body was inherently limited - while the mind was potentially infinite.
Entering camp, Jonah smiled and waved toward Willow, “Got us some breakfast!” he called as he entered the small clearing. It was odd, how common little circles like this were. They were pretty much perfect as a campsite and there were plenty of them. Most of them, like this one, were almost a perfect circle devoid of trees. He half suspected someone maintained the forest to make sure there were plenty of these little patches, though he had no idea why anyone would bother.
“Oooo!” Willow was suddenly right in front of him.
Jonah flinched, “Did you just use your time-stop thing to get over here to check what I brought?”
“Yeah,” She answered as she started snatching handfuls of berries from the basket he was holding against his chest, “I’m starving!”
“You’re not starving. You literally say that every time you see food.”
“Cuz I forget I’m starving until I see food!” She pouted at him, looking up at him with those blue eyes like frozen diamonds through dark lashes. When she stepped away with her haul, she was smirking like a cat who’d managed to both knock an expensive shade off a table and blame the dog for it. Way too smug. Yet his entire thought process had come to a sudden halt - if his thoughts had been playing across a monitor then the glass had been shattered and the backlights had fizzled off.
Finally starting to pull himself back together, Jonah scolded himself, They’re just a pair of eyes, you bampot! It was too late, though, Willow had clearly ‘won’ in that exchange. If he tried to resume it he’d look childish. Or socially incompetent. At least he thought it was socially incompetent to bring an argument back up after one party had used an underhanded tactic to entirely derail it.
Deciding whether he won or lost, it wasn’t worth trying to reignite that particular topic, he instead just followed her over to sit near the still smoldering pit of coals. They always used a few of the plentiful fallen feather-branches to create a makeshift bench or two. He sat to Willow’s left and watched a couple wisps of smoke rise from the center of the makeshift fire ring. Honestly, Jonah wasn’t entirely sure why they made a fire every night considering it was generally hot throughout the day and warm at night. Naomi had helped them make one the first night and they’ve kind of just kept making them.
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“Is Naomi okay?” He asked, thinking about her lessons on building a fire having reminded him of her state the night before.
Willow nodded, “She’ll be fine, I think.” She lowered her voice and leaned toward him a little. He leaned toward her in turn, heart beginning to speed up at the proximity. It was a confusing experience, given his immediate desire to pull away given the smell he caught off of her. They hadn’t had a chance to bathe or clean their one pair of clothes since leaving the kobolds and the blood, sweat, and dirt weren’t doing them any favors. Heart pounding and eyes watering, Jonah waited to hear what she’d say.
“I think she’s worried that if she opens up to us too much we’re going to abandon her.”
He sat back at that, frowning, then replied just as quietly, “Even if we wanted to do that, which I certainly don’t and I don’t think you do, we literally can’t. What are we gonna do? Throw rocks and tell her not to follow us?” He was honestly baffled at the idea and a little offended that she’d think so badly of him. They hadn’t known each other long, but long enough that it was truly hurtful to hear how little Naomi thought of him.
Willow waved her hands in front between their faces, clearly trying to pull his attention back to her, “It’s not about you or me…” She looked uncertain for a minute before continuing, “I don’t love talking about her behind her back but… Look just make sure you don’t joke about leaving her behind if she’s too slow or being a burden or anything, okay? I mean I know if you said anything like that it’d just be poking fun, but that’s definitely a sore spot for her and she will definitely think that it’s at least partially not a joke. She didn’t really tell me anything, so I don’t know why but… Let’s just be careful about that, kay?”
After a moment of thought, Jonah nodded. He still felt vaguely disappointed that he apparently wasn’t worthy of being trusted not to literally abandon a companion in the wilderness. Looking back into those earnest, stunningly blue eyes though; he gave in. Maybe he was just being selfish and making something that had almost nothing to do with him, about him. He nodded firmly, agreeing to her request.
Smiling, she sat back up and popped a couple berries into her mouth, eyes widening in surprise before they closed in delight as she chewed slowly. How’d Willow manage to make eating some wild berries a spectacle?
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Willow
Several Kilometers from the Nearest Known Dead Body, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
Willow ended up spending the rest day training; both physically and magically. Naomi had gotten up a few hours after Kent brought back berries for breakfast and she’d thanked him quietly before going to sit down and eat by herself. Willow had tried to sit with her and talk a couple times throughout the day, but it was clear Naomi needed time to think things through herself.
Meanwhile, Kent had spent his time trying to focus on forming his insight. He spent the majority of it glaring into the dead fire. His ever-serious face even more tense than usual. While Willow wouldn’t call Kent handsome, she wouldn’t say he wasn’t handsome either. He had an extremely strong jawline, a bit too square really, but his cheeks were a bit pudgy. His stubble was uneven and his reddish hair was a bit thin. He was in what she’d call, ‘normal’, shape figure-wise. Not all that thin, not fat, not muscular, just normal. All that being said, he actually had a nice smile. His thin deeply bowed cupid’s lips widening and stretching those baby-faced cheeks back, his green eyes sparkling. Mostly, it was just that when he smiled he looked so darned sincere. It reminded her a bit of her pa-paw’s smile, actually. Though, Kent was missing the roughish glint her pa-paw’s eyes were known for.
She’d stopped staring at him when she noticed his eyes flicking in her direction nervously. It was fun to tease him a bit, but she didn’t want him to get the idea that she was interested romantically or anything. While he was nice, he definitely wasn’t her type. He was more like a brother. Tons of fun to bicker and mess with and maybe once they had some time to get to know each other he could be a close friend.
Once she’d truly started training, she’d entirely lost track of time. While doing every physical exercise she could think of, she’d also trained her magic. She’d worked on calling up her focus, on figuring out how to ‘step into’ her moment like she had when Madrick had first appeared and asked her to hit him. That time had been smoother, more correct, so she wanted to be able to reproduce it on demand. Besides that, she’d also tried more directly controlling the mana aspects entering her ability. That had some interesting results as she found that different quantities of mana put through the ability at different speeds altered the result a bit.
Pressing a lot of her discipline mana into the ability quickly caused all of the effects to become much stronger. The area around her that lost color expanded, the amount her perception sped up increased, her awareness of her relevant surroundings became even sharper.
Pressing a lot of her discipline as well as her unnamed mana into her ability quickly did the same, just increased the strength of the effects. Where things got interesting was when she varied the speed and amount in relation to each other. She found that if she used a minuscule amount of her unnamed mana with the ‘normal’ amount of her discipline mana, she had much finer control over exactly what her focus did. She found she could entirely turn off the grey-out effect if she wanted to. She could also change the color from grey to something else, or she could directly highlight something by leaving color in a specific thing or area. She confirmed that Kent could see the color in the things she ‘let’ keep its color. She also learned a bunch of other small ways to use just a teensy bit of her unnamed mana in exchange for much more control over her ability’s external effects. What it didn’t help her control was anything internal. The effects her focus had on her wasn’t something she was able to change by introducing her second mana type.
She was fairly certain that with more practice she’d be able to control the internal effects directly using just her discipline mana, but she wasn’t there yet. Overall, it was a fantastic day full of discovery, pushing herself, and generally just getting more comfortable with her new abilities. It was a fantastic day for Willow, that is. Given neither Naomi nor Kent seemed all that excited or happy with how the day went for them, she supposed it wasn’t fair to call it an unmitigated success.
They’d stopped their respective self-imposed tasks to eat some dinner a couple hours before night started to fall and it had taken quite a bit of effort to convince Kent to tell her how his progress toward an insight was going. It took a while to convince him she was actually interested and not trying to get an ‘I told you so’ on him. When she did, he admitted that he was having trouble focusing on a single concept. She asked if he’d tried looking for the common pieces between both and following that. He’d gotten a thoughtful look and said he’d consider it. He wouldn’t give her any details as he said he was worried about “polluting his personal connection with the concepts by introducing too much of someone else’s perspective”. She thought that was a bit weird but just told him she would be happy to brainstorm if he changed his mind.
Naomi had been slowly getting back to her normal self. That is to say, she stopped actively avoiding all forms of conversation and trying to isolate herself entirely. She was still clearly not ready to talk about the previous night though. Instead, Willow managed to get her talking about one of her favorite survival games. She listened to stories of burned-down bases, characters freezing to death, dying of poisonous berries, dehydration, and more. Naomi wasn’t a very good story teller, tending to trail off in the middle of a thought before starting a new one, but it was fine. Chatting seemed to be helping her relax a bit, so maybe that’s what she needed.
Willow agreed to take first watch, since she’d taken the second half of watch last night after Kent had kept the first watch for her and Naomi. She did her normal ‘keeping watch’ routine of walking the perimeter of the camp, staying out of the little ring made by their tents, the logs in front of the little fire ring, the ring itself, and whatever else happened to be left out. She kept near the tree line with the intention of keeping her night vision sharp. Naomi had mentioned that the firelight would dull her ability to see very far, which Willow had taken to mean she should stay a bit outside of the small area the fire illuminated. It definitely seemed to help.
As she patrolled, she tried to think about her magic: which was still so cool. Or about the upcoming search for more pop-hopper camps. Or about what training she’d do tomorrow. Really, anything, except the question her mind kept returning to. Finally, she gave up on redirecting herself. If she really wanted to, she could feed the thought to her focus, but she knew the question needed to be answered.
What’s the end goal here… We’re going to find the pop-hoppers for the kobolds and maybe help figure their whole ownership dispute thing out. Then what? The way everyone talks, we’ll be around for thousands of years. It’s somehow scarier to think about having that much time than it was to only have maybe a hundred. I knew what I wanted to accomplish within my lifetime on Earth. Now though… Does my lifetime even have an end if I don’t get killed somehow?
She hoped a creature would leap from the darkness at her as she moved from one side of the camp around the edge to another random stop and stopped to scan. The thoughts had been at the back of her mind for quite a while now and she’d just kept herself distracted every time they poked their intrusive little heads in.
Back on Earth… Part of what made living life so important and meaningful was the need to use the time I had. Now I apparently have endless time. I could just lounge around for eons now? How many people just let themselves die purely from the drudgery? She actively scanned her surroundings around and repositioned again. Well, I won’t let myself go that route.
Willow let her fists clench as she bent her neck to look up at the stars, which were covered by a thick mist and thus not visible at all, and scowled.
Stupid misty planet ruining my dramatic moment. She scoffed.
Anyway, that doesn’t change anything. I need a goal for myself. A five year, or may thousand-year, plan or whatever. In the orientation, that lizard lady, Var-shush or something like that, said The Origin wasn’t the only universe and hinted that people leave The Origin when they’re strong enough. She expected it to take a long time for us to get out of The Origin to a different universe. I think she said we’d be here for ‘foreseeable future’ , right? That sounds like a challenge. Yeah… I’ve always liked a challenge. So let’s do it. Miss Var-shush, I’m gonna make you eat your words. I’m getting out of The Origin within a hundred years! I give myself one long-lived human life.
QUEST REGISTRATION ACCEPTED
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Break the Mold
You’ve committed yourself to leaving The Origin within 100 years. Doing so will break the previous record of 129,312 years by 129,212 years.
Best Guess Reward UA related to soul nexus advancement speed
Notice: The UICI questing module is simply a best-effort parsing of the ‘Law of Universal Achievement’ for the purpose of creating a more concrete link between unconscious awareness of an available achievement and conscious understanding
Willow glared at the scroll as it unfurled in front of her. Even the stupid UICI is part of the conspiracy to ruin my bad-A moment of determining by own path and future!