Chapter 114 (2/2)

The spear she had provided for the first exercise had been just as heavy as that godforsaken vest, and swiftly caused his arms to burn. But he knew that she really would demand he do it again if he paused, so he finished her exercise, his chest heaving. She had only shook her head, and said words that made a vein in his forehead throb.

“Aren’t you a little too weak? And the whole point was to stab the spear through the hoop without touching it, working on your control… well I suppose it’s fine for your first try.”

So they moved onto the next exercise, which required Randidly to move around, between those strange spinny wooden pillars, hitting the pegs in a certain order, at a certain angle.

See, the pegs were covered with 6 letters, spaced equally apart on the peg. At most points, Randidly was surrounded by 3 or 4 pillars, each with 9 pegs, 3 for each segment, pointing out in different directions. So usually 3 pegs per pillar were within reach. Which meant he had access to 54 letters that could be touched at any one point.

The whole idea was that Mrs.Hamilton would say a word, and Randidly would spell it out by hitting the letters in the right order. Unfortunately, there was a lot of letter overlap, and uncommon letters were only located on one or two of the pegs, in the 20 or so pillars, and the 180 or so pegs.

It was allowed to press a letter, and take a single step, moving so he would be close enough to the letter he needed. This sometimes pushed his footwork to the limits, making him use his imagination to move to where he needed to be with a single step.

Another problem was that everything was spinning constantly, moved by the wind from his steps, or from the touches of his hand. So not only did he have to look around and try to memorize where the letters were, but he had to keep track of them all while they moved.

This was still at the limit of possible. Then Mrs. Hamilton started giving him words that would have him touch the first 3 letters, then freeze, because it was impossible to make it across the pillar group to the W on the other side.

“This is impossible.” Randidly said flatly.

Mrs. Hamilton chuckled. “You just don’t think. Why did you pick that first E just because it was in front of you? If you had thought about it, you would have realized that if you moved that direction, the W coming up would be impossible.”

Randidly just gave her a long glance.

He had noticed something different about her since she obtained the Soul Skill. But this was insane. Truthfully, no one had ever really understood how much work Mrs. Hamilton did, handling all the logistics of the NCCs. But it certainly required a mind like a steel trap, and an uncommon eye for detail. And now with the bonuses provided by her soul skill…

Her level of insight and planning was slightly intimidating.

Randidly broke off the glance and tried again, and again, and again. It was late afternoon before he finished, performing at a level that Mrs. Hamilton found “barely acceptable.”

Stretching, Randidly removed some food from his spatial ring and took several bites, swiftly devouring the food. Even though they had much increased stamina, Aether only did so much in terms of support; people with stats and skills still slowly developed an increasing amount of hunger. Randidly consumed close to 40 pounds of food a day. Luckily both the Wolverine raising and farming was booming, otherwise he wasn’t even sure how much more growth Donnyton could support.

After he had sated himself, Randidly turned to Mrs. Hamilton and asked “What’s next?”

“Quiet reflection, or spell training. I need to think a little about how I want to proceed, and check in on Lyra. I’ll come back around dinner with your training menu for the next week. Good luck~”

Nonplussed, Randidly watched her go then wandered a bit away from the training equipment. While he calmly brewed potions, he created swarms of pestilence, he created Walls of Thorns and waves of Spearing Roots, he shot Incendiary Bolts and made Rings of Fire. He could still feel the small boost he could give his spells by burning a little bit more mana, but Randidly didn’t force it now.

Instead, he just felt the mana expenditure, feeling the small differences in the ways it flowed out of him, depending on what spell he used. They were currently just vague impressions, but Randidly had the feeling that as his sensitivity increased, he would grow nearer to having the same strange power as Lyra had, able to freely manipulate and control mana.

After he had repeated the cycle of spells several times, he sat down to meditate, activating Agony. The vicious, digging, jarring pain became his world, but Randidly was used to it now, and his powerful will made it possible to ignore the worst of the pain for now. Instead, it served as a kind of isolation, removing him from the influence of outward stimulus. The sound of the wind and the warmth of sun on his skin slowly faded away, leaving only his razor sharp focus.

With his attention inward, Randidly focused on the one area of himself that proved that it was possible to control Aether, or at least to direct it; that strange place where his Soul Skill rotated inside of himself. Even now, the strange, decadent, rotting green energy flew around the core of Aether, opposite the bright orange energy, burning everything the green energy left behind to ash.

When he had caused the Aether to move, two details of the situation stuck out to Randidly. That he wanted to avoid his Soul Skills collapsing into nothing incredibly badly, and that in that moment, he had a strong image of Aether forming the core of a rotation, balancing the two forces.

From his experience with the system, both of these were logically important. The system responded to your desires. With a stronger desire, the system would respond more powerfully. And your perspective on what the system was changed how it behaved. It made sense that a powerful and logically consistent image of an outcome could bring that outcome to be.

Since he had used Aether to change his Soul Skill, why not experiment in that area again? Refining the Soul Skill further? He likely couldn’t do it immediately, but while he was working on Agony and Meditation, it was a good way to keep his mind occupied. At the moment he didn’t have any ideas on how to do such a thing, but Randidly believed that it was due to the fact that he didn’t have a strong image, and wasn’t sure what he wanted.

So sitting there, the energies rotating within himself, Randidly tried to imagine what was going on in this cycle.

At first he tried to handle one at a time, but then when he tried to move them together, they crashed and collapsed, probably like his Soul Skill would have, if he let them encounter each other. No, if he was going to get the right image, he needed to handle them all together.

In his mind’s eye, Randidly could see a small rocky prairie. What was rot? What was ash?

He watched as grass grew in the prairie, and then the rot came, eating slowly away at the grasses, forming a strange, blobby mass as the rot consumed and grew. Then the burning came, devouring even more completely than the rot could devour, burning away all of the biomass, leaving only the earth. For a short time there was nothing, but then grasses began to poke out of the soil and grow, and the cycle started again.

Grass grew.

When there was enough grass, the rot swiftly spread, growing large and fat and destructive.

Then, when the prairie was almost entirely rot, the fire would come, burning it all away, leaving the prairie clean. Only then could the grass grow again.

The energies circled and circled, even and steady, never growing closer, stead in the orbit. Randidly watched, entranced.