113 Fundamental (1/2)

I nodded, “Yeah, I am.”

Yawm leaned back all his weight onto his back foot, giving him room to peer at me,

“No fear? That’s disappointing. The most fearful candidates tend to last the longest.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Candidates?”

Yawm nodded his head, gesturing towards the doorway,

“Of course. Come to my study. I’ll discuss it there.”

We walked out of the viewing room and down the spiral staircase. As we did, Yawm spoke.

“You aren’t the first entity I’ve tried teaching the cipher.”

“How did the other guys work out?”

“I could sum up their responses in a metaphor. The cipher is like an ocean. Up to a certain depth, you can hardly notice it. Afterall, water won’t drown you until it is over your head.”

Yawm pressed his fingers together, “Some beings panic once the water became to high. They would drown in water before it even crossed their neck. They were weak of mind and spirit, but they sought after power they could not understand.”

Yawm opened his hand, “Some would handle the cipher well until they submerged themselves. Once their feet left the ground, they found that they couldn’t swim. I tried helping them, but they swallowed the water before I could get them out.”

Yawm sighed, “And the most disappointing of the groups would swim out into the ocean. They would wallow in the cipher, relishing it. They were masterful, learning the cipher’s secrets with a depth even I couldn’t match, but...they could never find their way back to the shore.”

Yawm glanced at me for a moment, “Knowing the cipher is understanding existence. Everyone has asked why we are here, what are we doing here, what is our purpose? If you dive deep enough, you’ll find the answers within the cipher.”

Yawm turned forward, “Some questions are better left unanswered, however. I’d recommend taming your curiosity. It’s a difficult prospect for most sentient races. Curiosity is the largest driving force for most species. We’re wired so that new information gives us pleasure. In nature, it was always a good thing during the evolution of our species.”

Yawm walked towards his desk. He notched a hinge, walking into the center of it, every side surrounding him once inside. It was a giant, hollow square essentially, giving him lots of room for doing his work.

Yawm kept glancing at the pages on his desk,

“In this age, there’s more information than anyone could ever hope to absorb. Information without a purpose is meaningless. It’s like learning sixty languages,yet only ever speaking one. In essence, knowledge without action is a vice.”

Yawm waved his hand, “Do excuse my tangent. It’s rare I can discuss my thoughts with anyone, let alone someone who rivals my own strength. Tell me, what do you think about learning?”

I turned towards Yawm, “Well, I haven’t thought about it that much. I guess I take a...a lean approach. I do first then learn about it later. I found I get more done that way.”

Yawm widened his eyes, “Do first then learn later?”

I walked up to the desk, “Uh, yeah. Think about it like this. What’s the fastest way to learn how to do something 99% of the time?”

Yawm tapped his desk, “It depends on the task.”

I shook my head, “From my experience, it doesn’t really. The best way to learn is to do it. Wanna cook better? Cook. Want to be better at math? Do math.”

“Hah, then you aren’t going to enjoy how I begin my teaching.”

I opened my palms to him, “Trust me. If you can tell me anything about the cipher, I’m all ears. It was a bitch to learn.”

Yawm nodded, “Hah, hah, indeed it was. It must have been more so for you than me. A few of the principles I began with from Etorhma helped my progress tremendously. You lack them, making your progression stunted. Allow me to enlighten you.”

Yawm raised a hand. Several green sparks radiated, casting the room in a green shade.

“Don’t worry about the aura. It’s merely the radiation I use to drive my magic. Porytians source of mana is external rather than internal. I can store some within me, but I can’t actually produce it.”

Yawm squeezed his hand, lifting several pages from the table. Before he began his first lesson, I leaned against the bone desk,

“Can I ask a few questions first?”

“Of course. I’ll do my best to answer them.”

“Alright, cool. First off, how did you get everything in this room back to normal?”

Yawm tapped the side of his head as a few piece of paper circled above him in the air,

“Back during my days within Schema’s system, I gained many ‘perks.’ One of those perks involved photographic memory. Quite the useful thing, photographic memory is. I created a room I most enjoyed, and now I recreate it anytime that it is destroyed.”

He waved his hand, a table and chairs appearing out of thin air beside him. He waved his hand again, making the objects disappear. Watching my wonder, Yawm spoke with excitement,

“Do you see that ring on your finger?”

I lifted my left hand, the one with Schema’s dimensional storage. Yawm pointed at it with his free hand,

“I’ve torn one of those rings apart. Beneath the metal, there exists many lines of code from the dimensional cipher. Schema creates a folded piece of space time within the confines of the ring. Doing so is actually quite simple, but the other requirements of the ring aren’t as simplistic.”

Yawm pointed in directions, making spheres of water appear and disappear, “Using the knowledge I gained from the ring, I created several pocket dimensions for my own use. Within those dimensions, I store items I want to keep. Even though it may have seemed like it, I did not reverse time. I haven’t discovered that trick just yet.”

Yawm shook his head, “No, I simply use stored materials in conjunction with my photographic memory to recreate this space.”

I’m not going to lie, I gawked a little at the explanation. As I tried to suppress my awe, I shook my head,

“Damn...So that’s why Schema made it illegal to look inside the ring or tamper with it. He doesn’t want anyone knowing that the cipher is right there.”

Yawm clasped his fist, destroying all the created blots of matter.

“Schema doesn’t want anyone knowing that they are wearing utilities made from the cipher. Curious, isn’t it?”

I nodded, “Yeah, it is. Ok, what about the green aura. What is all that?”

Yawm glanced around, “This is the byproducts of nuclear fission. I create a controlled splitting of atoms then harness that energy for mana. That drives my own magic, my attacks, healing, everything.”

I blinked a few times, “Damn...That’s broken.”

Yawm laughed, “You’re own production of mana is far greater than any other living creature I’ve met, aside from Old Ones. That in itself is broken in its own right.”

I smiled, “I suppose. Alright, I’m all out of questions.”

“Then the lesson will begin. Remove that black helmet of yours.”

“Uh, why?”

“Communicating with a mask is irritating. I can’t read any of your facial features, and most of communication is nonverbal regardless.”

I shrugged, “Alright.”

I peeled back my helmet, revealing my face to Yawm. He inspected me for a moment,

“I imagined you weren’t a member of this species. Your progression since Schema assimilated this world...it must have been accelerated.”

I weighed my hands back and forth, “Eh, sort of. I met an eldritch and a dry man that helped me along the way.”

“An eldritch helped your evolution?”

I raised a palm to Yawm, “That fucker did not mean to. Anyways, let’s start the cipher lesson.”

Yawm shook his head, “Greedy for knowledge, aren’t you? I am as well, in many respects. Then let’s begin with something simple.”

Yawm tapped moved his hand, the floating pages connecting together. This super page stretched for dozens of feet, wrapping around Yawm. As he spoke, an image appeared on the page in front of me. The pages circled around Yawm, creating a moving mural that looked like stop motion animation.