NOVEL NEXT Chapter 53: Assistant Hajin told me to, uh, meditate
The date had been set for his Synaptic Resonance practical retake: two weeks from now, on Tuesday. And Fabrisse had become increasingly confident he'd be able to fully recognize the basic synaptic thread in time.
| [Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition: 40% Progress] |
The fact that he could track his improvements tangibly did wonders for his confidence. If he could keep up this diligence for the next two weeks, he'd get there. He even got some more gains with his experience accumulation as well.
| [Progress to Level 5: 1152/1500] |
Over the next two days, none of the weird things happened. He categorized rocks during the morning, went to theoretical lectures, practiced Synaptic Threading, went home before eight, then obsessively checked his attributes until he fell asleep, even though nothing had changed.
Tonight, he was also doing the same time-wasting, obsessive staring thing. He'd learned that the shape of the rocks mattered, at least for Stupenstones. The rough ones would give him a STR bonus, and he decided to move them to the robe pockets for now. STR would only account for 20% of his Stupenstone Fling output, but it was better than nothing. Nonetheless, he did make a mental note to only practice Stupenstone Fling with the smoother stones that didn't grant him anything.
There was no Tommaso to bother him the last couple days. Apparently, he had been recalled for a couple of days to meet with a disciplinary liaison from the Northern Engagement Corps—something about 'reckless conduct unbecoming of a junior field affiliate' and 'a worrying comfort with improvised combustion.'
Tommaso had sent him a single message via communication glyph—one of the older single-use panels etched on cheap slate. It took thirty minutes to arrive and would probably dissolve by dusk.
It read, 'being lectured by a guy whose last name is Protocol. literally Protocol. wish me luck, he allergic to jokes.'
Fabrisse had stared at it for a moment, then sighed and scratched his reply into the return strip, which the glyph would convert and pulse back once the ink dried: 'try not to explode anything.'
He almost added especially your chances of survival, but ran out of space. Budget glyphs had character limits.
No new quest had popped up during that time. However, he did get a small boon for his hard work.
| Earth Thaumaturgy Mastery + 1 |
His current Mastery Point accumulation was 4. He would need another 6 to upgrade another skill to Rank II, which, at this rate, would take another twelve days of hard work. However, it would still be a significant improvement compared to the astounding growth rate of zero over the past several years.
"Why do you keep staring at nothing?" Greg asked. He was still sitting in front of his desk, writing some sort of report.
"Uh . . . Assistant Hajin told me to, uh, meditate. This clears my mind," Fabrisse lied. Lorvan literally warned him not to stare too hard the other day, and he'd already forgotten about it. In his defense, though, he was at home, on his own bed. Where else could he feel this comfortable staring at an invisible screen?
Greg replied, "This kind of training is why Earth Thaumaturgy is so ineffective." Then he just resumed writing.
Fabrisse just kept staring.
As he stared at his glyph, something popped up at him. The sudden motion made his eyes jolt.
When is the last step of the tutorial going to come? And when will I get to see my Emotional Attunement attribute?
Not like he had a lot of hope about his Emotional Attunement being anything usable, of course.
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In theory, it seemed like one of the most important attributes. But now he'd learned many spells didn't require you to invoke emotions at all, and theoretically he could go his entire life just flinging stones without ever having to channel emotions.
Another screen pulsed into view.
|
[Tutorial: Final Phase – Phase 4: Concordance Synchronization] ✦ Objective: Achieve and maintain short-term resonance synchronization with another aetherically-active caster. ✦ Requirement: You must be within range of a caster currently channeling emotion-fueled spellwork. ✦ Instruction: — Detect another's emotional frequency (e.g. shame). — Channel your emotional resonance into a shared aether pool. — Sustain a synchronized pulse long enough to draw upon their emotional input. ✦ Warning: Synchronization will drain FP at an accelerated rate. Emotional overload may cause backlash. Rewards: Emotional Attunement (EMO) Unlocked Skill to be Unlocked: [Harmonized Spellcasting (Rank I)] ✦ When harmonized with another spellcaster, you may draw on their emotional charge to supplement your own for 10 seconds. ✦ The effectiveness of harmonization is boosted primarily by your EMO, secondarily by your SYN. |
| [SYSTEM NOTE: One cannot fake resonance. To access this power, you must feel what is real.] |
Harmonization? That's an intermediate-level technique. I can't even manifest my own emotions, much less borrow from others. I don't even have a skill for it yet, and there's no way I'm understanding any of these instructions.
He didn't panic. Not because he wasn't overwhelmed, but because panic required quick thinking, and his brain was busy buffering.
Fabrisse stared at the tutorial, then opened the casting schematic to check the aetheric reaction involved.
|
[Aetheric Reaction Requirements: Harmonized Spellcasting – Rank I] → Input 1: External Emotional Resonance – 25% (if you're the caster) / 50% (if you're the contributor) Foreign emotional frequency detected within 10m. Must be active and stable for at least 0.5s. → Input 2: Internal Emotional Resonance – 50% (if you're the caster) / 25% (if you're the contributor) Self-generated pulse must be attuned within ±5Hz of external frequency. → Input 3: Synchronization Factor – 25% Measures moment-to-moment alignment of emotional pulse, aetheric rhythm, and intent. |
So it was a two-person spell. But what was the baseline? Did they expect him to guess? ±5Hz of what, exactly?
You needed someone else's emotional charge just to form the pool. Without that, you were just pushing emotion into a vacuum. No resonance, no pool. No pool, no harmonization.
He frowned.
He couldn't learn this alone; no way. If he wanted to master this skill quickly, Lorvan would be the worst person to ask. His mentor would just force him to train Emotional Tuning for hours while insisting he would need to grasp the basics first before borrowing emotions from anyone else. Traditionally, for Harmonization to take effect, firstly, two spellcasters had to feel or conjure the same emotion at the same time.
Maybe I can ask Liene. I'm not sure if she's learned that, but it's not like I have any other option.