NOVEL NEXT Chapter 323 – Frustration All Around
Gregor coughs, “Anyway, I’m sure you want to go check out what has changed more in depth so don’t mind me. I’ve got to put everything away and I like to take care of that personally.”
Jason shrugs and heads out of the house. Not because he doesn’t trust them or anything. He just wanted to go and do a final bit of moving meditation. Though with just the breakthrough Gregor knew about, things would be different.
Outside the city, Jason finds only a small contingent of guards training, less than a third of what had normally been there. Still, the usual official was in charge so there wasn’t any hassle getting his usual spot to train. That is where the usual became unusual.
For the last few days of going here, Jason would start with the moving meditation, if only because that was how he had figured out to view the inner representation of his stats. This time, however, he started by standing still. With the success of the last session, he had gained the ability to see without moving. Now, though, he needed the movement for a different reason.
At rest, while he could see everything, the stat threads moved slowly. For what he wanted to try, the movement, or rather movement at the right time and place, would allow faster progress. To start involved an unplanned bit of practice.
While Jason’s soul shell was now mobile, it acted more like the subconscious mind than a proper extension of his active will. Sure, if he was a kitsune looking to control an extra tail this would be enough. But to Jason, a tool is only truly yours if you can actively use it. Otherwise, you’re dancing to the whims of something else, even if that something is your own subconscious.
So there Jason stood, focused on his inner realm and the stats floating around outside of it. Then, with great force, he scatters it all. The representation and his view of how his body in NeoRealm worked crumbled as he crushed it all. To the finest powder and even further.
Why? Because now his understanding had changed and something better was available. His soul, of course, was out of reach but a connection to the shell was needed. If only to put his inner self into order. In his past life, some would form the shell into versions of themselves, others would solidify it into a golden pill, and some even created altars of it to godly beasts.
Here, though, he had an advantage. Those other methods could be seen as a method to gain what a simple potion had granted him. Whether it was to allow it to move like him through mimicry, solidify it for easier handling, or using belief in a higher power to force movement upon it from the outside Jason had no need of any of those techniques.
This could almost be seen as a negative as by the time someone had gained the ability to truly move the shell their training would be advanced enough to make use of it. Yet here Jason was without a systematic way to use it, a blank slate. Untapped potential paired with no clear path to use it. Worse yet, he couldn’t only think about NeoRealm, but also had to consider the “real” world. Not that he had any illusions of how real NeoRealm was at this point.
Still, he couldn’t just optimize for the System. Jason needed a method that would crossover just like his soul did. After all, while unlikely, there is a slim possibility that a soul technique too closely tied to NeoRealm might mean that trying to log out would leave him in a coma with his soul shell ripped out, stuck in NeoRealm.
As luck would have it, though, he had shaped his cultivation in both places down a similar path. While in NeoRealm, the core might be more of a conduit for Energy it was close enough to work with. And of course, the biggest help will be another thing that has crossed over, his understanding of the concepts of Substance, Civilization, and Ascendance.
The System might not be able to understand the full immensity of them but that was okay. It only needed a corner and that corner was also enough for Jason. From there, it was just a matter of rebuilding his inner world and core around the concepts like he had outside the game. So, with great care, he began to reshape his understanding of his core.
From a simple portal that Energy comes through to imagery both more profound and intimately familiar to Jason. The walls of civilization to mark the boundaries of the core. A fertile soil to give substance and provide a place to grow. And of course a tree, growing towards the sky. Though this one was shaped so as to form a portal exactly like what had been there before.
Of course, if these changes had just been mental things would have been a lot easier. No one in the area was able to spot what happened but some sneaky spying magic caught it all. Jason had underestimated how closely his view of his inner realm matched the real thing. Despite being the one who developed it, he hadn’t fully internalized that his body was a void because that is what he believed.
Now? He believed that he had just torn it all down and started fresh. So of course those sneaky spying spell managed to observe this was a bit more literal than intended. While not unheard of, you don’t see many cases where a person destroys their own core and then rebuilds it.
Almost a fluke that the people behind the spell even managed to catch this change. Any number of things could have put out a similar power signature and it is only their knowledge that Jason had a core already that meant they had been looking for the right kind of thing. Though upon observing this it is frustration all around.
While the researchers, of course, are happy to catch such a rare event, it also completely invalidates any future report from Jason. After all, it would be near impossible to sort out what the source of any change was. When dealing with something as extreme as reforming a core, there is just too much that could change.
