Exhausted both mentally by overthinking and by physical exercises, Tetsu packs in for the day. He finds his old grave he dug for himself and packs himself inside once again. “Good night mind fucker.” He salutes the tree.
The next day, he rises before the sun, wishes the tree good morning, checks his surroundings, and gets back to training. Around the fourth day, the tree reappeared in its mystical form.
Tetsu lets out a sigh of relief. “Thought you were dead! Glad to see you ain’t. So, finally, out of anger?” He laughs. Before it changed back, he bowed and apologized again. “I’m really sorry.” He says, getting back to training.
It’s weird how Tetsu forgot about food. Back on earth, both his mother’s competed within themselves as they served Tetsu delicious food. Health and love served on a single plate, Tetsu never craved junk food. While at present, his mind took over his body. Every day he slept thinking about magic and got up to practice said magic. On autopilot, he never craved food, nor did he listen to his body, which demanded food.
On his second day of training, a strong shower of rain cleaned him and provided several puddles of water. Having not eaten anything, he had nothing to let out, so he used those puddles purely for drinking. He wished this would continue, but on the fourth day, his stomach went on strike, demanding some food.
“One breakthrough and I will find you some,” Tetsu pleaded with his stomach.
He completely forgot the fact that they shared the same brain and it knew that he had made progress. From exerting most of twenty-seven points of mana, he could control and exert just one point. He also found out that he leaked mana over every activity and had to have his entire focus on his mana to hold it inside.
The stick didn’t change, nor did he get any closer to solving the symbol. Yet his progression was astounding, and quite enough, his stomach roared back.
Tetsu looks back at the tree as it readies its roots. “I’m not going to eat you, you moody old sap.” He scoffs, frowns, and turns to his surroundings.
“Anything out there that would rather be in my belly.” Tetsu scans around. His eyes stop on a puddle of murky water. His stomach squeezes tight, not wanting water for the umpteenth time. “I get it. I meant to see if some fish found their way in.” He scolds his stomach.
His eyes wandered around until his stomach approved of a dead body nearby. “I can’t eat diamonds!” Exclaimed Tetsu. His tongue rubs over a missing tooth from an incident not too long ago. “Yup! I can’t eat rock.” He smiles. With a gap.
His stomach squeezes harder, forcing his eyes over the jelly splattered around. “Why didn’t you say sooner?” Tetsu asks and his stomach replies with a grumble. “Yeah, yeah... I didn’t listen.”
He strolls down the hill and squats near a small serving of pink pudding. The jelly was left in the open for four days now, and yet it looked fresh and appetizing. Tetsu blamed and thanked his stomach for the illusion. He scooped a little with his pinky “Drugs.” He smiles, tastes, and spits it out.
“Yuk.” His gag reflexes try to puke his guts out and fail.
He carries a handful of jelly near a pool, washes his hand in one, and sprinkles clear water over the jelly from another. Once satisfied that the jelly was clean, he blasted it with his mana.
I completely forgot Tetsu learned how to control his flow as he forced more mana out of his hands than the rest of his body. This technique drained his mana pool fast, yet Tetsu held it on top of his progress list.
“Mana-blast.” He named it his first skill.
Mana blast costs ten mana points per minute. Damage zero. The range is laughable. Strain: plus forty points in fatigue. It was so pathetic that he had to make his own notification. Even the system didn’t recognize or encourage him by acknowledging this skill.
After a while, when his fatigue reached sixty and his mana pool bled dry, Tetsu took another morsel, this time forcing the jelly down. Once his stomach was satisfied, he filled up on water.
“Can’t you survive on water?” He complains and gets back to training.
For a second his body protested for a bath, for which he convinced himself that rain was around the corner.
With focus, Tetsu releases small amounts of mana into a single symbol. “Common grow, ignite, produce food, do something.” He pleads as he squints and unleashes more mana. Tapped out, he collapses to the floor.
“Five minutes.” He falls to the floor, puffing and gasping for air.
Once he caught his breath, with one push, he got back on his feet. The stick in his hand obstructs his stance. He slips and regains his stance before losing another tooth. “Close call.” He sighs and looks at the stick. “What the fuck! I do this every day. Am I losing my shit?”
Tetsu leaned against the stick as the tip almost took his eye out. “Wow!” He throws away the stick, turning towards the tree. “Plotting a revenge, are we?” He suspects the tree.
The tree, as a response, shows its root with the same symbol. “It wasn’t you?” Tetsu asks again.
“Must be exhausted.” He suspects himself.
His fatigue was over eighty, but when wasn’t it? He shrugged. Not wanting to push his luck, he sleeps for an hour and later gets back to analysing.
He held his stick straight, suspecting it to have come to life. Back to the basics. He checked for signs and differences. Once he placed the stick beside him, he understood the cause. The stick has grown an inch or two since last time. He for sure remembered it being at his chest height, but now it reached his chin. “You grew?” Cheered Tetsu. “But how?” He wonders and smacks himself. “Retrace your steps dumbo.”
Tetsu recalled himself pleading for the stick to grow. He follows his last experiments to the dot, yet the stick doesn’t grow this time.
“Weird. Maybe I haven’t noticed it grow?” Tetsu recalls and tries every experiment he performed thus far. Yet none of them made the stick grow. “I am missing something.”
Tetsu focuses his mind. “Intent.” He notes a point. “Focus... Mana... science?” He turns towards the tree.
The tree kept playing with its root as it grew it long, twirled it, spun it around its trunk, and built small figurines. “Stop showing off you, piece of lumber.” Tetsu hurls a rock at the tree.
Frustrated and breathing hard, he collected a few more stones. He was grateful for its help, company, protection, and much more, but anger took over Tetsu as he threw stones while the tree deflected them with its roots.
“So, this symbol makes stuff grow?” Once Tetsu calmed down, he planned more theories. With the loose mud, he drew the same symbol on the floor. “Grow what now?” Tetsu looks around.
He decides to grow more mud and focuses on his mana, intending to grow more mud. “Mud. More.” Tetsu repeated.
Out of habit and another perk of being an overthinker, Tetsu’s mind wanders off into the realm of mud.
What is mud? How are they formed? The fresh mud. How was this mud different from the mud back on Earth? What is this mud? Its properties and much more...
Before Tetsu knew it, he exhausted his mana pool and raised his fatigue to dangerous levels. Once he regained consciousness, the mud had doubled in quantity. “Yes!” He raises the mud to show it off to his lumber friend and faints.
Woken up by his stomach, he made mental notes of his rations before moving ahead. Jelly, being the only food source, Tetsu separates the ground where the jelly lay into sections. One for each day.
“One week of jelly left.” He counts the sections and tells his stomach. Looking for the source that actually kept him alive this far, he finds two puddles around. By experience, he suspected them to dry off within the day.
“Rain?” He looks above. There weren’t any clouds nor the promise of any forming soon.
Thanks to his experiments, Tetsu wasted his precious resources. All he did was try to preserve water, yet all his efforts only drank or evaporated the water. His best bet was to rely on his luck, which by the by dropped seven points, and wait for his water to dry.
“How come you are hungry already?” He questions and a spark lit in his head. “Symbol, mana, intent, focus, knowledge and resource.” Tetsu gasps.
Finally, Tetsu cheers and then kicks himself to be silent. “I cracked the code.” He lets out a high-pitched screech.
This weird symbol carried one enforceable law with it and with some help from mana, a magical power, an intent to shape will, knowledge over the item to be conjured, resources required to conjure said item, because of science and whatnot, and extreme focus to connect these steps, the law set inside the symbol becomes enforced.
AKA, brought to life.
Many factors in these steps that lead to enforcing an instruction were vague. Tetsu didn’t know how or why a symbol carries an enforceable instruction. Mana on its own was a cosmic mystery. While he still had many gaps to fill, in order to truly understand the inner workings of this symbol, he was over the moon by his progress until this point.
A stupid or a genius idea crossed Tetsu’s mind. To know which it was, he had to try out the experiment.
He collects a few leaves, dry bark, and anything that could ignite. He draws a circle and places all the items inside. In between, he drew a random symbol resembling the symbol on the stick. Stretching his hand out, he follows the steps to start a fire.
Symbols kept changing. Each time, he added, subtracted, or swirled the lines on the symbol hoping to create the fire symbol. Every time he doubted his own steps, he would grow the stick to verify. After satisfying his skeptical side, he went back to his experiment.
When nothing worked, he tried to imagine how would one draw growth or expand and compared it with the symbol on the stick. His kindergarten times flash to mind. Kids drew a flower more or else like this symbol. The inverted letter W is the leaves, the vertical line is the stem, and the semicircles as its head.
“It makes little sense, but what here does?” Shrugs Tetsu.
Now heading back to his kindergarten days, Tetsu tries to draw fire and turn it into a symbol.
Two days pass by as Tetsu consumes his weekly rations and loses his only puddle. He underestimated his training regimen to find the unknown and now faced starvation. At max, he might survive for another two days. By that time, he had to secure his next meal and water or die at level one.
“By now, I could’ve lit the fire by hand.” He tried to cry, but his eyes were too dry for a watery session. So, he brooded instead.
A gust of wind blows away all the failed symbols Tetsu noted down in the mud. He looks at his surroundings filled with even more failed symbols, sighs, and gets back to work.
Swoosh! A spark glides inside the circle, igniting the items. Tetsu’s eyes sparkled as they reflected the flame’s colors. The heat couldn’t match Tetsu’s excitement, for his heart ran a mile every second. “Yes!” He clenches his fist. His heart pounding.
“Let’s celebrate soon.” Tetsu postpones his excitement and dives right into his next experiment.
His curiosity took over as he ignored his system, his surroundings, and the possibility of death. Over a hunch, Tetsu modifies his fire symbol a bit and begins experimentation.
One hour later, he creates water out of thin air. Another two hours in, he creates a gust of wind, swirling around like a baby tornado. Four hours down he produced zaps of lighting that tingled him. Yet his accomplishments seemed small.
Stuck in his muse, Tetsu found no limit to what he could accomplish right now. This wasn’t his first encounter with the muse. He and Kile always experimented with this concept, trying to pull this realm out with sheer willpower. Unable to control this mystical realm, they learned to embrace it when it poured out into reality. One best example was when Kile outsmarted the brilliant billionaire, Mr. M, because of this realm.
Muse land or realm, well known as the zone, is a place where myths are born. It’s where reality takes a turn to meet imagination. A place where dreams are born, nurtured, and developed into reality. The best part about an overthinker is being able to escape into multiple zones. This is where the soul finds a purpose, a passion to live, for not themselves but to bring life to a vision.
You can be a scientist, an artist, or a wanderer. Once you connect your soul to your work, your dream, you escape into the zone. A utopia where work is fun, where work is life. This is the place from where Earth got its greatest technologies, novels, art pieces, war tactics, software, and everything else that blows your minds to kingdom come.
As sparks raised his first flame, one idea led to another. Without his knowledge, he dove into this realm. Once his heart reminded him of this familiar sensation, the heat of giving birth, he let the realm consume him.
Time meant nothing in this realm. Accomplishments meant nothing. The only aspect that mattered here was the trill to imagine and create the unimaginable.
Tetsu places his palm over a rune, focuses the rest of his mana, and smirks in a way that being cheeky in his presence felt cheap.
“I found a hack.”
═─┈─{═E═}─┈─═
Exhausted both mentally by overthinking and by physical exercises, Tetsu packs in for the day. He finds his old grave he dug for himself and packs himself inside once again. “Good night mind fucker.” He salutes the tree.
The next day, he rises before the sun, wishes the tree good morning, checks his surroundings, and gets back to training. Around the fourth day, the tree reappeared in its mystical form.
Tetsu lets out a sigh of relief. “Thought you were dead! Glad to see you ain’t. So, finally, out of anger?” He laughs. Before it changed back, he bowed and apologized again. “I’m really sorry.” He says, getting back to training.
It’s weird how Tetsu forgot about food. Back on earth, both his mother’s competed within themselves as they served Tetsu delicious food. Health and love served on a single plate, Tetsu never craved junk food. While at present, his mind took over his body. Every day he slept thinking about magic and got up to practice said magic. On autopilot, he never craved food, nor did he listen to his body, which demanded food.
On his second day of training, a strong shower of rain cleaned him and provided several puddles of water. Having not eaten anything, he had nothing to let out, so he used those puddles purely for drinking. He wished this would continue, but on the fourth day, his stomach went on strike, demanding some food.
“One breakthrough and I will find you some,” Tetsu pleaded with his stomach.
He completely forgot the fact that they shared the same brain and it knew that he had made progress. From exerting most of twenty-seven points of mana, he could control and exert just one point. He also found out that he leaked mana over every activity and had to have his entire focus on his mana to hold it inside.
The stick didn’t change, nor did he get any closer to solving the symbol. Yet his progression was astounding, and quite enough, his stomach roared back.
Tetsu looks back at the tree as it readies its roots. “I’m not going to eat you, you moody old sap.” He scoffs, frowns, and turns to his surroundings.
“Anything out there that would rather be in my belly.” Tetsu scans around. His eyes stop on a puddle of murky water. His stomach squeezes tight, not wanting water for the umpteenth time. “I get it. I meant to see if some fish found their way in.” He scolds his stomach.
His eyes wandered around until his stomach approved of a dead body nearby. “I can’t eat diamonds!” Exclaimed Tetsu. His tongue rubs over a missing tooth from an incident not too long ago. “Yup! I can’t eat rock.” He smiles. With a gap.
His stomach squeezes harder, forcing his eyes over the jelly splattered around. “Why didn’t you say sooner?” Tetsu asks and his stomach replies with a grumble. “Yeah, yeah... I didn’t listen.”
He strolls down the hill and squats near a small serving of pink pudding. The jelly was left in the open for four days now, and yet it looked fresh and appetizing. Tetsu blamed and thanked his stomach for the illusion. He scooped a little with his pinky “Drugs.” He smiles, tastes, and spits it out.
“Yuk.” His gag reflexes try to puke his guts out and fail.
He carries a handful of jelly near a pool, washes his hand in one, and sprinkles clear water over the jelly from another. Once satisfied that the jelly was clean, he blasted it with his mana.
I completely forgot Tetsu learned how to control his flow as he forced more mana out of his hands than the rest of his body. This technique drained his mana pool fast, yet Tetsu held it on top of his progress list.
“Mana-blast.” He named it his first skill.
Mana blast costs ten mana points per minute. Damage zero. The range is laughable. Strain: plus forty points in fatigue. It was so pathetic that he had to make his own notification. Even the system didn’t recognize or encourage him by acknowledging this skill.
After a while, when his fatigue reached sixty and his mana pool bled dry, Tetsu took another morsel, this time forcing the jelly down. Once his stomach was satisfied, he filled up on water.
“Can’t you survive on water?” He complains and gets back to training.
For a second his body protested for a bath, for which he convinced himself that rain was around the corner.
With focus, Tetsu releases small amounts of mana into a single symbol. “Common grow, ignite, produce food, do something.” He pleads as he squints and unleashes more mana. Tapped out, he collapses to the floor.
“Five minutes.” He falls to the floor, puffing and gasping for air.
Once he caught his breath, with one push, he got back on his feet. The stick in his hand obstructs his stance. He slips and regains his stance before losing another tooth. “Close call.” He sighs and looks at the stick. “What the fuck! I do this every day. Am I losing my shit?”
Tetsu leaned against the stick as the tip almost took his eye out. “Wow!” He throws away the stick, turning towards the tree. “Plotting a revenge, are we?” He suspects the tree.
The tree, as a response, shows its root with the same symbol. “It wasn’t you?” Tetsu asks again.
“Must be exhausted.” He suspects himself.
His fatigue was over eighty, but when wasn’t it? He shrugged. Not wanting to push his luck, he sleeps for an hour and later gets back to analysing.
He held his stick straight, suspecting it to have come to life. Back to the basics. He checked for signs and differences. Once he placed the stick beside him, he understood the cause. The stick has grown an inch or two since last time. He for sure remembered it being at his chest height, but now it reached his chin. “You grew?” Cheered Tetsu. “But how?” He wonders and smacks himself. “Retrace your steps dumbo.”
Tetsu recalled himself pleading for the stick to grow. He follows his last experiments to the dot, yet the stick doesn’t grow this time.
“Weird. Maybe I haven’t noticed it grow?” Tetsu recalls and tries every experiment he performed thus far. Yet none of them made the stick grow. “I am missing something.”
Tetsu focuses his mind. “Intent.” He notes a point. “Focus... Mana... science?” He turns towards the tree.
The tree kept playing with its root as it grew it long, twirled it, spun it around its trunk, and built small figurines. “Stop showing off you, piece of lumber.” Tetsu hurls a rock at the tree.
Frustrated and breathing hard, he collected a few more stones. He was grateful for its help, company, protection, and much more, but anger took over Tetsu as he threw stones while the tree deflected them with its roots.
“So, this symbol makes stuff grow?” Once Tetsu calmed down, he planned more theories. With the loose mud, he drew the same symbol on the floor. “Grow what now?” Tetsu looks around.
He decides to grow more mud and focuses on his mana, intending to grow more mud. “Mud. More.” Tetsu repeated.
Out of habit and another perk of being an overthinker, Tetsu’s mind wanders off into the realm of mud.
What is mud? How are they formed? The fresh mud. How was this mud different from the mud back on Earth? What is this mud? Its properties and much more...
Before Tetsu knew it, he exhausted his mana pool and raised his fatigue to dangerous levels. Once he regained consciousness, the mud had doubled in quantity. “Yes!” He raises the mud to show it off to his lumber friend and faints.
Woken up by his stomach, he made mental notes of his rations before moving ahead. Jelly, being the only food source, Tetsu separates the ground where the jelly lay into sections. One for each day.
“One week of jelly left.” He counts the sections and tells his stomach. Looking for the source that actually kept him alive this far, he finds two puddles around. By experience, he suspected them to dry off within the day.
“Rain?” He looks above. There weren’t any clouds nor the promise of any forming soon.
Thanks to his experiments, Tetsu wasted his precious resources. All he did was try to preserve water, yet all his efforts only drank or evaporated the water. His best bet was to rely on his luck, which by the by dropped seven points, and wait for his water to dry.
“How come you are hungry already?” He questions and a spark lit in his head. “Symbol, mana, intent, focus, knowledge and resource.” Tetsu gasps.
Finally, Tetsu cheers and then kicks himself to be silent. “I cracked the code.” He lets out a high-pitched screech.
This weird symbol carried one enforceable law with it and with some help from mana, a magical power, an intent to shape will, knowledge over the item to be conjured, resources required to conjure said item, because of science and whatnot, and extreme focus to connect these steps, the law set inside the symbol becomes enforced.
AKA, brought to life.
Many factors in these steps that lead to enforcing an instruction were vague. Tetsu didn’t know how or why a symbol carries an enforceable instruction. Mana on its own was a cosmic mystery. While he still had many gaps to fill, in order to truly understand the inner workings of this symbol, he was over the moon by his progress until this point.
A stupid or a genius idea crossed Tetsu’s mind. To know which it was, he had to try out the experiment.
He collects a few leaves, dry bark, and anything that could ignite. He draws a circle and places all the items inside. In between, he drew a random symbol resembling the symbol on the stick. Stretching his hand out, he follows the steps to start a fire.
Symbols kept changing. Each time, he added, subtracted, or swirled the lines on the symbol hoping to create the fire symbol. Every time he doubted his own steps, he would grow the stick to verify. After satisfying his skeptical side, he went back to his experiment.
When nothing worked, he tried to imagine how would one draw growth or expand and compared it with the symbol on the stick. His kindergarten times flash to mind. Kids drew a flower more or else like this symbol. The inverted letter W is the leaves, the vertical line is the stem, and the semicircles as its head.
“It makes little sense, but what here does?” Shrugs Tetsu.
Now heading back to his kindergarten days, Tetsu tries to draw fire and turn it into a symbol.
Two days pass by as Tetsu consumes his weekly rations and loses his only puddle. He underestimated his training regimen to find the unknown and now faced starvation. At max, he might survive for another two days. By that time, he had to secure his next meal and water or die at level one.
“By now, I could’ve lit the fire by hand.” He tried to cry, but his eyes were too dry for a watery session. So, he brooded instead.
A gust of wind blows away all the failed symbols Tetsu noted down in the mud. He looks at his surroundings filled with even more failed symbols, sighs, and gets back to work.
Swoosh! A spark glides inside the circle, igniting the items. Tetsu’s eyes sparkled as they reflected the flame’s colors. The heat couldn’t match Tetsu’s excitement, for his heart ran a mile every second. “Yes!” He clenches his fist. His heart pounding.
“Let’s celebrate soon.” Tetsu postpones his excitement and dives right into his next experiment.
His curiosity took over as he ignored his system, his surroundings, and the possibility of death. Over a hunch, Tetsu modifies his fire symbol a bit and begins experimentation.
One hour later, he creates water out of thin air. Another two hours in, he creates a gust of wind, swirling around like a baby tornado. Four hours down he produced zaps of lighting that tingled him. Yet his accomplishments seemed small.
Stuck in his muse, Tetsu found no limit to what he could accomplish right now. This wasn’t his first encounter with the muse. He and Kile always experimented with this concept, trying to pull this realm out with sheer willpower. Unable to control this mystical realm, they learned to embrace it when it poured out into reality. One best example was when Kile outsmarted the brilliant billionaire, Mr. M, because of this realm.
Muse land or realm, well known as the zone, is a place where myths are born. It’s where reality takes a turn to meet imagination. A place where dreams are born, nurtured, and developed into reality. The best part about an overthinker is being able to escape into multiple zones. This is where the soul finds a purpose, a passion to live, for not themselves but to bring life to a vision.
You can be a scientist, an artist, or a wanderer. Once you connect your soul to your work, your dream, you escape into the zone. A utopia where work is fun, where work is life. This is the place from where Earth got its greatest technologies, novels, art pieces, war tactics, software, and everything else that blows your minds to kingdom come.
As sparks raised his first flame, one idea led to another. Without his knowledge, he dove into this realm. Once his heart reminded him of this familiar sensation, the heat of giving birth, he let the realm consume him.
Time meant nothing in this realm. Accomplishments meant nothing. The only aspect that mattered here was the trill to imagine and create the unimaginable.
Tetsu places his palm over a rune, focuses the rest of his mana, and smirks in a way that being cheeky in his presence felt cheap.
“I found a hack.”
═─┈─{═E═}─┈─═
