The next tenday, everything went about as I expected it to go. My days were split up with tutoring Heinrig in psionics and training Jahn and Stavros on the joys of groceries and grocery accessories. I spent some additional time training them on inventory management and the finer points of basic accounting, which was a bit more than what they would need for the job. Fortunately, there wasn't a sales tax here, state revenue was all gathered in the form of business and individual taxes, so that made sales much simpler. For the sake of sanity, I'll omit the detailed analysis of the tax structures of Blauenwald, since that kind of detail should be reserved for those that enjoy multivariate equations and optimum flow rate solutions, neither of which are as exciting for most people as watching paint dry. I think that's sad, but I know it's true at the same time.

Heinrig's progress with telekinesis was simply fantastic. He was almost caught up with my father in just a tenday or two.

We conversed about options and agreed that the telekinesis tricks would be a good first release option and that I could share it with Lunette for her research project, which would hopefully be something we could align under the endowed research if that worked out properly, and otherwise I could volunteer in the future letters. If the position didn't work out, then we'd not be sharing the rapid healing techniques. Telekinesis was limited enough that it wouldn't likely trigger the political response as the healing capability, although a new capability might cause a bit of a ruckus. It could be used as the big distraction and the revolutionary research to cover the release of the healing technique, which should be obfuscated and academicized as much as possible so that it could be distributed as widely as possible before the potential implications became clear outside the relatively small magic researcher community.

I had Leatherskin on at all times without feeling any significant strain on my resources now that I'd broken through to the third tier of capability, and I'd begun experimenting with enhancing my senses at least at home. Smell and hearing were fairly simple to enhance, I just imagined larger invisible ears or a bigger nose and those worked fairly well. I could do imaginary magnification of sight too, effectively my pretending that my eyes had extra telescopic lenses. I don't know if those made any difference in my appearance, but since Colossus mode didn't seem to make highly visible changes, I suspect it was not. I'll need to check with a spotter later, for now, I wouldn't do it outside the house anyway. I was happy to be learning and developing more buffs because using the same things over and over gets tiresome quickly. I can see the benefits to always having tougher skin, but juggling rocks gets old after the first month or so. It's a blast for a while, then I quickly get used to it and ultimately it becomes something I do from habit and not so much from enjoyment. Odd things, humans, familiarity does truly breed contempt. It's so easy to lose sight of the good things all around because we're used to them. Music at the touch of a button. Hot water on tap. Even clean, fresh, cold water on tap. Friggin toilet paper. Oh, man, I miss that! Anyway I digress, again. Yes, new is generally more fun, or at least more exciting. So hurray for fun and new ways to work on skills. Time to work on the new sense enhancement skills.

OH.

MY.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

OK, I strongly recommend against working on enhanced hearing in your parent's house after "bedtime" in the evenings. The outside noises are low, crickets, wind, the very occasional crunch of feet on gravel. All of that is fine, what's not fine are the inside noises, so now I need some ear and brain bleach. I mean that quite seriously. I know that they do stuff like that, or clearly I wouldn't be here, but accidentally listening in is just… ick. I suppose it's better than walking in accidentally, but it's a big NOPE for me.

So.

Much.

Nope.

It's far worse than the three names of doom, or even the super nasty water experiment that shall not be repeated until near a good supply of fresh water!

Ugh. I think it's time to work on something extremely complicated, to get my whole focus on something else. Colossus mode plus rock juggling it is. Maybe with a side of developing night vision. Did I mention that I miss music on demand?

An mental exhausting and psionically draining hour later, I've managed to suppress the trauma somewhat, practice my channeling and energy skills, and finally leave myself thoroughly prepared for sleep, even if I've had no luck with night vision enhancement.

Tenday morning brings more of the usual, cooking, cleaning, and psionic practice. I've got at least one more week of training and tutoring coming up, and now I have some more low-power, high concentration skills that I can try out on Heinrig. Luckily for him, his parents live in an outbuilding, so his risk of accidental but permanent psychological damage is considerably lower with the sense-based skills. If I can get the low light or night vision skill working, then I have another possible game changer. At least if all those movies where night optics are portrayed as a great tactical advantage are remotely accurate. That's my exercise for the day, so I head into the cellar and close the door, letting in just the light that filters around the incomplete seal. Then, I try to see in the dark.

And try again.

And again.

Aaaaand again. After several hours of failing, my eyes are dry and aching, and my head isn't happy either, so I give up in favor of lunch. While I eat, I can think of a couple more techniques that might potentially work, but I'm leery of actually imagining changes to my eyes. Overlaying reinforcement imagery for my body seems simple, imagining that my eyes are different, somehow that triggers an instinctual panicking fear of blindness. But I've tried all the external things I can think of, lenses, mirrors, concentrators, whatever.

The best option of those I think up during lunch is that I should try imaging I have a cat's eyes. I'd rather enhance my human eyes, but for the life of me, I can't remember if it's rods, cones, diopters or cylinders that are the eye parts we use for seeing in the dark. I'm not even certain those are all eye parts, even. I can only hope that intent matters enough that I don't screw something up. Just to play it safe, I plan to only imagine the changes for my non-dominant eye. I might be able to undo whatever changes happen, after all the Colossus mode isn't permanent, so it might be as simple as just stopping the power. But I'd rather be half blind than all blind. I return to the cellar and start my testing again.