Relentless in my pursuit and giving my all every single instant no matter the circumstances, I continue my search crosslegged on the stone floor leaning on the wall of the corridor. A continual search for the perfect mental frame of reference, the perfect way to explain and tied all the concepts in my mind together in a concise way.

It took me a long time to find the Perception field. Days meditating in a row after weeks intermittently working on it. Learning to use the Life resource is no lesser skill, so I treat the endeavor with the seriousness it deserves and don’t let anything else distract me.

I just make full use of all the nodules of fat and glycose Aspen helped me with as I draw my body’s metabolism way down, only keeping my nervous system at peak condition.

Time loses its meaning for me in this state, even if I can feel my stores slowly running out. A pressing need in the back of my mind grows as my food stores are literally eaten away.

This added pressure all heads straight to my search for Health equivalent resource. Though I hadn't seen anyone actively wielding Health, I didn’t doubt it was possible for even a moment.

Not when I had used the system provided resource trio occasionally to eke out every smidge of speed from my body. But I doubted Health would be so simple as that. That its only active use was in conjunction with both stamina and mana to infuse someone’s body.

It had to have its own power, its own unique way to make dreams and magic come to life. Even stamina that at first glance didn’t have any magical use could be used to infuse the body by itself. I just had so much more mana available that I barely experimented with the concept but it is definitely possible. I even play with vigor occasionally, but my relatively limited amount of it limits my experiments.

I lock all those thoughts away, once again, in a cloud and let them drift before coming back to my goal:

LIFE.

How, why and what won’t help me a lot right now. At least not when ruminating on the same piece of information for the hundredth time.

Trying to reach for even the slightest of enlightened states, I push and prod everything within my body trying to knock something loose.

Occasionally, energy discharges and I feel more tired than usual from a seemingly inconsequential task or just the opposite. But even as I treat my own body and soul as a hide and seek playground, I find no indices of Health or Life. All my attempts just continue teaching unrelated things about myself. I’m not exactly wasting time, as I likely would eventually have to poke and prod at every single one of these nooks and crannies eventually, but they are not what I’m looking for right now.

I look at the top of the corridor in the darkness as time passes with few ways to precisely measure it. Just a few feet behind me running water sprouting out of the rock and disappears as it touches the ground.

At least I don’t have to worry about going thirsty, even if you didn’t provide me with a scrap of hard bread.

Trying to focus on the life aspect of the triad of all resources in balance yields nothing in my search for the trigger, for the feeling that will let me conjure this new resource.

Days, weeks or months pass, I can’t tell which, and through it all, there are no changes. The only real time measurement is my ‘food’ supply constantly dwindling. All the while not a whiff of Life.

When every nodule of sugar and fat is dry, I stop.

This is not working. I may just be too far from my goal to succeed in a single stretch, but if I’m to lose, I will do so on my own terms.

Running and trying to bypass the restrictions.

I start running, for in movement I more commonly found the answers to my problems, even if mediation did hold some of the answers and is easier. A simple pace dictated entirely by my very feet. I don’t try to settle on any single speed and just follow my gut and the pace my body asks for. All my doubts that built up in my motionless state are simply gone.

Sprinting then walking wait a minute and go back to trotting and finish up with a sprinting stretch. As the minutes pass I tend to go slower as the nervous energy is burned off and I take the time to look at the space on my torso.

A glance there reveals everything I had expected, but I still didn’t have a better way of accessing it. Even with all my preparations, any attempt of accessing it could go terribly wrong. Emphasis on the terrible.

I talk with the seed in my chest I dragged along for the ride right before entering this trial and get him to try to establish a connection to its buddy hidden inside the space bag.

I simply ignore everything not even trying to control my speed and let the adrenaline and everything about me flow freely as we prepare.

Coordinating our efforts, a sharp pull sends the quick process in motion. The portal mechanisms all act in concert, and the small portal springs to life letting a small bag of nuts simply shoots out as if my modified space bag was a Jack-in-the-box.

A fraction of a second later, the system slap comes even faster than the last time I played with space. However, the headache that follows is definitely worth it, and something that will pass in minutes.

I grin down at the results of my attempt in hand. A little bag of food.

Nothing that will last me for a week or even a single day. Just a nice afternoon snack, for those that liked small meals, but even this little bag is already more than I could have hoped for.

I feel the erosion as the system tries to take it from me and instantly I’m in motion. I put the entire contents of the bag in my mouth only leaving the lightweight leaf bag outside and in the system's grasp.

With a grin simply plastered on my face, I look ahead feeling hopeful.

For the next half a day I take small tidbits and eat them. By the end, I’m familiar enough with the system’s response to avoid the brunt of its punishment. Even just what I eat today should have given me at least another week, though eating so much in such a short period after so long is taking up a lot of my concentration to balance my body's responses.

I didn't cover a lot of actual ground, but my perception field was extended the entire time trying to find anything relevant around.

I manage to keep my trip to mostly new places which helped add to the map, instead of uselessly treading over the same ground. The only problem is that this third level is even larger than the previous trials and without a LOT more food I don’t think I will be able to complete it.

Even considering the depressing prospects of me completing the trial, Merlin delivers on his promise. My perception field is just expanding seemingly without a limit.

From a cool uniform 69 meters, I’m now near 80 in a tall ring all around the inner world and I’m able to reach 95 in a small ‘beam’ right in front of me. I need to spin my torso to line up the ‘flashlight’ in the direction I want, which luckily is straight ahead instead of a weird angle.

He and his helpers must be doing an amazing job inside with Inner world expansion.

Tough as the mechanism of using the ‘flashlight’ mode I wonder if I can spin it around without moving my entire body or even or even my shoulders.

At a slow walk I just to let the blood flow freely throughout my body and brain, I reach out with my perception field like I’m grabbing space, I try twisting the entire thing to the side. I move up and down, I push and pull and try everything in my imagination, all to no avail. Still, for some reason I don’t think will take me months to succeed. So I prepare to use my full faculties and will so I can get a win, even if it is an easier and therefore lesser one compared to my real goal.

Another few hours pass with little success, but I’m relentless. I’m a dog with a bone, a rabbit with its carrot or a monkey with its banana.

I can’t quite decide which.

As the mental imagery takes me from the track I laugh and release the tension, before trying yet again with a slightly different approach, another iteration of my experiments.

Pulling in a particular way, but with a mental image of something else, then try the opposite. Pull with greater strength, for a short time, then push for gradually longer time frames, before coming back and slowly reducing the pull from strength iterating it through time.

After that long process is over I start it all again, but this time instead of trying to push, I pull, or slide sideways, or attempt something, anything different. With nigh infinite variations and a seemingly very narrow set of possibilities for me to find, narrowing my search is slow, but I manage to keep making small progress points.

Slowly, I manage to twist the flashlight ‘beam’ a few meters to the side, but it is a very uncomfortable experience, even worse than trying to fit in a suitcase, a far cry from my hopes, but at least finally I have tangible proof of my goal and I know that I can do it even now if I’m willing to pay the price.

Even swinging it a meter to the side is not the type of mental effort I can sustain for hours. The twist is also limited. If I give my all, I might be able to push about 10 meters against the roughly 600-meter circumference to form a full circle. Barely a nudge in the grand scheme of things, though still useful in very select circumstances. Knowing one of the possible mental contortions that can minimally shift my perception field, the subsequent search is greatly sped up.

Tired and with a million things on my mind, I decide to stop for sleep before exhausting myself.

A couple of hours later, still with a faint remnant of the tiredness behind, I get up and put one foot in front of the other. A slow pace, not to hasten the end of my supplies too much, but I feel I need to move for this before I’m back to the normal meditation schedule… if I’m to go back at all.

Movement feels so natural. Still, the reality of the situation is that I have limited stores of food, and meditation will extend my stay a lot and give Merlin more time to work with.

I contort my mind into a facsimile of the previous day, trying to bend not as much and get my ‘limbs’ in a position with less pain and more leverage.

Recharged and with fresh eyes, the search heads smoothly. Ideas start coming to me and I put them into practice. Each success not only fuels my drive and excitement. They also teach me something about how little strength and ’limb’ bending I can get away with. I even start finding more ergonomic shapes to twist my mind into that retain more of my strength.

With all my efforts, days pass and I just keep going, narrowing down upon ‘lines’ for the optimal combinations of considering timing, strength, angles, perceived effort, number of points to affect, the spread of said points and all the data I can think off.

But as this second puzzle starts to form in my mind, Something calls to me. A familiar convergence, a mental image of a star. A multi pronged stellated shape with about 100 sides. A small core surrounded by really long ‘needles’.

I try to plot it all into a graph and the resemblance is uncanny. I test and add more and more data points in my head moving closer and closer to the tips and slowly find better reference points and more specialized applications so I can choose which competence I want to employ.

For anyone that has a lot of strength and no dexterity or vice versa, there is a star point seemingly made for them. But even as I continue to map the extreme edges, something calls to me: the place of balance, the core. The place where theoretically everything should even out and as soon as I have a few more of the very tips dialed in perfectly, I use a bit of ‘trigonometry’ and head there next.

A balanced approach sounds much more up my alley, so instead of having to choose if I want better leverage while giving up comfort, minimum pull for long term slight twists, or the myriad of other aspects of the possible ways of dealing with my perception field, I head to seek the average.

What I find after heading deeper and deeper is an esier time with not the enlargening in the base of the pyramids, but hollow triangles with more and more sporadic points where I can still work.

Heading even further in my experiments inside the core, I look for the point where everything perfectly balances. Once, twice and then a thousand times until I find it.

I move back and forth, trying to ascertain the exact spot and get better references on the edges of the stellated Disdyakis triacontahedron if my memory serves me right. A small detail that I would never have remembered back on Earth without my massive Intelligence stat increase and the memory training I have started.

I push and pull, twist and spin trying to find even the barest budge. It takes me a while, hours tinkering until I finally succeed.

With an easy push of my mental finger. The entire perception field shift to the side. I wait for a moment, as it slowly gains momentum. But I stop pushing after a couple of seconds. The perception field however doesn’t lose speed, nor does it gain any. Like a planet spinning in a vacuum. I may spin slowly without a lot of force to initially push it, but it will spin forever.

Like a gigantic and lightweight Faris wheel, the inner world moves coming full circle after five minutes with barely a push. I grab it to break its speed but instead of a slow and gradual stop, I drop my jaw. A sharp jerk, not like I try breaking my bicycle by putting my foot down and absorbing the momentum, but loser to pressing a good brake lever, with the enormous mechanical advantage that would entail.

“This is incredible.”

The barest of arm pushes is enough to send the entire thing spinning and a finger pulls instantly stops it. A stronger push but even that can be slowly built over time with no concern about inputting too much power in the system given the amazing stopping power.

Balance is not only the average of all, in this case, but it’s the sum of all and it is way more than I could have dreamed about.