I decided to go offline quickly, wanting to think about what the heck was happening before things got any worse. Wolfram and I agreed to (carefully) talk again next evening, and I reminded him again that we had to be careful what we sent about our personal cultivation when next we spoke.

When I re-entered my body I found that they sense of unease was greater than when I was in soul-form, and I felt as though something… bad… had entered my body. I was starting to get a sense of what was happening, and I instantly felt like one of those idiots in a horror movie who opens the doorway to Hell, ignoring the clearly marked signs saying, ‘Do Not Open’.

Belief. You had to entirely and completely believe that your chosen cultivation method was possible for it to exist. No wonder Wolfram had said simply choosing powers was impossible: For everyone except me it probably was impossible! It was obvious now that I thought of it – if it was that easy, why wouldn’t everyone just buy abilities from a list like I did? The thought didn’t help, and I felt the sense of queasy sickness grow as I unconsciously started to question the validity of my powers.

My only saving grace was that I had been doing this for more than four years. I quickly started focusing on what I had done, pulling up all my various sheets and reading through them to solidify it in my mind. It was possible! It was real! It was here, in front of me, all the proof I needed!

Then I saw my sheets start to flicker, my Ion Shield start to fade.

I cleared my mind, taking deep breaths. I am like a game character. I can buy abilities once I figure them out. I have used these powers in combat, and they worked perfectly. I repeated this like a mantra, over and over, using repetition to try and drill it into my consciousness as my abilities continued to fade.

It was working, slowly, but it wasn’t enough.

Alder. I focused on Alder, and the fact that he sent people to hurt me because of a personal grudge. He hurt Tetra! I replayed the scene of her being smashed across the room over and over, starting to work myself up into a rather spectacular rage.

I am going to kill Alder for hurting Tetra. I repeated it to myself over and over, distracting myself from my destructive thoughts… and it worked. My character sheet stabilized, and I went over my list of abilities again. I started thinking of adding new abilities, and suddenly everything started shifting again and I shut my eyes – it was too much, knowing that what I was doing was supposed to be impossible.

OK. No new abilities. At least, not for now. But I had hundreds to choose from, things I had added over the years whenever I was struck by inspiration. I could stick to them for now, keep myself on solid footing.

I gathered my will, harnessing my innate stubbornness into a solid certainty that was bolstered up by anger against injustice. I AM like a game character. I use Qi from the universe itself to power abilities from my list. I am a singular and powerful entity, and nothing can stop me. I will use this power to bring any and all who stand against me to their knees!

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I didn’t go online for the next few days, not wanting to risk another disastrous conversation with Wolfram. But I was feeling much better, repeating the mantra to myself day and night, and dispelling any lingering doubts. I actually started feeling foolish… how could I have started questioning something that was so obviously true? Maybe others had a different way of using Manna, or Qi, or Universe juice, or whatever it was called, but my way worked and was much better than anything else I could think of.

I shuddered as I thought of Wolfram's cultivation, having to program something into existence. I would have to thank the Celestial for his tip about not sharing information if I ever saw him again. I’d hate to be stuck with something like that.

Time went by in much the same manner as before, but now I was grateful for Sylko and Idonea’s constant aggravations. Every time I got mad it became easier to cope, my anger giving me something simple to focus on as I continued to shore up my defenses and repair my cultivation base.

After seven days had passed, I felt confident that I could speak with Wolfram again, and even discuss his cultivation if he wanted too. I would have to be careful not to do to him what he had done to me, though… he had always been more… gullible? No, that didn’t seem like the right word… he was pretty clever after all… but… influence-able? Maybe, but I wasn’t sure that was a real world. Either way, he had a lot easier time believing things or changing his mind based on other people’s opinions than I did. Suggestible! That was the world I was looking for.

Wolfram had always been more suggestible than I was. He was able to experience Hypnotism, for example, while I wasn’t. No matter how I tried to relax, or how skilled the practitioner, I had never been able to become hypnotized – it wouldn’t work on me, I was told, because I didn’t think it would work. And once I decided something like that, it was pretty hard for me to change my mind.

So I had to be careful, lest I manage to accidentally convince Wolfram that what he was doing was impossible.

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Master Ginma was droning on about one of the many legends that I had already heard from mother. I wondered if the reason mom had known so many legends well enough to repeat them to me was because she had been a noble, and probably had a much better education than most commoners... I had picked up from the other students in the class that most of them hadn’t heard many of these tales before, and the majority of them were listening raptly to the lesson. Never having experienced television or movies, I imagine that for them having someone read to you was pretty much top notch entertainment.

There were some few advantages to being (by far) the smallest person in the room, and one of them was that I could ‘fall asleep’ without any of the instructors being able to see me. So I went online, deciding that I should finally try to review the Cultivation Technique that Wolfram had sent me days ago.

It really did seem inefficient, and from the descriptions in the text it took at least a year to even start to sense the start of a power. One of the abilities the House Spiritwind Cultivators developed was something like a ‘wind blast’, a power that took six years of cultivation to manifest reliably. And from what I could tell, it was about as powerful as an attack that would take me four or five CP to buy. And at my current rate, that would take me about a month…

And not only that, but my ‘energy absorption’ primarily took place as I slept. As long as I visualized the glowing formation (which was second nature by now) I simply woke up with more Qi than I had when I had the previous night. On the other hand, House Spiritwind cultivators needed to practice for more than half the day, every day, in order to eventually be able to use their wind blast power.

Was this because my Cultivation Technique was meant for a Celestial? I’m pretty sure that is what the CCEO told us… If so, the then the technique that Wolfram and I have is broken beyond belief. No wonder I was able to defeat three fully grown soldiers by the age of five.

Of course, that also had a lot to do with how I had chosen to use the energy, my own personal cultivation method – I had been able to develop pretty much any ability that I thought would rightfully exist in a roleplaying game. I had come to accept that, for now, I would have to live with the abilities that I had already added to The System. But I was okay with that, as it again reinforced the entire feel of making a character for a game and having to pick powers from a predefined list in a book… and it still left me with hundreds to choose from. Not bad, all in all.

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Wolfram sent me after I finally met him online again. He had sent me a whole host of worried messages that I had basically ignored. I could tell from what he sent that he was still thinking in terms of programs and programming, and he probably filtered what I had said about my cultivation through the same lens. He was safe, for now, still firmly seated in the misconception that The System, and maybe even cultivation in general, was all based around some kind of mystical programming language or source code.

I was forced to lie to him for his own good.

Wolfram hesitated before answering, and when he did there was a definite sense of confusion, He sent as sense of amusement,

I could only laugh in reply. Hopefully he would never know just how close I had come to ruin.