Ki-Less Meditation

(Vanessa Swordarm)

April Fool's 2016

Spoiler :

After getting so many critical reviews, and nasty comments (breaks down and starts crying) I just can’t take it anymore so I have made up my mind, I have decided to stop writing forever! And soon I am also planning to take down all my prior chapters, so they can’t hurt the eyes of the readers on royal road anymore!

As a not so fond farewell to all you haters I have written in these spoilers a long rant about what I really think of all of you!

(Warning: includes hate, more hate and many snobbish and obscene curses)

Spoiler :

April Fools! I love you guys!

(Even the haters)

A Spoiler of the next real chapter:

I realize soon after I start reading the scroll that it isn’t just an ordinary piece of paper.

For one, once I started reading it I couldn’t stop myself from continuing to read it, it was like my eyes were glued to the page.

This wasn’t anything like the corrosion I had experienced from other much lesser mages no, it was more like the words on the scroll were the most interesting and intriguing thing I had ever read before and I wanted no needed to read it all.

This was not because of any great literary skill on the part of my master, (though not being a bookish sort it wasn’t like could determine that anyway) rather it was of the many emotions I felt while reading it.

It was almost like I was my Master as if I was well…Will.

I felt his humor and his odd sort of childish amusement when I read what he thought to be jokes. And when I read his light teasing about my stubbornness, and his reveal about the clearing enspellment, I felt like I was the one being mischievous.

P.S. just before I decided to retire from writing I had been thinking of starting another fanfic, and because I hate for all my hard work to go to waste I will be posting the chapters I have for it, for one day and one day only. RMHS Just a warning this fic is the worst of my work to date so unless you want your eyes to start bleeding right before you start puking all over the place, there is only one solution DON’T READ IT!!

The end and goodbye!

FOREVER!!

P. P. S. Don’t you readers even think of coming crawling back to me when you realize just how good of thing you had

(sniff, sniff)

Author's Note:

Spoiler :

For those of you who did not read the spoiler yesterday I am sorry if that caused you any distress...as you can see I am not really dropping my writing.

Though in my opinion it should have been obvious that it was an April Fools joke, after all at the very least one should take everything online on April 1st with a large grain of salt.

Actually originally my April Fools post was just going to be about the rough-rough draft page picture.

The joke was that: "I am so tired of working hard for my readers, that I decided to be lazy and give them the first draft to read, and if they want a better chapter they had better edit it/write one themselves"

However some of the comments I read put me in a bad mood and so, a few months ago in 2015 I started to plan out a new and meaner version of April Foolery.

To the people I wanted to target: It would serve them right if they believed it for a second. As to those who were innocent of ever making me angry? Well wasn't the first day of the fourth month always full of victims anyway? Besides it was only some words, and it would only be up for around 24 hours they would survive.

I felt that it was exagerated enough to be joking, I personally liked the touch at the end where I channel the same lines that a cheated on steriotypical woman would say. I mean come on do I really seem like the kind of person who would blaim their own incompatence and lack of will pwoer on other people so much so that they even claim they (the other people) will regret it?

(on second thought please don't answer that question)

P.S. One part of the joke wasn't a joke I wonder if you guys can figure it out and if you will even care when you do ;)

FP: Tee hee I plan for the non-joke to be as mysterious as posible...

AA: Yet it will end up compleatly ordinary and boring and no one will like it

KNG: I am confused is it really you speaking?

I realize soon after I start reading the scroll that it isn’t just an ordinary piece of paper.

For one, once I started reading it I couldn’t stop myself from continuing to read it, it was like my eyes were glued to the page.

This wasn’t anything like the mental corrosion I had experienced in the past from other much lesser mages no, it was more like the words on the scroll were the most interesting and intriguing thing I had ever read before and I wanted no needed to read it all.

This was not because of any great literary skill on the part of my master, (though not being a bookish sort it wasn’t like I could determine that anyway) rather it was of the many emotions I felt while reading it.

It was almost like I was my Master as if I was well…Will.

I felt his humor and his odd sort of childish amusement when I read what he thought to be jokes. And when I read his light teasing about my stubbornness, and his reveal about the clearing enspellment, I felt like I was the one being mischievous.

However the fascinating traits of the scroll didn’t end there, for the scroll was quite small, and thus it was able to hold only a few sentences of my Masters writing at a time, however whenever I got to the last word of the sentence I was on, there was another.

The scroll never changed in size, but somehow despite this fact there was always more to read. However I am not sure if the method was made possible through words appearing and vanishing or if he had somehow made a much longer ‘scroll’ fit inside the small one through magic. When I tried to see if the words vanished, as soon as I looked down towards a past sentence, or upwards towards the promise a new one there it would be, instantly.

Essentially it was like I was scrolling without actually scrolling, it was quite the novel experience to say the least. After playing with it quite some time, I finally dragged myself away from the entertainment just experiencing the words and the feelings they gave and instead finally started to get myself to really comprehend what I was reading.

Afterwards I was left with many mixed feelings.

I wouldn’t say that like he feared I was angry, and I wouldn’t quite say that I was disappointed either. However I knew for a fact that although I was excited to see what would come next and curious about what my actions and choices would ‘reveal’ about me. I couldn’t really say I was happy about this either.

And the reason for my tangled emotions was only partially because if I were happy I would also have to say that I am thrilled about being outed as a well…stubborn person. Well…I do admit I can be quite determined sometimes…which is a big part of the reason why will er my master so throws me for a loop.

Basically my determination or even my stubbornness is completely ineffectual against him.

Either I usually find out that there is no need for me to dig my heels in, because he usually just seemingly easily and almost casually gives me everything that I have asked of him so far, an apprenticeship not the least of it.

Or the rare few times since we’ve met that it looked like we may argue, he speaks so reasonably that I end up finding myself without any words with which to use against him, and more importantly I then am no longer even in the mood to ‘fight’.

Whatever the truth of my feelings at the moment, it didn’t really matter in the end because, the only way for me to see the conclusion of this event was to play along, after all I was always more of an action kind of girl rather than the sit on my heels and wait type.

And so I sat down, in a cross legged position and carefully, set the scroll beside me before laying my hands on my lap and closing my eyes.

Habit is a scary thing, I soon found out. For every time so far that I got to the point that I could be considered meditating I would immediately feel my ki start to engage and rush towards my ki channels. Each time this happened I would have to focus on calming my energies down, and of course as soon as I did that almost every time I would start to break out of meditation.

I was so intensely absorbed in my attempts at ki-less meditation that I was completely unaware of how much time passed. The fact that the light clearing hadn’t changed an iota did not help matters. However it must have been quite a while because when I decided to take a short break and started to stretch, my legs were shocked by a barrage of pins and needles and my lower back began to complain.

So understandably my originally intended quick break lasted a bit longer than expected, as I took the time to get the circulation in my legs running properly again as well as stretch away the ache in my back.

I also couldn’t resist doing a few ki exercises to make myself feel better, but as I said to myself out loud those didn’t count because I was not trying to do meditation at the moment but just warm myself up for health purposes. However as soon as I heard me talking to myself, I realized that the guilt and long hour(s?) of meditation must have gotten to me and so quickly sat back down to meditation.

I don’t know long this second attempt lasted for reasons stated earlier, but I estimate it took several times longer than all the time I had been there before I started meditation. Shamefully I comforted myself self with the thought that at least now I was doing something productive compared to the fact that I had spent most of that time walking the ‘endless field’ of a pocket dimension. (I have to admit that I was quite impressed to read that as far I know mages who can do that sort of thing are on the rarer side).

Finally I managed it for a brief second. The moment was brief for as soon as I thought I managed it I felt an excitement that quickly ruined my frame of mind for meditation.

However once I had experienced that feeling and knew better how to get there, my progress started to greatly increase in speed.

I went from one brief second, to a normal second and then to seconds. Not much later I got to the point that I could do it for about a minute at a time, and by that point I had forgotten all about the reason I had started this strange form of meditation and instead was starting to become engaged in it for its own sake.

The thing I found most different about ki-less mediation compared to my usual kind was that rather than focusing on controlling my body it was an exercise in not controlling my body thus it was much more focused on controlling my mind and my thoughts, despite or because of the fact that it made that action much harder to do.

With ki enabled meditation, I normally would just clear my mind or focus my thoughts only in the very beginning. As soon as I got to the point where I could control my body I would then focus solely on moving my ki around, or on a particular martial art skill that I was then currently trying to learn, and from then on it was just a matter of instinct and habit.

With ki-less meditation my thoughts became unstable and unfocused much easier because I had ‘nothing’ specific to focus on. To combat this possible problem I tried out various methods and experimental procedures most which I had thought of on the spot.

These included everything from the classic stereotypical ‘clear your mind and think of nothing’ approach to the somewhat unorthodox meditate on meditating and focus on focusing tactic.

I am not sure which of them paid off, possibly a combo of one or more of many thereof, but I shockingly (to me at least) eventually found myself in the midst of success. For while meditating I suddenly felt, something that I had first felt before long ago.

A feeling that had only come about after a long tiring day spent near endlessly repeating hard to pronounce magic words read from an unsanctionedly borrowed library book, to the point that my voice had become hoarse and my body near collapse.

At that time far from the grand happy success I had pictured before I had started all I had felt was relief when all my work paid off and I managed to get the spark of magic I had coaxed into appearing into making the twig I was holding smoke slightly.

Of course that wasn’t the end of my practice or my capabilities and although I eventually managed to get the twig catch on fire as well as a few other tricks, by then I had begun to realize that compared to my ability to use certain flame element martial art skills and cause blazes near to being explosions my magic as being useful wouldn’t be anything more than the level of not quite pathetic. Or in other words, though not the worst of talents I was far from being a prodigy in magic.

What I was feeling now, was as far as from that little spark as could be. So much so that had I experienced ‘this’ on one of my many earlier attempts I would have immediately rushed out in search of a master dojo be d*med for I would believe confidently that I was a genius.

It was a complete and utter rush no a flood of magic. However this feeling only lasted for a small second. Quite excited and encouraged I was about to try again when one of my hands brushed the scroll sitting next to me and I recalled that my master had requested that I do something after I felt magic.

So I picked up and started to read from it again.

ki: An energy produced in the bodies of those who practice certain forms of Martial Art's Cultivation and in a few with abnormal bodies

Channels: Invisible veins that ki runs through

Meditation: A form of stress relief cultivation practice by mages, martial artists and anyone who wishes to learn some mastery over their mind and body. Certain rarer varieties can have more powerful results, like making learning certain skills easy or the body stronger to name a few examples.

Library: A place with a lot of books, also in this world in some libraries you can find books that teach things about magic, martial arts and other interesting things