Prying into the outer rim of a foreign mind is usually a relatively casual affair. It is discouraged in the same way entering another’s house without invitation is impolite, but it is far from a dangerous and taboo venture. This is why I was comfortable casually reading the mind of a lower level being with little precautions. In retrospect, I should have been more careful considering my status as an alien being, but if I already knew everything I would have no need to learn.

Your mind is composed of three parts. At the center your consciousness sits the core, which resembles a spherical crystal (you would be surprised to see how many high grade magical stuff love to take the shape of a pretty crystal). It is widely accepted that this core is unbreakable, and it is theorized it represents your fundamental being, your personality, or what you were before your upbringing and experience reshaped your behavior. Some say it is the link to our soul, but no one has any compelling evidence for or against this. I am myself extremely curious as to what it is and what could be accomplished if I could modify it, but this is impossible for now. When I hatched a plan to tear through spacetime, I already had the power to impact it, I only needed more quantity and not quality. As I have yet to see anything having an impact on the core, I can only assume I need a change in quality to be able to start interacting with it.

The core is buried on the spiritual island that represents the inner mind. If your core is radiating your personality and dictating your actions, your inner mind is a filter you built to make your actions fit the circumstances. For example, at birth a baby will start screaming when it is hungry, but as it grows up it will learn to either wait or go find food itself. This is transforming your impulse to cry for food to something you have learned is more appropriate.

You never cease to build this island, and it is filled with all the things important to you, such as your family, friends, emotions and beliefs. Since a malicious entity could totally come in and modify your beliefs by altering your spiritual island, which is also called your emotional anchor, it is always fiercely protected by your will. Invading another’s inner mind will always result in a battle of will, and the spiritual island provides a huge advantage, making such direct brainwashing almost impossible.

Surrounding your inner mind is what I am attempting to access right now, which is the outer mind or sea of knowledge. This is where all of your general knowledge is stored, including your language, how to walk, and all the miscellaneous information you have collected throughout your life. It is considered impolite to sail on another’s sea of knowledge uninvited, but there is very little danger except getting lost. General knowledge is useless if you cannot access it, so the outer mind has to keep all of the information rigorously organized, making it appear as a perfectly still lake.

To recap, the core tells you why you have to do something, your inner mind translates that into what you should do, and your outer mind is in charge of how you do it. Together with your will, your mind can produce spiritual force and affect the physical realm. The image of a core, an island and a sea is generally correct, but it is just a representation of the truth, and can sometimes be changed without any real consequences.

…

I must admit, I might have grown a little arrogant. After toying with cosmic forces, I may have started to consider mundane topics unworthy of my attention. I am practically an immortal Deity, so how can my predictions be wrong? I was confidently basing all of my assumptions on outdated and unreliable information, and was therefore unprepared for what came next.

As soon as I intruded in my target's mind, I instantly felt something was wrong, but it was too late. A flood of distorted information rushed into my mind, threatening to disorient me and make me lose my way back to my physical body. Before I could process the knowledge I was receiving, new waves of miscellaneous facts would arrive and occupy my thoughts. Instead of calmly fishing on a peaceful lake for what I wanted, I was thrust into a raging storm filled with incoherent data.

I have never experienced anything like this, but I do have a solution. To avoid being distracted by telepathic communication, I once devised a barrier to filter the data I was receiving. The only issue is that such a barrier is quite difficult to build, requires a lot of concentration, and any errors can have disastrous consequences, like completely isolating your mind by not filtering information correctly.

I have very little confidence in performing complex magic perfectly while being literally bombarded with headache inducing distractions, so, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to go about it in a very roundabout way. Instead of casting a single difficult spell, I can cast thousands of tiny standalone spells that each demand an insignificant amount of brain power. This makes the task easy and risk free, but it also takes time. A lot of time.

I painstakingly started to build my barrier while doing my best to resist the environment. When I finally finished what felt like days of monotonous but torturous work, I had to rest a moment by doing some random mathematical calculations before I was once again ready to face the predicament I was in.

Do you remember when I explained reading someone’s outer mind was almost completely safe? What was the only danger?

…

That’s right, to get lost! Now, can you guess what happens when you are helplessly swept away by a raging storm? That’s right, you get lost. The good news is that there is a simple way for the experienced to find their way out. The outer mind accommodates all the knowledge gathered by a particular individual, and it does so in order, with the newest knowledge stored at the edge of the mind.

The bad news is that, if you haven’t noticed, this sea of knowledge is not a calm one, and thus all the data has been disorganized. This makes it pretty much impossible to find our way out, and we will very likely be forced to simply roam around until we eventually find the exit. I expect this will not take more than a year, so it’s not too bad, but I am already incredibly frustrated being in an ocean of interesting data which has been rendered completely unintelligible. I can only hope we find an exit before I am driven mad.