Well, fuck.

I stared at my new tattoo, worry creeping back despite the lingering effects of my prior illicit imbibing. At first I thought I had been right when I first met Nott, and that he was really just Morah in disguise, but as I stared at the shimmering golden outline of the book displayed I resolved myself to believe it wasn’t his. From my limited interaction with the Dillholiest of Holies, I couldn’t imagine he would ever choose a book as his emblem, and if he did it definitely would not be an open one. I’m fairly sure he was born in New Jersey.

I tried doing the classic LitRPG tropes; saying status, thinking it, and all kinds of different ways to activate it. Touching it did nothing, either. I looked back at the pamphlet, hoping maybe I had missed something in it that would help, and noticed that it looked somewhat thicker than before. More a novella now instead of a magazine.

Hmm.. maybe?

Flipping open the cover I found the same entry making up the few pages as it used to be, but past it a new section had appeared. Only one page bore anything new and it only had a few sentences. It was a very intriguing bit of text, however.

Choose your Foci and Resonance, Methods and Mode. Do not tarry as time never waits, not even for the bold!

Below this a filigree surrounded the word ‘Begin”. It was underlined and written in the same brownish black ink as the sentence above but leaked from tiny geometric crack like patterns, pulsing with light while somehow remaining dark. Ok, I could complain that I don’t love cheesy shit, but Nott made this and he knows better. Sigh. I guess there’s no sense in waiting. Yes, I mentally thought the word ‘sigh’, sue me.

I pressed ‘Begin’ like one would a hyperlink, and was pleasantly surprised to feel haptic feedback as my finger met the coated-glass texture of the obviously magical page. It feels like a smartphone screen, but textured like a parchment and looks like beyond 16k resolution. Best. Ereader. Ever. Lines began to appear and I shut off my nonsensical mind to focus. They started off as small points, then slowly expanded as if they were all individual pieces being zoomed in on simultaneously, forming a greater whole that looked very familiar to me. I saw a reflection of the—subjectively—best ui and status pages from just about any rpg. You know the one; with the gates to hell popping up and a dragon emperor needing your help? Yup, that one.

Mostly it was the looks and style that poured nostalgia over me like a warm shower. The tabs were on the left instead of the bottom and the options listed were not something I had seen when playing its vanilla counterpart but in no way was I complaining. Whether you're relaxing on a nice rainy Sunday or upgrading your metaphysical existence, nothing beats a good book. On the right side was a character model that looked like an artist's doll, with lines from a few points on the model leading to three boxes in the middle, which then had a single line leading to the topmost tab on the left.

Out of the five tabs only the one showing a headless bust in a strongman pose was able to be selected, with the others greyed out and no images displayed. I tried selecting them anyway, of course, but didn’t get any feedback from the page. This figure must be me. Which means I have to make a new body, or something like it, before I can see what the other tabs are for. I was as excited as any grown man has a right to be and eagerly reached out my right hand again, bracing the tome with my left.

I pressed the middle box with one path aiming straight towards my left side, then splitting in two and moving around my body before connecting to each other on the opposite side, with a small gap between the two. As my finger hit the page and I received a little buzz, where the two had met branched out into hundreds of darkly glowing lines stopping at a multitude of points. My entire body was indicated at what had to be the cellular level if the sheer number of them meant anything. The other boxes along with their associated paths disappeared as the glow overtook my body. A darklight nexus formed at an intersection directly opposite the original lines. Three beams split off from it, curving away from each other in small arcs, and traveled quickly back towards the box, which was no longer blank.

Empirical Focus was now scrawled there, flashing in that weird way the text seemed to have. The three lines each had a word written in a blank space at the center of their path now, as well. Strength was written at the top, Agility along the bottom, and center was Grace. I pressed and held on Strength hoping it worked like a long press would and was happy to feel a slight pulse, the space containing the word sliding back forth along its arc. As I moved it to the right Grace barely nudged towards the left while Agility seemed to move at a 1:1 ratio as Strength.

The model morphed as the ratios did. As Strength was nearly maxed out I saw the figure change to look like a bodybuilder with most of the thin glowing lines ending somewhere in my upper body. I held my finger there for a moment feeling the steady but forceful pulse emitting from the Strength button. It felt like the same word but expressed through that vibration as pure feeling as well. The idea of a steadily beating heart, bursting at the seams with vitality, strong enough to lift a house. This could be the stock idea of strength, but it feels more personal, like my own personal definition of it. Then again I am doing manually what happens naturally at birth. It hasn’t said it, but this has to be my First Oscillation.

Swinging Agility towards the right made the figure become more lean with more muscled legs in proportion, and the haptics changed to a quickly moving wave versus the slow and steady pulse from Strength. It gave off a feeling of adrenaline fueled movement, almost like I was weaving through traffic on a bike at high speeds and though my reflection was only a blank outline it seemed as if the figure was just oozing flexibility.

I took my hand away and scratched my head, trying to decide what it meant and what to choose. So raw power, or speed. Grace doesn’t seem to change much though I have a little more with Agility maxed out. I could always go with a more rounded approach but it seems I can even things out later on, if I read that pamphlet right. I left Agility at a little over three quarters of the maximum and pressed the still flashing Empirical Focus, feeling that same rushing wave from the page before it cut out completely.

The glowing termini on my figure stayed huddled mostly around my waist and legs, while the lines connecting them faded quickly back towards the original box. A humming vibration emitted from the book itself, that felt almost identical to when I selected the focus. Soon it faded as well and the two boxes that had gone away before were back in their respective positions. The top led towards my head—ending right at the ‘third eye’—while the lower ended in the center of my chest.

Choosing the upper option made the other fade just as before, though I hoped it would come back again and I wasn’t locking myself out of a choice without knowing it. The point where it met the forehead broke up into a pulsing eye shaped diamond, with the rest of the line splitting into three sliders again, identical to the Empirical selection. The figure of me on the page changed position as well, sitting down in a lotus form, with its fingerless palms resting on its knees.

Above was Velocity, its feedback at the median level a staccato rhythm that seemed to give the idea of a quicker syncing between mind and body. I shifted it to the maximum and the rhythm built up faster with more alternating patterns until it seemed like what I wanted my body to do would be enacted as I was thinking it, with no delay though it seemed a limit would be reached and I would not be getting a spidey sense. A part of me wanted to just keep it there and accept the change, but I forced myself to check the other option There’s no way Cognition is going to be that good.

As usual with my predictions, I was wrong. It was even objectively better, depending on what—I’m sorry for this one—you wanted to Focus on. Just like the Empirical choice, it seemed these were opposites, with the thought-to-action enhancements from Velocity countered with Cognition’s feeling of understanding. A constant high pitched hum of vibrational music, like running your finger along the edge of a half-full wineglass, flew through me. I had the surety that with this I would be able to parse most any stimuli I received, translating it all into structured thought, if with the same bottleneck limitations I felt from Velocity.

Idly, while trying to make it past the mental stump I had just stubbed my toe on, I moved my finger along the middle selection. I had, stupidly, not tried to do it on the first page. I should say Stupidly with a capital S, because as soon as I touched it I realized it wasn’t just what I was left with when altering the other two options, but that Connectivity was its own thing. Like I said, Stupid. It had a different name; of course it would actually be different. The actual buzz and feeling came as a blend of both Velocity and Cognition but enhanced with a feeling of balance and interactivity between the two. Just like Pneuma and the Meta it's a blend of other Resonant energy, like a magical Law of Three, just with a controlling force instead of a neutral one.

As I moved it to the right, while the capabilities of Velocity and Cognition seemed to lower, that feeling of completeness grew, giving the idea that while I would not have insane processing or transmission speed, the connection between the two would strengthen dramatically. Jeez Im a fucking idiot. This is the one I needed to have pumped up on the Empirical Focus. I let out a long suffering sigh, having resigned myself to my inevitable impulsive mistakes when I was still a child, even if my mother and everyone else never did.

Shaking off the cobwebs, I moved it back to around the same level I had left Agility. I felt that with the higher level of interaction between the two while they may be at, let’s say, forty percent capacity each instead of the seventy-five that Connectivity was, because of that interconnection it felt more fluid than one or the other. Balanced.

I finalized the choice. The third eye diamond remained, just like the glowing points still on my lower body, and the lines leading back disappeared. Again the entire thing shook, now a harmony of both my Empirical and my Ephemeral choices before, taking much longer before going away. After a minute the last box appeared, leading to my chest.

OK, you can do this. I amped myself up and pressed the last option, now labeled Spiritual Focus. The third eye on the figure opened, whirling with clouds of multicolored energy. It flared, the outlines of my body shook, and the line leading to my chest zoomed in rapidly. Near instantly I was left not looking at a heart, but a revolving 3D inked version of what appeared to be a star enlarged to cover the entire figure of myself. That I felt an inexplicable feeling of oneness as I traced its fluttering corona settled the argument I was having within my head of its Spiritual authenticity, and without a doubt I knew it was some representation of the soul.

I lifted my finger and a single slider appeared on the line between it and the box that had morphed into a little copy of the figure subsumed before. The word Balance appeared closer to my soul at first. As I slid it back and forth the resonance I felt was the same, with only the intensity of the feeling going down the closer to my body's depiction. The body didn’t change, but just like with Agility its presence did. While the slider was as far left as it could go, it seemed that I would be more attuned to the Empirical side of things judging from the physical solitude I felt, even while the song of my soul was almost muted. Moving to the right that physicality faded and the song strengthened more, which I took to mean anything from the Ephemeral side would Resonate more with me.

I guess it's capitalized for a reason. There’s got to be some way to use that for analyzing things, at least if I feel others as strongly as I have these. I left the slider directly in the middle, hoping to widen my options for starting my journey. Though I assumed I would be able to use the book after I left, I didn’t have a clue if I would still get information from it in the same way or have to resolve myself to scrounging it up wherever I could find it. I prayed for the former as the latter meant attaching myself to another entity. Given my recent interactions just the thought of it brought a grimace to somewhat mar my metaphysically empowered excitement.

I looked around for something to press and finalize things, before checking out the other tabs, but found nothing. I worried it had glitched out and stared at the pulsing of Balance for nearly 3 minutes, when finally it started growing brighter. When it got to the point that I had to squint to continue looking, both the figure of my body and the image of my soul started emitting their own particular Resonances blended into a cohesive that ramped quickly in intensity. The vibration of the book nearly numbed my hands and I watched as both my soul and body merged within the light's brilliance. A wave of the same sound and energy contained within it moved from the book outwards, like a pebble in a pond. The force continued for just a second before the wave of energy abruptly returned and the book slammed shut, closing on my left thumb and making me shout.

When I reflexively brought my thumb to my mouth, the book remained floating in the air, to my surprise. The glow inside it had not stopped growing while it defied gravity, and soon the entire thing looked more like a book-shaped lump of steel white hot from a forge. A hair thin beam shot out from the top's leading edge and landed directly on the middle of the doorway Nott had left for my departure. I realized this was Notts way of making me leave the nest, but as the door opened and I was sucked slowly into it like a ghost into a vacuum I couldn’t help but mentally curse them for not letting me check out the other tabs first.