The particles in the stories are microscopic particles, at the size bordering on the edge of being a macromolecule. Google is your best friend.

Also Mother is the term used for the owner/top caretaker of an orphanage, in case you were not aware.

Apologies for the lack of a release yesterday. *Waffle Fluff kowtows*

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He stands up, waves goodbye and then his body erupts into a black flame leaving nothing behind.

I go back through to the throne room and decide to keep meditating for the next few hours, at least until my body awakens. During all the hours, I only achieved a mind that was one with nature about 20 minutes prior to my awakening, so I barely managed to peel any of the barrier covering my soul off.

Becoming one with nature was an interesting experience, if anything. I could feel the movement of the cold air in the large cavern, the particles of water in the air. I could even feel all the vibrations in the earth. Interestingly enough, when I reached the zen-like state, I felt my body move when the surroundings moved. When the wind suddenly blew from the black doorway, my body swayed with it, although the wind itself was incredibly weak. When the earth shook, my body naturally trembled. When the heat increased, my body heat also jumped.

That was when I realised that I was one with nature and that the sensation was slowly, so very slowly becoming clearer.

However, while in this state, I was woken up by a loudly crying baby in the crib opposite me. I looked around to see what could’ve caused him to cry, but not before cursing the child for making me lose my attunement with nature. He didn’t seem to be crying for any real reason other than just for the sake of crying.

This made me curse him in my mind again as his crying caused a chain reaction in which all the newborns erupted into a cacophony of tears.

Dear Lorde Betty, may these childrens souls calm down and quieten so that I can fall back asleep and continue peeling the protective layers.

As I prayed quietly in my mind, it seemed as though my prayers were answered when the old woman from yesterday night entered.

The old woman came in to attempt to silence the ‘little ones’ and slowly but surely the babies quietened down. She then looked at me with an inquisitive look, as I did not cry at all during that ‘event’ and instead had a pained expression on my face, mirroring my thoughts and views on the ‘event’.

Also, I unconsciously regard Betty as my deity now, probably because he has been the only one who has helped me or answered any of my questions as opposed to the other gods who have done jack-shit to help me so far.

Now after that matter was dealt with, all the ‘little ones’ were given milk in bottles, clearly because of the lack of mothers that can provide breast milk in the establishment. We were also given some mashed potato, or at least something that tasted similar to eat. After eating and drinking, I immediately attempted to go back to sleep and succeeded after an hour or two.

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I awaken in the throne room, on the same spot as last time. I stand up and stretch a bit to check if everything was O.K. with my soul-body and then proceed to get into a cross-legged position and meditate again.

This time, unlike the previous 4 hours that it took to become attuned with nature, it only took three hours and forty-five minutes, which I considered a huge improvement because if I managed to lower the required time by 15 minutes each time I slept, it would only take 16 sleeping sessions in total to become able to instantly come into the meditative state.

Of course I acknowledged that the chances of that happening are incredibly close to zero. I repeated this 6 hour sleep, 2 hour awake repeating cycle for the next month. I found that every time I meditated, it decreased the amount of time required to get into a state of attunement with nature.

However, every time that I finished a sleeping session, although the time for me to become attuned with nature decreased, so did the time it was reduced by. The first time reduced the time by 15 minutes, but then it was 12, 11, 7, 2 and now steady at a constant one minute reduction every time I finish my meditative sessions.

Another month later, 2 months since I began peeling the layers, I broke the last layer and became capable of manipulating the ‘aura’ in the air. How to say this… It felt like I just gained insight on the fact of how to release my ‘aura’.

It kind of feels strange when I release my ‘aura’. It feels as though the power comes from all over my body, pouring out like sweat, but at a much higher rate.

Strangely enough though, it’s comfortable and when it surrounds me I get a feeling of bliss, as though I am in my natural environment.

During those 2 months, I never saw Betty, and although I had tried calling out to him both physically and mentally, he never replied. I still had an hour remaining in hell before having to return back to the surface, so I might as well attempt some magic.

I attempt an efficient fireball spell and rub my hands together to generate heat and attempt to increase the friction and flammability of the small heat particles inbetween my hands. However, I find myself incapable of selecting a single particle and only pouring ‘aura’ into it.

“Already failed on the first step, huh.”

I mutter this as I can’t affect a single particle only. I convince myself that, since I only need a single particles to be affected and am incapable of doing so, rather than increasing my ‘aura’ reserves and deciding to ignore selecting one particle and just select a bunch of them to make up for my lack of control, I would instead train in control. As Betty said that this method is 8 times more efficient than just trying to simply use power and not logic, it proves how important control is.

Because of my realisation, I spend the remaining 30 minutes trying to affect the smallest amount of particles with my aura, and only then do I realise how difficult it is to do so. I can only affect a minimum of 100,000 particles which fill less space than a 1 cm^3 cube of air.

I awaken and think to myself:

Well, this is going to take a while to reduce to one… Now I understand why most mages of this world decide to just go for power rather than control.

I look around and see children everywhere, crawling around on their playmats. It appears that after my appearance at this orphanage, there was no more soldiers added to the ‘legion of babies’ that this place has. No, but seriously there is way too many kids younger than three years of age which just makes you assume that they are trying to make either a city or an army of babies.

Oh, I forgot to mention that 1 ½ months after my ‘birth’ into this world, I was allowed to crawl around a bit without being watched by that eagle of a grandmother.

It’s like she knows where you are at all times, whether you are a kilometre away or hiding under her feet. It’s scary.

But although she used to watch me so incredibly closely that I couldn’t explore or search for answers without raising questions and being forced back into my cradle, I knew she did this all out of maternal love. Oh yes, apparently the name that the older children call her by is ‘Grandma Sophia’. I learned this when one of the older children came in here to look after us while ‘Grandma’ was out, and when she returned she was addressed as such.

Anyways, when I finally was free from the ‘watcher’ for half a month, I proceeded to first attempt to stand up and discovered, that I was unable to. I suppose the countless hours of sleeping that I did kind of ruined my physical abilities. I then tested my voice to see if I could speak fluently, but not before hiding in a corner out of sight of everyone.

I found that I could speak fluently, without much difficulty or problems other than my lack of breath. I could only speak about one sentence before having to breathe again due to my horrible lung capacity as a newborn.

I also noticed that although I am not in my soul body, I can for some reason feel my ‘aura’ swirling inside my body. I will for it to exit my body and all of a sudden feel intense pain and everything turns dark.

I woke up in my cradle with Grandma watching me with worried eyes and it doesn’t take a genius to know that I probably fainted upon trying to force my ‘aura’ out of my body.

Hmm, strange. So when I faint, my soul stays with my body and doesn’t go to Betty’s Palace in hell. Hmmmmm.

When Grandma saw that I was awake, she let out a breath in relief.

“Thank God, I thought that you mightn’t ever wake up.

Julie, come over here for a second.”

As she called over ‘Julie’, I shuffled my body a bit and peeked out of the slits in the side of the cradle to look at this new person that I’ve never heard of.

She appears to be 14, one of the older kids, with freckles, brown hair tied in a bun behind her head. She looked 5 foot 4, her eyes were hazel coloured, her skin a slightly tanned white and she wore another nun habit, similar to Sophia’s but without any indication of it being used for a long time. Her ears also appeared normal and she had no tail, spelling out that she was human.

“Julie, from now on you are in charge of looking after Sephtis.”

Julie suddenly looked defiant and opened her mouth but Grandma placed a finger on Julie’s lips to stop her from verbalising her defiance.

“Julie, you decided that you want to take up looking after the kids when I pass away. Although I was at first opposed to such an idea, you imposed your ideals upon me and I resigned on the condition that you agreed to do everything I said, as long as my order doesn’t disregard your wish of taking care of the children.”

Grandma removed her finger from Julie’s lips but although there was nothing prohibiting her from speaking at the moment Julie remained silent. Grandma sighed and continued:

“There should be no problem, think looking after Sephtis for the next year as training for taking over the orphanage.”

“But Grandma, I want to look after REAL children. I have watched him for a while and looking after him has no complications, he just eats and sleeps. Honestly I was more surprised when I heard he fainted in the corner but not because of the fact that he did so, but rather that he actually went as though to escape our sight.

Please Grandma, I don’t mind looking after kids at all, in fact I would love to look after the newborns, but not him please.”

Grandma Sophia sighed again and said:

“That is your problem Sophia, you have no patience for certain types of people. If you are to become the Mother of this orphanage, no in fact any orphanage, you will come across children like this rarely I admit, but you will come across them nonetheless.

So as I said before, take this as training and look after him.”

Julie looked downcast but as she understood that she had to take care of me for her own sake as a Mother, so she just stated:

“Yes Mother.”

Grandma nodded and then left the room. Julie looked at me with a face filled with an emotion close to, but not exactly anger, and then voiced her verbal complaints in a plain and confronting way.

“I don’t like you.”

To which I replied:

“That makes two of us.”

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Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Fixed mistake from {Anyways, when I finally was free from the ‘watcher’ I proceeded to first attempt to stand up} to {Anyways, when I finally was free from the ‘watcher’ for half a month, I proceeded to first attempt to stand up}

-Waffle Fluff