Successfully slain Ojáncano Level UP x3!!! Ignition spell unlocked, level 2 Ki boost unlocked, level 1 Pain resistance unlocked, level 11 Fire resistance level up, level 2 Medical magic level up, level 4

Huh, ignition started out at level 2, I assume because of fire affinity and my knowledge of how fire works. Fire resistance was from the flaming knee to the side, and ki boost was from using ki to try to get past the monster, Interesting… medical magic leveled up from use while healing myself after I escaped from the room.

So ki boost uses up ki to increase my abilities, though it used up 10 ki from using it one second, while ignition let’s me set things on fire, which can be even more powerful with the right thing to burn...

I wonder if I unlocked any feats. I mean I just slew a giant cyclops, that has to count for something right? First I should probably check my general status…

Name:Aether Cael Level: 5 HP: 48/60

MP: 55/70

PP: 50/50

KI: 50/60

STR:12 DEX:10 CON:11 INT:14 WIL:10 CHA:7 Unused stat points: 3 Status effects: lesser injury Skills:fire resistance 2, pain resistance 1, mana bolt 1, medical magic 4, ki boost 1, ignition spell 2, meditation 1, Feats:Basic regeneration, basic magic affinity, basic fire affinity, basic blood affinity, basic ki affinity, basic Psionic affinity Feat points: 8

Hmm, my health is greater than it should be, I wonder what’s adding to that. Maybe due to medical magic? Doesn’t show any version of the magical healthcare feat though? Let’s check if it’s still available

Available Feats: Beginner fire affinity (4 points) Beginner magic affinity (4 points) Beginner blood affinity (4 points) Beginner ki affinity (4 points) Beginner Psionic affinity (4 points) Basic monster hunter (10 points) Basic giant slayer (5 points) Friend of the trasgu (1 point) Magical healthcare (100 points)

Huh… well, let’s make an experiment shall we?

I raised my intelligence stat with the three points and found that MP was increased by 15, so that would mean that MP and intelligence are linked, but my HP stayed the same. I also found that medical magic healed 4 units of hp per unit of mp, though not too quickly… it took about a minute for every unit of hp...

So I decided to try another experiment, trying to use my other pools to try and heal it a bit faster, using Psionic Power, or PP to force it to heal and regenerate, and Ki to try and supercharge it. Then…

analysis skill unlocked, level 1 (Grants information related to target,as well as additional information in status screens) Ki healing unlocked, level 1 (Allows the use of ki to supercharge the body’s natural healing) Psionic healing unlocked, level 1 (Uses the power of the mind, bring the body to mend itself)

Suddenly I understood a few things better. I had an intuitive understanding of several things, hearing a little voice in my head that helped me connect the dots… this gives me a lot to meditate abou-

Jesus Christ I’m already becoming a power gamer.

Anyway, those new skills raised my feat points to 11, just enough to get the monster hunter feat, leaving me with 1

Monster Hunter: awarded to the first person in a region to kill a monster. Grants knowledge of any monster the wearer fights, including strength and weaknesses, how to process the carcass, and behavioral habits. +5% damage to monsters.

Well, knowing how to cook the sasquatch certainly helps. That +5% damage also looks good, since it seems it applies universally. Next I got up to prepare the sasquatch meat. I mean I heard money tasted like chicken anyway, and have you tasted barbecued chicken?

“A dónde vas señor?”

Oh yeah, the goblins are still here…

“Voy a tratar de comer al monstruo, ya que está cocinado y no he comido por un tiempo”

“Por favor síguenos, el Ojáncano tuvo unos cerdos acorralados en su cueva”

Hello bacon my old friend…

Quickly preparing a pig with the help of the goblins, I happily ate it instead of the burned sasquatch corpse. Between you and me, I prefer not to eat anything too humanoid…

The cyclops even had a few gold coins hidden in a drawer. Loot GET!

Eventually, my analysis and monster hunter instincts told me the goblins were called trasgu, so I decided to spend my last point on the feat that makes me their friend. They seemed friendly . After that we went our separate ways, me leaving them the leftovers of the pig and them telling me I was always welcome in their village. After I got that feat they were much more friendly with me, instead of the formal reverence they held before. They even pointed out a few dangerous areas to avoid, but for now I’m staying in the cave and meditating on several things.

First was my status screen. Now I could instinctively feel my regen rates, which were equal to a certain stat plus 1 from the basic regeneration feat each hour. Health and Ki were based on constitution, MP was based on will and PP was based on intelligence. Blood affinity also added to my max health, increasing it by 10%, while fire affinity was a lot… stranger. It permeated all my other affinities, but didn’t seem to overtly effect them. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was an element? It was based more on understanding the element itself than a form of energy you generated by yourself. Maybe if I had another element to compare to? Humans are practically made from water after all.

So I began to meditate on water. The cleansing flow, the ocean current, the frigid ice, the broiling steam, the gentle trickle of a stream… I stayed like that for an hour until I felt a wetness in my crotch area…

That never happened.

minimum water affinity achieved!!!

Excellent. It seemed to be similar to fire, permeating my other affinities, but not overtly affecting them, or so I thought…

Whatever water touched, fire recoiled from, wherever fire was, water was repulsed. They were like two magnets with the same polarity. They needed a buffer…

And two hours later, I achieved minimum air and earth affinities. Buying the basic version of all 4 elemental affinities, I began to feel something… like the world was a beautiful painting around me, each element in its place.

Next I tried to see if I could obtain space and time affinities, since they seem to be so easy to gain…

I actually lost track of the time I was meditating on that, easily more than 6 hours. I was only brought out of my reverie by the call of nature…

Finding a hole near the pig pen, I squatted down and began to think. Maybe the space and time affinities didn’t work like they did in fantasy stories? I mean Einstein said they were the same thing, didn’t he? That time was a coordinate just like x, y and z? I remember seeing a diagram of two cones meeting on a plane. One of the cones represented the path a photon of light took in the path, the plane represented the position, and the other cone the path the light was going to take… maybe instead of imagining black holes, stopping time and tearing the fabric of space, I should focus on dilating time, just get… lost… in… the… moment…

at that point I felt really self conscious of my place in the universe. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean I felt conscious of my exact position relative to everything around me, as well as how long I was holding that position as the pigs in their pen seemed to have been time lapsed, laying down, suddenly dashing to the other side of the pen, and rolling around in the mud as if they were posed by a certain blue hedgehog.

And then I was back to normal.

My meditate skill leveled up, bringing me a single extra feat point.

I was getting close. Really close, but not just yet… so I decided to walk about, maybe head to the trasgu village and meditate there? Maybe that can help.

So a quick trip to the trasgu village later, and I found a way to at least get out from the stone walls that made up the building. The village was in a small collapsed area, something like a wooden shed or stable area. Here, little trasgu made their houses in the rubble, bits of smoke coming out of the larger piles of debris, making it look like the place was just destroyed if you couldn't smell the scent of pork.

“Hola! Hay alguien en casa?”

Next thing I knew, goblins started coming out of the literal woodwork.

“Bienvenido, heroe, que te trajo a nuestra aldea”

A familiar goblin appeared to welcome me, though I would disagree on the hero title. This was the one that knelt in front of me while I healed myself. His skin was a darker shade of green, but his eyes were much brighter, like emerald gemstones…

Why did I have to make it weird?

“He venido a visitar, y quedarme un rato si me dejan”

The goblins face twitched for a moment, before grinning

“Por supuesto, déjame traerte a un lugar donde puedas descansar”

The goblin took me to a spot between three piles that reached waist high. There wasn't much open space between the piles, goblins stepping over the tops to reach where they wanted to go. I was a bit too heavy for that, so I decided to try something else, sending my ki to the soles of my feet and trying to make something like snowshoes. Save for a few buckling piles and a few cracks it worked pretty well, giving me a skill called “shadow foot” that lets me reduce the effect of my weight at a low cost of ki.

I thanked the goblin and sat down in a lotus position, hoping to continue my meditation after the goblin left.

“Si necesitas algo, pide por Milesio”

Milesio huh, so that was his name…

So I was back to meditating. Trying to sense the space around me, the nanoscopic effect that everything had on it, any shifts in my sensation of time, when a little mushroom bumped into me.

It was an infant trasgu, using an oversized mushroom cap as a hat. I have to admit, its big head and small body looked pretty cute, so as the strange creature tried to climb into my lap I decided to help it out a bit. Its was small enough to fit in my hand, looking more like a strange doll than a creature as it flailed around weakly. In the meanwhile I was trying to use MP and PP to exert a force on space, which didn't really help much because I was effectively trying to push a piece of nothing. I began to focus more and more, permeating the area around me with my MP, PP and KI. The space around me was so clear, as the movement of the dust, the air currents, even the instantaneous passage of light was felt as I spread my senses through the area- when did the other 17 get on my lap.

Currently, 18 little baby trasgu were piling on top of me. How the hell they got on me when I would notice if a single speck of dust was out of place I do not know, but them leaning on each other like a bunch of little green hairless kittens was too peaceful for me to disrupt in good conscience.

There I was, sitting… in.. the… moment…

And it happened again. The babies seem to have left earlier, and a small bowl with pork soup was sitting next to me, still warm.

“Gracias, Milesio”

So I sat down as started to contemplate. It was a lot darker now, yet he could feel the world around him just as well through his pools. He even seemed to gain a few skills, ESP for psionics, Mana sense for magic, and Ki scanning for Ki. all did basically the same thing, though using all of them at once gave a lot of detail. Even in the darkness, I could see everything. Darkness was usually associated with space and light with time weren’t they? I guess that’s because space if generally dark, dotted with the occasional star, while light is constantly in motion, moving at the greatest possible speed.

Of course, light was made of photons, electromagnetic waves carrying energy about as fast as the universe would allow them. It carried information as well, based on its wavelength and frequency, either as radio waves running across vast distances, the shorter wavelengths of WiFi, fiber optic cable, or even as visible light, just permeating through space and bouncing off objects or heating them up. And then light was still just an electromagnetic wave, a ripple traveling across a field. A ripple that surged out of fire and lightning, but a ripple nonetheless.

On the other hand, darkness was just the lack of light. Shadow wasn’t a thing, it was the effect that occurred when the light couldn’t reach. It was caused by anything that prevented the light reaching your eyes. It was nothing more than a void of light, with nothing there.

Well, it appears I was sitting down for a while, since I gained the minimum affinity for both… lightning, and… void? To be honest I was expecting light and darkness. I feel I’m getting somewhere closer to space and time affinity, though given that it seems to be much harder to achieve than any other affinities I’ve seen so far. Maybe it’s just not an affinity? I hope it is, since I have been getting close to “something”. Maybe it’s a higher kind of affinity? Something harder to get than the standard elemental and even the various “power” affinities like magic, Psionic, ki and blood. Hmm...