Strolling through my memory palace, I can’t believe half of the stuff I discover, though I see no reason to doubt my senses. I have an inkling of how to replicate the effect in the portal we are building without having to power it with my Qi.

I seek the remnants of all I learned with One Step Towards Connection even if only a superficial connection.

Rebuilding the entire thing, at least without the gold in the middle is a fairly easy process by reutilizing the swapped pieces of the formation.

It has a very small gold focus in the middle, nor is it an extremely refined design, but an hour later, we have something workable without having to go back to the completely wasteful original design.

A lack of precision, small glitches from the rush job and a near lack of gold to power the portal double mana consumption for the minimum viable portal that a comm rune can work through but work it does. And with the much smaller formation on the other side, they get it up and running before us. As soon as we connect, I hear the voice of our main point of contact so far.

“I may be a necromancer, but that black thing beyond death. Luckily there was no one nearby.”

“Did you get the packages?” The comm operator asks as we stand at his sides.

“Ohh, yes. They were scattered a dozen meters away from the small goo explosion. Though what is this seed about?”

“It is a gift from our resident Magic Man. Just plant it nearby and feed mana, preferentially nature mana if you have any such mages.”

“I will have to call upon… wait. It’s the person you keep calling Magic Man one that threw a much of seeds out in the middle of nowhere?”

I lean forward interested, but before I have a chance to answer, Merlin laughs from his belly. “It is that instance… The one with the boob armor girl you told me about.”

A shirl voice reaches our ears making us wince before the typical noises of mishandling a microphone while trying mute it comes through. Though after a brief pause the Necromancer's voice is back.

“Well, while I prefer that you be more respectful of my people: yes, Valeri saw your ‘magic man’ throwing a bunch of seeds out.”

“I don’t suppose you would do me the favor of connecting the seed you plant there with the ones spread over right?”

“Well, it will take a while, but I don’t see why not. I send a few of our mages, and the types of growth we occasionally see from it add a bit of variety to our diet. We even got slight improvements on our healing salves, so this it’s the least we can do.”

I widen my eyes at their discoveries. Not at his hinted meager gains, but the fact that there were any gains at all from mixing different plants with similar properties, our resident ‘potion’ maker continued to improve with the healing salves and connections, but this could prove to be another avenue for easy growth. And this might also be helpful when he managed to make a proper potion.

If I detect the specific mechanisms they achieved that I may be able to modify the leaves to extract even more out of them.

I start thinking of my next step, I only have another few hours, before people will stop by and prepare for the trip tomorrow, but just as I pull my new notebook, a much better way of organizing than the previous iterations of my list, I feel a pinprick, the barest of threads just reaching and grasping myself. I would normally not notice this latch, especially given my reduction in stat points, but I had taken the first step toward at least navigating the void.

Though being able to aim my landing similar to jumping out of a plane was really useful, I couldn’t do the reverse and leap from the ground into a flying plane of my own volition.

The ghostly frog tongue wraps around me very faintly, getting my measures more precise and I concentrate on it.

I let go of all the concerns, with a good guess of what happened and for the second time today, I reach for a connection. Nothing happens for a couple more seconds until the automaton’s probe gets a firm lock on my position. Strength that even someone without senses capable of seeing space warp sucks me in and then I’m floating in the void with nothing and nobody else in sight.

So he hasn’t come this time as well.

I reach out with my senses all around me and make use of the opportunity, even if it will likely be a couple of minutes at most. I navigate sometimes fighting the current that surrounds me accelerating me, then I go with it before turning every which direction. I try to get as used to the movements, but as I expected, I’m plopped back in reality way too soon.

In the courtroom are only two people, a tentative friend and a person of authority that is not amused by my antics.

“This time you screw the pooch.”

I make a small effort to feel regret, the system may be callous and in the end what I did involved unexpected dangers… but if the system denied me access to Earth, I would reach out and grab what I could in whatever manner was available, and knowledge… that was scarce.

“I will admit, I’m pushing the envelope. But there is a simple answer to it. The system just needs to stop denying what is plain would answer my needs.”

“For the record, what do you refer to?”

“In the short term, I want to go back to Earth to fix the mistakes and problems it has caused, healing my soul would also be another good step. But it all comes back to a single denial with no rhyme or reason, denying us essential knowledge. That is the fundamental problem.”

“And opening a hole in reality fixes that how?” He asks genuinely.

“How else am I supposed to learn?”

“You are a few decades too young to think of messing with something like this. I don’t even know how you overcame that last hurdle. Even if your Qi is impressive, there is only a single being backing its usage and higher applications of it will remain severely limited.”

I take careful note of his off handed words. Another piece of the puzzle fitting what the automaton has hinted at. It is perhaps a small aspect I could start looking into.

Though as the weight of his first statement comes back, tiredness I didn’t know I could feel slams into me. “I don’t have decades. I need to learn in months or better yet weeks what careful and methodic exploration should have given me.”

“What you are looking for is impossible…”

“Impossible implies an absolutism that I don’t believe in. If people are attacking Aspen, it is possible to go back.”

“Their circumstances aren’t your own.”

“I will make the circumstances in my favor, I will bend the world to my will if I need or I will come up with a never before used method to bypass those restrictions. You yourself said that you didn’t know how I finished the connection, how I warped space with my bare will and brought an instant of glory, before… it all when to hell.”

“Glory…. you nearly killed all of humanity.” I let his words sink in. The beginnings of a chill creep down my spine, but I take a breath and feel his words. Do they resonate as truth?

I absorb his words trying to extract the meaning beyond ordinary movement, but there is nothing else. The vibrations are empty, a mechanical sound constructed to make me believe something different from reality, likely for my own good.

“So, if I poke a needle in a zeppelin, the gas leaks and blows up nearly killing everyone else in a cascade that will reach all amongst thousands of other craft flying in formation and it is somehow my fault? A kid exploring its environment?” As his mind shifts to counter my weak argument, I really lock gazes with him, bore down into his soul and drive home the heart of the matter. “If what you say is the truth.”

He looks at me as I firm my jaw and lean forward. Nothing he says will convince me. I make sure he knows… I won’t change my mind without a good reason. But then he changes his tune.

“You stubborn …. Yeah, not that much danger for the whole of humanity. Still, there was a chance that the system wouldn’t have caught it in time and it could have easily consumed your entire village. If a single droplet had flown away, it might have killed a few unlucky people. The system doesn’t deal well with people that walk too far from the normal path like you. You do not have the prerequisites to even imagine the forces you are playing with. A few thousand people are just a rounding error when the scales get big enough.”

“Then fix the system’s mistake and take me back to Earth. I will forfeit any possible reparations for this single action. Just a gesture, showing me that the system is capable of growth and acknowledging its mistakes.”

“Not even the supreme court could give you that. And you are one to talk about mistakes. A different set of portals, a stronger entity reaching through and a failure of the system could have killed billions.”

“And wishing a black hole into existence could do the same, but I will own up to that. I poked somewhere dangerous, without knowing what the system had done, and it could have had disastrous consequences.”

“So you will stop?”

“No.”

“No? You… just admitted your mistake.”

“And I learned from it. I learned a lot. The next test will have an enormous redesign, but the system can’t deny human interaction, putting us all in isolated balloons that could pop with the barest of pricks and call itself righteous. To expect us to follow its rules or die. Unless the rules change again, I know how to avoid that… thing.”

“What if I tell you that that thing… is not all you have to worry about?”

“You already implied that it was not. But this is the only way forward I know… and I will not halt my efforts until I achieve my goal or it is no longer required.”

“I tell you now, only death waits if you keep this path.”

“How? What are the pitfalls awaiting me? Give me concrete details and I will stop endangering anyone right this instant.”

“I can’t, but just because of that you are going to keep risking all of humanity alongside you?”

“I will be more careful, I learned from my mistakes, probably more than you realize.”

The judge seems ready to tear his hair out before he purposefully leans back and composes himself.

“It seems you will not show remorse, though that's only an insular problem in your case. You forfeit most of the reparations. Even if you had killed all of humanity but still survived, I couldn’t entirely withdraw the reparations. So I will render my verdict:

“You will get, 41 percent of the integration portion of Aether perfectly attuned to yourself or roughly 8 percent of the total expected reward. The rest is forfeit. As much as it pains me to puff out a candle flame that has the smallest of chances of becoming a sun one day you are hereby banned from ever receiving an Aether well as a reward from this court or any other. Furthermore, if you want to go back to Earth, I will nudge you. At each end of the month, the cost of your stay will multiply tenfold. ”

His ruling and the gaze of the system dawns upon us. His words are law incarnate. Binding in a way I didn’t know was possible. This is no simple decision, is it a punishment meant to take my attention?

I blurt out the first things that comes to mind:

“What? No that is not fair.”

“Actions have consequences, ignorance of the law and said consequences may be taken to account, but they don’t excuse your actions. Nothing else I could have done would have been more appropriate. You have nothing to complain about, you are getting orders of magnitude more Aether than most people get in a lifetime after the initial integration process.”

I sense as the system’s Aether stirs around me and it reaches into my soul. Except this time, it is not just sending constructs into my soul but interacting with it. I shut out everything around and cross my legs on the ground.

The system’s will moves, trying to scoop up something. Something fundamental to myself. Meaning, will, flavor… spice to be mixed into the Aether and make it more than this free floating stuff.

People put a lot of emphasis on Attuned Aether vs Unattuned. The price for an attunement perfect for someone is the difference between the Heavens and Earth. And even the pure Aether is more expensive than Mithril.

I still couldn’t see the whole of this picture. Why… the system gifted everyone a lot of Aether… as far as I knew it was attuned Aether. So why this emphasis? The system’s attacks on Pando seemed to aim at extracting the little Aether he had. Could it be just because of the attunement? Even if I got a much larger portion than anyone else and shared some of that with Pando it still didn’t make much sense. I may not know the normal allotment very precisely, but based on Merlin and Alex’s polls I have a decent guess at an average portion.

Was it just hype or did this attunement business had more to it?

I pay attention to the Aether spinning around me, but just as I think the system is going to take away this ‘dust’ before mixing it up with Aether and returning to me, a faint sense of ripping in my whole being takes me out of my good mood.

Like the system is taking spoonfuls of myself.

My senses are not numb, I open up to see its actions and now I can’t close my eyes again.

It is a subtle feeling, something that I definitely wouldn’t notice the first time around that it gifted me Aether.

A tread of Aether streams to my pool, I try to feel the changes but as I wield it I realize… it hasn’t just mixed my sense of self so it could attune the Aether. It only used a pinch as seasoning before putting a lot of filler in. Like it was trading the best Himalayan salt by chemically refined table salt with pink colorant.

The rest of my meaning is taken away.

God dammit.

Rage and a sense of loss threaten to overwhelm me. A diminishing of my very being that in my ignorance I allowed.

“Get OUT of MY SoUL!!!”

I push and lock down the skin of my soul, now much stronger and thicker after the last attack and the multiple thin layers ad backing material I added to it into a more efficient defensive shape. But the system is inexorable and it pushes back for its help will not be denied.