It once again takes a good bit of time for Jason to fall into his moving meditation. He really just does not jive with it. Still, he powers through and returns to watching the flow of his stats. Then it vanishes barely a few minutes later as the first change to the next form happens.

Jason shakes his head and centers himself again before restarting. Another failure and another happens one after another before he manages to pass over the first slow down. Of course, he then falls at the second but progress is progress. And with time manages to keep track of his stats as they dim with the reduction in speed.

Hours later, Jason wakes from his most recent attempt to realize success. Even his hand movements had stopped. So, of course, after a moment to consider what he has done, Jason dives right back in because true success only comes with being able to repeat it. He fails halfway through and starts over.

Still, after a few more tries, he is able to replicate his success not once, but twice more. Jason would have continued until he managed that consecutively but each attempt by now was taking up quite a bit of time and dinner was soon. Of course, he could ignore dinner but it was a good way to keep in touch with the others so Jason wraps up his practice for the day and heads back to the house.

Once dinner rolls around, Jason is very much glad he did come back. Gregor managed to score a good deal on some quality fish. Relatively rare in the area as most of the native species are bottom feeders, which are really hard to remove the muddy taste from.

They are some of the best fish Jason has tasted in a while and they aren’t even cooked in a special manner. Just salted half an hour before, then cooked with a good squeeze of lemon juice and a few scrapes of zest. Of course, Gregor did an amazing job making sure they were cooked just right but the simplicity really brought out the flavor of the fish.

After dinner, Jason settles down to see if all his effort during the day was for naught. He sinks into his usual meditation and gazes outward. Right away, he notices a difference. Before, the separation between what he had come to realize as the System layer and his inner self was hard to separate. Now, having spent so much time observing it, the dividing line is sharp.

But that isn’t the most important thing. Rather, the fact that Jason can see glimpses of his stats is more important. Not as clear as earlier but it is there. Nobody is perfect and Jason is just glad he won’t need to attempt moving meditation out in the field. His regular meditation wasn’t the safest but it allowed him to put up defenses.

And that reminded him that he still hadn’t upgraded his alarms for when out camping. Really should get around to that sometime this century. Tomorrow. For now, what matters is cementing his gains with his stats. There are too many things he has started to dabble in over this time of rest. Plans to restring his entire body, starring his and Lily’s stats, improving his Energy, and now transferring his stats over to his real self instead of the System’s attempt at containing him.

Jason pauses as he realizes the System really does seem to be holding him back. Not on purpose, mind you, but that doesn’t make it any better. Jason sighs as he lays back in bed to consider his situation. Something has to give and despite the power it has, Jason is betting on the System tapping out first.

Just going by the master he accidentally picked up through the System and some of his other guesses the System already will let people leave. The problem is that Jason doesn’t want to leave, at least not prematurely. If he was on the edge of 500 instead of 25 things would be different. As it is, though, he needs to make sure his foundation is strong enough in the main game area, if only to support himself.

Jason rolls onto his side and considers the various goals. The quest to break through the next bottleneck is his overarching short term goal. It also puts a time limit on starring his stats so that can be a part of that, especially with the optional goal of the quest already to cap one of his stats.

The long term goal is replacing the System strings with his own and part of that was improving his Energy because he just doesn’t have enough of it at the moment. In fact, this recent bout of nonsense got started because of the goal to improve his Energy. He hadn’t even completed the sixth step because of where his thoughts took him. Jason groans, this free time has really scattered his brain. Without one goal to work towards, it had all twisted apart.

Though that really does bring up the question of where he should place transferring his stats. It might have something to do with capping a stat as he felt part of the slowdown of growth comes from the problem. On the other hand, one of his stats is already Energy so maybe this transfer plan is connected there as well. Could it be that part of the restrictions on his Energy use comes from not truly controlling his own stats?

At the very least, Jason wasn’t able to tell yet. Still, the discovery that he can observe his stats in action was an interesting one. Especially since it doesn’t seem to be limited to the main three. So far he had been focused on Toughness because that is what his bones grant. But the rest of them seem to be there as well. If anything, this concept might be used to connect all his current goals. A connecting line through the entire mess he had allowed to develop.