Setback, Step back, Grow

Chapter 23: Setback, Step back, Grow

After a while, Mercury felt visible improvement, both when it came to his training as well as in his relationship to Kintra. She was scared when he disappeared first, and even more scared when she saw him come back covered in dirt and heavily panting.

But while she was scared, the moment that her heart skipped a beat was when she saw Mercury smile.

He hadn't done so in a long while, so Kintra decided to ask what he had done, and the answer surprised her even more. He had gone out for a run? Practiced his magic again? For a moment she was worried he had eaten something bad, but when she asked if he was feeling sick, he said he wasn't.

And then he asked her about her day, too.

Kintra was over the moon about this. If Mercury finally showed some more interest in his surroundings again, she had to support it. So, she told him about everything even remotely interesting or funny, especially all the little things.

She told him how she hit her head on the doorframe, tripped and bumped into some sort of hulkish abomination of an adventurer, who then carefully stood her back up and told her to, "Be a little more careful, little madam," with a smile. She told him about how she impressed everyone with her ease of filling out and sorting documents, and she might have bragged a little bit about how most adventurers preferred her to the other receptionists because of that.

She even told him about how she was finally getting to know some of the regulars. She got along especially well with a party of three, a ranger, a fighter and a doctor, called Steyn, Caraya and Besdo respectively. 

Apparently, they had hunted down a bear today and came back all bandaged up and in need for many new medical supplies, like clean bandages, some catalysts for making salves, and so on.

All in all, they were good stories, and Mercury listened until she was done talking. Then he smiled and nodded.

"I'm glad you had a nice day," he said. It wasn't breathtaking or worldshaking, but it was nice, and in the end, that's all that mattered.

And after a moment of silence, Kintra smiled back. "Yeah," she said.

"I did have a nice day."

That night, Mercury's sleep was quiet. When he found himself in the world of his dreams, there were no screams. It was dark everywhere around him, and the distant fog seemed to move, slithering and crawling, but Mercury didn't mind.

His thoughts, right now, were calm, so he didn't mind the fog. It was just his imagination thinking it was punishing himself anyways, so he simply calmed it down with his will.

But he kept things the way they were, largely. As long as it was quiet and dark and didn't distract him, this was fine. So, he sat down, in the middle of a foggy field under a starless sky.

And then, he began to focus. In this place, things worked differently. He couldn't train his physical body here, since this was just a dream. Instead, it was a lot easier to train his mind. 

So, he focused again, sharpening his will as hard as he could. Then, he began his practice again.

He abandoned all other things he had been working on. He forgot about controlling his mana, he ignored expanding his veins, he spared no mental power on completing this task he had set for himself.

Mercury was about to break through this obstacle that he had set for himself.

If thinking about two things wasn't enough, he'd scan three places at once  If three wouldn't do, he would check four. If that wasn't even enough, he'd have to accurately analyse five spaces.

And so, Mercury challenged himself. When he didn't hit the limit on how much mana he could absorb at once, he started searching for even more viable triz with his mind. 

But it wasn't even close to enough. If he focused on just absorbing mana, he could probably absorb hundreds of triz every second, since even a single Mp was made from hundreds, if not thousands of them, almost like a drop of water consisted of many billion H2O molecules.

But Mercury didn't mind that. If he could absorb hundreds, he'd check hundreds every second. If it was thousands, he'd do it, and he was determined to keep up, even if the number was in the millions or billions.

All it would take was time, and he was sure he had that at the very least.

So, he focused on absorbing mana in his dream until he couldn't anymore. He didn't need to worry about breathing in this case, since he wasn't even in his real body. Thinking was also a lot easier here, so he met more success than on the outside world, but in the end, his capacity still had a cap. 

11.

That's all he managed. 

Outside of his dreams it was more like 7, maybe 8 on a good day.

It was far away from what he needed, but he had time. So, he attempted to scan more triz at once. Just one more, he thought. Just one more.

And after attempting and having his concentration fail multiple times, leading to his entire meditation breaking down and him having to entirely restart absorbing mana only after getting his own back under control, he managed.

He managed scanning 12 triz at once. 

And after practicing for hours, he managed to stabilize it. 

Expanding it by just one took him almost a day while his thoughts were sped up. Realizing this, Mercury smiled. 

It was indeed a flawless challenge. 

And when he trained day in and day out, he didn't waver for a moment. He didn't rest when he slept, and when he was awake he did physical training as well.

He ran, and jumped, and climbed for weeks upon weeks while still absorbing mana in the meantime.

Then, when he finally went to sleep after an exhausting day, he looked forward to being able to exhaust himself all over again. It was fun. This was a challenge that was repetitive to the point of nonsensicality, and Mercury loved every second of it.

It was like a boss fight. He could try again every single day and make small steps forward. He wouldn't run out of attempts anytime soon, so if he could slowly improve, that was all he needed.

Every time he wanted to scan more he took many attempts. Sometimes he'd try for hours and hours on end before being able to add another process of scanning. Sometimes it would only take him minutes until he figured out how to become better at it and add another process.

But that didn't bother him. He advanced, slow and steady, step by step, and inch by inch. He fought for every millimeter of progress and he did so with a wide smile on his face.

Mercury Starlight Rainfall had found an adversary that offered to make him stronger. And if he failed at beating it, he'd try again. And when he succeeded, he'd go even further, until he was at the point where "overkill" wouldn't describe it anymore.

"Succeeding" wasn't enough. "Winning" didn't fucking cut it anymore.

He advanced steadily towards his destination.

The destination of utterly crushing the challenge in front of him.

And then, time passed. Hours turned into days and days into pages. Even if he had more than 48 hours in every day because of his dreamworld, it didn't matter. It wasn't enough.

So, when time ticked forward, Mercury tried to halt it inside his dream. He couldn't stretch it a lot. He only increased the time he had by about a minute a day, if even that. But time was time.

And as the pages turned and faded, Mercury kept practicing. He didn't rest while eating, nor while talking to Kintra, nor while running. He even had Kintra attach weights to him when he wanted to run, just to make sure it was as exhausting as possible.

Mercury felt his limits every day and pushed himself past them, simply because he thought it might be fun to see his friends again.

It was power out of will, will out of necessity and necessity out of emotion. But with every step his reasons blurred. A millimeter mattered less once a meter had been crossed. A meter wasn't much anymore when compared to a kilometer.

But when his steps seemed more unimportant and his reasons blurred, Mercury was left with one thing: His determination.

And with determination, pages turned into seasons. 

- -

Yet, it wasn't enough. 

- -

At the end of his second season he had trained enough to make it a year. It was winter, yet he was running in the snow, because time was just a concept and progress was what he needed.

With every step, the journey grew more arduous. Once he reached 32 triz in his mind, it was hard to increase it. When his weights grew heavier, his stats started raising more slowly.

His limits were simply harder to break.

And then there was the wall. The incredible, unsurmountable, and ever-growing wall he now saw at the end of his path.

In his training his mana pool had increased. Not by much, since this way of absorbing more mana was still incredibly slow, but it had increased. And even with a small increase, the maximum amount of triz he could absorb had grown.

It had grown more than the amount of triz he could check at once.

And eventually, when his progress was halted for three full pages, Mercury clenched his teeth. 

If his progress was halted, he needed more of a challenge. So, he decided to dedicate his 32 ystirs to something else, that being a word magicians used for parallel trains of thought, or so Kintra had been told.

He dedicated 10 to exercising his control, splitting his mana pool into 5 identical pieces and having them perform complex maneuvers around each other, just to train the complexity his ystirs could process.

Then, he dedicated 14 more to expanding his mana veins. He started connecting his main tunnels via smaller branches and making them reach every cell in his body. He created them so thinly and precisely that they may as well be invisible.

And then, he dedicated 8 ystirs to scanning and absorbing the triz in the air. Only that he didn't let them scan just 8 triz at any one point. He tried scanning more than one triz with every ystir and when one crumbled or got tangled up, he restarted it. 

So while using all his ystirs, he was still keeping them in check and rebuilding them when they failed. And then, he was also overexerting them all, as well as trying to constantly create new ones.

He may not have known it, but Mercury was already going overkill. 

That morning was the first that he coughed up blood. And when he looked at it, Mercury smiled brightly.

There it was, after all. A sign of exhaustion. Of progress. Of growth.

And so, the next morning, he coughed up some more.

Then some more, and then more again.

He never let Kintra see, so as to not have her worry, but he was overexerting himself more every day.

After all, this was his one card. This was what he had to bet every single thing on. This was the one chance he had to move forward in a way that others may not even have considered. 

There wasn't even any point. What was the point in maintaining that many ystirs? Sure, it might help with mana control and expansion of mana veins, but those lose importance once they reach all parts of the body.

Mana could also be controlled with one ystir. It would simply have to be connected in one mass, but that one mass could be as complex as it wanted to, so why bother with so many?

The truth was that Mercury didn't know. But when his reasons blurred, his heart remained steady, eyes set on progress.

This was the one card he could bet everything on. It was the one card he HAD bet everything on so why? Why?! WHY WASN'T IT WORKING?!

[The individual is imposing a trial on themselves. "Succeed." Reward: . Penalty: Everything.]

He stood to gain nothing but lose everything.

But he knew one thing.

An individual with everything to lose is scary.

So, he had made it so he had everything to lose.

There was no time limit. The only way he could lose was if he ever gave up or stopped trying his best.

So all he had to do was keep winning. And winning. And winning. And winning. And winning.

- - -

Repetition.

It was something he knew well.

Something he learned in the office and something he learned now.

It was everything. Deeply ingrained in his being. He needed no reason, all he needed was repetition.

With his determination blurred, all that was left was 

So he kept going. And going and going and going. Because there was a goal to head towards and a step was a step.

And so he continued. Continued training and continued pointlessly coughing up blood with barely any progress anymore because the task was too monumental.

And then he broke the cycle.

Take this as a lesson, kids. When you're trapped in a cycle, no one can necessarily help you out. 

Of course, you can receive help from people. Mercury had Kintra, too, and she was trying her hardest. But that alone wouldn't help.

You gotta have the will to change yourself. Seek professional help and then do as they tell you. Try to improve. Sleep enough. Eat enough. Drink enough. Take care of yourself.

Not necessarily by doing nothing, but by doing things that recharge your batteries and make you feel better, even if you don't necessarily want to.

Mercury still had <Self-Reflection>, even if it was now part of <Steady Heart>. He realized it. He knew what he was doing was only harming himself.

And he fought a battle with himself. He wanted to improve and wanted to beat this challenge, but where he was heading right now was simply failure.

So what should he change? 

If he was hurt, he wouldn't be able to progress, so he decided to-

"Take a break," Kintra said, "... please."

"I will." Mercury couldn't smile at her, but only nod. He could only rest until he came up with new ideas. He just needed… rest.

And that was his first dreamless night.

But there was one thing he didn't notice immediately.

The trial was still ongoing. A break was not failure. He had already gained tons from this direction, all that was left was to find more directions of growth.

And Mercury was just about to find many a way to improve himself.

But first, Mercury rested. He took a long night's rest and even overslept. His deep, dreamless sleep had him wake up still tired and groggy, but the smell of food soon woke him.

When he looked up at Kintra, he was greeted by a soft smile and a piece of salami. Outside, the sun was already shining a warm light onto the sparkling road.

Mercury laid down in his basket lined with blankets, took a deep breath of the cold air and let out a sigh he had been holding onto for far too long. It was a sigh heavy enough to move mountains and part oceans, and he released it in the middle of the street! Who knows what devastating effects it could ha-

The food cart owner across the street gave him a wave, holding out some skewered meat for our tired cat, which Mercury gratefully accepted.

After eating to recharge a bit, he started thinking. He liked days off, but he couldn't just laze around all day. So, he decided that he would go jogging, just to sort out his thoughts.

It wasn't the same intense running he had been doing before, but a casual jog. It was enough to get him to pant, but not enough to actually cause exhaustion, albeit his lungs stung a bit from just how overworked they were. It was kind of like stretching after an extreme workout.

In any case, Mercury was still thinking about what he could do with his ystirs. He had 32 of them, but what use were they? They couldn't really be used as their own individual brains, since they were just trains of thought, so all he could do with them was to comprehend.

Ystirs, in short, weren't creative. They were like co-processors, but in the end they were still processors that needed to be fed info. They could prepare a spell or control mana if used properly, but they couldn't come up with new ideas. 

So instead, Mercury opted to use them as processors. He fed himself ideas and used his ystirs to think about different outcomes. Like, what if he focused on mana control? Or mana veins? Or physical training?

But none of that ended with him as high as he wanted to. These were things that could lead to individual power, sure, but were they enough to allow him to resurrect his friends?  Not quite.

In the end, what he needed was something different. Going a conventional way wouldn't quite do it, so he had to figure out something new. 

That's when he thought of his astral body skill. Thinking about his Skills, he actually decided to check all of them again, for the first time in a while.

Skills:

Active: <Appraisal lv. 2>, <Beginner Runecarving lv. 9 -> Novice Runecarving lv. 2>, <Bloodlust lv. 1>, <Crude Weaponmaking lv. 3>, <Dash lv. 3 -> 6>, <Focus lv. 3 -> 9>, <Footwork lv. 2>, <Sneak lv. 3>, <Throw lv. 10>

Passive: <Fall Damage Reduction lv. 2>, <Intuition lv. 1>, <Multitasking lv. 1 -> 13>, <Night Vision lv. 2>, <Quiet lv. 3>, <Skill Point Generation lv. 1>, <Talent lv. 1>

Both: <Astral Body lv. 1>, <Beast King lv. 1>, <Daydream lv. 3>, <Dreamwalking lv. 1 -> 3>, <Endeavour lv. 5 -> 8>, <Enhanced Smell lv. 1 -> 2>, <Language lv. 4>, <Meditate lv. 16 -> 53>, <Steady Heart lv. 2>

Abilities: <Mana Veins lv. 3 -> max>

Unique: <Shop lv. 1>

It showed a lot of improvement, sure, but he was expecting that already. What surprised Mercury was the <Daydream> Skill. He hadn't noticed its existence before, and now he was surprised to see it at level 3.

Did he always dream through the pop-ups? That was a bit unfortunate, especially since this skill was pretty goddamn rad. Well, it was boring on its own, but he wasn't left with it.

He had <Astral Body> and <Dreamwalking>, which meant daydream was really just a short step away from being something like <Creation>. If he could dream up something and take it from there to the real world with his astral body, he would be able to create literally whatever he pleased. 

But for now, that wasn't something feasible. He'd have to level up <Daydream> before he could even attempt something like that.

Which was when Mercury found out that dreaming on command was rather hard.

Dreaming, especially daydreaming, usually requires a state of relaxation and ease of thought. You daydream once your thoughts go off on their own, not when you want to think about a certain topic. 

This quality already made it hard to dream on command, since the daydream would change depending on subconscious whims. But in addition to that, Mercury was nowhere near a state in which he could let his thoughts drift off easily. The more he tried to force it, the more of a barrier there was, so Mercury decided to focus on something else.

He gave up searching for something only he could do, because it was simply too early. He barely knew the basics of magic, so it was no wonder that just trying to gain more and more ystirs was too much. Instead, he decided to focus on something Yvette had taught him.

He decided to focus on the transmutation of energy.

See, when mana evaporates it creates a reaction, like in chemistry. It doesn't happen unprovoked, if compared with chemistry again, it needs a catalyst. A starting point. It needs to be brought to a boil by the catalyst of "thought", or "will". Once that catalyst is added, a reaction starts.

Exothermic reactions release heat, but this wasn't an exothermic reaction. It was exomagical in a way, releasing magical energy. It was hard to quantify, but in essence, this energy was movement. Particle movement is felt as heat. On a much, much larger scale, particle movement could be defined as kinetic energy, and when only electrons moved, in some sort of constellation that allows them to interact with each other, it waa defined as electric energy.

Magical energy was energy similar to that, it bashed against things and could move them, but it could also be gained from moving things. However, mana can't be condensated again by adding magical energy.

In essence, magical energy was a transitional state, highly impermanent at that. It could heat things up and move things, or it could be generated from heat and moving objects. That was what Yvette had explained, though Mercury added the comparisons to chemistry and other sources of energy himself.

But magical energy was special, in the way that it allowed for all forms of energy to be controlled by the mind. It was similar to moving muscles, but this also allowed one to generate thermal energy, as Mercury had learned. This seemed to be part of the laws of physics of this world, as different from Earth as they may be.

But what he had yet to learn was the creation of kinetic energy. And so, he needed to figure it out himself.

Converting it to heat was fairly doable, you simply allowed some of the magical energy to flow into all parts of what you were trying to warm up. But that could only be used on solid objects. 

Gasses would immediately move, so in order to create something like plasma, one would need to create kinetic energy to keep the air in place. A barrier of some sort, at least if he wanted to heat it up slowly. If the heat was created faster than it dispersed, that would work as well. 

Also, one could be more or less efficient with their magical energy. Yvette could make a flame with a few drops of mana, while Mercury struggled to even warm himself in the slightest with a handful of it. 

So, he knew he had a lot to learn.

Mercury started experimenting with magical energy then. He had so many ystirs to experiment with, after all, so he dedicated his mana into 32 chambers. He then slowly began evaporating it, all separately, and immediately ended up with a singular mass of magical energy. He channelled it into the ground to get rid of it as he stopped.

Okay, so he needed to take one step before he began.

He needed the ability to separate masses of magical energy. Little did he know, this was the basic concept for multicasting, but to Mercury it was simply a necessary step to speed up his training and efficiently use all of the ystirs he had worked hard to attain.

So, he dedicated himself to it. He started with two chambers of mana and evaporated both of them at once, trying his best to keep the masses of magical energy separate. He failed.

Then he tried again, with two more chambers, and failed.

The magical energy felt almost gaseous, no, more like a property of the "air" in his core, rather than something of its own. Just like heat was inseparable from particles, it was hard differentiating magical energy from its surroundings. It seemed to dissipate immediately and there wasn't much he could do about it.

Well, wait.

What were its surroundings?

Mercury realised he didn't actually know.

He was able to keep single masses of magical energy separate from anything and kept them from immediately reacting to his body, sure, so why couldn't he do so with multiple? What made them immediately combine?

In order to test this, Mercury created a solid barrier in his core, all the way along it, splitting it in two. It felt extremely uncomfortable, to say the least, but he had to do it. Then, he also sealed off his mana veins, so there was no path for the magical energy to take if it wanted to combine.

Then, he evaporated mana on both sides. Immediately, the magical energy rushed towards the wall Mercury had built and pushed against it, trying to combine.

It was, in other words, creating physical pressure.

This meant that it could be made into shapes and retain them. Maybe they were attracted to each other by some sort of law, like gravity. Of course, the cause of gravity was being researched heavily, and he did remember some papers speculating about the existence of gravitons, and he knew there were particles causing other fundamental forces, but that was advanced magical science he didn't quite want to venture in yet.

He knew now, that magical energy was attracted to one another.

He also knew that once combined it was easy to control.

He knew that he could control it and move it as he willed and even make it react to or keep it from reacting to something.

In essence, he realised that his mind, his will, could move this.

And, since it was attracted to itself, keeping it separate would be a good exercise.

Mercury smiled.

He didn't know how challenging this would be, heck, maybe it would only take him a few tries. But he had found something that was very comparable to the science he was used to. 

This gave him an advantage, due to his slightly nerdy childhood and his still present interest in science as an adult, though he didn't much like scientific maths. He already had a bit of that in his office job, tracking company earnings and spendings when he kept records, so he preferred to spend his free time without too much of it.

Maybe that also made him avoid RPGs a bit, since they were all stats, but now, with the pressure from his job gone, keeping track of numbers had gotten a little fun.

So, he set about his training, reopening his mana veins and bringing down the wall in his core, immediately allowing him to breathe more easily. It was a freeing feeling.

But then, he focused his mind on the task at hand again. Right. He had a challenge ahead of him, so he decided to evaporate mana and then try to make the magical energy form two different shapes.

He decided to, for now, just make them into two balls, since that seemed like the simplest thing to do. So he tried. And failed. And failed. And failed, and failed, and failed.

But he did it with a smile. 

He took breaks and rested. 

He sometimes did other things he considered beneficial or fun.

He made sure to sleep enough and take breaks, even in his dreams.

Because a step forward had to be taken on the right path. Not a path that led to only pain and suffering, but a path to progress.

Sometimes these seem awfully similar, since both can be rocky, hard and painful, and sometimes one swaps without knowing. But it's important to think. To take a step back and look closely. To understand and realise when one is going wrong, when it's time to turn around, when it's time to-

Change.

Mistakes are fine, as long as one can solve them.

No one is perfect, but that's alright, as long as one works to better themselves.

It's okay to rely on others when you need help, as long as you offer them the same afterwards.

And it's okay to fuck up if you learn from it.

As long as one is able to come back, that's alright.

Because once one focuses their eyes on a good path, it becomes clear that a step was a step.

Sometimes we move backwards. Sometimes we stumble and fall. Sometimes we swap paths, and sometimes that's good, and sometimes that's bad.

Some people walk multiple paths at once and some choose only one.

All of that is alright.

Because a step was a step. 

And a step taken after taking a step back to consider, is a step that will most likely not need to be undone. And a step that didn't need to be undone, that was founded on solid ground, one that was made with confidence after deliberation.

That was true growth.