Awakening
Where is this?
Inside of an unknown organism digestive system.
I know that now.
Wait, What's an I?
A method of referring the core of one's individuality.
What is core?
Your self and physical vessel is a core.
My self?
Yes.
Who am I?
Your self.
I feel... smarter? Right, new strange alien concepts that I've never had encountered before is slowly filling up my head. Something like speech, something like words, something like i'm missing my head, something like... That's pretty bad isn't it?
Let me try something quickly.
I try to open my eyes and...
As expected, i can't use something that isn't there. That's going to be a problem, how am i supposed to hunt without being able to see the prey?
Wait.
Since when do I have eyes, or hunting for that matter? Last i checked absorbing world's blood doesn't require any eyes. Wait... Last I checked?
Wh—
Thought process is deemed irrelevant.
Well let's move on, maybe I can use my hands to...
I don't feel my arms either.
There's two conflicting information available to me regarding this. One, i never had one in the first place, or two, my arms were cut off on my way here to this place. Either way I don't have it.
So what am I supposed to do now?
Bend, twist and shape.
What's that?
Devise a personal fragment.
I don't think i know anything about that though.
Subject has been granted an access point.
Ah, so i'm supposed to try to visualize an image of creation that i desire to make a fake reality that can be interposed in between baseline reality and the next, then what's next is to solidify that fake fantasy with the world's bloo- mana- mana to make it finally become real. Sounds simple enough, let's try it then.
Slowly, I think of a scene, a scene of great towering shapes, of great canopies of—
A forest.
A tranquil forest bathed in sky (sky?) blue glow, the leaves on it sways ever so gently to attract hapless fellows to it. Motes of light are scattered throughout, its gentle glow reflected by the glossy moss that carpeted everything beneath the tree.
A feeling emerge from somewhere within me. I never felt this before, a feeling like falling, but the ground never comes, and you fall into every direction at once.
I feel my body spinning. Or rather. I am rotating.
A rotating sphere. That's what my body is.
As I am rotating, I could feel something formless gushing out of me from somewhere.
It's mana.
Right, Mana. I could feel mana forming around me, it spoke to me of comfort.
I desire to see it. To be able to perceive the world and to see this act that i do. How do I see? Oh. But of course.
Crystallized mana at the center of my body melts, reassembling itself to construct something for me to witness the world.
Soft flesh and even softer nerves weaved themselves into being, a pale white orb residing at the center of me is the end result.
I follow the instructions on my mind and channel my mana into it and...
Ah
It's beautiful.
There's no other words that could describe how beautiful it is.
Countless motes of blue light swarms around me, each glow distinct from another as they form a spiraling river of specks, a haunting blue in contrast with the backdrop of a seemingly endless darkness and the lumpy, glossy flesh flooring that reflects the soft blue radiance back into the air.
Slowly i began to "see" myself. Not from my newly created eye, no. But from the perspective of the very air that surrounds me.
A kaleidoscope vision of blue shades gravitating towards a transparent orb with a not so transparent vein covered white orb right in its center is what greeted me as i witness me.
Having done its job, the eye in center of me dissolves back into its purest form.
This is the subject's physical vessel.
Something in me told me that.
I've gained vision.
It is amazing, looking around the space i was in, i realize this chamber of flesh i find myself in is quite expansive, it could probably fit one of those extremely big nest of those hairy beings from the forest. Well aside from the gorgeous mana fulfilling their intended purpose, there are also some sizzling white gas roiling in my direction from an opening in the chamber's wall.
That's an acidic gas, something in my mind screams at me.
Substance is deemed to be lethal to core integrity.
Contact is deemed unacceptable.
Creating countermeasure...
Countermeasure is unavailable.
Subject has been granted an access point.
Acidic gas are dangerous to me apparently.
So i coax the formless mana to take physical form and enter the baseline real as a wall of trees. The trees too are glowing in blue. Though i do not exactly know how I have d—
Eliminating thought process.
I have complete knowledge of mana manipulation now and I have no need to question it.
The trees slithers and bends like tentacled limbs under my will. I made a few take root in front of the entrance to block the entrance.
I also made the mana in front of the roiling acid becomes semi solid, not enough to take a permanent physical form but enough to interfere with the real. And then i pushed.
With the assistance of condensed mana and the wooden wall, the entrance/exit to this space of mine is sealed for now.
Strange that i have this nagging feeling that the gas should've just pass throu—
Irrelevant.
It is indeed irrelevant...
What was i doing again? Hmm assessing the situation, I got eaten by some giant thing and am now inside a very spacious flesh cave.
100 meters.
What? And wait what's a meter?
The diameter of subject's current domain.
Domain?
An area .
Right. So what is a meter.
Originating from a different layer of being, used by the inhabitants of this world as a common way to measure length.
That doesn't tell me anything-
A meter is the equivalent of a standard shortsword.
A shortsword?
Common weaponry utilized by the livestocks caste that prioritize speed.
Right.
I decided that I know enough for now.
So I focus my attention into enforcing the wooden barrier for now.
Carefully, I grew the trees to sl—
Wait. Does the trees always have eyes?
I didn't know flesh could grow on barks. Observing those eyes, i can see that they have something called pupils in them, a part of eyes in less evolved being so that it can focus its eyesight on something.
Wait, judging by the location of those pupils...
Ah, they are looking at me.
Not at my core.
At me.
I-
An anomaly has been detected.
Engaging prot—
Protocol no. $&) #& bLocKEd
Running threat analys—
Analysis interrupted.
Submitting available result...
Detected a major magical anomaly.
Eluvahjiensqiereno—
Command code invalid.
Subject is to bl—
cUT oFF tHe LiNe, leT fEStiviTy STaRt
Understood, new directives have been issued.
Huh those eyes are always there, aren't they?
So for now, I'm just going to ignore them. They don't seem to be that important anyway.
Subject's domain is deemed to be inadequate.
Engaging protocol no. 5...
Commencing.
Ignoring the new addition, seeing I have no idea what to do, for now, I am going to try to cover this whole fleshy expanse with my trees. On that note I just notice how fleshlike they feel. It's akin to luminescent blue tentacles, just covered in leaves and twigs. And covered in bark of the same coloring. What are tentacles again?
The greatest kind of limbs.
Really? According to the knowledge inside my mind isn't arms or legs a better form of locomotion? What's with all the mobility it could provide compared to a structureles—
This information is absolute.
But—
This information is absolute.
Well, alright then.
I started doing this thing trying to grow my trees all over the place, right now a quarter is all the space i managed to cover. But then I realize that the more trees I created, the mana motes swirling around me become lesser and lesser. I could try-
Subject's action is deemed as lagging to perquisite standard.
Mana value is estimated to be below acceptable level.
Shutting down...
Warning. Subject's body is unprotected.
Creating defensive node type. 47...
Booting up...
Insufficient knowledge.
Subject has been granted an access point.
Sufficient knowledge.
Engaging protocol.
As i regained my conciousness that i apparently lost due to an overusage of mana manipulation? I realized something.
I've been doing this the wrong way.
Because of that, I then starts to focus creating the trees on areas near me. They grow in a pattern, trees spurts their way from the ground around me, their branches coiling around each other at the peak of the canopy.
Only instead of making them separate, they're all now connected with each other through thin connective nets of stiff vines. It makes it as though all of the trees are one, which as my mind told me is exactly the case.
This form of transmuting costs me less mana than normal. It's still a sizable amount however as it works by fooling something that bleeds into thinking that i'm doing less damage to its circulation, because a single object causes less harm than many objects and because it doesn't really recognize the size of a living object except that bigger things with bigger volume will require bigger expenditures? I don't know what that something is yet nor do i know how i know all this, but moving on.
Multiple trees formed coils that has their gaps covered by the another coiled tree with me being in the center, while at the same time, unknown symbols are being etched into their trunks by me? What am i—
Runes.
Runes. So it is, that I am carving runes.
Magical conduits to shape mana formations into creating deviations in the surrounding laws of unblemished reality into laws that follows the commandment that each rune formation entails.
Currently runes of protection and runes of concealment is what i am working on.
Weird, I don't remember ever dra—
Eliminating thought process.
Well anyway I just finished this project.
And as such I am now surrounded by glowing blue trees coiling around my core like snakes.
I feel nice. I am now enveloped in a cocoon apparently. The blue ambiant glow is relaxing.
Wait... Snakes?
Irrelevant topic.
Ah I see.
So now that I am now safely secured in this closed cocoon of mine created by woods that are infested with eyes constantly looking at me I can finally sleep.
Wait, do I even need to sleep?
Yes.
Ah... Is that so?
Okay then, I am going to sleep now. Goodnight.
Wait, goodnight? What is a goodnight?
Irrelevant.
... Alright then. It's time to sleep.
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cELebRAte iT, SPiTe It. sHiFTinG TIdES aND thOUsaND, THoUSanD, tHOuSaNd, THOUSanD dAwN.