A man and his cube.

Chapter 5 - A man and his cube.

Ding dong

Before I could even process the situation my doorbell rang.

I walked to my door.

I took a step. I was calm, my body cool.

I took a step and my body became just a bit stiffer.

I took a step, my mind empty, unwavering like the sea.

I took a step, my body only going through the motions.

I stood before my door, I could feel a storm arriving.

I moved my arms, opening the door with no problems.

"Are you ready? I want to set off now.", I was asked by my father.

"Yes.", I answered without thinking.

I could feel something wrap around me and the world changed. 

I recognized the room in an instant, it was the same white room I always tested my Mystery in, its walls still divided into rectangles.

The same table still holds the same tray. The same person stood there.

The same words were said to me, "Put your hands on this tray and activate your mystery when I tell you to."

I walked the same steps, I did the same motions.

Nothing changed, yet it was different.

Would this situation change my future?

It will.

That felt heavy, my mind messy.

"Now."

I heard the same light words, yet they induced so much pressure.

I activated my powers.

The world went silent.

A translucent blue cube appeared on top of my hand. It hovered ethereally with racer-sharp edges that seemed to cut the air, its mere presence changing the atmosphere of the room.

The room lit up blue, as all was focused on the cube.

It remained motionless in the air as time passed.

With each second feeling like an eternity my mind stopped working.

Had my Mystery improved?

Would I be able to reach the expectations of everyone?

Would I ever escape my fate as an ordinary person?

Was I … a failure?

I didn't know and that scares me. It worries me.

It destroys me.

The worry for my future makes me lose all hope for the present.

So I hide.

I stop thinking, stop worrying, stop being human, becoming just a robot going through the motions of living.

I am scared.

I want to hide.

I wish I was normal.

I wish I could just continue living with my family.

… My sister, mother and father. I don't know if I am able to continue living like this.

Rather than worrying about my future, I wish they could embrace me like they did every day.

I miss them.

Time moved forward and just like that the cube disappeared and a wave of exhaustion rushed over me.

My heart tightened, my face paled.

It was quiet.

'I failed.'

My head dropped, my eyes became wet.

"33 minutes, an improvement of 3 minutes."

My head snapped in the direction of the speaker, eyes widening and mouth agape.

"I knew it.", I heard my father say softly from the side.

…

"Phuu. There should be no problems now.", said my teacher as he removed his hand from my back.

"Haaa", I breathed a sigh of relief and stood up.

"I think we should stop here today."

That is a bit sad, but I guess we should.

"Okay, thank you, teacher!"

"No worries, what kind of teacher would I be if I could not take care of such a talented student?"

"A pretty bad one."

"Probably."

"Well then, remember to rest tomorrow. I also heard you are going to TAMSOH the next week. That is quite a difficult school, you should probably get ready for that, thats why let's decrease the training for this and the next week."

"Do we have to?"

"Yes, training your Mystery is important but you should also train you academics."

"Haa, Okay! I will do that."

"Then, until next time take care of yourself."

"Yes I will do that. Goodbye"

I waved to my teacher who waved back with a soft expression.

However, this looked a bit ridiculous as his soft expression didn't match his scarred and muscular body, … or maybe it did.

'My Goodbye is still awkward.', opposite to my teacher's expectation, I only worried about the goodbye.

'But stop training my Mystery?'

I let out a dry laugh.

'One month ago the mere fact that my Mystery could be trained was still unknown and now I am advised to train less already.'

It's been about one month since it was found out that my Mystery had improved and since then time seemed to move so quickly.

It was pretty quickly found out that my Mystery had improved by passively absorbing mana through me, but it couldn't absorb mana while activated in addition to that the absorption rate is quite low. But of course, more testing showed a way to improve.

My Mystery, or rather the cube I can summon forth can absorb the mana of objects placed into it to about 40%, with the other 60% dispersing in the air.

While that also isn't the greatest, it is still a lot faster than passively absorbing mana.

But there was a limitation of course, absorbing too strong mana can make my Mystery break, or so I was told. I don't actually feel anything, but from the faces of the people who had to save me every time that happened it is pretty severe.

That also happened in this training lesson, I accidentally absorbed too much, and this forced my teacher to try and save me.

Which he succeeded in, duh.

With all that, my duration of summoning the cube had increased to an hour, about a minute per day. Other than that I can also now control the cube a lot more. I can rotate it and move it in a radius of 1 meter around me, but this decreases the time I can use the cube by a lot.

All in all, everything has been going great! I had never felt so strong, so refreshed and happy.

I love living, I love living and love my Mystery.

My future never looked so bright, and I love it.

And think, … I might have fallen in love with my future self, who I am going to become.

I am motivated to do something to improve myself every second of the day, I also even see improvements every day.

Once again, I love living, my life, my Mystery, and my future self.

I can't wait for tomorrow to see how much different I will be!

I am happy.

I am satisfied.

I fee like I could take over the world.