Accessing the Mindscape

Jien decided to try and tackle the first of the two items that he had assigned himself, trying to manage the amount of information that would flood his mind when thinking on topics with a large amount of connections to other pieces of knowledge that had been inscribed. He felt that this would make it much easier to dig into the issue of using the knowledge of the three professions to create a combination between the Serpent Vine and his fencing style. To try and accomplish this goal he first focused on meditation.

He was unsure of how to properly access what he had called the Mindscape. He figured that it was a metaphorical representation of the repository of knowledge absorbed by the spell. This brought him to the thought that perhaps if it was just an image in his mind perhaps he could manipulate it in some way to better suit his needs and to stop overloading his mind.

The issue with this thought process is that he had only ever seen the Mindscape once, when he had cast the spell for the first time and had his short discussion with the shadowy figure. Other than that one instance he had never been able to visual interact with the that space since. When he used the spell he could feel the knowledge being imprinted deep in his mind, but he never saw any physical representations of the absorbed knowledge like the transparent sphere.

Thus started his practice of meditation after his daily training. He would take a hot bath after he was done with his physical and mana control training with Mark and Emily. He would then dress and sit to have a hardy meal with his father. As time progressed Jien's portions had grown larger, he was a growing boy after all and his body needed more nutrients and protein as he was being pushed harder than ever before.

Jien would eat with elegance befitting the son of a lord, but with a speed that seemed the exact opposite. He had even begun to use his offhand in instances so that there would hardly be pauses between bites. Lord Losler would almost always burst into a joyous laughter. He had never seen Jien so aggressive regarding anything besides maybe his studies, this was something that he celebrated. It showed that Jien was growing and that he was taking strides forward rather than shrinking back from what was needed from him.

After eating Jien each night would excuse himself to his room and settle into a cross-legged pose to meditate. At first it took him a long while to get comfortable and try to clear his mind. He wasn't even sure if this was the right path, but he wanted to try this before trying to take other methods into consideration. If the Mindscape was truly in his minds eye then he should be able to enter it and change it as he needed. The issues would come if the Mindscape was not directly from his mind but was an aspect of the Personal Library spell.

If that ended up being the case then Jien would be at a bit of a dead end. To find the answer he would have to unravel more of the secrets of the Personal Library spell. The spell itself was easy to use but that was because of the way that the spell was to be used. Jien didn't have to circulate his mana in a specific pattern to use the spell, only to draw mana to his eyes without endangering them. The spell itself was a complex feeling that had been fed to him by the archon. If the Mindscape was indeed a part of the spell then he would have to interpret what part of that complex feeling represented it and how to use that particular portion. This in itself would be an easier process if he was parsing out pieces of a spoken, written or body cast spell. Each had its own variation on how to identify the individual pieces, but the same couldn't be said for casting from feelings. After all that casting method was so rare that it was almost considered a myth in itself.

Jien truly struggled with meditation at first. His mind was usually running at a speed that most wouldn't consider for a child of his age. To empty ones mind, they would need to let go of their different thoughts. However, every time Jien would try to, his mind would buzz loudly with not only more thoughts than before, but even beyond that, the knowledge he had inscribed into the Mindscape would begin to run through his mind as if he was reading the many books he had recorded with the spell on loop.

This distracted Jien greatly at first and he felt that perhaps if things were this way then meditation was not the right route to take. After all, meditation was about clearing the mind and honing focus. If you were unable to even clear your mind then how were you to move on to the next steps.

However, after more than three week of continuous attempts to meditate each evening before bed he made progress in his attempts. He couldn't clear his mind of the knowledge he had absorbed from various books, but he was able to weed out his miscellaneous thoughts. It took him a lot of effort and even when he first succeeded in doing so he ended up with a headache due to the knowledge buzzing through his mind like a thousand angry hornets.

It was only after clearing his mind of the extraneous thoughts that an idea came to his mind. The constantly buzzing knowledge may be a sign of how to access that white void with the sphere. Perhaps if he could properly focus in on the constant litany of the books running through his head he may be able to finally see what had become of his Mindscape.

It wasn't until yet another week and a half passed, on a night on which he had truly been pushed hard that he succeeded while almost half asleep in a lotus position.