The first strand

Xanther sat cross-legged on his bed and tried to enter his soul space. As he opened his eyes, he was back in the blank space where he needed to train.

"Can you walk me through mixing the energies?"

[I was getting to that. You're too impatient sometimes. You'll be able to simulate the energies and train here if you do it properly. To create some True energy, you will need to gain control of a strand of each energy and coil them in a spiraling pattern. Once you have created this rope of energy, you will condense it until you feel like it is just about to explode. Just as you feel that, let go of it and let it merge using its explosion at that stage. Simple, right?]

"No, no it is not. I can barely control the energies one at a time right now, how am I meant to do 5 at once like that?"

[You're part voidling, we are good at that stuff. Just trust your instincts and go with the flow.]

"Real helpful advice. 'Just trust your gut', if my gut is wrong, it gets splattered on the walls."

[There are no walls he—]

"You get the point!"

[Fine, fine. It's not like you can die anyway, so just get on with it and use your time well.]

Xanther closed his eyes and focused hard on his surroundings. He felt the flow of the 5 energies around him and tried to split off a strand of one of them. Once he had it, he tried another and ended up losing both.

He repeated this process, slowly becoming more adept at handling the energies. The more he repeated it, the more an urge that slowly guided him in the right direction built up. He ended up repeating this for over 35 hours without a break before he could at least somewhat control all five at once.

His mind felt like it wanted to split, but he wanted to see where this unknown urge was taking him. He began twisting each strand into coils individually. It took him 5 hours at first, then 4.5, then 3, then 2, then 1, until he could coil them within 5 minutes. His progress surprised him. He wasn't learning like he used to. The way his mind became able to process information in such detail and correct it felt both foreign and natural to him.

He was about to ask if this was because of the odd bloodline in his status.

[Yes, this is what it means to be a voidling. They're juvenile creatures of the void who have yet to individualize themselves. You have only a fraction of the benefits it could give because I can't just transform you completely yet.]

"Let me guess, I'm too weak?"

[Hopelessly weak.]

He closed his eyes once more and tried to embrace his thoughts better. He let his instincts guide him through forming the energy. The five stands started twisting together slowly at first but very quickly reached the point where it was near instant. He continued learning like this until the final step.

Nervousness built up in his stomach, like a rock formed in his core. If he failed, he would get a taste of death, albeit temporarily. He didn't know his chances of success and didn't bother to ask what they were.

He guided the incorporeal rope into him and felt an odd warmth where it lay. He began using all that he could muster to push down on it from all sides. He began to feel it almost vibrate and tried to let go, but it seemed to force him to keep the pressure. By the time he let go, it had begun detonating and his body immediately expanded. He felt a large wave of overwhelming pain spread through his body before everything went black.

He woke up seated in a circle of black blood that was slowly sinking back into the grey ground. His mind began analyzing his death in perfect detail as he tried to figure out how to best deal with the compression stage of the process.

It took him 50 hours of unsuccessful attempts to finally create his first strand of True energy. He had died on 62 of the attempts and survived 14. Just having the energy within him made him feel like he was bursting with energy. When he felt the way it moved around inside the confines of his body, it almost felt alive. It was passively making him stronger, but it didn't care about how much his body could handle. This one strand would be his limit until he can properly adapt to its help.

[Well done, you took 100.5 hours to learn this from start to finish. A monumental feat from the perspective of a resident of this world, but it is only a small step to me. I'd have preferred you to learn it faster so that you can begin learning how to make use of the gift I have for you, but it seems like you'll need more time. You have 30 hours before the sun rises, do what you want until then.]

"Have you ever heard of properly complimenting someone?"

Xanther only got silence in return. He decided to explore his strength further through maybe a mock fight if that was possible. Since it was his soul that he was staying in, he should have had enough control to at least make a training dummy.

He began picturing a target dummy that could just barely stay intact after his hits. The grey ground began producing tendrils from the ground that merged into the dummy. Xanther opened his eyes and saw a rough version of the dummy in his head.

"It's oddly... blurry? I don't know how to put it. It's like I know what it is and how much it can take, but I can't fully see it."

He decided to still give it a shot and began trying to perform a heavy strike. Energy began flowing to his fist along with the strand of True Energy. It felt like his arm was burning as the strand ran down his arm. He struck down on the dummy. The energy condensed as he struck it and his arm fell downwards through it faster than he could see. He took his energy back, but his arm still had twisted the wrong way once again.

"Aaaaargh!"

The training dummy had a line through it where his hand crushed it, but he didn't care enough to pay attention. His arm bent back into shape and fixed itself quickly, but the pain lingered. He decided that it would be best if he just rested until the sun rose.