18, Discovery In The Mind

When I got low enough to see the ground, instead of the mass of varying shades of green, I saw proof that confirmed what the tablet stated.

Experiences really can contort your Mindscape.

I was still floating, but with one look I recognized the objects instantly; daggers.

Replicas of the exact same dagger that I used to kill Jaqueline.

The forest floor was littered with them.

Some blades were pristine and some were used.

If I had a body I would have panicked and frozen but my ethereal form seemed to be immune to that.

I merely found it unnerving and wanted to remove them but I knew I had steps to complete before I could do that.

With a look at the revolting objects below me I turned my attention up, towards the sky of this world within my mind.

At the apex of this strange landscape was the shape I created earlier which brought me here to my Mindscape.

I floated up until I was just below this construct of magic and started planning the best way to complete the second stage.

When I settled on a plan I brought another wisp of mana up into my Mindscape and started the same steps again, only slightly different since I wanted to do it in a batch instead of each one individually.

I slowly created another 3 triangles using the strand along with the remnants of the completed ones.

Unlike the previous times it felt far easier to make the shapes with mana but I kept going slow since I didn't want to keep repeating the process.

I stacked all three shapes on top of each other and went about creating the imaginary hole punch once more.

When it was ready I punched all 3 sheets, they trembled and threatened to disperse but in the end they held together.

I now had to decide if I wanted to stack 4 sheets together or do them in smaller piles, since I could barely control all 3 sheets at once I decided to split them into 2 piles of 2.

I placed one on top of the original shape, formed the punch and pierced two of them.

This proved to be the right decision since even with two the sheets of mana lost their stability but I was able to prevent them from collapsing.

I decided against doing these punches in bulk because if I lost control over one who knows how bad the headache would be and it would be far more work to do it again than to do it right the first time.

In the 4 sheets I punched 10 more holes and was left with what looked to be pieces of a paper snowflake, all that was left was to connect them.

I controlled the 4 and had an edge of each one contact one edge of another one and formed a pyramid without any base.

When the final side of the pyramid connected it released a shockwave that swept through the entire Mindscape.

The wave passed me without having any effect but on it exponentially expanded the Mindscape. .

When the shockwave reached the fog that surrounded what was visible, it pushed it back.

The wave continued to push the fog until it reached what I call the edge of my Mindscape because eventually the fog ended and it hit something.

The shockwave hit a barrier at a certain point in the distance causing ripples to form that expanded throughout the world revealing its shape.

The fully expanded Mindscape was in the shape of a massive dome with the construct floating in the sky.

It looked like a certain scene in the animated Atlantis movie only without the water.

The fully revealed scenery below was split into two distinct areas as if there was an invisible wall between them.

One side was dominated by the supremely massive trees that seemed to grow as if they wanted to challenge the sky.

They were smallest on the perimeter of this side and grew taller as they approached a certain area.

The opposite side where the sorter trees were was on fire.

A great firestorm was ravaging the forest, it produced no smoke but the flames were rampaging fiercely.

It was at this point that I realized just how much the illusion of the cabin had affected my mind.

"I knew it traumatized me but to have the extent of it shoved in my face like this, it's quite shocking."

I knew that my first order of business to get this back to normal was that I needed to extinguish this fire, but I also wanted to explore what was making these trees grow so much bigger than the others.

I feel slightly more confident at making the shapes with my mana now so I called forth 2 wisps of mana this time.

Repeating the precious processes I created four sheets and made the holes in each one individually.

My control had gotten better since the mana didn't destabilize at all this time so I decided to try stacking two sheets at a time again.

Soon there were 4 identical triangles with 9 smaller triangles inside that were all interconnected.

The next pattern that gives me full control over my Mindscape is to punch a hole in each of the 9 to make 27 triangles and then connect them all to create an octahedron.

It was a tedious process but to be safe I punched all 72 holes individually and finally connected all the triangles to form the octahedron.

When the last face was connected, the construct started to spin and glow brightly.

It spun slowly at first, then picked up speed and rotated faster and faster then suddenly stopped sending another shockwave through the world.

This shockwave didn't have any impact on the surroundings like pushing the fog, but this time it affected me.

I felt a link establish between myself and everything in this world, every dagger on the floor, every piece of dirt, every portion of fire and every tree felt connected to me.

I went through my connections but there wasn't anything that seemed to cause abnormal growth of trees.

I decided to deal with that mystery after.

Bringing my attention back to the task at hand, I focused on my connection to each and every blade on the ground and imagined each one turning back into dirt.

I wasn't able to turn every one to dirt at once, it seemed my processing abilities weren't strong enough for that, but within 5 batches I was able to turn them all back into soil.

With the knives now gone I turned my attention to the burning trees.

I started to go through and extinguish each one by trying to remove the flame but after I got through about a quarter of the forest I would lose control over an area and the flames would jump back and reignite.

I thought about a better way to do this until I came up with an idea that could work with my limited computing power.

I imagined an isolated area around the burning and had all of the oxygen start to flow out within the area, I was thinking that regardless of the space physics should still have an impact since fire is nothing but a reaction.

It didn't seem like this had any effect at first but everything else seemed to respond to this process to I gave it time and eventually it worked.

There was nothing but the inferno but then as if somebody just blew out a candle all of the flames were extinguished at once.

I maintained my isolation for some extra time just to ensure that the flames wouldn't re-ignite when all of the oxygen got reintroduced.

I took this time to see the devastation the fire left behind.

Nearly half of my mind was now full of skeletal trees that had branches occasionally falling, there was nearly nothing green left on this half.

It was a stark contrast to the other half which was stuffed full of gigantic trees full of vitality.

I guessed that enough time had passed to be safe so I lowered my barrier and allowed the oxygen back in.

It looked like my caution was justified since nothing in the area ignited.

Now I had to repair this side of my mind and only then could I explore the cause of the freakishly large trees.

I started to brainstorm ideas of what I should do with the destroyed half, I could remake the forest but I could also change it to whatever I wanted at any point.

An ocean shore was not happening because that would involve both the second and third illusion which makes it a no go.

A forest would be possible again but it would be too boring I felt, I didn't want to continue with the forest theme.

What about a tepui?

I had always enjoyed heights in this life so that might be a good idea.

This led to another idea which I loved so I set to work on it right away.

The technique said I would have complete control so I decided to go for it.

I pulled the ground up and had it swell to create a giant wall of stone that was as tall as the trees on the opposite side.

There was a few seconds of delay but it responded to my thoughts and rose up to a height that was slightly higher than the largest tree.

I pushed the wall backwards to make room for a meadow between the edge of the forest and the cliff.

Within the wild grasses I filled it with a field of flowers containing different species and variations of color.

There were Sunflowers, Tulips, Roses, Dahlias, Plumeria, Daisies and many more.

For the cliff face I pulled up a series of faces from my memory and imagined the wall shaping itself to make each face one at a time.

Under the first face I had the number one engraved in the stone, this continued sequentially through all 6.

With this completed I looked at my creation and found myself giddy with my newfound power.

I decided to start testing things, I wanted to see if I could move static images without affecting their form.

I imagined the faces staggering themselves on the wall instead of being in a straight line.

Before my eyes they moved along the wall.

The area around each face remained solid and didn't lose any detail, but the rest of the wall seemed to have become liquid to allow the faces to move freely.

I chuckled at all of the crazy things that I could do with this power but then shook my head since I remembered that I had something else I wanted to do.

I turned my attention towards the area where the trees were larger than the others and slowly floated myself over there.

I was constantly amazed by the size of these trees.

The branches around the top were close to as thick as I was wide and as I got closer to the ground I could see many branches that were thicker than I was tall.

The trunks of most of the trees were the size of some houses I had seen from my previous life.

I finally reached the ground and was still able to see everything perfectly despite the fact that the branches should have blocked all light if this was in reality.

I just filed this oddity under the peculiarities of the Mindscape.

As I got closer to the origin of the massive tree phenomenon the bases exploded in size, the trunks were now able to house transport trucks easily if they were to be hollowed out.

If you could hollow one of these trees completely you could turn the whole thing into an aircraft hanger without much work.

Continuing on my way past these natural giants I finally reached a clearing between the ancient monolithic trees.

In the middle of the clearing were several dozen roots all twisted together and at the top they spread apart to create a natural pedestal.

Floating slightly above this pedestal was a small object with a golden glow that radiated an immense vitality into the surrounding, causing everything to seem brighter.

I even felt its effects on this ethereal body, no wonder the surrounding trees were able to grow to their incredible size.

With the help of this object it would be more shocking if it had no effect on the surroundings.

I moved closer to the object and I was overcome with a strange sensation of deja vu.

I knew I had seen this before but I just couldn't remember where.

Drawing close enough, I touched the glowing object that looked like a large seed of some kind.

When my finger made contact with it I was instantly enveloped in a blinding golden light.

The light seemed harmless but when it faded I felt something was different.

It wasn't bad or something I could put my finger on, it didn't change my appearance but I could tell something was different.

I noticed that my hand was holding something that it wasn't before, there was a stack of two clear crystals sitting in my palm.

I looked at the object again and this time the golden glow was gone and it revealed its true appearance.

It was about the size of a walnut but its color was incredible.

It was mainly black but also had many specs of vibrant white, as I continued to watch the seed different colors would drift across in different areas only to disappear seconds later.

It was like an entire galaxy had been shrunk down into a single seed.

With the protective insulating light gone, I could finally recall where I saw the object.

It was the seed I got from the storm dragon who referred to me as an inheritor.

I had also gained knowledge from the light about what kind of seed this is.

[Divine Void Seed]

All Things Originate From The Void.

All Things Reside Within The Void.

All Things Return To The Void.

The information sounded ominous but at the same time it suggested that this would grant me overpowered nonsense that I was looking forward too.

This brought another question to my mind, If this seed was this impressive then what would the two crystals contain?