Out of time

Kane wanted to go to the abandoned factory right away, test and experiment every ability he could, and so on.

But he just couldn't bring himself to practice at the moment, only a few days ago he was a normal person, and he'd just had an entire finger blown off.

Despite the shock, however, there was a single thing Kane absolutely needed to be sure of before moving forward.

He condensed a bullet of mana and aimed it at only the absolute tip of his finger, firing at himself, he noticed his own mana simply absorbed back into his body with no issues.

This time, he let out most of his mana, leaving only enough for a similarly small bullet. Kane fired it and winced.

The very tip of his finger was gone, there was nothing beyond the edge of his nail.

Although it still hurt like hell, losing nothing but skin and a small portion of muscle was nowhere near as painful or frightening as an entire bone, he could tolerate it.

But Kane had now confirmed something important, so long as he had some mana in his system, his own mana wouldn't harm him, as it could just assimilate with what he still had left.

With this, Kane felt comfortable practicing again.

He'd still need to be careful, he didn't know if there was a limit to how powerful the spell could be before his body could no longer absorb it.

Quickly healing up the tip of his finger, Kane pulled out a book his dad had gotten him while he was young.

It was the continent's normal alphabet written with rough textures, if Kane could quickly learn how to read the language of his country, he could translate other people's answers into braille and cheat for the rest of the year!

He'd learned it in the past, but since he only ever read in braille, he completely forgot it.

To say Kane was no learning it quickly was an understatement, remember when it was previously stated that Kane's brain developed along with his body?

This "development," while not a direct improvement of his intelligence, allowed increased thinking speed and better memory, it took Kane only a handful of hours to completely memorize the alphabet, even less to begin instantly comparing it to braille.

His dad had returned home halfway through Kane's study session, he sounded dead tired, but even still, sat down offering to help him out.

Kane told him it was fine and let the man get some sleep.

By 2 in the morning, Kane was still going at it. Even he was amazed at his lack of boredom or tiredness.

As far as amazement went though, his insane study speed took the cake.

"Do I even need to cheat? If it's like this, I could just actually learn everything," He pondered.

He decided on a compromise, he'd spend the rest of the night genuinely learning things he considered to be interesting or important, and he'd cheat on anything he didn't care about.

Next thing he knew, the sun was rising, and Kane was still on his computer learning.

He'd finished the school stuff a while ago, now focusing on unrelated skills and knowledge that he just thought might be good to know.

Given the progression of his powers, he wouldn't find it particularly strange if he picked a jungle or something as his next training ground, so some basic survival skills and knowledge on plants and wildlife was something that especially piqued his interest.

He considered learning some programming skills and hacking into government programs to confirm some theories of his, but he wasn't dumb enough to take the government as lightly as his school.

Some hastily learned and half-baked computer skills would do nothing but backfire on him, not to mention he didn't know if the available software for this type of stuff was even capable of cracking into government documents undetected.

Kane leaned back in his chair and sighed, turning off the monitor, he began prepping for the day.

"Here Kane, I had some extra time, so I made you and Cassy some breakfast to take with you," his dad tapped his shoulder as he walked by.

Kane gave him a hug, "Thanks dad, how do you know I'm going with Cassy thought? Is it that obvious?"

His dad smirked, "That obvious and then some... that, and she's been waiting at the front door for the last 20 minutes."

Kane did a double-take, "20 minutes?? And you didn't think to let her in?"

His dad shrugged, "She said she didn't want to intrude, it's pretty warm out today so I thought it was fine."

Kane waved his dad goodbye and walked out the door, shockingly, he wasn't met with a surprise attack.

Kane looked over toward Cassy and raised an eyebrow, "20 minutes? Really?"

She pulled her coat tighter, "Not my fault you took so damn long, besides, your dad said he was gonna cook so I couldn't just leave."

Kane scratched his cheek for a moment, "Fair enough, it's a boring walk so I'm glad you didn't."

"Are you being sincere? Must be a good day for you," Cassy beamed.

"Yeah yeah, even I act normal sometimes," Kane put his hand out, only to bump Cassy's as she'd done it at the same time.

"Tag, you're it!" Cassy tapped Kane's nose, having her hand grabbed by him before she could run away.

"Oh, is that what we're doing now? Shouldn't play tag with a blind person, it's unfair," Kane joked.

"Kane, don't talk about fair, every blind person I know would revere you as a god for those senses of yours," Cassy began pulling him along with her.

"Oh yeah? And how many blind people do you know?" Kane retorted.

She smiled, "Just you!"

Kane couldn't hold back the grin creeping up his face as he struggled to retort.

----------

The breakfast was delicious, to the point where Cassy admitted defeat from just the waffles alone.

Soon after, the 'school' part of school began.

Although they couldn't talk in class, Cassy knew Kane's hearing was good enough for her to just whisper whatever she wanted to say. Kane would reply by nodding or shaking his head. They had fun talking to each other like this throughout the day.

Kane, despite cheating for half of his school work and using a cheat ability for the other half, felt very proud of his perfect answers.

His senses had grown to the point of enveloping the entire classroom thanks to both the training and the finger incident from last night.

Kane tried making more friends, but most of the people here held onto grudges or took rumors far too seriously.

So the only friend he could make other than Cass was his ex-military PE teacher, who quickly bonded with Kane over their mutual love of exercise.

But before he knew it, he'd wound up bumping into the friend he'd lost over winter break as well.

His old friend, Derek, had been planning a party for quite a while, Kane wasn't cool with some of the people he had invited over, or the drugs they were doing. It escalated into a fight, and Kane almost got Derek arrested.

"You plan on apologizing this time, Kane?" Derek scowled.

"I don't know, I was in the right there, we both know that. But it was still your party and you were still my friend, I shouldn't have screwed you over like that. Sorry."

Kane had never once felt like he was truly in the wrong there, but he understood that he'd betrayed his friend's trust.

Derek sighed, "Thanks for at least trying, and you're right, that was f*cking stupid of me. I'm still pissed at you though, so just give me some time."

Kane nodded, and they went on their separate ways.

----------

Night came quickly, as Kane put on a dark hoodie and began his run out to the factory.

Adding mana to his legs along with his already improved physique caused a massive boost in speed.

In only 11 minutes, Kane had completed the 10-mile run, and with plenty of stamina to spare.

He couldn't just destroy the old factory training though, that'd draw far more attention than the park.

The real benefit of being here was the far lower chance of someone showing up, and the much, much larger open space around it. After carefully checking the area for other people, Kane began practicing.

He condensed about half of his mana into his extended finger and fired it off, this time making sure he had enough left to properly control and guard against it.

It took all of his concentration, but Kane managed to keep the projectile in the air long enough to become used to guiding it.

Its sharp angular movements gradually turned into smooth fluid motions.

"I don't think I'll ever get tired of thi..." Kane had a sudden thought.

Was his space usage relegated to his mana? Actual space? His perception? All three?

He stopped the bolt and made his way over to the factory, halting in front of its looming rusted walls.

He tried teleporting through it. Teleporting got him a bit closer to the wall, but that was it.

"Hmm, so it isn't space itself," Kane noted.

This time, he stretched his perception out beyond the wall before teleporting, instantly appearing on the inside of the factory.

He tried teleporting back outside without using his senses first, nothing happened.

This is what he'd figured out from these experiments and past tests.

Mana wasn't necessarily required for the process of teleporting or aporting, but rather physical objects needed to be surrounded by mana to enter subspace in the first place.

He could only use teleport or aport on things/places he was actively sensing, that place or thing simply existing wasn't enough for Kane to utilize space on it. Nor was already being aware of its existence, he needed to actively sense it.

This raised a question though, why could his senses slip through space and view unknown things then?

The best explanation Kane could come up with was that his heightened senses were somehow using subspace to view the mana in the environment.

By accessing space itself, the mana particles that Kane was particularly sensitive to became detectable, and those particles passing through physical objects made the objects detectable too.

In other words, he wasn't detecting the other side of the wall with his senses, he was detecting the mana on the other end and its slight interactions with the environment!

He wasn't teleporting because he knew where a place was, he was detecting an area of mana to send himself to, only seeing the environment around that mana as a byproduct.

With this in mind, Kane sent another bullet up, guiding it towards the roof of the factory, using the vague senses he shared with it, he detected the mana interacting with the roof and teleported.

It was almost a success, Kane had already used a lot of mana just to set the teleportation up, so he was pushed out of the subspace partway through.

Kane was now falling from around 40 feet up, with no mana and virtually no way to detect what's on the ground.

Even with his accelerated thinking, he couldn't react quickly enough to begin absorbing mana before he crash-landed.

Thankfully, he fell on a fairly empty plot of concrete, and not some rusty spikes. Rolling as he hit the ground, his inhuman body was just barely able to take the plummet.

Kane grimaced from the painful strain the fall had put on his legs, but he quickly healed that up.

"So that's what happens if you don't have enough mana to finish the teleportation... scary." Kane had never imagined he'd get kicked out of it, he just thought the teleportation wouldn't happen.

But with this, his suspicions were confirmed, teleportation locks onto a selected area of mana as the target and uses subspace to send him over, rapidly consuming his mana as he needs a constant shield around him to stay inside.

He had to actually find and lock on to the mana himself though.

If he could teleport through his shared perception with the bullet, maybe he could apport things, or activate separate attacks from it!

Kane chuckled at the thought of hundreds of smaller bullets being shot out from a single beam.

He finished testing the rest of his skills, without mana, his physical strength had easily entered the realm of a bodybuilder, while everything else seemed to have surpassed human limits.

With mana... well, let's just say lifting a few thousand pounds wasn't as hard as he thought it'd be.

Black Hole had to be disabled prematurely, as it now looked like an extremely dense softball and threatened to swallow everything in a 15-foot radius.

"I should... probably head home before I blow something up," Kane muttered.

--------------

The next few days came and went, Cassy and Kane grew even closer during the following days, Kane kept growing his power and experimenting, and his plan to cheat out the school year seemed to be working quite well.

It was the happiest he'd been in years, but it couldn't last.

They had already made their move, and Kane wouldn't be allowed to escape their plans.

Kane heard his dad approaching his room, stopping his meditation, he quickly hid under his covers and pretended to still be asleep. It was pretty damn early, not to mention a Saturday, Kane couldn't figure out why his dad was coming to get him.

The door opened, "Hey Kane, wake up bud. You've got a doctor's appointment."

Kane, while pretending to be drowsy, lifted his head out from under the blankets.

"Ah, I forgot."