He opened his eyes and sighed. Then he stood up and stretched, letting out a loud groan as his body uncoiled. He didn’t feel any pain, but spending many hours in the same position caused tension in his muscles and bones. However, it was not physical discomfort that caused his irritated expression.

  He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath in, allowing the soothing sound of the aquamarine leaves combined with the gentle breeze to calm his psyche.

  After all, irritation has never been a good guide.

  According to Zaiah, his body should get rid of the crystal’s personal mana within a few minutes, now leaving no trace that he could feel. Hence, nothing should prevent him from learning to control the flow of his own mana.

  Recalling the feeling of being overwhelmed by this energy, he grabbed it desperately and tried to direct it to the ring. Now that his body was accustomed to its presence, he could only rely on his memory. After several hours of fruitless effort, he remembered an object given to him by the System.

  As if to mock his incompetence, the object, although it looked a little different from when he first saw it, did not respond to his efforts.

  Previously an all-grey cube, now at the bottom it looked like it was made of glass that was smoothly transitioning into a metallic texture. It didn’t take a genius at the time to assume that the object was some kind of training tool in mana control; this assumption was later confirmed by Zaiah, who, although he retreated in panic when the cube appeared, quickly changed his attitude to one of fascination with the object.

  All Zaiah had to do was barely touch the cube with his mana before it began to change its composition fluidly. When he saw the change, he stopped immediately so as not to minimize what Orion could learn from it. Then they split up, leaving Orion to practice alone. He was now in a place that resembled a park, except that the vegetation in that part was arranged to create enclosed spaces for people, giving them privacy.

  Orion has learned that meditation is a big part of life for many people here, so it’s no surprise that this was considered when planning such places. Moreover, the park was divided into sections with different main themes.

  So, for example, he saw an area where fires were burning now and then, and smoldering coals were scattered on the ground in some places. Then he passed one that required considerable steps to step on rocks placed in shallow water, seeing numerous ponds and waterfalls nearby. In another, he could feel unnaturally strong gusts of wind, and in yet another, there was bare ground instead of grass, with large boulders and even occasional caves.

  Taking his place in a neutral zone surrounded by hedgerows, he sat down and closed his eyes. In his mana control training, he adopted the familiar iteration method, where he tried to direct energy in various ways. Each attempt was a little different from the last, supposedly turning failure into fertilizer for success. His mind had been working tirelessly for the last few hours figuring out the direction of his next attempt, even before he completely failed at the present one.

  Although this method was laborious, in his previous life he learned that it was also reliable. Even if a given approach did not produce a satisfactory result, it often provided sufficient data to improve subsequent ones. This time, however, despite the time spent, there was not even the slightest nuance suggesting which direction he should try next.

  Zaiah already told him that by starting the exercise, he can forget about all this aspect stuff for now. He must first feel the mana in general before he can discern anything in it.

  So at first he started with mental instructions, like turning System windows on and off. When he realized that this didn’t work, he tried to imagine that he was tensing invisible muscles, thereby squeezing the pathways to force movement; a bit like milking.

  When that didn’t work, he tried to command or encourage that energy by combining intention with physical effort. In the absence of any positive results, he also did not hesitate to attempt to use persuasion, mentally asking the energy so that, by its grace, it would stop fooling around and enter into the ring.

  [F 02:24 / 10]

  Noticing that it was a free cycle, he decided it was time to end his experiments. His eyelids were already heavy enough, so he headed for the hotel in the city center where Zaiah had booked him a room earlier.

  Turns out, the hotel was the tallest building in the city; the one that looked like a giant grain of rice from a distance. Its shape looked almost futuristic, which, combined with the immaculately white cladding of the walls, caused Orion to fear the high costs associated with staying.

  He was wrong, for he was told that the facility was one of the cheapest places to stay, and what he took to be an elegant appearance was one of the major inconveniences for the local people, since tenants were not allowed to paint their drawings on the walls.

  The skyscraper was divided into several repeating sections, separated by five levels. Floors were occupied by apartments, further divided in size according to the number of people who were to live in. On the first floor, outside the apartments, there was also a place where one could buy and eat a meal and a shared toilet for the residents of the upper five floors. Then this pattern was repeated up to the sixth floor and so on.

  Orion initially thought it was a joke, but it turned out that although each floor had a few shared bathrooms, in fact, toilets only occurred once every five floors. This was because the need to defecate decreased as the leveling progressed, usually disappearing between levels forty and fifty. Besides, some races didn’t have to worry about it from birth.

  Another surprise was the local alternative to elevators, where dozens of glass tubes were installed in a special, huge hall. Watching people use them made it easy to get to the bottom of it, so after waiting a while for an available booth, he went into one and put the key to his room in a marked spot in the wall.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The journey up itself was a rather specific experience, as if several ways had been combined to lift him. At the same time, he felt that he was getting lighter, that something was pulling him up, that a sudden blast of air was pushing him from the bottom, and finally, that space itself was squeezing gently, making him have to travel a shorter distance.

  The room itself was by no means surprising. It was a standard hemisphere here, about five meters in diameter. This meant that although he had to bend down when entering, he could stand upright in the center. The interior, though small and rather awkward for a person accustomed to living in a square room, was neat and clean.

  Beneath the vault of the ceiling, a glowing stone the size of a pea hovered, providing the only, but sufficient, source of light. Both the wall and the floor were painted the same light gray, and evenly arranged basic white furnishings created an almost sanitary atmosphere.

  At his disposal was a neatly made bed, a floor table, and a few pillows that he could arrange into a seat. Besides, there was a cylindrical nightstand and a rather large chest, which had many compartments inside for the convenience of laying out his stuff.

  Orion was still irritated by the lack of success in controlling the mana and quite tired from a rather strange day. First, he woke up in a cell and experienced soul probing, only to later throw himself into a wringer of unpleasant memories. Then he walked for a while, just to eat his lunch and get dressed, and then he practically invited himself into some preschooler lesson, which he was surprisingly allowed to.

  Then he was suggested to go a few kilometers away from the city to spew out a strange liquid, whose total mass was probably several times his own, and then he listened to a lecture on mana, returning to the city. Yeah, it’s been a pretty busy day, and after analyzing it, it’s no wonder he couldn’t focus properly on his training.

  Alone in the room, he allowed himself to become tired. He fell limply on the bed, staring at the spherical ceiling. Although his mind quickly went into a stupor of fatigue, despite the passing of the next few hours, no sleep came. He would twirl and move from side to side, unsuccessfully trying to drift off.

  The bed underneath the top layer of sheets was made of some kind of gel material, which made it very soft. It was comfortable, and after further fruitless attempts to fall asleep, Orion concluded that it was simply too soft.

  So he crawled out of bed and lay on the hard floor behind a big chest. He had become too accustomed to sleeping first on a metal bed and then on bare rocks, so the soft surfaces were quite disturbing to him.

  It’s like falling asleep on it was supposed to make him wake up somewhere else.

  Lying on the hard floor, though a little helpful, still didn’t take away all that discomfort. Identifying its source, he realized that this time the problem was in a closed room. He’d spent the last six months sleeping out in the open, which made him feel like he was in a cage he entered of his own free will.

  “You’re not used to comfort anymore.” she said, giggling.

  He grunted in the affirmative and, standing up, reached for his keys. It didn’t take him long to get back to the park, and since he already knew its layout, he quickly reached the rocky section with the caves. There, he chose a place that seemed relatively isolated from view and curled up in the gap between the rocks.

  The dream occurred almost immediately.

  He was greeted by the now familiar sight of a completely black sky and an infinitely large water surface reflecting non-existent stars and over which a shimmering silver mist drifted lazily.

  His mind was clearing and relaxing at a remarkable rate. The body felt as if it had just woken up, fully rested.

  Amidst the silence, he put his hands behind his back and once again that day began to walk. This time the walk was slow and undirected. He wandered aimlessly, looking around. Each step left behind a fraction of the previous day’s worries. Relaxing completely, he looked at the System clock.

  [F 05:67 / 10]

  It was his second time in this place and the first time he checked the time here. Having previously contemplated the skill that would allow him to enter the land of dreams, he wondered how he would interpret time. After all, it’s no secret that dreams tend to distort the perception of time, but from what he’s learned so far, a full sleep state would only work if he entered the rainbow sphere from which he first jumped in panic, escaping the nightmare and in which he listened to Neru’s recording.

  But just to be certain, he decided to count the seconds as he wandered. After a few minutes, having already confirmed that time inside the dreamland runs the same as in the outside world, he wondered what to do with this fact. He’ll have to somehow occupy the time he would normally just sleep through… It was a pretty big deal to suddenly gain a few hours of mental activity. On the other hand, if it turns out the only thing he can do is wander around here alone every time he sleeps… well, whatever happens, happens.

  So his first thought, what could he do to avoid wasting time, was to sit in a meditation pose and do another attempt at mana control.

  And it worked. Almost immediately. Without the slightest problem at all.

  The energy, suddenly conveniently obedient, flowed through his body as he wished. Out of habit, he tried to point it in the direction of the ring, only to notice that he wasn’t wearing any.

  Except just when he wanted it to be there, the ring appeared as if it had always been there.

  Already guessing where this was going, Orion mentally dismissed the ring and held out his open hand, palm up.

  Pumping the mana out of himself, he combined it into a glowing ball. Then, according to Zaiah’s explanation, he made up some aspects that he instilled in it. The warmth aspect, the familiar stickiness aspect… the stench aspect? Nah, we don’t want that. After a few minutes of the combination of removing and elevating aspects, he was holding a rubber ball in his hand. As he turned it, he saw the seams were flawlessly made.

  He rejected it, however, coming up with another idea. What’s not more associated with magic than the power of free flight?

  So he rose into the air, effortlessly rising several meters above the water’s surface. And though the sight of the reflecting stars and the strangely shining silver mist from above was wonderful, and some youthful part of his mind was practically giddy with excitement, he fell leisurely to the ground.

  So that’s how he must have felt, huh? he thought, sighing in resignation.

  The reason for his gloomy mood was simple.

  Nothing he did here was real.

  Despite his lost hope for rapid progress in mana control and the knowledge that what he was conjuring was really only a manifestation of his intentions in his dream, he still dreamed of a large log lying on a water sheet.

  Then, in front of it, two more on either side, so that they more or less form the shape of a triangle.

  Then in the middle, between the logs, a burning campfire.

  The rest weren’t even fully conscious. He just let it happen.

  Still gazing into the fire and enjoying the crackling of the burning wood, he did not even have to look up to see the shape, with its distinctive long tail, drifting freely in the air.

  He didn’t even have to look up to know who was sitting on the other log. Just like him, she was staring at the fire in peace and silence.

  Still sitting, he lifted his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, enjoying this fake moment with his real friends.