6) Taking it all in [ Let sleeping Fairies lie ]

  Meditation turned out to be a pretty simple process.

  Professor Loa Chi seemed to think the most difficult part of the Skill was learning how to sense the raw Chaos in the air around you. While he believed pulling at it before you tuck it away inside your soul’s connection to the realm of the Gods, the spirit world, was pretty easy.

  The second part was passing all the stuff through your physical body without the Chaos tearing you up.

  Once you have managed that, you can the Chaos and send it off into the spirit realm. Then you are supposed to get an equal amount of Magic. At least until your Magic Pool is filled up all the way. The Chi’s book and my Instinctive Knowledge were both pretty unclear as to what happened if you kept pulling at the Chaos if you already filled your Magic pool.

  Maybe a Title? Or one of those achievements? I think I got one of those at some point.

  I could check, since that seems like the sort of thing Blinky can tell me about. But… Right now, I’m doing something, and all the increases to my Memory score don’t seem to be doing anything to help my tendency to become distracted.

  So, step one. I needed to pull at all of the background Chaos around me.

  Which seems like it would be fairly simple. When I had turned on my Beacon, that first time when I wasn’t being invaded by adventurers, thieves, and insane Oozes, I could feel the difference in the level of Chaos all around me as it flowed past my Core towards…

  Wherever, or whatever, it had been going towards.

  Having the Chaos flow towards my Core would have made sense, but instead, what I had felt was it flowing past my Core to head toward the heart of my Domain. Which begged the question of what exactly was so special about that area right in the middle of my Domain. It was the very spot right smack in the middle of the Library in which I had been created.

  Was it just because it was the middle of my Domain, could I change what counted at the center of the place?

  Important information. But not time sensitive information.

  Letting my mind go blank, with some effort, I tried to feel the normal amount of Chaos that should have always been around me at all times.

  And… Nothing.

  When the Chaos had been moving, it had been easy to sense. After all, I am a Core. One of the very things which was made by the Mother of all to absorb and regulate the excess Chaos that is absorbed by all living things due to their tendency to move around in the stuff.

  A Core is supposed to keep the small random changes that Chaos makes animals and Unchoosen people from killing them, by instead crystallizing the excess.

  And since absorbing Chaos was the entire reason my own Core existed in the first place, I might even be absorbing it even now.

  Even though I’m not a part of a living being right now. It should be creeping into my Core all the same, right?

  Not that it seems to be doing anything for me if it was. It might be that as a member of a Chosen Race with a Class, I don’t do the normal Core things anymore...

  But, as those thoughts went still, and I, for once, don’t replace them with more idle thoughts, I can feel a slow, thin stream of something slowly coming towards my Core.

  It sinks inside my Core, and then goes off in some direction that's… Inward, and then outward to someplace that is in no direction at all but away.

  The same direction I feel like I go every time I level up. The Spirit Realm.

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  The feeling is nowhere near as strong as what I can feel when I have the Beacon on. But like my Class ability, the Chaos seems to be coming mainly from the open doorway of the library, and it is coming there from down the hallway, down the stairs, and out from the outer corridor. Out there, it not only seems to be coming from every entrance into there, but even from the very stone of the walls, floor, and ceiling all around me.

  Just not as much as the stuff drifting along with the air.

  Now, I just needed to pull it into my Core. Which should be easy, my physical body was crystallized Chaos, not fragile flesh and blood. As I said, this is what I was made for.

  Even before I was a me.

  One moment, I can feel myself seeming to grasp at it all at once, and it seems to be collecting onto the outer surface of my Core, before, all at once, it began to slip inside me.

  And I feel… Like, I do have an internal structure.

  Skin and bones. Muscle and nerves. Blood and… flame.

  Caesar.

  I have all the details of what makes my innate Summon’s very body all inside of my Core. Like a language written in light, or carved into every part of the defined crystallized Chaos that is the physical form of my Core.

  Which leaves me wondering if all Cores have such details of the creatures they once sat inside of. I mean, they must. Where else am I getting the information I need to create Totems from Cores to shape my Magic into my Summoned creatures.

  [ +1 Meditation ]

  As always, the first bonus is easy, but as I lose myself in the first lasting physical sensation I have felt with what amounts to my own physical body… I lose myself.

  It’s not a stimulating, or even a relaxing sensation, it’s just… There. Where normally there wasn’t even numbness. Almost all of the time, all I can feel is… Nothing.

  As such, the light in the sky above the shaft that led to the surface in the outer hallway has long since changed to a cloudy darkness by the time I notice Viola sitting cross legged on the shelf in front of my Core.

  The Fairy is slumped over with half of her body leaning against the book nearest to my Core, draped over my Core itself.

  Viola seems more relaxed than I have ever seen her, so I don’t do anything that might wake her up.

  Instead, I examined the blue circle around Blinky, and I realized that it is now completely full.

  Is that what sleep is like? You just drift off, and then you’re gradually aware of things around you again. If so, then this is something I don’t want to take away from the little Fairy.

  Who really should have been wide awake and guarding me while I was out of it.

  Alright. I admit that I was at least a little upset with Viola. But not too much, because in the end, she is a Fairy. As such, she is by nature unreliable.

  Also, my Guardian is a living being, with all the frailties of those with mere mortal bodies of flesh and bone. For instance, my Fairy seems to be drooling on my Core.

  Gross.

  And, more than enough time for me to go. My Magic pool is recharged. So it’s time to meet with Unity, and to Level up.

  But first, I needed to make sure I had more than a passed out Fairy guarding me as my consciousness traveled to the Tower of Ascension.

  Blinky. What Summons do I have out right now?

  Roster:

  Tier 1

  Vile Skeleton 6

  Water Undine 1

  ...and that was it. Just those two to guard me while my Core was sitting here helpless, while Viola was sleeping. I mean, sure, I was the one who decided to mentally drift off without warning the Fairy. But she still should have done something other than fall asleep on top of my Core.

  So…

  The Skeleton let off whittling at the bottom of a door, and took a position to the side of the top of the stairs with his broken off sword in hand.

  The Undine I had out was Resummoned to the top of the shelving unit that I, and now Viola, were hiding in. Although the one long pale lavender leg sticking off the edge of the shelf gave away our hiding spot.

  The Earth Spider I called up was set to place three layers of crystalline webbing into the shaft leading up to the surface, while the Earth Snake began to reshape the stone around the half height doorway in the wall of the outer hallway to seal that entrance shut.

  I wanted no more intruders coming from the same direction the Mother of Madness had come from, and that the adventurers had left by.

  Up from below, or down from above. Everyone coming to me from now on would have to take one of the two shafts.

  The other Summons, all of them except Caesar, I scattered in the various side rooms, the library, and one, the Air Fish, even out in the large, formerly trapped room.

  Caeser, I called up on the top of the table with my book of Meditation, which the Fire Lizard clutched in its mouth.

  The Fire Lizard had managed to take the little layered ball with the fine filigree carving in it to the Tower of Accession when I had Summoned my innate Summons from this world to the Spirit worlds, something that was supposed to be impossible.

  Something I told myself, then and there, to investigate further.

  Now was that time.

  Beside. My Liaison, who was supposed to liaise with an entire race, was instead sitting in the Tower all by herself with a chair, a desk, a Core stand, and a lot of time on her hands.

  A book to pass the time, and read through for me so I could ask her about it, seemed like a nice thing to do.

  Or to offer as a bribe. But aren’t bribes just another nice thing to do?

  Anyways… “I-”

  Viola stirred in her sleep.

  I was fairly certain that I didn’t really need to say this part out loud.

  I would like to Level up.