"Got you." Varian took out the small grey stones inside the spear tip.
There were space fluctuations around the stones.
Varian then checked the other tents and found the spacorts inside the weapons.
He got a few handfuls of them.
"Haha...cough" Varian laughed, but soon coughed blood.
He looked down at his injures. The bleeding was minimum thanks to his physique but he would still need treatment.
{1 Minute remaining}
Varian ran to the valley, and the portal reappeared. He jumped in.
In the next moment, he appeared back in the academy.
The guards looked at him in surprise and sent him to the infirmary.
Varian drowned in the healing liquid, and the darkness engulfed him.
… ... ...
{Thank you for the payment of 1 mp. We wish you good health.}
Varian nodded and looked at his balance painfully.
{Current merit points: 8
Cumulative: 540}
As he was about to leave to practice with spacorts, he recalled Sylvia's words.
'To accelerate your training, it's better to shut off your five senses.'
Varian thought back to the healing pods. They were very effective in isolating the senses.
With the right combination, he could prevent sight, sound, smell, taste. Touch… he could ask for vacuum and float inside.
"Hey sister, can you help me arrange a healing pod? I don't want to use it for healing. I have other uses." Varian requested the nurse in charge.
She was a middle-aged woman and had short hair. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
"This is your second time coming here on the second day of your first sem."
"...." Varian stared at her for a moment awkwardly and replied, "I'm not trying to pick fights. I can't help it if I'm dragged into them, right?"
She looked at him solemnly for a moment and nodded. "I can allow the usage. The cost of pod is mainly due to the healing liquid itself. So you can have it for free."
Varian nodded "Thank you."
"But," she continued, "If you cause any damage, you would need to compensate. Do you have a minimum mp as guarantee?"
Varian looked at the seven on his comm and showed it to her. He was pretty awkward about it but decided to thicken his skin.
She shook her head. "You can ask someone else to guarantee on your behalf." Then she thought back to Varian's injuries the other day and said, "Your tutor can also do."
Varian smiled and shared Seth's information and the proof that they were tutor and pupil.
'I will thank you, Mr. Seth. Don't worry, I won't damage anything... most likely I won't.'
"Seth... the teacher who was fined for standing alone in the gardens and damaging them again and again with snaps?" She looked at him with scrutiny.
"...."
'What happened to your reputation, tutor?'
"Coming to the point, he was broke after paying for damages this morning's and he ain't getting salary. So you can't use him as a guarantee."
"..."
'Great.'
Varian prepared to leave.
"Ok, ok I'm just kidding. I know Seth." She smiled and waved her hand.
Varian could swear he saw a blush on her cheeks when she uttered S-e-t-h.
'Wait, what's happening here?'
Varian didn't ask. He was already hit by Kyle and Maya. He was not in a mood to dig the past of another potential love story.
"Even though he doesn't have a salary, he still has those stupid swords. They're worth a ton. You can have him as a guarantee." She said and approved the application.
Varian was back in the healing pod again. But this time, he was in a vacuum. He could easily hold his breath for an hour or so. It was almost thrice the record of a normal human.
It was completely dark. There was no light. No sight. There was no sound. No smell. Only touch was faintly present.
He held the spacorts in his palms and slowly injected space power into one of them.
Varian kept his rudimentary space sense open and active.
As the space power seeped into the spacort, it vibrated and Varian felt something different.
He could feel ripples in space. They were large in the beginning, but quickly died down. Space returned to stability.
He was able to feel the large ripples but couldn't feel the small ones.
The original spacort now turned into powder and drifted apart.
[+1 Xp
Space Path Level 1: 71/100]
Varian injected space power into another spacort.
Ripple. Ripple.
This time, he was able barely able to follow as the space fluctuation died down.
Varian was able to identify smaller ripples than last time.
[+1 Xp
Space Path Level 1: 72/100]
Then another….
[+1]
[+1]
[+1]
[+1]
[+1]
…
[+1
Space Path Level 1: 80/100]
The System's notifications were directly fed to his brain.
Varian felt the space fluctuations and picked a larger spacort. After injecting space power into it, it twisted.
The space began to solidify and weaken.
Varian sensed this through his "Space sense".
He couldn't describe it in normal terms. But if there was an analogy, it was like having a radar that could sense space the sense around him.
It was not sight. He couldn't see with Space sense.
However, he experienced how the structure of space and the existing things in it.
He could feel himself in the Space.
Due to his own energy, he was affecting space and changing its curvature.
The spacorts, he observed, held something which was released after being injected by space power.
Varian felt the connection to his space through his "space sense" increase, but fell short of a threshold.
There was an immediate benefit. He was confident of teleporting without much deviation. This was a big leap compared to his previous self, where he could only control the direction of teleportation and not the distance.
He also found he could use space binding with ease.
During the process, through his space sense, he felt his space power going to mix into the space around him and solidify the space.
Once the space sense is formed, it will act as the thread between him and space. It would be an extension of himself, in a sense.
He could affect anything in the range of his space sense through his space power. With each level, space sense would grow.
For now, the range of his space sense was almost non existent.
A Sovereign's space sense could easily wrap a planet.
Varian longed for such a vision and continued to meditate and sense.
Time flowed unnoticed.
[+1]
[+1]
…
…
[+1
Space Path Level 1: 100/100]
Varian opened his eyes.
It was time.