I eventually peeled myself off the floor — dignity slightly bruised, but spirit very much intact.
After taking a quick shower and changing into something classy-yet-athletic, I headed out the door.
The walk to my usual gym wasn’t far, but it still gave me enough time to strut like a model on a runway.
As I walked, I passed a few Cadets in the hallway.
…They barely glanced at me.
Rude.
But I didn’t blame them. They probably couldn’t handle the aura I was radiating.
Newly ascended. Impossibly handsome. Getting a bit sweaty already, as I was being overwhelmed by my heightened senses. A total package.
So I made sure to nod at everyone, like a benevolent emperor gracing his peasants with his presence.
“Sup?” I said to a guy I’d never met.
He blinked, confused.
“…You good, man?” he asked.
I patted his shoulder like a war veteran bestowing ancient wisdom. “Never better. Keep working hard. Or whatever it is you NPCs do.”
I left him behind before he could utter a response.
Finally, I reached the gym. The reinforced steel doors slid open with a hiss, and I stepped inside, fully expecting dramatic orchestral music to play.
…None did.
But that was okay. I had an active imagination.
After booking a private Training Room, grabbing its keys, and walking through another set of automatic doors, I stepped inside.
The room was standard. Steel-lined walls. Reinforced flooring. A few practice dummies. Weighted weapons. Reactive targets. And all the usual Awakened training gear.
I stood in the center of it all, cracked my neck, and muttered to myself, “Alright. Let’s see what I can do.”
I summoned my Origin Card with a thought.
«Matterweave»
It shimmered into existence.
The rune etched on its surface pulsed with a bright golden glow. It looked a bit different from what I remembered — more complex, as if the lines had grown into fractal patterns, weaving deeper into one another. Elegant. Sophisticated.
With a small grin, I lowered myself to the floor and touched it with my hand, moving my gaze toward the nearest training dummy.
It was such a simple gesture.
But the change was immediate.
The metal beneath the dummy’s feet vibrated, then melted upward into a smooth column, curving into a perfect bladed arc before snapping down like a guillotine and bisecting the dummy in half.
I blinked.
Huh.
That was new.
I hadn’t even focused that hard.
Just… willed it.
Before, I had to concentrate — picture it, grip the atoms, wrestle with the material like I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
But now…
Now it felt like moving a finger. Like flexing a muscle.
It was way too easy. And fast.
For the next thirty minutes, I lost myself in experimentation.
I sculpted spikes, blades, walls, and platforms — all with casual flicks of the wrist. But none of that was new.
I could do it all before, just not with this level of ease or speed or efficiency.
So, I began trying new things.
Since reshaping matter came so naturally to me now, I started giving things more intricate forms as I transmuted them.
I crafted makeshift arms out of stone — complete with fully functioning, moving fingers. I also tried making golems, but couldn’t sustain them very well, so they fell apart.
At one point, I made two stone hands fight each other. One punched the other a little too hard, demolishing it completely and sending shards flying everywhere.
I panicked and ducked.
Large fragments of stone clanged against the wall behind me.
“…Okay. Still working on the control.”
Reshaping matter so intricately took more finesse than I’d thought, and consciously moving it required even more.
On a brighter note, my range had definitely improved. I used to max out at fifteen meters before my sense of matter faded into static.
But now my control radius had increased to at least twenty-five meters.
I also felt more connected to my power. I could feel the vibrations in the floor, the grain of the wooden bench in the corner, and even the subtle density of the reinforced walls.
It was as if the room was a body — and I was running my fingers down its spine.
And that wasn’t all.
I kicked off my shoe, planted my bare foot on the ground, and tested a thought.
The reinforced steel beneath my sole bent upward slightly — a tiny wave responding to my will.
I stared. “…No hands? Finally! No hands!”
I stomped again, and a small spike rose beneath my foot like a polite hiccup.
My powers had always been bound to my hands — I needed them to feel the structure of matter and to guide its shape.
That’s why I rarely wielded any weapons and mostly fought barehanded, because my hands were necessary for my power.
But now I could use anything! Hands, feet, elbows — hell, I pressed my forehead to the wall, and, yep, the metal flexed.
With enough physical contact, I could manipulate matter using any and every part of my body.
Yes…
That too.
I checked.
Don’t ask me why.
Then came the most unsettling discovery.
I looked at my arm, touched it with my other hand, and focused.
The tiniest patch of skin — a sliver near my wrist — trembled.
I felt flesh and blood.
My own flesh and blood.
I didn’t reshape it — not because I was scared, but because I couldn’t. It seemed that freely revamping organic matter was still out of my reach.
But I felt… something.
It was slow — painfully slow. Like writing calligraphy underwater…
But the matter seemed ready to move when I tried to move it. It responded to me. Even though I couldn’t freely reshape it, I could still control organic matter to a degree.
“Ah, this is dangerous,” I thought, glancing around.
Spotting a wooden bench at the far end of the room, I walked up to it, shattered it into splinters, picked up a broken wooden log, and tried the same thing again.
This time, I didn’t just sense it — I separated it.
The log cracked apart, fibers peeling away, then wove themselves back together after a few minutes of effort, rough and tangled.
I sat back, wide-eyed. “…Okay. Organic matter. Low-level. Not fast. Definitely not clean. But possible.”
This was awesome!
My Origin Card had just handed me the beginner’s toolkit for playing god.
At a very slow framerate.
Still, I was impressed.
I cracked my knuckles. “Alright, Matterweave. You and me… we’re gonna break so many Academy safety rules together.”
And then — as all great journeys begin — I promptly ran out of Essence.
Yeah, it turns out, the more intricate the transmutation, the more Essence it consumed, especially when trying to control organic matter.
My knees buckled. The platform beneath me gave out.
The training dummy I’d shaped into a samurai turned back into a plain block of metal. And I faceplanted into the floor with a heroic thud.
“…Ow,” I mumbled into the tile.
From the ground, I lifted a hand and gave the air a weak thumbs-up.
Testing: successful.
Ego: inflated again.
Nose: possibly broken.
Yes, this was progress.