The Insider System

Chapter 105: Going Deeper Pt.4

Starting the compression Lake quickly got it to the point where it had sprung a leak last time. He was happy to find that this training actually did something and he wasn't just failing at the same place every time. He guessed this meant he was getting better at controlling the state principle and he would soon be able to finish this second compression.

Making a small amount of progress, Lake found it was easier to do if he focused on shrinking the middle of the cube and only put a small amount of focus on keeping the sides in a perfect cube. The last few times he had done this he had been using the sides of the cube to crush the insides smaller, and that had probably been why the insides were bulging outwards, and he was losing control of it.

Seeing he was making slow but steady progress, Lake did his best not to let his mind wander; he needed to focus more now that he had split his attention on doing the insides and sides separately, but with it being so slow it was kind of boring to watch. Lake just closed his eyes, and really focused on the feeling of the cube shrinking.

After a while his progress once again stalled and he was stuck with only a bit to go thinking about it he decided to just do what he had done last time and add another layer of compression on the inside in between the sides and the place he was compressing in the middle. Lake was pretty happy with the results until he felt that the balance was off in some way and the middle was compressing much faster than the sides.

Lake knew this was because he was barely paying any attention to the sides compared to the inside so he readjusted his focus to be more even and he finished the second round of compression. Using his finger to touch the cube Lake could tell it was now dense enough to be used as a shield meaning he had made it to the first mile stone and could now use this compressed mana to cast Air Wall which was the basic defense spell for the Wind element.

It was funny it was so hard to make just the first level of a solid defense with the Wind Element when he had been able to do so with Dark before he even understood what he was doing. Why he thought it was like that was because the other elements had more principals, so they didn't need to rely on just how hard it was to make a shield.

Also most elements started off much harder to begin with so most of the time you only had to do a small amount of work to get them ready to be used for defense. Wind was the least dense element Lake knew of even the Light mana he had gathered seemed to pack more of a punch. This was another example on how the elements used for spells differed from what was in the environment.

The best example he had found so far was darkness; it was just a shadow cast by something blocking light, and it was nothing like the Dark element you used to cast spells. The same way the air you breathed wasn't the same as the Wind mana you used for spells. Both Dark and Wind were both just basic mana with principles added to make it seem like what they were named after.

Stretching his cube to be wider, Lake heard a voice tell him the name of the spell and he repeated. "Air Wall." After he said this the mana moved and did the rest of the work itself. The mana he was using was what he pulled out of the environment and actually belonged to the God or Goddess of Air and not only had they created the Wind Element but the spell he had just used so the spell was ingrained into the element itself which was what allowed it to know what it needed to do after he called out the name.

He just wished it could condense itself for him because with how long that had taken he couldn't see him using it in a fight any time soon. Now that he was done with that, Lake had one more thing he wanted to try with condensing Wind mana before he moved on to the speed principle. Starting a new cube, Lake got it back to what he had used to cast Air Wall and stretched it out into a flat surface.

Stepping onto it Lake lifted himself a few feet before he set himself down. What he had just tested was one of the methods the book said you could use to fly. He had just wanted to see if it actually worked and he was happy he had tried it because he also found he had been able to compress the cube much faster this time.

It seemed if he continued to do this over and over again he would be able to use Air Wall in a matter of seconds instead of the minutes it took him to do it now. Of course if he needed to cast a spell to defend himself he would probably just use Dark magic because he could do so almost instantly.

Most people didn't have the luxury of choosing any element they wanted to use unlike him, so if they only had an affinity for Wind they would have to go through a lot of training because it was their only option.

Getting the swirl going again Lake Just let it spin while he thought about what he could be not understanding about speed. It was possible the problem was he didn't know how fast this swirl was even going so he was unable to set a goal. With the cube he had been able to tell exactly how hard and dense it was so he was able to tell if he needed to keep going or not.

If he needed to know how fast this was going to be able to control it he had no idea how he was supposed to figure it out, so he thought maybe he could just say this was 1 and work his way up from there. It would be like how bike gears worked sort of.

Putting his idea into practice Lake tried to think of the speed the vortex was going as 1 and tried to get a feel for what that meant. It didn't really seem to be working but Lake tried to switch it to 2nd speed anyway just to see if it would work. When there was no reaction at all he guessed his system wasn't going to work.

It was to bad because he thought it would have been nice if he could control what speed it was going by just thinking a number, but he would probably just use the highest number he could so the number system would have only been helpful to track his progress and not really something he would be using to change back and forth between speeds because why would he set it to 1st speed for an attack when he could use 2nd.

Stopping the swirl, Lake wondered what he was supposed to do. He had read the full section on the speed principle and it hadn't really said anything other than the fact that spinning the swirl was the best way to learn how to control the speed. Lake smacked himself in the forehead. It had never told him to increase the speed only to increase your control of the speed principle.

Lake already knew how to slow it down, he had done it on multiple occasions whenever he stopped the spinning. The Wind element had some sort of hard cap set on it which was the speed the spells flew when you cast them but you could slow it down pretty easily if you wanted so Lake guessed he should just fluctuate the speed up and down until he got a grasp on the speed principle.

Once he thought he actually got it that would be when he would try to pick up the speed past the limit set. Starting the vortex again he slowly picked up the speed until he hit the limit then he did the same in the opposite direction until it dissipated back into a ball of mana. He just kept doing this over and over again until he thought he could probably do this with two different balls of mana at once.

Forming another vortex over his other hand Lake found it was really easy to do the same thing with both so as a challenge he thought he could do the opposite in each hand instead. Speeding one up while he slowed the other down. It would be like how people did that thing where you taped your head while rubbing your belly.