Chapter 13 Evolution?
Sam P.O.V.
During the day, Tenka takes care of Salaba and me. She grows stronger every day, honing her skills with her wolf companion, Taki, and her owl scout, Eldo, by hunting for the entire group. We set up a large tent made of several stitched hides that all of us could fit in—Barabas included, though he takes up half the space like a furry boulder.
During the night, however, I suffocate and burn.
I spend my sleep cycles inside a volcano. By now, I can endure being just beside the flowing lava without screaming. The first time I got splashed with a glob of magma in the mindscape, it hurt and startled me so much that I woke up in the real world in the middle of the night, shouting at the top of my lungs. The worst part is that the sensation lingers. I am still numb during the day, having red patches on my skin as if I was really burned slightly. It's a phantom pain that follows me into the waking world. The brain causes a stigmata, because of our strange power or mana...
Eventually, I will get used to it... or so Barabas claims.
Can you imagine your very soul being blistered? Head, eyes, nose, armpits, and the rest... Hehehe. It's a unique kind of torture.
Tenka did not mention anything out of concern, but I can tell she suffers the after-effects of my training too. A small stigma of sorts. She shares the burden. I check her out spiritually, but to my knowledge and guessing, I can tell her soul is growing along with mine. It just hurts a lot...
She always wakes up an hour later than me, letting her mind and body finally relax truly for an hour, while I prepare the day. At least I can cook for her. My left arm still hurts slightly, a dull throb, but cooking is fine. Chopping vegetables is therapeutic.
There are so many wild vegetables outside, thanks to Berth, that it pains me to leave this place. Still, the animals will take care of the surplus once we are gone... nature reclaims everything.
Salaba also benefits from our "Sessions," though indirectly. I slowly unlock her potential by receiving power from all of us as we meditate every day. She does not feel any pain from my soul training, and she is older than Tenka...
Her power is more individual and different from mine. That is what I wanted. Her soul did not connect with mine like Tenka's did. She isn't bound to me in that deep, terrifying way, but she still awakened. Now I can keep her from connecting at a soul level unless she submits fully. The others must be like her. I think of it, as bloodlines of sorts. Tenka is the main branch; Salaba is a side branch.
Tenka is different. She is like what you could consider a "party member" in game terms. We grow stronger together, sharing XP and HP.
The pets are the shame... cough... same.
After Barabas, our souls are the most connected. She even surpassed Red on this level. Of course, I will never tell the big wolf that... he's sensitive.
Gary, however, does not seem to feel right. He sleeps all day, perched on a branch, fluffing his feathers. His growth takes a toll on him. I'm worried about the little guy, but Barabas said that if he survives, he will evolve like him, when he became a "Kin eater". He has not even a shred of doubt while he says it.
I try to channel some of my power into him, and he sucks it up at an alarming pace. It's like pouring water into a drain. The three others, Tenka, Salaba, and Barabas, channel their power into me when they see me getting pale from the drain.
Once the equivalent of my own whole power reserve, went into the bird, his feathers suddenly fall off. All of them.
Then, white clay ooze out of his skin, cocooning him rapidly until he turn into a large beige egg with brown spots.
I look at Barb, wide-eyed.
Barb: ("Don't look at me, Sam. Isekai shit... As you might put it.")
("I admit, you are right. That was still disturbing...")
...
The same night, I try to go to Barb's Mindscape like usual, but I feel resistance. Instead of the volcano, I feel like there is a bubble around me, preventing me from going out. I feel just like... I'm in an egg too?!!!
("Shit. This is boring. I'm stuck. No air, no sounds, no sight, and no senses. This is suffocating. At least I'm used to the feeling of isolation from my millions of years drifting, but this should be the start of my own mindscape, right?")
I think maybe this is a crucial period, a blank canvas to manipulate to my taste. I don't want the same chaotic mess as Barb's volcano-tea-party.
("I need to think of something good, not like that bear XD.")
I think for a few minutes in the void.
("Ok, got it.")
I make my complex mental image. I start with the foundation.
I try to think of the truest aspect of life in the universe. The source of all geometry. The Golden Ratio. Phi. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 (1.618)... Like the Egyptians building the pyramids, keeping Pi (3.1416) in all the aspects of it. Math is the language of God, after all.
First, at the center of it all: a small Japanese house. Paper walls (Shoji screens), fluffy Futon, a small hot spring steaming gently, surrounded by a dense bamboo forest swaying in a nonexistent breeze. The symbol of a calm mind and zen. Or at least, what I think zen is.
Second, the surroundings. Four seasons in four quarters.
Summer: A scorching desert with dunes of gold.
Winter: An Iceland of glaciers and jagged peaks.
Fall: A rainstorm land with eternal thunder and crimson leaves.
Spring: A lush forest, a mix of my past Earth memories and the current wild world.
All arranged in Feng Shui, with the ratios and lengths respecting the Golden Ratio.
Third, a sturdy wall all around it, like a bubble, with thousands of doors. A piece of land floating in the center of a void. These doors are named after the "Laws" or "Concepts" they belong to.
Door 1: Ice.
Door 2: Fire.
Door 3: Water.
Door 4: Air/Wind.
Door 5: Sound.
Door 6: Light.
Door 7: Darkness/Void.
Door 8: Holy.
Door 9: Disintegration.
Door 10: Yin/Yang.
Door 11: Energy.
And may more, as I have a lot of time...
Some are more about anime concepts and stuff from my old life. I lose count of how many I create. I even left a lot of free rooms for later expansion. There are a lot of experimental rooms too.
Different bases of lifeforms, under other stars and gravity levels, which I speculated about, in my past life, reading science magazines and articles on the net.
I realize, if I could clone myself, things could go faster...
Sadly, my Mindscape is just in an embryo state now... Everything is a bit abstract, fuzzy around the edges, but I should be happy with what I did so far.
In fact, I'm tired in my dream... Funny.
Zzzzz.
3rd Person P.O.V.
In the morning, Tenka notices that Sam is still asleep. She does not make a big deal out of it at first and just makes breakfast herself. But when the sun is high and she tries to wake him up, she realizes that no matter what she does, shaking him, shouting, pinching, he won't wake up!
She wakes Barabas in a panic. Once the giant bear gets a good look at Sam, he grunts. He says the same thing he said yesterday about Gary.
Barb: ("If he survives this, he will evolve. Like the bird. Like me, I guess... though this was not supposed to happen yet...")
Sure enough, she can understand him clearly now. He speaks English in her mind, just like Sam. She can also understand her own pets and feel their emotions, almost as if they were her own.
It seems like they all had a breakthrough at the same time, yesterday, when they poured their energy into Sam.
They are closer to the level Sam was at, while he got pushed a lot higher, stimulated by an amalgamation of factors, that they do not understand yet.
Heck, Sam is not totally human either, despite looking like one.
Except Salaba, poor girl. She is still smiling nonetheless, feeling better and more powerful too, even just from the residual energy of the training...
Still, in the afternoon, the situation changes drastically. They all have to flee from the tent.
And... they forgot Gary inside!
Some strange markings and spots appeared on Sam's skin. At first, it was beautiful and calming, glowing with soft light. But after a while, it became dark, cold, and poisonous. The aura was ever-changing, cycling through different attributes: fire, ice, rot, life, some even hurting Sam's physical body because of the raw power they generated.
The effects change in a kaleidoscopic aura.
RIIIIIP.
The tent gets shredded to pieces by invisible blades of wind. Only Sam and Gary's egg remain in the center of the storm.
Fire burns the air. An ozone smell creeps in, as electric arcs fly around, like angry snakes. Rocks levitate, turn to sand, and get blown away in a shockwave. The plants grow rapidly, flowers wither and die in seconds. Time itself seems to slow and accelerate in a bubble around him.
Barabas chips in, shielding Tenka with his massive body.
Barb: ("The kid is Crazy! He put all these laws together in his mindscape! I did not have the time to talk to him about this part... He tried to map the universe before he mapped his own toe! Well, he may be lucky, but his body might blow up too!")
....
The truth is: Sam even left unknown places, that his mind can think of, speculate on, or estimate the existence of. Even creating impossible things, because of the lack of real data. It's like thinking of the fourth, and fifth dimensions. The concept exists mathematically, but is hard to imagine physically. Sam studied a lot of physics in his spare time....
(Can you tell what E=mc² really means? Check out the Riemannian universe theory too... He can make a homemade microwave... XD).
Mixed with all the cultivation novels that he read before... It's a recipe for disaster or godhood.
The poor Gary is just beside him, being radiated by this chaotic energy. Literally!
Until...
BOOM!
Splash!
Blood flies in the air from Sam's seven main chakra points, or seven focuses. Fountains of crimson erupt from just under the privates (Root), the pelvis (Sacral), the heart, the solar plexus, the throat, the third eye, and the crown.... Right through the center of his skull.
Tenka screams, as she try to get to her love " HAAAAAAA!"
"Tenka NOOOO!" Salaba screams, holding the girl back.
Barb: ("The kid's body couldn't keep up... Sigh...")
But the blood doesn't hit the ground. It stays in mid-air, like a sphere of mist, rotating gently.
It absorbs natural energy, along with the fuzzy aura that came from Sam's brain and powers. It starts to rotate mid-air and gradually goes back inside Sam's body. With it, it carries a lot of all the available elements and laws he visualized.
Inside Sam's body, seven miniature and intangible black holes, are sucking the remaining natural elements all around them.
Lucky enough, Berth made this place a literal paradise, for his bastardized evolution, filling it with strong life energy and power, beforehand.
Except there is one problem: There are not many of the destruction-related laws here...
Only low quantities exist, due to natural destruction laws, decay, erosion, sunlight degradation, etc... This place is mostly filled with nature.
Most of the destructive laws, come in small amounts from far away. Even across the universe, starlight and cosmic radiation, are being forcefully dragged here.
Still, in Sam's memories, the 6th and 7th chakra points, are in the pineal and pituitary glands, in the very center of the brain. There are small holes between his eyebrows and the top of his head where the pressure blew out.
So for now, he is actually brain-dead. his body is dead, a hole in the heart, his blood, not circulating.
Lucky enough, all the medicine and anatomy lessons he knows said that the brain can still function with some major pieces missing if the pathways are re-routed. The other parts will fill in the blank, just like the optical nerve trick where the brain fills in the blind spot. Missing a limb becomes a phantom pain because the brain tries to fill in the void, but the body cannot...
Here, the energy fills the void. His power bridge the gaps, letting him live through this.
His body gets filled with natural energies. The first places to be affected by this are the destroyed main chakra points. They heal and get remade from pure energy and redesigned in the process. The effects will be unknown. This evolution is related to his mind/soul mixed with the mysterious powers of this world...
This is not a cultivation method or training. His older soul changed, expanded, and his young body tries to follow suit to contain it. This, in normal cases, was not supposed to impact his body this much. It should have worked its magic over years...
The worst part is that Sam speculated on most of the basic physics in this current solar system. He had to go beyond the limits of his previous views, wanting to be safe, creating safeguards for gravity, radiation and other unknown.
At the same time, once he gets through this, his body, which was already good, will be insane. A mashup of science and energy. Maybe, if he survives...
But for now, his situation is critical.
The gang retreated a hundred meters and kept going because all the plants and dirt—even the air, get dismantled to mist and entered Sam's body. The radius of destruction is expanding slowly.
The suction keeps getting stronger until boulders rise and crash into his body, pulverizing on impact. Rocks keep piling up, compressing together, until a ten-meter ball of concrete-like stone remains floating, one meter above the ground. Natural energy keeps seeping in from its pores, but at a much slower pace.
He has sealed himself in a stone chrysalis.
Barb: ("Well, it seems like he might make it! But I'm not sure about Gary... What's up with the egg though?")
They go back closer, cautiously, but still stay away from the stone sphere. The outside looks like kaleidoscopic spades, with small lights shining in between the cracks of the rock. It represents all the stuff in his mind, apparently leaking out.
In the end, they could do nothing. They retreated to a safe spot and watched from a distance, setting up a perimeter. It's pretty safe now, since even if an animal went there, it would die fast... Their power would get sucked dry before they could even touch the stone.
What the hell will he become???