|2 weeks later... |
*Bamp*
Ouch
*Bamp*
Ow
*Bamp*
Fuck you, I give up on this shit.
If there was something that Ethan began to hate deeply in this small space of two weeks, those things were the system and his powers.
Well, in the case of his powers, they were too complex and he wasn't used to dealing with supernatural things, so it wasn't like he hated him, he just didn't understand them completely.
Now the system, this one he wanted to burn in the deepest, most horrible, dark and lifeless circle of hell, being tortured daily by the Devil himself while the other demons tore pieces of his soul in the slowest and most painful way possible.
That was probably the worst thing he had ever wished for someone.
But he had his reasons. One of the main ones, or rather, the only reason he had to hate him was the fact that he did not fulfill his main function, which was to help Ethan control and improve his skills.
And maybe, just maybe, it was also because of the incompetence of the system, he was learning hard how difficult it was to fly.
First, let's recap what happened in the last two weeks.
After "settling" in the abandoned Hell's Kitchen building, Ethan decided to create a training routine for him, to start improving his skills and perhaps increasing his fusion rate. But Ethan came to be disappointed very quickly.
Of course, he managed to learn some things from this training. First, he learned how his improved physical attributes worked.
Ethan hadn't noticed until before, perhaps because he spent a lot of time in the hospital without doing any kind of physical exercise, but his strength, speed and endurance were now slightly greater than before. Not on a superhuman scale, not on the same level as Captain America, but almost at the same level as a boxer or professional fighter.
It took him a while to understand why he was stronger, until he remembered that one of his abilities was improved physical attributes. In a nutshell, he should be much stronger than a normal human. But he later wondered why even with his supposed improved attributes, he still wasn't so much stronger than a normal human.
Only after a lot of thinking and pondering, he arrived at the most logical explanation for that problem. It had to do with his fusion rate.
As the system had said before, its potential and capabilities while Enerjak were linked to his fusion rate, and as it increased, the more his abilities would increase to the same extent. And the same applied to his improved attributes. Due to its current low fusion rate, his attributes, although superhuman, were still limited by its merger rate.
After reaching this brief conclusion, Ethan came to the erroneous conclusion that physical training would also be a way to increase his fusion rate. And well, it wasn't that he was wrong, but that he had put too much faith in the wrong training method.
The biggest proof was that, even after a whole week of punching concrete walls, making long runs around the neighborhood and lifting improvised weights that he did with things he found on the street, his fusion rate rose from 1.50% to:
1.53%
A fucking increase of 0.03%. He even wanted to cry seeing that shit
After being very disappointed with that pathetic increase in the fusion rate, Ethan asked for advice to the system, who essentially used different words to say the same as the other time, to train his other skills. Without much to do, he decided to try the skills he considered most "simple", because it couldn't be worse than the previous experience.
Big mistake.
The skills had no problem, they worked exactly as they should. The problem was that Ethan didn't really know how to use them. As he himself had said before, he only had the theoretical part of the skills, and not the practical part. And if there was something he learned to value recently, it was that practice was more important than theory.
His experience with telepathy was something funny. He could hear the thoughts of others around him, but because of his inexperience with skills, to allow his thoughts to enter the minds of others also required him to completely lower his mental barriers and allow the thoughts of others to freely enter his head in an overwhelming way.
That is, depending on where he was, it was as if he had hundreds of people talking directly inside his skull. And not as passing thoughts or whispers, they were loud and complete voices, some even screaming on certain occasions.
So after this experience that would be marked forever in his memory, Ethan decided to put telepathy aside until he had more experience with mental powers. So, he soon decided to focus on telekinesis. Which proved another big mistake.
Unlike telepathy, whose theoretical part was simple and its application complex, the theoretical part behind telekinesis was complex and its application is incredibly simple. After all, it's just using your mind to move objects, right?
Wrong. Very wrong. Incredibly wrong.
And Ethan learned it in the worst way.
First of all, to use telekinesis it was not only necessary to think and make it happen, no, this is only in cartoons. Any mental power, to be used in the right way, psychic energy is needed.
According to the system, psychic energy nothing more than the force exerted by powerful minds that with proper training, can be manifested by certain individuals to develop skills such as telekinesis and telepathy. And needless to say, Ethan wasn't a powerful mind. Far from it. So his process to use this energy was extremely complex.
It had two forms, one complex and one even more complex.
The complex required using the universal theory or fact that everything and everyone in the universe has a certain amount of psychic energy. Based on this principle, he could use his mental power to manipulate this psychic energy scattered around the environment to use these skills externally, and perhaps even entering the realm of psychokinesis.
But this required a mental power and concentration that Ethan did not have, so he discarded this theory and started the even more complex method, which as the name said, was even more complex.
This process required using a power that Ethan did not yet have full mastery, energy manipulation, to absorb the energy of chaos present in the environment and convert it into psychic power. First, a simple explanation is needed.
Chaos is a universal force present in every corner of the universe, from the most organized places to the most chaotic zones. And one thing Ethan came to learn was that Enerjak was, in a way, a god of chaos.
The Chaos Force, one of the fundamental forces of the universe, or rather the multiverse of the Sonic franchise, was one of the main sources of Enerjak's power and also the reason why he was so feared, because in addition to a literal omnipotent god, he was also one of the beings with the greatest understanding and dominance of the Chaos Force. And because the chaos of the Sonic franchise is somewhat similar to the chaos of the marvel world, Ethan could use both equally.
The even more complex method involved Ethan absorbing the chaos around him in controlled quantities using his energy manipulation, and through a conversion method that he did not fully understand and could only do because, well, he could do, turn this energy into psychic energy and use it in his mental abilities.
Despite the complexity behind it, Ethan could understand it to a certain level, but applying it was another story, specifically because of a very important detail. Chaos was, as the name itself said, a chaotic energy and almost impossible to control, and Ethan only achieved this feat by having the powers of a being who had already conquered it before. But it didn't mean there were no consequences.
It turns out that Ethan didn't have a way to focus this energy. He didn't have the Chaos' emeralds , he didn't have a flawless magical ritual, much less a futuristic and stylish machine, he just channeled through his powers and his own body. And because his body still doesn't have the same properties as Enerjak's body, he didn't channel chaos in the same way.
Briefly, if he absorbed more energy from chaos than his body could handle, he would suffer some repercussion, usually in the form of internal damage. Lucky for you that these damages were never really serious and your new regeneration was able to take care of them.
Needless to say, Ethan never managed to do the part of converting chaos into psychic energy. The process of absorbing the chaos of the environment required a level of concentration that Ethan did not have and if he lost concentration and ended up absorbing more than he could handle, he would suffer some repercussion and end up losing all the energy absorbed until that moment.
So, after much failure in the goal of training his powers, Ethan decided to focus on a simpler skill and much easier to master. Fly.
The theory behind the idea of flying was even very simple to be honest. First, Ethan needed to absorb the energy of the chaos around and use it to cover his body, creating a field around him that only he could see.
Then, he needed to imagine or generate a force that would pull him up, something like an initial impulse or propulsion.
Then, he just needed to idealize a force that would keep him in the air and prevent him from falling horribly to the ground. And to move through the air, he just needed to imagine a new force or impulse that would make him move at the desired speed to the desired direction.
Briefly, it was like applying those properties and formulas that your Physics teacher taught and you forgot after passing of year.
But it was easier said than done.
Currently, Ethan could push himself above the ground and stay for a few seconds, because keeping the field stable while ensuring that the applied force remained stable was a difficult task.
So far, he has fallen on his face on the ground 37 times.
Progress, isn't it?
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Sorry for the unnecessary info dump, I got really excited when I was writing this chapter