“Sorry about the hand thing, kiddo,” the Core chuckled from across the table. “I’m just a little rusty.”

  “Yeah it’s alright,” I grunted, rooting through the vegetables I’d brought home. After getting used to just one arm, going back to two was messing with me.

  “Hey, kid, don’t you ever cry in pain?” The Core asked. “I had to erase your arm and start all over again. Didn’t that hurt?”

  “Of course it hurt.”

  He frowned. “That kind of pain would’ve killed a weaker man. And you said ‘owch.’”

  “That’s cause it hurt.”

  “What kind of a sociopath are you?”

  I’ve already died several times,” I stated. “I don’t like it, but in return, I’ve been building up something of a pain threshold.”

  “Sure you have,” the Core cackled. He took a bite of a purple squash, before bursting into a spitting fit. “AGH. What is this?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s a kiwoard. Eating a hundred of those will naturally increase your vitality by one.”

  “A hundred.”

  “Yes.”

  He poked the squishy, slimy membrane. “A hundred of these?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you willingly put yourself up to this? You are a sociopath.”

  I rolled my eyes. “When you said we were gonna start training, I didn’t think you meant having breakfast.”

  The Core snorted. “It’s eleven thirty five pm. That’s dinner, not breakfast. And second…come’on, you can’t start training on an empty stomach. I mean you can, technically, but then you’d probably die, considering what I have in store for you.”

  “And that is?” I asked.

  “It's a surprise,” the Core cackled. “Humans love surprises.”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  “Like what?” The Core asked, fluttering his eyelashes.

  “Don’t do that either. It’s disturbing and you know it.”

  “Grindy, you’re just too serious,” The Core groaned. “Lighten up, would you?”

  “What am I supposed to call you, anyway?” I asked, forcing the conversation to focus. “I can’t possibly call you ‘the Core.’”

  The Core scoffed. “Why not? Human names are trivial things. Either they’re so bland as to defeat the point of a unique and original name, or they’re so unique and original as to become unpronounceable. There’s far more sense to the names of Cores.”

  “Your name seems pretty generic to me,” I said. “There’s maybe one adjective separating you from every other Core.”

  The Core rocked his chair back, smiling to himself. “You may refer to me as the Fleshborn Everwatching Core who commands the Gauntlet of the Body. Or Core of the Gauntlet of the Body if you must be brief.”

  “You want me to call you the Core of the Gauntlet of the Body?”

  “Of course,” the Core of the Gauntlet of the Body said with a smirk, tipping his white hat over his eyes.

  “That’s way too many syllables,” I sighed.

  “Of course it is,” the Core chuckled. “The longer your enemy spends reading your nameplate the more time you have to go for the kill. Plus, longer names that are easier to forget make people uncomfortable, which is also a lot of fun.”

  He tapped his chin.

  “Hey, you oughta be calling me Master too, since I’ll be training you.”

  “I’m not calling you ‘Master.’”

  My chest tightened.

  “Ah ah ah,” the Core of the Gauntlet of the Body said, wagging his finger. “You made a promise to follow orders. And that’s an order. Besides, if there’s a Tungsten ranked being teaching you and you don’t call him ‘Master’ then people’d start getting suspicious. Of course Master is just an honorific, preceding the rest of my name.”

  “You seriously want me to call you the Master Core of the Gauntlet of the Body?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s not suspicious?” I took a measured breath. What kind of a lunatic was I getting involved with? “If you are to teach me, you need to impersonate a human. And to do that you need a human name.”

  “Fine.” He huffed. “Let’s see.” His eyes lit up, and he smiled wide. “Call me Reggie!”

  “Reggie?” I clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Does that name have any significance?”

  “It came to me in a dream,” Reggie whispered, nodding to himself.

  Dreams are basically visions of life before the game. If a monster were to be having dreams that would change everything we understood about their—

  “I’m messing with you!” Reggie cackled. “It’s just the first name that came to mind.”

  “This is going to be a long couple of weeks,” I groaned.

  “Weeks?” The Core, Master Reggie, laughed in an unsettling manner. “Ascending takes a matter of years!”

  I groaned a little louder.

  “Oh I’ll get you up and ready much faster than that,” Master Reggie said. “The sooner you can exact judgment, the better. Speaking of which, it’s time for your first lesson. We just need some materials…”

  He snagged one of the vegetables. “Perfect.”

  “Rose and Junior need to eat those,” I sighed. “They raise hitpoints.”

  “Bah,” Master Reggie grunted. “They’ll thank me later. Now, you’ve been practicing weaponizing your mind, haven’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said, flicking a burst of mind energy at the curtains, causing them to flutter. “The second area is the area of the mind. I know that much—”

  Master Reggie flicked my forehead. “You. Are an idiot. Now say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  “Now say I love you Master Reggie.”

  I scowled, but my chest had already begun tightening. “I love you Master Reggie.”

  Master Reggie clapped his hands like an excited four-year-old. “This is going to be so much fun!” He grabbed a squash and bit into it, before immediately spitting it back out. “GAH. Where was I? Ah. right. Tell me what you can do.”

  Finally, time to learn.

  “I can move objects, and I can hit them with a cut of mental energy—”

  “Split this squash down the middle,” Reggie said.

  I focused my will to a single point, and snapped it forward, slashing against the skin. It cut through several layers of membrane, though not so deep as to pierce through the gourd's liquid center.

  Reggie clicked his black tongue. “Disappointing.”

  “I’ve got it,” I scowled, refocusing my mental energy.

  “Stop, stop,” Master Reggie sighed, waving his hand in the air. The Squash separated into a thousand little pieces, each dropping onto the plate, and gushing a sickly blue liquid over the table. “Do you see the problem?”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “You have a stronger will than I do?” I guessed, reaching for some napkins.

  Master Reggie swatted my hand away. “My will is pathetic, kid. I’m just stupid. Stupidity is the key to power in the second area. And in all the areas, actually. The more stupid you are, the stronger you become.”

  I frowned. “Please tell me you’re joking—”

  “Shut up and watch, kiddo,” Master Reggie grunted. He squeezed his hand and another squash appeared out of nowhere.

  There wasn’t a trace of mana so…

  My eyes shot wide open. “How’d you do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Master Reggie said. “The squash was always in my hand. Of course, when I say ‘squash,’ I mean that solely in the metaphorical sense.”

  He cracked the squash against the table. Immediately, piles of gold and jewels split out from the membrane, clattering noisily on the hardwood floor.

  I started choking.

  Master Reggie smirked. “If you can believe that something is, then it will be. Or that’s how it works in the second area, anyway. This feature is cataclysmically weakened in the other areas, but it is present, if you try hard enough. But not the first area. Obviously. That’s my second law. Just try harder, even if you’re doing something stupid. Actually, if you’re doing something stupid then that’s all the more reason to try even harder. Now, tell me that the table is clean.”

  I blinked.

  “The table is clean.”

  Master Reggie frowned. “You have to mean it. Shut off your brain and convince yourself that the table is clean.”

  “Mind power can do that?” I asked.

  “It’s not telekinesis, moron,” Master Reggie groaned. “You are exerting your understanding of the universe, on the actual universe, with such an immense mental power that the actual universe breaks into a cold sweat, soils his pants, and follows your lead.”

  I closed my eyes. “The table is clean.”

  When I opened them…the table was still covered in blue-and-purple stained coins and jewels.

  “Not like that!” Master Reggie hissed. “GEEZ! Keep your eyes open! And then hold a bunch of the slimy money! And then convince yourself that it’s still clean anyway!”

  I obeyed, forming the mess into one large pile and concentrating as hard as I could.

  “The table is clean.”

  Nothing.

  Master Reggie sighed. “Well, I tried. Keep at it.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “Until the chick on the couch wakes up,” Master Reggie said.

  “Rose—” I blinked. “Chick?”

  “Yep. When she sees the mess you’ve made, then she’ll probably kill you.” Master Reggie chuckled. “Anyway, I’m going to bed. I’m taking yours by the way. If you finish early, go sleep outside or something.”

  “You’re an exceptionally rude person.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to run out of stamina,” I hissed. “I can’t do this for seven hours.”

  “Then convince yourself that you aren’t tired.” Master Reggie shrugged, gesturing in my direction. “You seem good at that.”

  He wandered off, leaving me alone, at a horrendously messy table.

  “Here goes nothing,” I grumbled. “The table is clean.”

  At first, I concentrated on just one object at a time, intending to work my way up through the table, but I was starting to realize what Reggie meant by this lesson. Breaking a brick with my will was different than convincing myself that something never existed.

  In other words, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

  I’d assumed you could turn thoughts into physical forces, like telekinesis. But Reggie was creating and destroying matter. That’s not something you can do with a push or a pull.

  I could only assume using will as a literal force was merely an act of misinterpreting the power of the second area. But I don’t use will to cause change. I don’t use anything. That is simply the way it had always been. But in order to make it be the way it would have always been, I’d have to use willpower, and a lot of it.

  I’d have to weaponize my perspective.

  After somewhere around five or six hours, I collapsed on the table.

  “This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” I groaned, rubbing my aching head. “I need some water.”

  No sooner had I thought about moving, that my chest painfully tightened.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I hissed. “Is this Reggie’s idea of revenge?”

  I rolled my eyes and glanced back at the table, covered in taunting blue goop and golden jewels.

  I was just so, so, tired.

  “Break.”

  The table split down the middle.

  I stared.

  At most, I’d never been able to break something with my mind that I couldn’t break with my hands. But an entire table? Broken that fast?

  There was a thunderous crash as either side smashed into the ground, denting the floor beneath.

  Rose woke up, peeking over her shoulder at the mess of blood, gold, and splintered wood that covered the Union carpet.

  “...Grind?” She mumbled.

  I’d managed not only to destroy the table, but all of our groceries.

  Think.

  How’d I break the table? What’d I do differently? I wasn’t really focusing, my mind had started to wander—

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath. “Disappear.”

  The table shuddered, and the blue vanished, leaving behind splintered wood and the gold.

  “Rebuild,” I ordered, and the halves of the table snapped back together, seamlessly reforming along the edge.

  “Sort.”

  The coins and jewels clattered together as they stacked up onto the counter, forming neat piles.

  Rose smacked her lips. “Grind? You alright?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I’ll need to buy more food tomorrow.”

  “Alright,” Rose yawned, rubbing her eyes drifting back to sleep.

  After all this time and effort, the trick was agonizingly simple.

  You had to create your own system.

  Whatever action you were going to use mental energy to do, it had to make sense within the rules of the game. Bigger tasks require more power.

  Thus, in order to get more power from the same effort, you just had to increase the efficiency.

  Before, I’d gathered my power like an ability, then fired it out.

  Not only was I wasting mental energy to visualize the power separately, I was wasting energy to store it, and energy to fire it, and energy to aim it, and most of all defining mental energy as just ‘energy’ was a disgusting limitation of the fullness of power that a human could visualize.

  But I couldn’t just say that something worked and made it happen. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe it.

  Hence a system, to convince myself.

  It’s so simple.

  All I had to do was picture a task, such as fixing the table. I would spend an appropriate amount of mental energy, the equivalent energy it would take to make myself physically fix the table, and the game will handle the in-between part where I’d normally have to actually go and fix the table.

  In the second area, visualizing is the same as doing.

  Why can I make the blue goop disappear? Why I can throw it away, of course. And how much energy would that take? Not much at all.

  How could I sort the money? I know where everything is supposed to go. I simply convince myself that I have already done the work, and the work happens without me.

  If I pushed that a little further, I could also do things beyond my power.

  When I split the table down the middle, I was picturing myself repeatedly bashing my head against its surface.

  By inputting multiple of the same mental action all at once, I can additively increase the force of the task.

  If I use the wrong model, then I waste my power. That’s a matter of efficiency. And, similarly, different models are good at different uses of mental energy.

  But summoning should be impossible. It violates conservation of mass.

  I walked over to the trash can, where I’d imagined myself throwing the blue pulp, and, sure enough, it was filled.

  This was going to take some thinking.

  Conservation of mass is, itself, part of a separate system. If one system uses the logic of repeated mental actions for a single physical result, then a separate system could use mental energy as a kind of currency, such as turning that mental energy into fighting monsters, earning money from that, and then buying a product from somewhere.

  “SODA.”

  A spark of pain jolted through my head, but the command worked, and a vacuum-sealed aluminum can of pop sat in my left hand.

  Now, this can has no actual seller. When I imagined buying it, I was purchasing it from the universe, as if the universe was selling goods. And since this universe exists in a video game, conservation of mass is merely a suggestion. I provided the currency, and the game provided the product.

  “So that’s how they get so much of this stuff summoned,” I muttered.

  Still, this method was far too vague. Summoning a single can of soda took more effort than everything else combined.

  Why?

  This was a video game. Nothing should have any true value or mass. It’s all relative. No matter how much I summon, the universe doesn’t run out.

  And what about the ultimate goal, using mental commands to run other commands? That wouldn’t be possible with the efficiency I have now.

  Yes, this would take quite some time.

  I cracked the can open and took a deep gulp.

  From this point onward, things are going to get insane.

  // {Notice} //

  Hi! Hope you enjoyed a fantasy story. But as much fun as a fantasy is, there’s things in the real world beyond what writing can fix. That’s where you come in.

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