Chapter 20 - Mind training

My sleep was very fitful that night. I constantly saw some incomprehensible dreams where images flashed by so quickly I could not discern them. Some shadows passed me like people on the streets of a highly populated city. Indiscernible faces, mumbled words, dialogs heard as if through water. 

I woke up for split seconds and fell back asleep countless times, each time returning to my dreams as if I'd put them on hold.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was how incredibly thirsty I was. The second was a strong headache. Then how sweaty and sticky my body was within the astro suit, that should have regulated my body temperature and cleaned it from sweat. Just how much did I sweat to be in this state.

I remembered dreaming about something but could not remember any of it. All I had was the feeling that they were strange, unclear and incomprehensible. Trying to remember it seemed to increase the pain in my temples so, l stopped trying.

Even though I just woke up, I already felt tired as if I did not rest at all.

"Want to eat?" I asked Otty and he immediately replied "hungry". Yeah no wonder there. I stood up and rummaged through the backpack, taking out two dry rations.

But stopped in surprise, hearing his next words.

"Alright?" Asked Otty, looking at me with two sprouts, which was his gesture of fully concentrating on something.

"Yeah. My head hurts a bit, but otherwise fine." I replied in my head. "Why worry?"

"Felt sick. Worry." Said Otty.

"Yeah. I guess I did feel sick. I am not sure how to describe it but it felt like I overexerted myself yesterday." I said, not sure how much he would understand from it.

"Not use long. Feel weak quick. Need use more." Said Otty.

"Umm what?" I asked.

Otty sent me a picture of myself when I do morning exercises. I decided to do some training lately to keep my body in shape, as I had to rely on my physics quite a lot while in here.

"Use more like this; be stronger." Said Otty.

"Train my body? I do train it." I said, confused.

"Not body. Mind. Not used much. Need train." Answered Otty

Did he just call me stupid? Well, I did understand his meaning, but it still kind of hurt my ego. What was I doing then, if my life up till this day is considered not using my brain much? But jokes aside, my first thought yesterday was right. I really did overexert my mind.

But could I really train it? My mind. Or brain. Or whatever Otty meant.

Brain isn't a muscle. But it can build neuron links to quicken the actions that we train with repetitive moves. We call this muscle memory, but in truth it's just our brain creating a special neuron path that allows us to make this action without putting much thought into it. 

Speaking of repetitive actions, I could hardly make Otty hear my thoughts in the beginning and had to exert myself to send clear thoughts to him, but now I do it almost effortlessly. So would it work the same with absorbing Cry? If I do it more, will my mind adjust to it and let me do it faster? 

The question is, why do I need it at all, though? I could have just let my AI control my horns and do it effortlessly. Why did Otty demand I do it manually like this? What would happen when I train my mind doing it? All I can do is try and see.

"Alright, let's get back. The camping place we stayed at two days ago has lots of water. I need a bath. I feel so dirty under the suit; it's disgusting. If we hurry, we will be there by the end of today." I said, packing up my sleeping mat.

Then I bit on my ration and placed Otty on my shoulder. He can eat while I walk, and I can just eat on the go, so there's no use in wasting time here.

My head hurt with every step, and the loud crunching sound of dry ration in my mouth seemed to increase it even further, but I kept my pace, bearing through it. My desire to take a bath was a lot stronger than the headache.

*****

That evening, lying in an improvised bath made of some container and filled with water from a huge pond, I talked with Otty about my idea of returning to get Crypicker and Refiner, or at least make myself new horns with better functionality.

Otty did approve new horns, mentioning something about my current ones being too binding. The picker and refiner, however, he called a waste, obviously because he could help me steal Cry from golems better than any device.

He also did not forget to remind me not to take the maintenance unit to that core section. Obviously worried about the danger it would bring. But when I asked him about this danger, he only showed me the image of his view on me when I was training and told me to train my mind.

Was there something that could harm my mind?

The sleep that night was a lot calmer, but my mind kept wandering as if it was too excited to sleep, similar to insomnia. So, I slept in short dozes, waking and falling asleep over and over again. The next day I woke up half as tired as the day before but still not in the best condition by far. But at least my headache went away.

I put a pan on the impulse stove, filled it with water, and threw my brick-like ration into it, covering it with a lid. I felt sick from eating the damn thing like a cracker for the whole week. Now that I had enough Cry to power up a stove without worrying about charging the flashlight, there was no need to be thrifty.

I actually had so much I could heat up the whole bath without relying on the battery. My life now definitely was going to get a lot easier.

The water from the pond I found when I traveled here last time showed no signs of bacteria and viruses when I analyzed it. As if it were sterilized. Which was quite worrying, so I double-checked for any toxins and even scanned the area for radiation. But all my tests turned up negative. 

It did have some substances mixed in it, but otherwise it was just normal water. Yet I still filtered it through my astro suit's water recycler and boiled it before intake. Simply because I felt paranoid. It was still an alien space base, populated by strange alien life forms in the past. I could not be sure that the scanner would be able to find everything when this place originated from another universe.

Until I build myself an autonomous med capsule, better be paranoid than die of some strange disease.

Otty looked at my improvised porridge, and picked his own ration, raising it toward me, showing he wanted it too, which made me smile.

"Yeah. Sure buddy." I said throwing his ration into the pot as well. "Just don't get seared by hot liquid."

Now that I said it, I remembered that this whole time we only ate solid foods, so I became interested in what he would think of soups, sauces and porridges. There are so many kinds of broths in the galaxy, they say no server can fit the data on them all.

"We should make curry when we get back." I said, picturing it in my head. Otty definitely seemed interested.

For some reason I actually had an easy time picturing "hot" in my head, which surprised me. It was always a kind of a stumbling block in our conversations when I needed to describe something that relies on sensing.

So how did I just do that? If you ask me how I picture "hot", I can't explain, but I definitely just did and from the looks of it, Otty actually understood it.

Looks like mind training does indeed work.

*****

On the way back I made two more stops for rest before I reached the house. Every evening I would spend a few hours compiling a report of sorts on the design specifics of the Demonic race, comparing it to the study of that guy from the Archaeologists forum, where I outlined what I found reliable and what differed and some explanations why it was made this way from my opinion.

Yeah, my opinion part was a load of bullshit. With my maintenance unit I had full information on everything I've passed. Other people travelling through mazes had to rely on their own wit to understand their findings. Obviously there were lots of unsaid or wrong things. So, I hoped my addition to his work would be helpful to people, but I did not want to make it obvious that I had something so OP in my hands.

Why I bothered to do all this, I can't really answer. I was alone for more than a month now, with no one but my friend Otty to converse with. And he is not such a good conversation partner, to be true. I wanted a bit of socialization, I guess. Besides, this gave me something to do in my boring evenings. A sort of hobby, I'd say.

Once my report was done, I posted it and went to sleep.

The next morning, I continued my travel back, and in half a day we finally reached our house. And the first thing I did was hop on the hoverbike and engage the generator charging the thrusters.

Checking my particle use as my masterpiece rose into the sky, my smile stretched to my ears. 

"It works!" I said to Otty. "I have enough to fly for at least an hour. If we absorb all that Cry from the golems I…, will be able to fly it for days without stopping. This is fantastic, Otty!" 

In an hour on this thing I can cover more distance than I could in several days of walking.

That evening we had a banquet. 

Oh, I forgot to mention, Otty LOVED the porridge. Even though it was made of crappy ration. So as a celebration, I filled the table with all kinds of things, just to let him try them as many as I could. Well, most of them I never tried myself, to be honest, so it was a surprise for both of us.

After the belly ripping dinner and a bath I lay down on the bed deciding to check the forum. 

To tell you the truth I was a bit anxious to open it the whole day. It's been a week since that girl deleted her post denouncing me, so I hoped people more or less calmed down by now and would not bother bullying me. However, when I connected to the Arena's intranet it was instantly apparent that they were not. The notification mark was red, showing a lot of comments left on my new post. 

My mood was instantly souring. I swore silently, losing any desire to see it and just disconnected without checking it any further. No doubt people still had a lot of crap to say about me. Just a waste of time. 

I sighed and went to sleep. Maybe tomorrow. Today was too good a day to spoil it by reading people trash talking about me.

Just as I closed my eyes, though, I received a message from Keith. It was a short message that had only one sentence.

"Are you fucking serious?" 

That was his reply to my latest message to him.

"Oh, Keith is finally awake." I muttered and wrote him a reply that read:

"Hey, dude, is it finally morning wherever you are."

"Yeah, we are back from that official visit, so our day time difference is back to seven hours, but forget that. Are you serious about golems? You want to try hacking an ancient weapon of war?" Came back his reply a few seconds later.

"They are shut down so they aren't a threat. And I can try it on the one I stole Cry from. Without its Cry, it's just a piece of brick."

"You sure it won't be a threat?" Asked Keith.

"Yeah." I answered.

"Then sure. Let's fucking do it. I can't wait to see what kind of shit the Demons put in it."

"Okay. I'll let you know when I bring one to my lab. Sleepy now. See you tomorrow." I said and went to sleep.