While the approaching faction war filled Victor with all sorts of concerns, it also served as more fuel for the flames of his motivation. Under the warmth of his flaming resolve, Victor decided to make the most of his time tonight before he fell asleep. Right now he had three ways he could make use of his time. Train his ability, study the book from his teacher, or call his mentor.
Right now Victor was the most inclined to get some advice from his mentor and the least interested in training his ability. The reason for this was something he realized while making his deal with Rufus. After saturating an ability's components, he truly didn't know what the next steps afterwards were. Victor was under the impression Rufus had saturated both of his components already, so that meant he would be dealing with attuned shards next.
'He said something about making a false component. Whatever that means.'
If it was something he would have to be dealing with soon, Victor wanted to learn about it as soon as possible.
Using that line of thinking, Victor quickly used the system to contact his mentor. The seconds passed as Victor joined the silence in his room, waiting. Once a full minute passed, Victor finally received a notification.
[Unable to established mentor link]
This can happen too?
'I guess this makes sense. My mentor almost didn't pick up the first time, so perhaps he is busy right now. I'll try again tomorrow night.' Victor nodded in understanding before he reached into his pocket, revealing the grey book with the name Material Processing Universal Standard Method on the front cover.
'I am going to need as much strength as I can before the faction war occurs.' If the only way to achieve parity with the other ability users was by using this book, then today would be the best time to start studying it.
Victor then casually opened the book, intending to get a general sense of the content, only to be met with problems right at the first step. The first page was completely devoid of words and instead displayed strange patterns and symbols layered on top of each other in various colors. Completely baffled, Victor flipped to the next page. And the next. He then rapidly flipped through the entire book. before pausing somewhere in the middle. This book was completely unreadable.
Suddenly Victor understood Mr. Ferrcast's words about following the instructions to read the book. Victor quickly took those instructions from his pocket and scrutinized them thoroughly, following them step by step.
The next step involved opening his system window and finding a new function that must have been unlocked recently, known as [Library]. Using this function, Victor scanned the book he had received, thereby binding it to his system's library and granting reading rights.
Honestly, Victor was slightly exasperated by all the security measures. Victor needed both a digital key and a physical copy of the book to read the content. From what Victor recently learned, sometimes gaining access to both could be quite the ordeal. Victor was fortunate to receive both as gifts from his teacher. Recognizing the book's value, Victor understood the importance of taking precautions to prevent its loss or damage.
Victor focused his attention back towards the open book on his desk, and what he had once considered unreadable changed. While it looked to be chaos at first glance, his vision, augmented by the virtual key, allowed Victor to see the words previously hidden on the page.
Unbarred from reading the book, Victor spent the next couple of hours poring over its content. Late in the night, the metal book cover finally closed as Victor stared out his window, slightly puzzled. The words of this book were just too strange. According to the book, certain materials aligned with the world in such a way that they could resonate with and channel certain powers. The main purpose of the book as written by the authors was to teach the readers basic methods of how to process such special materials. Improper handling could lead to the material losing its efficacy, or worse, rendering it useless scrap.
But the book's first chapter confused him when it discussed the various materials' temperaments and how to best manage them while processing. After pages of ways to manage varying situations, Victor had to put the book down. Since when did inanimate objects start having personalities? Did those words mean his desk was watching him study right now?
Victor started looking at all items around his room warily before he gathered his wits, remembering this phenomenon only applied to special items. Victor subconsciously brushed the ring given to him by Angie. Did this ring have a temperament of its own?
Having no idea what that meant for him, Victor put the book down and lay down in his sim-pod, ready for some rest. The white capsule closed over his head as the nightlights powered off, and Victor was quickly lulled into an inorganic sleep.
Soon, he encountered a familiar set of choices. [Enter Simulation] and [Sleep] glowed in his vision, and this time Victor chose the first option. Today Victor had learned that it was possible to train in the simulated world just like in the real world, so he felt he had to try it out for himself. Entering the simulation in a sim-pod also provided about half the benefits of sleep, so Victor didn't worry too much about feeling exhausted in the morning. At least not yet.
Victor's avatar quickly loaded into his own private area within the virtual world. Some people would refer to this area as their second home and would customize it as such. Victor didn't really care much about the look of his spawn zone and only really used it to store his virtual items, so it was almost devoid of decoration, similar to his room in the real world.
'There has been so much change in the real world recently... I wonder how different this world is.' Victor hadn't thought about this world in a while, so now that he was here, it was quite natural for him to be curious about the changes.
Victor took a look outside his window, examining the street leading to one of the hubs of the virtual world from a height of 15 meters in the air.
'Hmmm, it's much less crowded than I remember.'
This made sense because the last time Victor was here, the age demographics of the students spanned a full five years, from 16 down to the minimum age of 12. In addition, most of those in his year must be training their abilities right now, so hardly any people would be frivolously wandering the simulation right now.
Victor observed from above, unafraid of detection. Currently, Victor and the building he was in were in a separate space, far from the city, rather than in the sky from which he was viewing the square. Only the window was connected to various main hubs around the virtual world that he could quickly access by leaving the room. Currently he felt no need to peruse the ghost town that one of his favorite meeting spots with his friend had turned into. Perhaps if Victor knew that after tomorrow he would only revisit this place in his memory, he might have haunted this street one last time.
Unfortunately, Victor would never get the chance. Quickly getting bored of the view, Victor left the window and sat down on his bed. While it was a strange thing to have a bed in a virtual world, it was actually just as effective as a real one.
Victor closed his eyes as he activated the source component of his ability, pulling him into that mysterious dark world once more. A black hole floated at the center of this space, and its corona gradually shone brighter as it spun faster, and its gravitational pull increased. Unaffected by the gravity well, shattered metal shards and symbols of shifting colors orbited around the spinning lightless mass. Scattered in the distance were many white sparks, 78 to be exact, all waiting to be absorbed.
Victor then got to work, focusing his attention on the nearest star, causing it to rocket towards the event horizon with increased speed. An unknown amount of time then passed as Victor pulled 8 more stars into the black hole before he sensed he was starting to get worn out. Victor's source component had absorbed 17 white shards at this point.
Victor had set a timer to wake him up once 3 hours had passed so he could escape from his ability core, but it seemed he was still too early. Temporarily trapped within his ability space, Victor didn't panic, and instead he turned his attention toward the center of this dark space, where the black hole sat.
Yesterday when he was here, he remembered deactivating his focus component from within this space. Applying that reasoning, Victor concluded that he should be able to deactivate his source component as well. Victor channeled the same sensation he had yesterday, but this time he directed it towards the black hole.
This time he was surprised, as he faced some sort of resistance. However, when he noticed the light around the black hole dim slightly, he decided to push against that force even further. Victor's efforts quickly bore fruit, as the spin of the black hole slowed, gradually entering its dormant state. Once the corona around the black hole fully disappeared, Victor felt his awareness getting hazy as his ability to see space faded from his vision.