He spread out his will and imagined it positioned right in front of him. Waiting for the moment when the greater spirit had the least control over the rest of the spirits, he imagined an invisible wave in front of him and he pushed out. The wave rippled out from his position and in fact, Orou saw the spirits in front of him stop. If the spirits had faces, they would surely all be facing towards the Orou as for the first time, he felt a closer connection to the spirits. He wanted to reach out and will these spirits to do as he wished, but his will kept on going until Orou couldn’t even see it anymore. As soon as he stopped giving orders to the wave, the spirits returned to their usual behavior, at least until the greater spirit sent out a wave on its own.

For the rest of the day, he kept trying and trying to both move the wave forwards and at the same time, moving the spirits in front of him. He had a limited time frame to send out the waves as the influence of the greater spirit was too great otherwise, but by the end of the day, he found out that it was simply impossible for him. The second he let go of the wave, the spirits stopped obeying him. He could concentrate on multiple spirits at the same time, but this was something completely different, he would have to practically split his will into half and devote full attention to both tasks at the same time.

Of course, the second he realised that he needed to split his will in two, he tried to do so. He made his will go in both directions at once and he kept applying force to it until he started to feel his mind almost splitting in half. He writhed on the floor for several minutes and his headache got way worse, but for his efforts of almost killing himself, he felt a slight crack in his will. The crack didn’t feel natural or right in the slightest, but as he watched it, he could see it repair itself. He had to make a decision and he made a choice that not many people would make, the choice of inflicting pain upon himself, hoping for results unknown to him.

Over the next few hours, Orou’s will was tested in several ways. The pain from his head made Orou half insane, but he kept on going and going. He had urges of giving up, of simply giving up on this meaningless action and figuring out another way. Orou shook his head and cleared his mind of the distracting thoughts that were suddenly popping up in his head. The crack in the middle of his will was growing bigger and bigger, the larger it got, the harder it was to resist the various urges that were popping up, but the more he was tempted with giving up, the more determined he got with finishing what he started.

Even when he was resting in between tearing up his will, he felt a crack in his mind that seemed like it would end him at any moment. Various emotions, fear, despair, bitterness and insecurity, started popping up from the crack in his mind and Orou had to devote most of his time driving back these emotions to where they came from. He knew that if he let the emotions overwhelm his mind, the emotions would devour himself from the inside and make him broken, insane.

As he kept on splintering his will, he felt that in his mind, two separate entities were fighting off the oncoming wave of emotions. The left side that hosted his curiosity, his passion and his hot-headedness was driving the negative emotions towards the right and the right side that hosted his anger, his obsession and his resent was doing its best to resist the pressure. Orou didn’t have to torture himself anymore as once the two sides emerged, there was no turning back. The crack fed on the emotions that were being thrown around and it expanded, expanded and expanded until it shattered his mind.

His vision went black and his emotions became faint, his breathing became still and his heart even stiller. His consciousness was dim, but faintly, he felt himself swimming in an endless sea of black. He knew that the sea was endless and that he had been swimming for an eternity, but something drove him forward. He hoped that the sea would one day end and that he would no longer have to swim, for he had grown weary and old, but he knew that it was hopeless.

He knew that he was no longer able to swim, the black sea had long since devoured him. He moved with the currents and where he moved, moved the sea. He had grown as endless as the sea, but now he knew that there was nothing in this world besides the sea, that is, until he saw a light in the middle of the darkness. A tiny thing, not even worth its gaze, had approached him and challenged the might of the sea. Boundless anger overcame it as the entire sea lashed out, but the tiny thing held on strong despite his efforts. For the first time in eternity, he lifted his endless body and stared directly in the thing’s eyes, but all that he saw was endless light.

Orou woke up, his body drenched in water, rather, his own blood. He tried to stand up, but his body got confused as two separate wills ordered the exact same thing. He looked around, only for each one of his eyes to look in a separate direction, away from each other. He had succeeded in splitting his will and as he looked within his mind, he saw the faint remnants of a crack that was once there. After several minutes, confusion and anger, he got both of the wills to do as he wanted and he started looking around, looking for any signs of what had happened to him.

He was lying in a pool of his own blood in a different position than he remembered passing out on. The box was nowhere to be seen and next to him was Grizz, worriedly looking over him as he stirred. The sun was high in the sky, though he had no clue whether it was the next morning or a week after. He had difficulty in moving his body, so he simply laid there as he looked at Grizz.

“You need to stop doing this. I came back and when I saw you bleeding out from every orifice imaginable, I didn’t even know what to do. I called a few doctors to look over you, but they couldn’t find any injury or even anything wrong with you, so, I had to call in a few magical doctors. I’m telling you, magic is dangerous and getting involved will only bring your doom faster,” Grizz applied some sort of weird gel onto his scales and immediately, he felt the effect. He didn’t realise his body was burning hot until the gel cooled his entire body down to a manageable temperature.

He did his best to stand up and process what had happened, but no matter what he did, his two wills kept interfering in the process, almost like they wanted to outdo each other in who could be first to complete the task he had given. This caused the two wills to interfere with each other and in turn, make him unable to move. Orou sighed to himself and very slowly, guided the wills to work together. Still, once he found a way to coordinate and make the two wills work together, he would have achieved the first step in his mastery over spirits.