By the point Jason had gotten into the flow, though, it was almost dinnertime. So, with a bit of regret, he finishes up and heads back to the house.

After a delicious stew, Jason spends a bit of time with his regular meditation to see if he can now pick stuff out but without the movement everything is blank. Just another example of the System being lazy. Still, it does put a timer on his attempts because in a few days it will be time to leave.

Not only that, but irl it is going to be Sunday soon and Jason wanted to take advantage of them dropping the time dilation. While the government did that so people would actually spend time together and make real world friends, Jason just wanted to focus more time on cultivation. Plus, the only people he would actually call friends are in-game. During school he had a few buddies but Rosha is really the only person he feels a connection to at the moment with Courtney taking up a distant second place.

Jason shrugs, it isn’t like he can’t hang out with them, that is why the government didn’t fully shut down NeoRealm, but having just started his path this slow day would be particularly important to him. The slow advancement of cultivating an hour here and there is fine to build upon a solid base. Now, though, he has just advanced and needs to do more work so his foundation will be just as steady.

But that is for the future. The night passes uneventfully and once again Jason heads out towards the training field. Yesterday was a good bit of practice but now with a full day Jason has a lot of hope that he can discover the basics.

Back out on the field a new group of guards are training but the same official is there from yesterday so it is easy enough for Jason to get back on the field. From there, he once again falls into doing his forms. Still, it takes him a while to once again fall into his moving meditation. It never was his favorite way of doing things.

Once Jason is in the flow, things smooth out and he is able to return to the state from yesterday. The power granted by his amber skeleton flows in and out of the outer layer where the System stats are and his inner void. The solid golden orange of ancient tree sap formed into strange strings. But Jason has been dealing with strings and thread for a while now. And that is important because whether on purpose or not, the System is trying to hide something.

The stat boosts from his bones are strings, just like any of his Energy strings and that means they aren’t indivisible. Each of them is once again made of smaller threads. At first, this didn’t seem to be the case but with time Jason was able to notice the signs. The barest amount of texture on the surface, the ends twisting, and of course a wisp of deja vu.

And the closer he watched them the became clear. The power didn’t just go between the System layer and his void. As the strings transferred between one to the other, the barest slice of the string was unwound and rewound in a new pattern. Most important to Jason however wasn’t the strings winding and unwinding but rather the strings that brushed the edge.

If the string of amber wasn’t angled to fully enter the other side, it would touch the boundary but be repelled. This was important to Jason because it means the System was also in charge of this transfer. For a boundary like this, Jason would expect it to just transform the string as long as it attempts to enter the other side. Only the System would bother to prevent the strings from weaving back and forth.

Of course, Jason admits he could be wrong about it, but a gut feeling tells him he isn’t. This, however, is a much worse outcome than just a natural boundary. Since the System is monitoring the separation, that means it could have changed his stats and chose not to. To fix the problem is either going to be a quick thing once the System realizes he can or it could be a painstaking grind, as the System fights him every step of the way.

The first step though will be to view the stats when not in motion because even with his stamina Jason can feel his body start to drag. It isn’t even lunch time yet. And that kicked him out of his meditation. Then it really hits him and he sits down hard. Out of breath for what might be the first time since he started playing NeoRealm, Jason can only chuckle as the System rewards him.

{Excessive Continued Exercise

+2 Stamina}

Soon his rest is over and he gets back up to continue. This time, though, he begins on a different form. The one Jason had been using was meant to continue at the same intensity all the way through after a short warm up. Of course, no form is long enough to have spent hours but the way it chained to the next move encouraged that continuance. If he had been actively practicing, of course, Jason would have been able to change things as needed. That, of course, is the opposite of the point of a moving meditation.

This new form, on the other hand, had a natural chain to it. Each new link on the chain is just a touch slower, just a touch less intense. Not completely new forms, just the same handful tweaked. After half an hour, Jason should be left standing nearly still with his hands barely moving between a set of blocks. The perfect thing to make sure not only doesn’t he run himself completely ragged, but that he should have enough time to try and see his stats without moving.