Reid dove into himself, eager and ready for a new challenge - a puzzle to solve. He put himself into his threadspace, and took a few moments to survey the winding tangles that stretched farther than he could perceive. Reid doubted that he would be able to catalogue everything in there even if he had thousands of years to do so. Sufficiently reminded of just how much about the system and its workings he didn't understand, Reid decided to ask the question.

"Alright, Nyx - where do I start?"

She popped into being next to him. The burnt and damaged parts of her body looked like they were healing, and she wore a smile.

"I thought I already told you - I'm not just going to give you the keys to fix this. Maybe I got carried away with the mental fortress comment, but I just wanted to be the one to get in a good line for once." Reid firmly believed that she was the one making those kinds of statements more often than he did, but kept his thoughts to himself. "As for direction - you get one, tiny bit of advice. You have to choose - so sort out what you want to keep out, and connect it. That's it. It's a task that can take people years, so don't rush it. Keep raising your stats while you work on this - you'll need the change of pace."

Reid attempted to puzzle out the comment, then tried to just dive into the threadspace and feel for what he needed to work on. He had a hunch that it was related to the elastic threads, but struggled to understand what he was actually meant to do.

Hours later, Reid pulled out of his metaphysical self with a scowl. He drank a bottle of rainwater, and chewed on a strip steak.

Reid had followed every initial hunch and idea, and still had no clue what he was meant to do. He was entirely lost on whether he was even looking in the right place. He felt worse than when he'd started.

Maybe this was what Nyx meant when she kept warning him about things taking time.

#

#

Reid stretched and peered up through thick leaves that shook and fluttered against a strong breeze. His muscles loosened, and every bit of relief was pure and deep. With each passing day, his appreciation grew for good habits that took better care of his body.

He had followed Nyx's advice. He took a lazy, winding route that slowly brought him closer to his next beast lord target. He spent more time in his threadspace and on self-affixation than he did jogging - and he kept himself to that slower pace as he let day after day pass around himself.

Staying in one spot longer and moving more slowly let him see the interesting changes happening to the tutorial space in the wake of the difficulty increase's rainstorm. Tree branches were harder to break off. The ground under his feet felt more solid, and real. The forest around him was abuzz with noise and action. Tamrids moved more quickly. Birds flew higher. It was obvious now that the rain was more than water - it was somehow laced with power, and the environment in the tutorial space grew from it. The phenomenon was one that even puzzled Nyx, who simply commented that she'd never heard of something like this happening - at least not in a tutorial.

Reid wasn't going to spend too long questioning the gift, though. The improved water from the environment did more to quench his thirst, and the one regular animal he'd caught and eaten was slightly better at satiating his hunger than G-grade meat. He wasn't about to decimate some local population for snacks, but it was nice to know he had something capable of doing a bit to satiate him if he needed it.

Now that Reid was in F grade, Win's pills didn't do quite as much as they were intended to. They still had a small impact, but more often than not, Reid was using pills to flavor meals rather than for their intended purpose. Reid's self-healing could handle any injuries, and fatigue was an opportunity to make gains in his metaphysical constitution. The kitchen space had continued to develop, and Reid was getting pretty good at stretching energy further than before, which meant more relative benefit from every snack and meal. He did wish that metaphysical meals had actual proper taste to them instead of the odd energy-and-nutrients sensation, but he was at least happy with the progress he'd made over the last nine weeks - in each of his stats.

The game store and library metaspace was more organized than ever, and Reid had started to collate different kinds of information into 'reference' guides for himself. They sat at the table near the entrance to the library like coffee table books, and when Reid got bored, he sometimes found himself reading through them to see if he came up with new ideas. He explored movements in the physical world, and explored his metaphysical body within himself.

His physical body grew more durable and stronger in equal measure, and he continued to make excellent progress in his sea of rage metaspace. The newest large addition he'd managed was a snack shack, a squat wooden structure with a single entry door for employees and solid wood windows that opened during business hours to let the college-aged workers take wet or sandy cash and pass back cool - or hot - treats. They'd only paid for the overpriced food once, and Reid could vividly remember splitting a Choco Taco with Susan while Sara devoured a fudge pop. The give of the shell between his teeth and the cold, creamy interior cooling his mouth. The bitter taste of sunscreen and sweat as he cleaned a bit of melted chocolate off of Susan's cheek with his tongue.

Reid found himself more than a little distraught when his brain caught up to him, and he realized he'd made metaphysical Choco Tacos that were impossible to eat. The sun-faded menu set against worn and flaking pale blue paint mocked him with each tempting offering. Reid decided one of his first stops whenever he made it to some sort of established civilization would be a restaurant.

Reid's perception increased in tandem with other stats, and his 'physical' intelligence improved - but not for the reason he wanted it to. Despite an endless series of failures, Reid almost no closer to proving out how he could control effects like telepathy than when he'd started. He'd gotten to the point where he just played with and studied other threads to try and give himself inspiration on his main goal. It wasn't time wasted, of course. His mental map of the space was slowly building, and his intelligence gains were catching up with everything else.

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Constitution: 338 -> 550 Dexterity: 281 -> 550 Intelligence: 210 -> 518 Perception: 261 -> 523 Power: 325 -> 550 Control: 550

For the first time in a long while, Reid had been able to max out some of his stats. The accomplishment was wonderful, and he reveled in the familiar sensations of getting to the hill he couldn't move past, and the elastic end of the line on the metaphysical side. As usual, things had gotten more difficult the closer he came to the limit - but by forcing himself to only work in smaller stints, he hadn't caused himself any serious backlash through the process.

He felt good, powerful and agile and tough and bright - but even with the high of his gains, Reid was frustrated.

Nothing had taken this long, with so little progress to show for his effort. He'd tried to take inspiration from the wind moving the leaves - that sometimes air was absorbed, and sometimes it was resisted. It only gave him an alternate method of the same kinds of resistances he already possessed. He tried taking each individual thread and bending and morphing and tying them, but it didn't work. Nothing was repeatable. No progress built.

Reid went through everything he thought he understood in his mind. He had four different types of thread. Regular threads were seemingly all negative, and he had them set up to outright block all of those effects - which he knew included puppeteer and paralyzing roars. Metallic threads were positive - boosts and healing, and the like. Plastic thread, like fishing line, was informational in nature, and included identify. And the last was elastic thread. All Reid had initially done with it was to wind it into a string and leave it alone. Since then, he'd pulled it all apart and reworked it in dozens of different ways.

Some of the elastic threads seemed to belong all on their own. Others seemed to potentially fit in with additional threads that were sometimes elastics and sometimes not. There was no single continuous rule Reid could competently identify within the things that let him understand what he truly needed out of the things.

He once more whirled to where Nyx stood, a neutral expression plastered on her face as she watched Reid struggle.

"No."

"I'm stuck - I have no idea what to do, and nothing is bringing me closer to an answer. I don't even know if I'll get it on my own if I spend years on it. I need to figure this out so I can keep progressing."

"Untrue. You've been raising your stats just fine. That's progress. You choose. Sort out what you want to keep out, and connect it. And you get no other notes, so stop fishing."

Reid bit his lip, and returned to the threads. There were so many, and he sort of knew what some of them did, but it wasn't enough. It hadn't been, in all of his experimentation.

If that was the case, why? Why had Nyx kept insisting that he only have this one hint and why did she give it to him at all? Even when he'd made his mana compressor, Reid had gotten more information and guidance, and he at least had some idea of what to do there.

A full minute passed, Reid sorting through threads, before the idea slammed back into him.

What if he'd been going about things wrong this entire time? What if the answer wasn't in the threads themselves, but existed as something else - a kind of construct, the same way he'd made the compressor.

Reid closed his eyes to think.

There were so many options for a construct - and Reid wasn't quite sure how making one would impact his mind. What he wanted it to do - needed it to do - was to restrict not the skills themselves, but who could use them on Reid. Minor telepathy would be great for he and Lycra to talk, but someone he didn't know shouldn't be able to use it on him. Similarly, he'd be fine with Win and Lycra identifying him properly, even though others shouldn't be able to.

This was beyond knots and aglets. It was an entirely new application. A tremendous challenge.

It was also the first thing that felt like it was truly on the right path since he'd started experimenting. Reid dove in with eager glee.

He tried, first, to make structures to hold the threads in specific ways - at an angle to each other, curved in certain sections, or compressed. Nothing panned out. He shifted to making more complex tools and patterns. He wove threads together and then cross-stitched them into an aperture he'd created. It felt closer, but not quite right. He puzzled himself forward. It wasn't about intensity - not really. Maybe there would be a time when Lycra had to use a skill on him that would be identified as an attack? If so, Reid wanted it to be allowed through.

Two days of experimentation flew by as Reid's progress built.

He wove threads through different mediums, and how he did it seemed to matter. The right way to do things varied with each different type of thread. But he was still missing something critical - or more than one something. Reid worked through things, and tried to apply Nyx's hint to his work.

It was supposed to be his choice - his ability to sort through who he wanted to keep from using skills on him, rather than the skills themselves. So what he needed was twofold - preventative measures, and a way to enable them.

Reid took inspiration from the mana compressor. He brought himself to it and allowed the headache as he looked over the safeties meant to prevent him from hurting himself. There was a blowoff and a plug to stop the reaction entirely. Reid brought himself back to the threadspace, and tried to imagine what those tools would look like, applied to a thread. He had decent ideas, and knew his solution wouldn't be perfect.

But it would be progress.

He remade the medium, wove his threads, and then built a series of simple constructs around it. One would close around the thread itself and compress it in place. Another would shift the string - somewhat violently - between a straight and wound state. Another was set up to try and separate the thread entirely from the outside space by slamming caps on each end. With only a half dozen revisions, Reid felt he'd reached a point where things would operate as intended.

It wasn't the most visually impressive thing he'd made... by a far margin. The constructs jutted out and surrounded the thread, and he'd added an octagonal structure to keep everything stable. It made the end result look like a paving stone that had a single blade of grass growing out of its center.

Reid tilted his head. This was the way he wanted to restrict things... but it was only half the equation. A glance at Nyx's professionally neutral expression confirmed that. There was still a key part missing - Reid needed to... connect it. he had to find a way to ensure everything activated when and how he wanted it to, based on his own perception.

He wasn't certain how that would work, so he followed instinct. His system of mechanisms needed something to activate it, and Reid ended up crafting a connector to the paving stone structure. Depending on how it was influenced, the connector could make all the other constructs work. Reid created a chain, then a wire, then a spring at the end of the connector. The spring felt more right than the other options, so he stuck with it.

One end was attached to the connector, and the other sat in Reid's metaphysical palm.

The tools were made. They were ready. There was one last piece to this puzzle. A home for the other end of the spring. Something he knew he wouldn't find within the threadspace itself.

A connection.

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