Reid had grossly underestimated the time it would take to travel to the final beast lord.

Days melted away as he plod a simple course over varied terrain. Mountains rose, and fell away behind him. Rivers roared with churning empowered water. He passed by two separate empty Belar bases - one was abandoned completely, and the other showed the obvious signs - or lack thereof - that let him know Hugo had cleared the thing. Every guard was dead, and nearly all of them seemed entirely uninjured. The base itself was only damaged where empowered guns had impacted walls.

Reid wondered as he continued on. How much stronger would his friend would be with the new structure he had built inside himself? Did his work on Vidita have the potential to do more than protect her from other soul mages? And - just how powerful would he be in time? Nyx had him transcribe a long series of lessons, and they strayed far from the simple 'reinforce your soul' objective. Reid didn't really understand everything he was looking at towards the later sections, and Nyx hadn't explained it to him. In the end, that was fine. Hugo could surprise him with cool tricks whenever they met next.

And maybe Hugo wouldn't be the only one with new tricks.

Reid was close to a breakthrough. He could feel it in his bones. The long trek gave him time to work and look within himself, and the freedom of being alone seemed to help his process. He had connected his threadspace for skill manipulation with his intelligence metaspace library to allow himself to make targeted resistance a reality. He linked his kitchen - his constitution's metaspace, with his sea of rage - the power metaspace, to enable enhanced resource restoration with mana-empowered attributes.

The first thing that clicked happened when he was inside of his library metaspace again. He'd been slowly pushing on another message from Sara, and realized he needed to do a bit more organization to better encapsulate things he'd come to learn. The issue was he didn't have time - and it really felt like a waste. After all, he wasn't going to get any stat increase from the work. Reid's lazy attitude led him to a concept he pursued - automated, or semi-automated, application of learnings.

He first tried pushing from the library, but that failed completely. Then he spent more time in his perception metaspace, the laboratory, to get an idea. It took him an embarrassingly long time, in the perception metaspace, to remember and recognize that there was a door on one wall. He was so deep into his mental wanderings on how the conduit should take shape and the mere feeling of it happening that he failed to actually notice anything else within him. Reid hadn't imagined that trying too hard was something that could lead him to failure. Most of what he'd done all came from trying harder than he should have.

But this time was different.

The moment he noticed the door, things started to shift into place. He felt the same sort of underlying motion he had within his sea of rage, where he didn't move, but something more fundamental shifted. It connected at the door.

The last - and only - two times he'd done this, Reid had broken down a wall that had been sitting in otherwise empty air. The one in the threadspace was almost completely abstract in its position. The one in the sea of rage had been inside the snack shack, and was technically related to the concept of what he attempted to link. Now, he had a door - an actual, physical door in front of him that the connection point seemed to snap itself to. He could sense something deeper there, but only brushed over the surface, like a layer of water sat atop a frozen pond.

Reid moved forward and grabbed the handle. His first instinct was to pull towards him, but that felt entirely wrong. Instead, he pushed - and felt the familiar resistance.

Where he'd before had to slam his metaphysical self through the barrier to start the path, this time Reid only had to slam open the door itself. His shoulder smarted, but that was it. He felt good enough to push himself through the second half of the connection without a break, and was rewarded with the same pain, uneasy feeling that he was folding something back in on itself, and difficult trial that he was used to. Less broken than he feared, but worse off than he hoped, Reid panted on the floor of the game shop section of his library. He turned his head, and confirmed he'd broken straight through the 'front door'. In the junction, strands like wires were slowly extending themselves from cones that hung from the ceiling and clung to the floor in the dim area. They stretched back towards the lab room, and extended themselves into the game room and up over the countertop. Reid blinked and shook his head. He was almost certain there was no computer before - but now the top of the counter had something that was a cross between an old thick laptop and a point-of-sale interface.

"I was wondering how long that one would take you." Nyx was in one of the game store aisles, glancing over a few boxes and magazines that were blank.

"How long did you know the door was a way to get from Perception to here?"

She used a finger to itch at the side of her face, and shrugged. "Always, but also just now. It could've led you somewhere else. Anyway, this is a great connection to make. You hit the goal you set with this one - based on perception, you'll automatically catalog and refine some of the information you learn. Some, not all."

Reid furrowed his brow. "Do you know what all my conduits are going to be?"

Her eyes shifted over him, then the doorway. Nyx tented her hands like she was about to offer some wisdom, then started to disappear. "Oh no, I have run out of energy and I am fading... fading..."

"Oh come on!"

Reid could damn well sense that Nyx hadn't actually faded away. In fact, based on her emotions, she was having a good long laugh at herself for that one. He stowed his frustrations that she continued to elude his deeper questions around conduits and junctions, then set himself to rest. He still had more miles to cover.

Stolen story; please report.

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The implications of Reid's success didn't truly dawn on him until the next day. He had two connections made to his intelligence metaspace. That meant he should be able to do two connections elsewhere. What followed that realization was a significant amount of time spent in his perception, constitution, and power metaspaces. He played through other options in his head, what might be possible depending on the connections made. His answer came when he imagined power and dexterity working in true unison.

If his metaphysical dexterity was his metaphysical, energy-based body, then connecting it more directly to his power and the source of his energy should act like a boosting enhancement, or bodily reinforcement. The concept had him wade into the waters he'd kept himself away from, then out. Water was important to his conceptualization, but not in the way he was thinking. Instead, he found himself drawn to a specific spot on the beach - a set of outdoor showers. There were another few days between his initial sense of finding the location, and the shift-click sensation of things falling into place, but he had himself another start, and another door presented itself to him in the form of a shower stall entry point.

Reid followed it.

The black expanse around him folded in on itself again, but didn't give him the same eerie feeling as before. It was more familiar now, part of him. He stopped in the junction itself only for a moment before pushing forward again. The wall waited for him at the end, but he was less drained. Instead of panting on the floor, Reid was panting with his hands on his knees after he broke through to the other side.

He didn't need Nyx to tell him what he'd done. Reid could already feel the energy from his sea of rage spilling over and down into the 'muscle' groups of energy on his metaphysical self. He was empowered in a new way, and had the sense that he could force the phenomenon in the other direction if he willed it, sacrificing energy out of his body to give it back to his mana pool. Reversing direction seemed neat, but not useful. The empowerment, on the other hand, was exceptional. Reid felt less impact from moving, running, and fighting. He ended up killing a few beasts just to prove to himself that he was feeling things correctly.

Oddly enough, Nyx didn't come out this time and congratulate him. He didn't need her to tell him what this connection did, but he realized he missed her affirmation. He worried whether she had somehow actually gotten injured or drained, but that wasn't right. She was still right where she was supposed to be.

And that meant she was waiting for him to do more on his own.

Reid took the challenge as more days passed. He moved from well-inhabited lands to sparse and empty wilderness. Mornings started with a layer of frost on the ground, and the mixture of animals dwindled to a few that had larger and lighter coats. He dove back into himself at every opportunity. He scoured for answers, and found few. Further understanding eluded him until he finally took another step back. Reid was in his intelligence metaspace, the library, wondering whether or not to unlock a Sara message, when he realized something.

He hadn't tried looking down both conduits at once.

Reid shoved a shelf out of the way. Boxes and items shook and were displaced, but those were minor things. He could fix it all later. For now, he needed to act. He moved himself to a spot near the wall. When he turned, Reid could just barely catch both the conduit connection to his threadspace and the conduit connection to perception at once. He chewed on the inside of his cheek as his eyes traced over every detail. He drew a straight line in his mind, back from the other openings, through each junction, and back to him. He took half a step forward, and did it again.

The straight lines he was looking at intersected one another and formed an angle. Reid did a bit of quick math, then counted on his fingers. He blinked at the floor of his metaspace.

"There's no way..."

He tried to keep his breathing in check as he threw himself over and into his power metaspace. The sea of rage lapped lazily on his sandy beaches, and a half-finished sandcastle stood next to an orange plastic shovel. Reid wheeled and sprinted through the area towards the snack shack. Sand kicked up from his feet and hit him in the back of his legs, until he touched the old and weathered wood. Reid swung himself sideways around the doorframe to get into the back, and immediately traced a line from the tunnel that connected power to constitution. It intersected with a wall - Reid made a window with his fist. He could fix that later.

On the other side, he followed the line as it ran clear out of the snack shack, and back into the sand. His path wobbled slightly as he stomped through the sand, only interrupted when he swiveled back towards the shack to confirm his sense of direction, and to his other point of interest to make sure he didn't go too far.

Reid stopped at a seemingly random spot on the beach, turned, and held a hand out towards each conduit. His eyes flicked between his hands and his feet as he kicked channels into the sand to mark his spot, then he sprinted over to the showers and confirmed he was looking at things correctly.

He was.

Reid scrambled back to the marks he'd left on the beach, and wrote next to the lines.

Power in the center. Dexterity to the left. Constitution to the right. He put a dot on each, then took three steps forward and turned around. He mirrored the three dots, and stared at it for a moment before he added labels to the new dots in the sand. The center was Intelligence. He started to label the right side, then erased and redid it. Perception was to the right. The threadspace was to the left, with Intelligence itself in the center.

He drew two more lines to complete the vision. Perception to Dexterity. Threadspace to Constitution.

His eyes traced over the sand.

Constitution, Power, Dexterity, Perception, Intelligence, Threadspace, and around again.

Six nodes. Six sides. Six angles. A near-perfect hexagon made between his metaspaces and conduits.

Staring at his sand-doodle brought on a headache - the same kind of headache he'd get when he looked at his mana compressor for too long. He kept his eyes fixed on the spot as potential connections rolled through his mind. A pang of hunger made Reid realize he'd lost track of time, and he pulled himself out of his power metaspace.

Back in the real world, Reid jumped into the air with a cheer while he summoned one of Norton's meals. Fake stars twinkled over a chill and cloudless sky. A lone bird, grey except for its glowing purple eyes, took wing and flapped hard to get away from Reid. He tore off a piece of the meat and puff pastry with his bare hand, and swiped up a healthy amount of soft cheese. The meal sent an actual shiver running down his spine, and Reid admired the craftsmanship from his chef. Roast Welles was a damn good dish.

As Reid ate, he put a boot into storage and traced lines in the dirt with his big toe. Six angles. One-hundred-twenty degrees each. A roadmap to complete the conduits - or at least the first stage of what they all were for - that he'd discovered entirely by himself.

And now he knew exactly what to do next.

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