The cave smelled like damp earth and stale air. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but at least nothing was trying to eat me yet. Jaipa flying nearby his tiny form flickering around
Those twin green moons cast an creepy light through the mouth of the cave, painting the rough stone walls with dancing shadows.
"Alright," he said. "Let's begin forming your first core. Before that, do you know about the energy pathways?"
I nodded my head as I was agreeing then i said, "There are seven energy pathways."
"Haa... How do you know that?" Jaipa asked, ringing around me.
"Master Edhir explained a bit to me."
"So you know what you need to do?"
I neither agreed nor disagreed. What I needed to do was circulate my energy through the seven pathways...
I sat cross-legged on the ground, ready to start. "What do I do?"
"First, you need to look within yourself," Jaipa said, his voice ringing slightly in the chamber. "Close your eyes, feel the energy flowing through your body, and circulate your energy through the energy pathways."
I closed my eyes, trying to follow his instructions. At first, there was nothing but darkness and the sound of my own heart.
Then, the swirling energy gathered, spiraling inward, I carefully channeled it through the pathways inside my chest. I felt something as time passed, I grew comfortable with the darkness within me. Then, slowly, that darkness faded away My consciousness shifted then even with my eyes close I could see myself. My body was like a spiritual form, glowing faintly
This feeling… I remember it.
I was in my inner world," realising it
I looked around. And then I saw it.
A large, glowing white tree with countless flowers. In front of it, I was just a bug it was too massive to compare. It rested within me, and beneath it, an ocean of energy surrounded its roots , And then I saw it again
Those same familiar threads
Each time I encountered something new within me, I definitely saw these threads as if they were there to bound me and those Countless threads wrapped around that tree as if binding it there.
"You see it?"
"Ooh… Jaipa, you can come here too?"
"Ha! There is no place I can't go where you can!"
After his big talk, a beautiful silence settled in but it didn't last too long
I sighed.
"I saw glimpses of this place when our bond was forming. Aren't you fascinated by it?"
"It's quite weird."
I said it flatly. I just didn't want to talk more. What I wanted right now was to focus on the thing before me.
The tree wasn't just large and bulky it looked as if it had fruits. But after a closer look, they weren't fruits. They were flowers, wrapped in those threads, as if the threads were stopping them from blooming.
"Those threads again," Jaipa said while flying closer to the tree. Then, I shifted my gaze away from it just to look at a purple star floating in the distant sky. Those same threads covered it, though some portions remained visible from where I stood. Even so, it looked both beautiful and dangerous.
And then, as if it was resisting something, the star suddenly began to release an insane amount of energy, creating the illusion of a sun.
As if it was resisting because of me and it wanted me to see, the countless threads wrapping around the purple star started to shatter one by one…
Then, I felt it a relief !
"What am I feeling right now?"
I clenched my chest. My heart felt like it was beating for real for the first time!
In curiosity? No, that wasn't curiosity. I just wanted to believe it was a curiosity.
Jaipa?…Ha!
What is that?… What?!
His eyes were wide from shock, but in no time, he recovered his normal face. Then he looked at me weirdly and asked, "Did you ever cultivate?"
What?!
HaH… A smirk came onto Jaipa's face. "Now you can actually get shocked."
Now I don't want to deny it. What was it? Was I really that shocked from a simple question like that? No… no… I am not feeling well from the moment on those threads sharted…
I was more shocked than Jaipa from my own reaction. Leaving all of these questions for later, I said,
"No, I never did that!"
"HaH?… You are quite an interesting human or a thing! ..."
The more I get to know this kid, the more interesting he gets. It's like everything is connected to something his first key, those threads, letting an outsider enter the world of 48H by the world itself! And at the least, his body itself! And now this unknown tree and this core!
"Everything about him seems wound by something."
"Hey… hey, are you listening?"
"HaH…?"
"If you know about it, can you tell me about it to ?"
"That's a core!" He sounded like he was stating the obvious.
"A ..... core?"
"Didn't you say I need to form it?"
"Haa, you still need to form them. It's just… different.....I also saw this for the first time…"
It's like this kid had this core Fromed inside him from the start
Even for Jaipa, it was the first time he had seen a core different from known cores. He wasn't reacting much because he knew he was getting tangled in something big as time passed. Without much thought, he said,
"Let's start the process of forming cores."
"Here? In my inner world?"
"Yes, here in your inner world," Jaipa said, floating closer to the massive white-glowing tree wrapped in those mysterious threads. "This is actually perfect. Your inner world is already manifesting the foundations of your core structure."
"Now, focus on gathering the energy at a single point and give it the shape of cores."
I couldn't understand what his words meant, but I knew exactly what I needed to do. It was always like that. Even if I didn't understand the nature of it, I was able to do things without even understanding them like I was made that way…
I pushed my thoughts aside and started to focus on myself.
"I was like an empty shell, waiting to be filled by my own existence."
"Do all humans feel this way, or is it just me? I always felt like everything was missing within me, like I was just an empty shell. These thoughts were not because I didn't understand human emotions, nor because I was disappointed in myself. I always considered myself above all."
But when I gained that ability, I understood what I really was…!
After a while of those thoughts, a sudden rise of energy from the ocean of that energy, a large part of it started to rise above the ocean.
"Refine it! " Jaipa screamed
"Hurry!"
I started to refine that wild energy. I focused on the swirling energy rising from the ocean beneath the great white tree. It was wild, untamed, shifting constantly like a living storm. But as I concentrated, narrowing my thoughts to a single purpose, slowly, the chaos started to settle. I could feel it ,it was waiting for direction.
"That's it!" Jaipa's voice rang out as he zipped around me in frantic circles. "Now shape it! Think of a sphere perfect, complete!"
The energy began to condense, pulling inward. What had been a shifting, shapeless mass tightened, first into a dense cloud, then into something more defined. Sweat beaded on my brow—strange, considering I didn't have a physical body here.
"More control!" Jaipa urged. "You're letting it slip!"
He was right. The energy was wavering, pulsing like it was ready to scatter back into the ocean. I clenched my jaw and pushed harder, trying to force it into shape. The strain was overwhelming like holding back a flood with nothing but sheer willpower and then, something shifted. It wasn't a thought exactly more like an understanding. This wasn't about force. It wasn't about dominating the energy. It was about guiding it. Connecting with it.
I let go of the struggle, relaxing my grip. Instead of trying to crush the energy into submission, I pictured it as part of me an extension of who I already was. The moment I did, everything changed.
The energy steadied, its erratic movements smoothing into a rhythmic pulse. It felt alive, syncing with me. Slowly, it compressed even further, shaping itself into something solid, something whole. A perfect sphere.
Jaipa let out a sharp laugh, full of excitement. "Yes! That's it!
Finally I had formed my first core my self core!"