Chapter 113: Increasing Proficiency Two spells. In one afternoon. Finn sat on his bed, staring at his Soul Register, and a question surfaced in his mind: Why was that so easy? Not to take away from the effort it took — he’d worked hard, practiced for hours, dealt with disorientation and headaches. But relatively speaking... shouldn’t learning to actively use a fragment probably take weeks? Months? Osmund had given him the assignment like it was a long-term project, not something he expected Finn to accomplish in a day. I guess it’s because it’s somewhat similar to when I touch on concepts during adaptations, Finn thought slowly. Reaching for Geri and Freki’s loyalty. Observing Garuda’s divine servitude. Both times, I was... shaping abstract concepts. Making them manifest in specific ways. He frowned as the pieces clicked together. My soul already knows how to actively work with concepts. Every adaptation trained it, taught it the skill of grasping something abstract and giving it form. That must be why this felt familiar... Like using a muscle I’d already developed... Besides that, there was also something else. Something he’d been avoiding thinking about too directly. His title — specifically the ’Errant’ part of it. What if part of what made him ’Errant’ was this natural ability to touch concepts? To interact with abstractions that normal people couldn’t grasp? It would explain why learning to actively use his fragment felt less like discovering something new and more like... remembering a skill he’d always had but never consciously accessed. I’m naturally good at this... Finn realized. The thought was both exciting and unsettling. Exciting because it meant he had an advantage other fragment bearers didn’t. Unsettling because it raised a question he couldn’t answer. Why him exactly...? Finn pushed the question aside. He didn’t have answers, and dwelling on existential mysteries wouldn’t help him survive the fragment bearers hunting him or the pantheons Garuda had alerted. What he needed was more spells. More applications of Error. More ways to fight, evade, and survive. He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the darkening forest. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. Tomorrow, Osmund would expect to see progress, but never in his wildest thoughts would he expect that Finn had actually created a spell, let alone two. Finn grinned with satisfaction, then turned back to the room and started practicing [Desync] again. The stability was only 62% — too low for reliable combat use. He needed to get it higher for the effect to be cleaner, and to reduce the disorientation that came with it. He also needed to test the limits. How far could he skip? What happened if he tried to skip through a wall? Hours passed. Finn practiced until his head pounded and exhaustion made his movements sloppy. He’d improved [Desync] to about 70% reliability and discovered he could skip in any direction he could see clearly, but walls were solid barriers. Trying to skip through them just resulted in a failed spell and wasted effort. The door lock spell, which he was calling [Invalid] for now, worked on any simple mechanism he touched. There were only so many locks in the room, but Finn reckoned it should work the same way on any lock, latch, or even a stuck window that had warped from humidity. Basically anything with a clear ’open and close,’ ’this or that’ mechanism which’s ’status’ he could change. Finally, well past midnight, Finn collapsed onto his bed, tired and exhausted, and within seconds he was out. . . . When he woke the next morning, sunlight was streaming through the window and someone was knocking insistently on his door. It was Uxio, calling out to him that Sage Osmund required his presence. Finn sat up, wincing at the headache still lingering from last night’s practice. But despite the pain, he felt a fierce satisfaction when he remembered he now had two spells. "I’m coming," Finn called back, standing and stretching with a lazy grin playing on his lips. He took care of himself quickly and followed Uxio to the same clearing as the previous day, wondering why the huge man even bothered leading him there when he already knew the way. Not that it bothered him too much, though. Even with the no-revealing-of-contract term that he and Osmund had agreed to, from the way Uxio was always around Osmund, he would still very well figure out there was some sort of agreement between both of them. As they arrived at the clearing, Finn immediately frowned at the sight before him. Just yesterday, it had only been grass and trees, with Osmund sitting casually in his natural alcove. But now, there was a large circular platform about forty feet across, constructed from what looked like compacted earth mixed with some kind of binding agent that had hardened into something resembling concrete. The surface was perfectly level and slightly elevated above the surrounding ground. And off to one side stood a small tower. It wasn’t tall compared to the trees that hid the clearing from view, but it was substantial enough — maybe twenty feet high — that Finn found himself thinking of it as a proper structure. The design reminded him of an umpire’s seat at a tennis match, except instead of a simple chair, the top had been expanded into a small lounge area. A tower-gazebo of some sort. Inside it, Finn spotted Osmund seated on what looked like a lounge chair, with the same book from yesterday open on his lap. He was reading with apparent leisure, as if he hadn’t just constructed an entire training facility overnight. How the hell was all of this built in less than a day? Finn stared at the platform, at the tower, trying to wrap his head around the logistics. Even with spatial magic, this was— Suddenly, he felt Osmund’s gaze lock onto him. The intensity of it made Finn’s thoughts stutter. The short man was studying and scrutinizing him without hiding it at all. With his shock fully on display in those pale gray eyes. Osmund stood abruptly, walking to the open balcony of his tower gazebo and staring even more pointedly. His eyes narrowed, and his expression shifted into deep thought. Yep. He already knows... Finn felt his stomach drop slightly. How? How did Osmund know from that distance that he’d created spells? Was there some kind of... broadcast? Some way fragment bearers could sense when another had actively manifested their concept? He became immediately self-conscious, hyper-aware of himself in ways he hadn’t been moments before. Osmund motioned for him to get onto the platform. Finn broke away from Uxio and climbed the four short steps, still trying to figure out what had given him away. And then, as his foot touched the platform’s surface, he noticed the culprit. His fragment. It was... different. More present. Instead of being that subtle background sensation that suffused his soul in the way it had always felt since he’d first learned to sense it — now it was prominent. It was a slight difference, but it was definitely more noticeable. Like it had become just a little bit ’louder?’ in his soul. Most likely because of the repeated practice, Finn realized. I kept calling on it and using it consciously, and now it’s more... active. The moment he became conscious of the difference, he closed his eyes and willed it to recede. To mellow back down to its normal, barely-perceptible level. The fragment complied slowly, reluctantly almost, but it obeyed. The prominence faded until even Finn could barely sense it, just like before. He opened his eyes. And saw that now, Osmund was staring at him with a look that had moved past shock and into something closer to numb disbelief. The kind of expression someone wore when something had exceeded their capacity for surprise and they’d simply... stopped reacting normally. They were alone now. Uxio had retreated while Finn’s eyes were closed, presumably back to whatever duties he had. Osmund descended the tower structure, keeping his eyes on Finn the entire time, with very deliberate... conscious steps. And immediately, Finn felt his hackles rise.