Chapter 128 Archimedes He quickly scrutinized the surrounding mountain face, and seeing a particularly large crevice, used his telekinesis to push himself towards it, and landed without any issues. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞 He sighed a little in frustration, even though he was in a hurry, it should not mean he should be careless, he did not know how far the flash of light or the explosion carried, although it was very brief, he was out in the open. Giving himself the mental equivalent of a slap, he turned towards the mountain walls and opened his Mental Space once more, instead of pushing tons of Aether into the Rune, he tried to hold back. Rowan had noticed a bad habit of his, due to his unlimited stamina and essence, he never had to consider his expenditure, that would have to change for now, as he guessed control over his powers would become more necessary the stronger he becomes. If he lacks control, he would be nothing but a rampaging cataclysm. His rate of growth was too fast, and if he did not learn proper control, the thought of the destruction he would be capable of would be nightmarish. A small example of what he was capable of should be currently happening, he was sure if any other being had been cursed with the Flesh of Madness they would be dead by now, but he did not die, and his body had spawned monstrous creatures beyond number. A Dominator that had developed their bodies to his level over the course of decades or centuries would have better control over their physique than he could. If he had proper control over his body, he should be able to properly suppress the Flesh of Madness. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step, he was willing to start the journey of proper control of his powers. Creating a red flame on his left hand with only a part of his physical essence, even with only that minor expenditure, his body began to squirm, as if there were countless snakes under his skin. He waited for a while, and after he was sure he had the curse under control, he began melting his way through the mountain, and in a short while, he had created a wide cave about thirty feet across, he blazed his way deeper, and after about fifty meters in depth, he stopped. This should be good enough. He could experiment with his powers without being too flashy with it. Not attracting attention was a priority. Before freeing himself from the curse, he must be low-key. Rowan scrutinized the cave he had just made. The red flames had melted the rocks smoothly, and the cave looked like the insides of a ceramic bowl. He was not concerned if the air circulation down here was bad, for he was sure his flames did not need oxygen to burn. Rowan sat down cross-legged and entered his Mental Space, deciding properly to understand its properties, before making reckless attempts. He did not know how the Mental Space of others would resemble, but he was sure he was the only one who had a giant blank face. The face resembled a gray petrified stone, and if his Mental Space was supposed to be the size of a small pool, the Petrified face had stretched the Mental Space until it was the size of a lake. His body must be doing many things to keep his mental and physical state in one piece, else he did not know how he was even surviving. He looked around the Mental Space, where he could see his various Ability Runes floating around, and he only needed to think about the particular ability and it would glow. The Ability Rune for Flesh Light resembled a bloody beating heart that had been cut in half by the middle. It rotated slowly inside his mental space and exuded a low heat. To activate the Ability Rune with his Aether, he just gave a mental command, and the Aether would be attracted to the rune and would fuse with it. This operation was automatic as long as he willed it. The second part of was managing the ability outputs. After releasing the flames he intended to shape it into the pattern he desired, in this case just a usable robe would do the trick. After trying multiple times to restrict the ability runes from drawing excess Aether beyond what he could control, he ended up failing. In all the experiments he had been making, he had been releasing flames from his entire body. The flames had created a deeper cave into the mountain, and he had already melted him way downward for more than twenty meters. He paused, this was going nowhere. Even if he could succeed, it was taking too much time, perhaps it would be wise to look at it from another angle. Instead of trying to manipulate his Aether, why not try it with his Spirit first. He should shape his Spirit to be able to transport just the right amount of Aether to the Ability Rune, instead of using the default method of activating the Ability Rune. Rowan wanted to move a bit of Aether towards it, and found it to be more difficult than he anticipated. His plan was to pick a single grain of snow-white Aether and fuse it to the Ability Rune, with that, he could properly judge how much power the Aether granted to it. He looked at the Golden fog that represented his Spirit, and decided to move it, and to his surprise, it was not particular difficult to get a reaction out of it. It was similar to moving a limb you did not know you had, but his control over the golden fog was abysmal. Baby steps. He encouraged himself, maybe he was missing an important component of controlling Aether that he was not aware of, but he was making progress, and that was all that really mattered. It did not take long, for him to be able to gather the golden fog in the shape of a fist, this operation brought him a great deal of discomfort, as his head felt like it was about to explode, but when Rowan analyzed that the side effects were physical, he ignored them. He was confident that he could heal from any physical condition. He began to manipulate the golden hand slowly, it was sluggish and behaved as if he was trying to catch smoke with his bare hands. His eyes opened when he noticed that night had passed and a new day had dawned. If he were to follow the normal time conversions from his previous life, then the nights here were forty hours long, if it was the same for daylight, then a full day on this planet was 80 hours long. He wondered how the time on his Primordial Record was calculated because it had given him 33,000 years of lifespan, maybe its calculations of time used a method he could not comprehend yet. Ignoring the outside world, he entered his Mental Space and continued experimenting with the golden fog, when he thought he was ready enough, he controlled the golden hand to collect the Aether around it and deliver it to the Ability Rune. But he failed when instead of picking one, he shifted more than a hundred, and another eruption of flame exploded from his body in a circular wave, melting through another five feet of rock, his body dropped to the lower ground, but he was too focused to care. He began experimenting with putting less will into his commands of his Spirit, and after tens of tries, he could only reduce the grains to fifty, but that was still too powerful for him to control. He knew he had to make the process to be more efficient and streamlined, but he realized he was being held back by his Spirit Attribute. After trying and failing to pick up the right amount of Aether dozens of times, he shifted his attention to the spatial bracelet.