Solaena's [Guided] Journey (Fantasy LitRPG)

Sitting on a random platform, I overlooked what others called a pleasure district.

An accurate name, according to what I heard of what manner of activities took place in it.

It wasn't its only name, however.

There was another.

A more interesting one.

The door to the [Darkness] of the Everwell Sector.

It had taken me time to piece everything together amidst the overabundance of the Everwell Sector.

Too many entities.

Too many organizations.

Too many professions, services, opportunities, desires, and Paths, all layered atop one another until anything could appear inconsequential merely because a thousand things surrounded it.

But Civilization always came with a web of interests.

Endless threads.

Some that aligned.

Some that conflicted.

Some that intersected.

Some that only appeared to intersect until the entities that wove them acquired what they sought and discovered their interests had never truly been compatible.

And as it turned out, those interests could be woven from anything, even the weaknesses of the flesh, the desires of a mind, or its fears.

Needs.

Impulses.

Loneliness.

Curiosity.

Greed.

[Ambition]...

And wherever those types of interests existed, another entity could shape its own interests around satisfying, exploiting, directing, or cultivating them.

The pleasure district beneath me presented the most blatant expression of that [Truth] I had slowly acquainted myself with since the festival.

Towers rose in every direction, their facades painted in colors so varied and bright that even my eyes struggled to distinguish all their nuances.

Some glowed uniformly.

Others pulsed.

Patterns rippled across their surfaces in time with sounds transmitted through the platforms and suspended walkways.

Symbols shifted according to who approached.

Lights rearranged themselves.

Entrances opened.

Advertisements manifested in the air, promising experiences whose meaning I understood only through the reactions of those perceiving them.

The district itself never appeared still.

People entered towers.

Others emerged.

Crowds formed.

Dispersed.

Changed direction as another vain display caught their attention.

Credits changed ownership through methods too fast and abstract for me to perceive.

And beneath all of it...

Interests.

I stood.

Then [Will]ed a veil of [Secrecy] around myself.

Not merely darkening my presence.

Not simply hiding my form.

I suppressed the minute disturbances produced by my wings.

Altered the currents around my body.

Reduced every sound.

Directed attention away from the space I occupied.

Made my movements appear like meaningless shifts in light whenever complete concealment became impractical.

Only then did I jump.

I avoided the densest crowds.

Too many overlapping senses.

Too many unpredictable movements.

Too many [Ether] instruments whose functions I didn't understand.

But the emptiest regions offered little to observe and listen to.

So I selected an intermediate density.

Enough individuals for conversations to overlap.

Few enough that I could reposition without risking collision or surprises.

As I descended between suspended walkways and exterior platforms, my [Awareness] expanded.

And the more I experienced of Civilization...

The more skeptical I grew that anyone could maintain any meaningful semblance of [Secrecy] without making it obvious that they were doing so.

My [Awareness] repeatedly encountered empty spaces.

Not actual absences.

Absences that moved.

Spaces where air currents distorted without visible cause.

Where sound propagated around something rather than through it.

Where the crowd unconsciously separated.

Where individuals disappeared upon entering and reappeared after exiting.

Most suspiciously...

Many were nearly the same size.

Room-sized [Void]s.

Most likely, the district had standardized concealment tools.

Perhaps one organization provided them.

Perhaps several copied the same design.

Whatever the cause...

Once I understood what to search for, the veils appeared less like [Secrecy] and more like signs announcing that something had been hidden.

Not that I cared who wished to gamble unseen.

Or indulge in bodily pleasures.

Or consume one of the many substances engineered to alter their minds.

Or enter halls dedicated to games, performances, dreams, sensations, or other entertainments that centuries of practice had streamlined into profitable industries.

What I sought was much more difficult to hide behind a veil of [Secrecy].

[Comprehension].

For the more I comprehended, the greater the [Clarity] with which I could glimpse the steps my Path required for me to live up to my [Ambition].

Not merely the [Knowledge] of what happened within those towers.

The interests underlying it.

Why entities entered.

Why others created the places they entered.

Why some experiences became valuable enough that entire towers were constructed around providing them.

How weaknesses became markets.

How impulses became recurring sources of credits.

How entities who possessed time, security, food, and shelter decided what to pursue once necessity no longer decided for them.

How pleasure could motivate more reliably than survival in a Civilization where immediate survival had apparently become nearly guaranteed for most.

And, more practically...

I possessed the time for such a tour.

For now.

Once I solved my overdevelopment disorder, these leisurely excursions would become increasingly difficult to justify.

There would be too many [Cultivation]s to pursue.

Too many experiments.

Too many advancements to pursue.

Too much [Knowledge] capable of meaningfully furthering my Path to study and comprehend.

Not that my leisure was remotely comparable to what unfolded within my [Awareness].

For most entities, leisure meant taking a break.

Eating.

Drinking.

Speaking without [Purpose].

Visiting locations designed to entertain them.

Allowing impulses to determine their actions.

Refusing to apply the [Will] required to continue whatever work they had momentarily abandoned.

My leisure...

Was simply another intensity of [Cultivation].

A lesser one.

One oriented toward the time-consuming [Exertion]s that produced too little Essence development to justify carrying out while my safety margin was extensive.

Observation.

Listening.

Comparisons.

Allowing incidental [Insight]s to form without forcefully pursuing them.

And so I flew onward, flying close yet never entering any tower.

The possibility of a door closing behind me, an [Ether] tool identifying my concealed presence, or some hidden defense reacting to my veil of [Secrecy] provided no corresponding benefit.

The exterior offered enough.

I perched beneath platforms.

Behind signs.

Upon decorative structures no one inspected.

And I listened.

Most of what I heard meant little to me.

Fragments of arguments over wagers.

Promises that someone would win back what they had lost.

Complaints about prices.

Descriptions of sensations whose appeal I couldn't conceptualize.

Propositions.

Rejections.

Emotional accusations.

Emotional reconciliations.

Impulsive plans immediately abandoned in favor of different impulses.

Words of desire.

Jealousy.

Excitement.

Shame.

Regret.

Longing.

Words that belonged to realities I recognized as existing without considering them parts of my own world.

Sometimes, an [Ether] instrument failed.

A transparent wall flickered.

A concealment field weakened.

A projected image vanished.

An exterior panel opened for maintenance.

Through those momentary failures, I glimpsed what occurred inside the illuminated towers.

Tables surrounded by entities watching symbols and objects determine who gained or lost credits.

Stages where performers changed movement, voice, form, or appearance to induce reactions in observing crowds.

Rooms shaped around food, intoxicants, music, controlled danger, bodily pleasure, fabricated environments, and experiences whose only practical result appeared to be the experience itself.

Some entities emerged elated.

Some exhausted.

Some unsteady.

Some angry.

Some with more credits than they entered with, from their gait

The majority, though, departed with less.

Then they vanished into the crowd.

And I remained an observer.

One whose earliest trivial memories were being steadily consumed by the phenomenon known as infantile amnesia.

Expressions.

Rooms.

Conversations.

Minor events whose importance I still failed to recognize.

I didn't really care that more of such worthless memories vanished with every passing stretch of time.

I already preserved what mattered through writing.

Through repetition.

Through [Guided].

It wasn't like I couldn't [Will] all these trivial memories back into reality anyway.

And beyond it...

My overdevelopment disorder still shackled me.

It forbade me from furthering my Path with the entirety of my [Will] and [Ambition].

Forced me to wait.

To calculate.

To permit weeks to pass while my Essence recovered from developments that should have marked only the beginning of what I sought to accomplish.

By the standards of nearly anyone observing my circumstances...

I should have been inclined to slow down.

I had been born abandoned.

Starved.

Exposed to hazards that should have killed me.

Dragged through disasters.

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Forced to fight for every stable period of my existence.

And now I had reached the Everwell Sector.

Earned safety.

A position.

Credits.

A room.

Access to more [Knowledge] and opportunities than I could exhaust.

No immediate enemy threatened me.

No scarcity demanded that I struggled every instant.

Surely...

I had earned the right to take my time.

Enjoy being alive.

Experience the pleasures Civilization had spent centuries refining.

Allow my sole existence itself to suffice.

A shame such thoughts were so philosophical and that I refused even the notion of allowing myself to let go.

Because that was not my Path.

Something churned within my Essence.

I stilled upon the underside of a glowing platform.

The reaction was faint.

But unmistakable.

A conceptual current gathering around one part of my existence.

My [Ambition] Aspect.

I didn't immediately commune with my Essence.

Nothing indicated danger.

No pain.

No sudden dysfunction.

Only a deepening pressure that grew whenever my thoughts returned to the same refusal.

I could choose a different life.

Here.

Now.

A slower one.

One satisfied with safety.

One where I accepted that having reached the Everwell Sector at my age on my own was already more than enough.

Where I allowed myself to become an ordinary Pulse member.

Advanced according to the schedules others considered reasonable.

Pursued my [Vitality] Aspect over many more years.

Followed the Path others forged before me.

Healed patients.

Climbed the ranks.

Accumulated credits.

Visited places like this between duty periods.

Enjoyed what I had achieved.

A shame again that this prospective existence so thoroughly repulsed me.

Not because it was objectively poor.

Many would consider it [Ideal].

Maybe even [Perfection] for those content with what sufficed.

But it wasn't mine.

My [Ambition] did not concern itself with attaining enough.

Enough safety.

Enough power.

Enough [Knowledge].

Enough recognition.

The moment I accepted any present state as sufficient, I would have betrayed the very force that had carried me from warmth and hunger to where I now stood.

I took off once more.

I heard more.

I saw more.

I elevated my [Comprehension]

A gambler promising himself that one final wager would undo every previous loss.

An employee explaining how to encourage patrons to remain without making them realize they were being encouraged.

A group discussing which experiences had become unfashionable and which new ones would replace them.

Someone selling temporary confidence.

Someone else selling the temporary removal of fear.

A tower advertising artificial and ephemeral memories.

Another promising complete anonymity while surrounded by concealment fields whose identical gaps made its visitors obvious to my [Awareness].

Interest meeting interest.

Weakness meeting opportunity.

Desire becoming... infrastructure.

The pressure within my Essence continued building.

Eventually, [Guided] directed me away from the district's more populated portions.

I obeyed.

A long flight brought me to an unfinished exterior platform between two towers whose construction had apparently been suspended.

No workers.

No nearby entrances.

No active [Ether] instruments beyond the structural supports keeping the platform in place.

Sufficiently secluded.

I landed.

Sat.

Then slipped into true communion.

My Essence unfolded around me.

The familiar structures.

Aspects.

Currents.

Density events.

Ripples of development.

And amidst this [Chaos] of potential, this truest expression of my existence, my [Ambition] Aspect churned.

Conceptual waves expanded from it in uneven pulses, carrying fragments of everything that had led to its advancement.

My refusal to settle.

My disdain for a life defined by comfort.

My rejection of external measures of what should be sufficient.

The relation between present objectives and the impossible future I intended to reach.

[Ambition].

Not desire.

Not impulse.

Not momentary determination.

A direction imposed upon my entire existence.

The difference became clearer as I watched.

I could desire to visit a location.

Wish to complete a book.

Decide to win an argument.

Those things could matter.

They could even warrant substantial [Will].

But they did not necessarily belong to my [Ambition].

My [Ambition] was larger.

Deeper.

More continuous.

It wasn't what I wanted now.

It was what made every present want either relevant or irrelevant.

The axis along which my Path advanced.

The refusal to accept any limit or boundary merely because others believed it natural.

The drive to grow and progress beyond anything anyone believed possible.

Without exchanging one set of constraints for another.

Without becoming bound to an organization.

A patron.

A doctrine.

An Aspect.

I would take everything useful.

Learn from everything.

Leverage everything.

But my Path would remain mine.

The advancement disorder intensified.

My [Ambition] briefly surged without my intention.

A pressure to act.

To leave communion.

To test it.

To ignite every Aspect.

To turn the development itself into another [Cultivation].

I observed the impulse.

Separated it through [Clarity].

Allowed [Harmony] to preserve the distinction between my Aspect's conceptual unfolding and my own decision-making.

I didn't need to obey every urge associated with [Ambition] to prove I possessed it.

That would have made me controlled by the very concept meant to prevent me from being controlled.

So I remained still.

Hours passed.

The advancement produced no obvious dysfunction.

Instead, the Aspect appeared to draw the scattered expressions of my [Ambition] inward.

My wish to form [Vitality].

My intention to solve my overdevelopment disorder.

My pursuit of [Knowledge].

My future [Faith].

My desire to grasp [Truth].

To command my own Essence.

To reach summits others didn't dare conceptualize.

All were separate.

Yet all derived from the same deeper direction.

As the Aspect recognized that unity, its previously diffuse influence concentrated.

Then expanded again.

Stronger.

More selective.

More demanding.

One final pulse spread through my Essence.

Aspect Advanced: [Ambition] (Tier 0) ➞ [Ambition] (Tier 1)

My [Ambition] Aspect's Tier 1 advancement settled.

Quiet.

Heavy.

Waiting.

I immediately felt the need to exercise it.

To discover how much more it could elevate my [Will].

How much energy it could invoke.

How its burden had changed.

Whether I could push my [Vitality] through my entire right arm.

Whether my overdevelopment disorder would respond differently when [Ambition] itself burned through my entire Essence.

I restrained myself by heeding my own [Clarity].

My Essence had just undergone another major development.

My overdevelopment safety margin had narrowed.

Indulging the impulse to test my [Ambition] Aspect before measuring the consequences would have been no different from the district's gamblers following one loss with another wager because the desire to recover what they lost felt more important than the reason they had lost it.

I wasn't here to succumb to impulse.

I was here to acquire a [Comprehension] of it.

So I ended my communion and resumed my tour.

Leisurely.

I observed another set of towers.

Listened to another collection of conversations.

Eventually, the time for my duties approached, so I returned to the Pulse Tower.

I prepared chambers.

I reviewed schedules.

I assisted Xafsa.

I observed patients.

I answered questions.

I was corrected.

I didn't change my behavior.

It was just another Aspect advancement.

A week passed.

My overdevelopment safety margin recovered as I had spent the intervening days applying only the lowest-intensity [Vitality] [Cultivation] to isolate various regions of my body.

A fingertip.

One small muscle.

A shallow section of skin.

Nothing that demanded the push of my [Ambition].

Nothing that risked provoking further significant Essence development.

And throughout...

My newly advanced [Ambition] Aspect waited.

On the eighth day, I entered my room after completing my duties.

I had already eaten the small quantity of conventional nutrients I was now using for comparative physiological testing.

My body was rested, if showing its first signs of exhaustion.

My energy reserves were full, though, and my overdevelopment safety margin stood within the threshold I had established.

No reason remained to wait.

I sat at the center of my bed.

Extended my right hand.

Then manifested my [Vitality].

A strand of pulsing gold materialized.

Stable.

Coherent.

I infused it into my palm.

Warmth spread.

The concept I assembled flowed through the tissues it had already encountered countless times over the previous months.

No convulsion.

No indiscriminate acceleration.

Blood flow adjusted.

Cellular processes rose only where relevant.

The manifestation reached my fingers.

Then the back of my hand.

My wrist.

I allowed it to saturate the entirety of my right hand.

Skin.

Muscles.

Tendons.

Bones.

Blood vessels.

Nerves.

Every cell and structure I possessed sufficient [Comprehension] to include.

Only then did I call upon my [Ambition].

The response was immediate.

My [Ambition] didn't flare like a spark touching a wooden log.

It spread like one of those wildfires I heard so much about as of late after the Everwell Realm renewed into a world covered in yellowed dry grass.

A vast pressure opened beneath my [Will], supporting it before my ordinary energy reserves could even begin to prove insufficient.

I [Will]ed my [Clarity] higher.

My [Awareness].

My [Comprehension].

My [Harmony].

My [Mastery].

My [Purity].

My [Cultivation].

Even my [Secrecy] to some degree, sealing the minute signs of what I was doing within my room.

Every Aspect that defined my existence rose.

Higher.

Higher.

The strain accumulated.

But differently.

Previously, my [Ambition] had allowed my [Will] to continue after energy ceased being enough.

The greater my [Ambition], the greater the weight I had been required to bear.

And that weight had risen exponentially.

Now...

I drew more.

Considerably more.

Yet the burden rose more slowly relative to the energy my [Ambition] invoked.

Not slowly.

Not safely.

Merely less catastrophically.

For every increase in pressure, I received more force than I once had.

More [Will].

More enhancement.

More energy emerging from no measurable reserve beyond the sheer insistence that my objective would be fulfilled.

The implications were extensive.

So were the limitations.

Reaching this state had become harder.

At Tier 0, I could ignite my [Ambition] around nearly anything I genuinely put my mind toward.

An experiment.

A question.

A temporary objective.

Even a sufficiently intense desire to prove one particular possibility wrong.

My Tier 1 [Ambition] Aspect demanded more.

The Aspect resisted shallow invocation.

It didn't care about me merely wanting something.

The objective had to align with the deeper direction now embodied within it.

My Path.

My refusal to remain constrained.

My pursuit of growth and progress beyond what others believed possible without accepting strings attached to that progress.

Fortunately...

Nearly everything I did aligned with that [Ambition].

Forming [Vitality].

Solving my overdevelopment disorder.

Increasing what my body could endure.

Deepening my [Mastery].

Pushing every Aspect toward applications no one had accounted for.

All of it pointed in the same direction.

My [Ambition] opened further.

My [Will] surged.

Then...

I encountered resistance.

A boundary not within my [Ambition]...

But within my Tier 3 [Will] Aspect.

Not exhaustion.

Not insufficient energy.

A... limit.

My [Will] Aspect had reached the greatest intensity its present state could comfortably manifest.

I recognized it almost immediately.

In the past, for me to reach such a boundary would have demanded a prolonged, carefully structured [Cultivation] session.

Repeated attempts.

Increasing pressure.

Enough strain for the Aspect to reveal where its current limits resided.

This time...

My Tier 1 [Ambition] had carried me there with remarkable ease.

Not through subtlety.

Through force.

I pressed against the limit.

My [Will] strained.

The Aspect didn't advance, evidently.

Nor did I expect it to.

One encounter with a limit wasn't enough to redefine it.

But I felt it.

Clearly.

The next barrier standing before my true [Will] could one day fully express itself.

A future advancement.

Another objective.

I recorded its nature within my memory and returned my entire [Focus] to the [Vitality] coursing through my hand.

The gold intensified.

Not in visible brightness.

In conceptual presence.

My [Awareness] entered every layer of tissue.

My [Clarity] separated thousands of simultaneous processes.

My [Comprehension] interpreted them.

My [Mastery] commanded what I understood.

My [Purity] prevented adaptations specific to one structure from contaminating the rest of my concept.

My [Harmony] integrated the corrections.

My [Cultivation] directed everything toward one result.

Make my [Vitality] belong.

Heat gathered.

I corrected the distribution.

One tendon consumed energy faster than the corresponding muscle.

I altered the relationship between mechanical demand and resource allocation.

The cells surrounding one nerve entered excessive maintenance.

I narrowed the conditions under which neural support structures interpreted activity as strain.

Bone-forming cells reacted to repeated force through my fingers and attempted unnecessary reinforcement.

I suppressed the response until actual structural stress warranted it.

Minute vessels widened too far.

Others failed to widen enough.

Waste gathered.

Nutrients shifted.

Electrical signals accelerated.

My hand trembled.

Then steadied.

I moved every finger.

Individually.

Together.

Slowly.

Rapidly.

Applied pressure against the surface beneath me.

Released it.

Repeated.

Every action generated new conditions.

Every condition exposed another imperfection.

I corrected them.

Again.

Again.

The first quarter of an hour passed.

My ordinary energy reserves had long since emptied, but my [Ambition] sustained my [Cultivation].

The burden rose.

Yet not with the immediate declaration of impossibility I remembered.

I could bear it.

So I did.

Half an hour.

My skin remained intact.

My muscles obeyed.

My nerves transmitted every intention.

My bones accepted force without attempting to transform themselves needlessly.

My [Vitality] accelerated recovery where repeated motion produced genuine strain, then withdrew when that strain ceased.

Not perfect.

Never perfect.

The weight of my [Ambition] continued increasing.

The enhancement of my Aspects became harder to hold.

My Tier 3 [Will] Aspect remained pressed against its limits.

My thoughts began acquiring the faint weight preceding utter exhaustion.

Still...

I continued.

Not blindly.

Every additional moment still served a [Purpose].

Deepening my [Mastery].

The burden had not yet exceeded the value of what I learned.

My corrections remained precise.

My control had not degraded.

So my [Ambition] expanded to its new limit.

Not through a temporary impulse.

Not because I wanted to see how long I could last.

Because this practice stood directly upon the Path I intended to use to exceed every limitation imposed upon me.

The Aspect answered.

More energy.

More pressure.

Fewer consequences relative to what it granted.

But not none.

Three quarters of an hour passed.

My hand moved within a faint golden haze.

Opened.

Closed.

Bent.

Twisted.

Endured.

The [Vitality] within it no longer felt entirely foreign.

It still required my [Will].

Still relied upon constant adjustment.

Still remained a concept imposed from outside the natural processes of my body.

But every correction reduced that distinction.

Every second taught my tissues how to respond.

Taught my concept what my tissues were.

Taught my Essence that the two belonged within the same existence.

The final quarter hour became the most valuable.

My energy didn't exist.

My body had begun to tire.

The burden of my [Ambition] pressed over me like an immense weight seeking the first point where my [Will] would bend.

My [Vitality] reacted to the strain.

Not by indiscriminately accelerating everything.

Not by interpreting exhaustion as an emergency requiring the sacrifice of long-term stability.

It supported.

Distributed.

Preserved.

Allowed my hand to continue functioning without pretending no cost existed.

That distinction...

Was [Vitality].

Not escape from consequence.

The capacity to endure consequence without being diminished beyond recovery.

I held the manifestation until exactly one hour had passed.

Then my [Mastery] and [Comprehension] Aspects started failing, making the act of pushing further an idiocy.

I soothed my [Ambition].

The vast pressure receded.

My Aspects settled.

The limit that had shackled my [Will] remained behind as a clear memory of what awaited.

Finally, I ceased manifesting my [Vitality].

Gold faded from my right hand.

I examined it.

Warm.

Slightly swollen.

Tired.

A few tissues displayed mild overexertion.

Nothing significant.

Nothing requiring more than ordinary recovery supported by my physiological [Cultivation] [Cycle].

An hour.

My first attempt at leveraging my Tier 1 [Ambition] Aspect had lasted an hour.

I accepted the result with the indifference it deserved.

This was how it was meant to be.