The two underlings had had small leather bags that were attached to their belts on their back . In them were nothing of value . It held some gauze , flint , a whetstone , a small knife that seemed to not be for battle and a small water bottle . It felt like it was some basic ordinance .
Both the bottles had some very rudimentary inscriptions on them so Zac wondered if they had some special function . He poured the water out , but was surprised that the small bottle held far more water than it should .
It took almost two minutes for all the water to pour out . Zac was amazed that some inscriptions could do something magical like this . He felt no cosmic energy movements around the bottles , and it looked normal when he peered inside .
The magic bottle gave him a new idea about the sudden appearance of the giant sword . If a bottle could somehow store large amount of water , then it wasn’t impossible that the leader had some similar gear that could store items .
Chapter 30 - Experimentation
Zac eagerly filtered out all the gear that had belonged to the leader and started to go through them . His first guess was the inscribed bracelets as they were the only things except the sword and chest plate that had fractals engraved .
He looked over them multiple times , and tried pressing different parts of the bracelets , but nothing happened . He tried putting them on and focusing on them , but there still was no response . He could only helplessly put them aside for now , and continue to look through the other gear .
Zac picked up the pouch and opened it up . Strangely the insides were pitch black and he couldn’t see anything . His heartbeat sped up and he felt that he had found the jackpot .
He first took one of the small knives and plunged it halfway into the darkness , then pulled it out . There was no damage on it at all as far as Zac could tell . He planned to do the same with his finger , but as soon as he barely put it into the darkness he felt a burning sting .
His fingertip had been singed clean off , and blood dripped down over the pouch . Maybe flesh couldn’t enter he surmised . So he tried the same with a piece of dried meat , but this time it reacted like the knife .
Maybe it’s live things…’ Zac thought . He had no critter to try this theory out though , so it would have to wait .
The next task was how to activate the pouch . He had noticed some hints when he had fought earlier . When he had slammed his axe into the chest of the leader , he had felt that cosmic energy had entered the armor from the demon .
Zac had always only circulated the energy internally , and wasn’t sure how he’d push it outside . He tried circulating some energy into his fingers , then tried to push it out from the tip . The only result was that the concentration of energy got too high at the fingertips , and they started rupturing .
He tried many different things for a few hours until he finally gave up . Zac guessed that there was an inherent problem with how he handled the energy . He had followed an image of a circulatory system of his blood when he had started bending cosmic energy to his will . Of course he hadn’t imagined it to have outlets where it could flow out .
He started mulling over how to improve his system . He tried imagining a hole at his palm where he could let cosmic energy flow out .
But as he changed his energy circulation a blazing pain erupted in his hand and it looked that a bloody stigmata had appeared where he had imagined his exit .
A cold sheen of perspiration appeared on Zac’s forehead from the pain and he had a sinking feeling . Just a small change like this and the pain had been this bad . If he wanted to improve the system on his whole body , how bad would it hurt?
He knew that the circulatory system he had devised in no way was an optimal method of using cosmic energy , it was just something he had whipped together . He had planned on getting some skill or method for it later when he had the opportunity . But he hadn’t imagined that the pain would be this bad .
He was even more dismayed when he noticed that the hole he had created in his hand was continuously leaking cosmic energy and draining him of power .
Zac could only reluctantly change his circulation pattern back , bringing forth another wave of torment .
He sat for a full thirty minutes feeling lost at what to do . He was afraid that he had somehow crippled his future prospects . The more he thought about it the more he felt that it was extremely important to be able to project energy . The skills the demons had used all had projected energy in different ways . The mysterious mist , the black arcs of lightning and the root control . They all relied on manipulating cosmic energy outside of the body .
If he was stuck with this defective system where all the energy was stuck inside his body , would he even be able to use the skills he got in the future?
He needed to find a way to rectify this , even if he had to take the torture of rewriting his pathing . However , the hole he had made didn’t work , and even if it did he was hesitant to use that method anymore . He didn’t want to haphazardly get himself deeper and deeper in the hole by making a crappy patch-work circulation method .
He went over to the Nexus Node once more to scour through the skills , in case one of them actually was a circulation skill or something similar . Of course , he subconsciously knew that wasn’t the case , he had looked those skills over many times by now , and knew there were no such thing there .
The skills available generally could be categorized into offensive , defensive , movement and support as far as he could tell . The Eye of Discernment] would fall into the support skill .
But as he moved his hand away from the crystal he suddenly froze , struck with a realization . All things connected to the system had one thing in common ; the fractals . He still had no idea how to make sense of them , but they were present on the array flags , the weapons , and even the skills used them .
And it just so happened , he knew a pattern that was the exact size of his body . It was the fractal pattern that he had seen when he chose his class . Many details of it was muddled at the time , but the parts he could make out made a full circuit .
When he got the idea he couldn’t let it go . The more he thought it over , the more it made sense . He could still remember the pattern clearly , and it flowed through every part of his body . It was a far more complicated system compared to the one he had devised himself , but he saw no reason that it wouldn’t work .
As for the parts that were hazy and blurred , they might show themselves at a later point when he leveled up or completed quests . At which point Zac could use the new information to improve on the existing pattern .
The only problem was the massive undertaking to change the circulation . Just adding and removing a small hole in his hand had felt like putting the palm in an imp’s fire . He wasn’t even sure he’d survive such an undertaking .
But at the same time he didn’t dare wait . When he first devised the energy circulation he made some small revisions quickly after . At that time he hadn’t felt any pain whatsoever , and assumed that the circulation pattern was just a mental aid for using cosmic energy .
Zac was afraid that it might mean that the pattern gets harder and harder to change , as though it was fusing with his very being . It was still possible for him to change it , but judging from the pain it might be impossible soon .
Zac was no stranger to pain by now , and wasted no time . Ideally he would have wanted to wait until all his wounds were healed , but he had a sense of urgency . He started with his left hand to try if it even was viable to reform the patterns .
A blazing pain far worse than when he opened the hole engulfed his hand . It felt like his whole arm was dipped in burning acid . His whole body was covered in sweat in just seconds , and his eyes were completely bloodshot . Still he pushed through , and kept imagining his crude system in his hand slowly transforming into the fractal he was given by the Hatchetman class .