Chapter 17: ‘Magic’
Regaining some of her energy, Charlotte then went out of the warehouse and walked towards the nearest restaurant that she knew of. The one she had eaten at yesterday.
*Burp
"Uh… Fantastic, I'm feeling way better…"
She said after eating two normal servings. The people around her were looking at her like she was a monster. She had finished the first one as if it was nothing, still feeling a little empty in her belly. After thinking about it, she just ordered another one. If she was going to die of something, at least she won't let it be of starvation!
At this moment though, she couldn't move as she was too stuffed…
"Thank you very much! It was delicious!" So she just smiled and waited patiently until she could move, again.
She was fiddling with the crystal, she had nothing else. Her phone disappeared along with everything she had in the warehouse yesterday, and today was Sunday so she would have to wait untill Monday before buying a new one.
I can't contact anyone… Hmm do I have them in my social medias…?
As she seldom used them, she didn't add any friend of hers to it. She could only hope to receive the same number and hope to be contacted by them…
Feeling her feet again, she paid for the food and started to walk.
"I think it'd be better to be at home, no? In that case if I pass out there won't be any danger…"
Deciding her where she wanted to be, she went to the metro station. She wasn't in a hurry. She had finished the machine and it had properly worked. Success!
At least she thought so.
Arriving at the station, she realized she didn't have any papers. Her ID, her previous student cards and any form of identification had been lost. At least she wasn't asked for it or she would have problems trying to identify herself.
Once at home, she went to her room to see who she had on her social networks.
"Uhm, who are these again…?"
She kept seeing people she didn't know about, had an uncountable number of friend requests and some messages from when she was in college.
"Oh! Jean! That's one!"
After looking through the 3 social networks she ever used, the only one she found was Jean.
I've too few true friends… Heh…
"Charlotte Eschete:
Hey! Answer me!"
Being the good girl she was, she was patient for ten minutes until she lost her calm and made a call from it.
"Hello missy, what's this now?"
He had a groggy voice, and appeared to be annoyed.
"Hey Jean! Sorry to wake you up… It's just, I didn't have anyone else to call… Heheh."
"Huh? What happened?"
Trying to fix his tone to his normal voice, he sounded a little surprised.
"Nothing much, I just… Eh, lost my papers and phone yesterday, so I lost all my contacts and stuff from there."
"Oh, gosh, I thought you're being chased or something."
"No, ha-ha-ha… Not yet." She looked around to see if there were no hidden cameras or something like that. "Hey! If something happens please contact me from here until I get a new one."
"O-okay? Hey, what're you doing today?"
"Nothing, I'm pretty tired… Ah! Yes, do you have Elly or Dord's contact? I'd like to let them know!"
"I don't know? I have to search, if I find them I'd tell them to contact you… Where to?"
"Ah, eh, just tell them to send friend requests! By the way, what's your phone number?"
"Roger. Hm, it's xxxx-xxx-xxx. Take care."
"Yes! Thanks, byebye~!"
*Fuu
Now, let's see what I can do with this baby.
Charlotte ended the call and looked at the crystal, White Prism.
She had entered that space multiple times already, and there was never an odd reaction. Or a reaction, at all.
She still didn't know if it was truly her soul or the crystal's space.
Entering again, she realized something has changed. It was an unexpected change, something she didn't want, or at least didn't desire to have.
There were black spots in the space. There were only 4 and they were little black spots from what she could see. But compared to the colorless, translucent space, those black spots were truly conspicuous.
"This, isn't good, is it?"
Looking around, she suddenly frowned. It didn't matter where she looked, the black spots where following her!
"There's no problem with the space, right…? The problem is with my vision… In other words, with me."
!!
That means, this place isn't my soul!
She had already received a response suggesting that this may be the crystal's space. But that was only regarding the projection! Apart from it, there was no way to tell who was this place's master.
"But I can still enter…"
She wondered if anyone who was close enough and meditated could enter or if it was only her.
"Well, it doesn't matter for now. Hey! Prism! If you can hear me the show me the exterior!"
After waiting for a second, some kind of destructed structure appeared. She still was in the middle, but beneath her was a broken like surface. To her right side she could see something that was floating.
"Hmm? This should be part of the wall, no? And this, the bed?"
She said looking at the floating thing first and then looking at where she was seated.
"Now, let's do things!"
Charlotte believed that last time she tired herself because she was too excessive. After all, she moved her arm, her hair, her expression, and even tried to make herself float. Truly an overexertion on her part.
If what she believed was right, anything she did in the space of one meter around the crystal would affect the real world. That is to say, she had a one meter radius of literally personal space.
"But, can I saw beyond it? Can't I affect more than one meter?"
When she said it, the projection she was seeing grew dim, as if the resolution had lowered. And then, the one meter started to grow.
One meter and a half.
Two meters.
Two meters and a half.
Three meters.
Four meters.
Five meters.
When it reached around the five meters mark, she couldn't distinguish anything. Everything was so fuzzy it seemed like an illusion at the verge of disappearing.
"Uh, so it can only grow up to around five meters. Maybe it'll increase with time?"
All the measures were done by eye, she only thought it was five meters based on what she knew of her room.
"Hmm, return it to the one at the start."
Once it was back to normal, she started to consider what to do and how.
"Something simpler this time."
After playing all morning, she realized she had all control of what she could see. She could zoom out and in however much she wanted. Though she still had a question.
"Would I be able to see an atom, or even further in…?"
If that was true, then she could move things on the molecular level, and even at the subatomic level!
"I won't know until I try!"
She started to zoom in. At some point, she started to see dust almost as big as she would see a pebble in her hand. She stopped there.
"For now, this is enough."
She then 'grabbed' that pebble of dust and went to look for another one. Keeping them together, she then went for another, and then for another, and then…
After accumulating more than a hundred pebbles, she let them go. They all suddenly started to move in random directions, undoing everything she had done.
"It couldn't be that easy, eh?"
Doing the same thing again, when she had a hundred or so together, she started to consider how to keep them together.
She tried it five more times, thinking about glue or tape, but it didn't work.
"Maybe if I give a name to what I want it's going to be better?"
If her experience wasn't wrong, then if giving certain names to things could help achieve something, then giving name to this process and action of keeping them together would do the same.
After all, since humanity gained the ability to think and communicate, giving name to things was a normal thing!
"Uhm, I'll call this, 'dust gathering'?"
Closing her eyes, and letting 'it' go. She waited for a while and felt that nothing was different. Slowly opening them, she saw that 'it' was in the same place!
"Yes! Now this's more like it! … Now, for how long will it stay like this?"
One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes… It stayed the same, without moving, without any indication whatsoever of ever moving again.
"Aaagh, how long? For how long will it stay like that?!"
Getting impatient, she decided to do something else while waiting.
"Dust gathering!"
…
"Uh? N-nothing's happening?"
She had shouted as resolutely as she could, believing another big dust will form. But it was not effective!
She started to think what the problem was when she noticed the problem.
"Oh, right, I said that 'dust gathering' name when it was already together… I didn't say what the process of 'dust gathering' was…"
Lamenting her lack of insight, she started to gather the little pebbles again, not before saying.
"Ok! Here starts 'dust gathering'!"
Once she finished gathering a hundred or so pebbles of dust, she shouted.
"And here ends 'dust gathering'!"
Once she said it, she let it go again… Sadly, her recently collected dust and the previous one flew away.
"Something went wrong again…"
Sighing to herself, she thought again.
"Hmm maybe it wasn't wrong, but there's something left… Right, I changed the function so the previous one stopped having any effect. Then…"
Looking around, she saw an uncountable number of pebbles of dust and smirked.
"'Dust Gathering'!"
When she said it, the pebbles of dust started gathering alone!
"He-he-he… Ha-ha-ha… HAHAHAHA! I did it!!"
Lamentably, once they all gathered together, they stayed in place for a moment and then flew away.
"U-uh? There's still something missing…"
Trying more times and fixing what she thought was the problem, she finally made the gathering, glueing and staying glued a single process.
"Fui, it's done."
Then was the time to see how long it stayed together.
As she had done it before, she knew she'll have to wait for a long time. So in her boredom, she named other functions: 'Dust Disperse', which only worked after 'Dust Gathering'; 'Dust Movement' one and two, one that didn't require the 'Dust Gathering', it used the principle of gathering if one desired or not, respectively; and finally 'Dust Throw', which was simply throwing the gathered dust at some point.
'Dust Throw' was the hardest of them all, as she didn't know how to keep the momentum of the thrown dust. So she had to first guide it and follow it as fast as she could.
After an hour of playing around, she was starting to feel restless. The first gathered dust was still going strong!
"It's still holding together, there must be a limit, right?"
She believed it without doubt, because she had felt the tiredness after playing all the morning. Then she remembered, she had felt that fatigue once she was at her utmost limit and had not felt it one bit before. When she had returned to reality, she felt all the tiredness at once and couldn't move at all for a while.
She then decided it was best to stop doing it for now. If anything, she could continue after verifying the state of her actual 'body'.
Opening her eyes, she suddenly felt a little tiredness, it was nothing compared to before, but she felt it without mistake.
"Umu, umu, it's best to be careful." Nodding to herself, she closed her eyes to see something that has been bugging her for some time.
Arriving at the space, she saw the black spots she had been ignoring while playing. To her surprise, there was a new one!
"It's smaller than the others, but it's still there…"
She felt it was something dangerous, something that shouldn't be there.
"Continuing without solving this'll call disaster." Nodding, she started to think what could it possibly be.
Maybe it's some kind of pollution?
Was the answer she arrived at after thinking for some minutes. How to get rid of it was the problem.
She tried to get rid of it by naming and thinking about it. But nothing worked. She then asked for the projection of the space and tried the same thing, to her surprise, it worked there!
"Interesting…"
She said as the black spots in her vision were diminishing, albeit slowly. Once one was completely gone, she stopped doing it, she felt tired, albeit not the same kind of tiredness.
She felt lightheaded, as though she had lost some weight after working out. Although she hadn't worked out since high school, she still remembered that feeling!
"It's been six years since I last felt this way…"
Eating healthy, moving her body enough and working her mind were the only things she did to maintain a healthy body!
"So this can be another process…"
Feeling that she had done enough for a day, she called it to a close.
Arriving again at her body, she looked at the Crystal Core.
"We're going to be doing much more tomorrow!"
She went out of her room, prepared herself something to eat, took a relaxing shower and finally laid on her bed. Closing her eyes, she immediately fell asleep.
"Mom, mom! Is magic and science the same?!" The little girl asked curiously to her mother.
"… What, aren't you the curious one?"
"Answer me!" She said while pouting.
"Hahaha, yes yes, I'll answer you, what was it?"
"Ehm, is science and magic one and the same?"
"Uh? Why do you think so?"
"Ehh, I dunno! Someone told me that!"
"Who was it?"
"… I dunno!"
*Sigh
"No, they're not the same."
"Why?"
"It's simple, honey, science exists while magic doesn't."
"But magic exists!"
"Yes yes, but you can't see it."
"Why!"
"Hmm, let me see, magic is a miracle, that's why only gods can do it. Science is what miracles aren't, so we can do it."
"Then, if we do something big it's still science?!"
"Yep, everything we can do is it."
"But if no one knows, then you can say it's magic, right?!"
"… Come here you cheeky one!"
The mother launched herself to her daughter after staring at her blankly for a moment.
"Nooo, I'm gonna dieee!!"
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone