Chapter 72: Visualization

'Hm...'

The feeling was ultimately extremely subtle, and he couldn't glean anything more from just this. So, he tried moving the dagger around some more.

He controlled the dagger to move in a circle while he tried to draw a square with one of his fingers in the air.

Sylas' green irises brightened. He could actually do it.

But this wasn't too difficult for him. Compared to boxing where he was mostly an amateur, he was quite a high-level pianist. He felt that he should have already been capable of doing this. The question was whether he could really control the dagger like a secondary version of him or not.

Even with his experience as a pianist, he had found controlling the dagger, or multiple daggers at once, too taxing in battle.

He raised his other hand, trying to draw a square with one, a triangle with the other, and a circle with the dagger.

Sylas' eyes narrowed. He could feel himself running into a bit of a bottleneck. If he did so really slowly, he could just barely manage it.

'This is progress. I don't think I would have been able to do this before drinking the Elixir. But does that mean I'll have to drink more of them to succeed?'

There didn't seem to be a limit on how many he could drink, but they were obviously expensive. He didn't have enough left to buy even one, let alone multiple.

'Hm?'

Sylas suddenly had a thought.

When he was controlling the arrow to kill the gnolls, he had remembered feeling that it was so much easier. Why was that?

'The obvious reason is that these aren't flying daggers I'm using. They're meant to be wielded by the hand and so they're not balanced that way...'

Sylas' frown deepened. He felt that he was onto something. The difference between before and after the Elixir felt like he was approaching a problem from a new angle.

It made him think of a very important question.

How did his telekinesis work, exactly? Not the underlying mechanisms. Those were probably beyond his current self to grapple with. But rather, how did it manifest?

Did he think of a hand wrapping around an object and control it that way? Was he taking control of some intrinsic part of the item and "gifting" it his Will to control itself? Was his telekinesis more like a law of physics, akin to something like gravity except working in any direction he so chose?

The more Sylas thought about it, the more he realized that he could think of a ton of potential mechanisms through which telekinesis might work, but he had never really consciously realized which one he was using. He just did it without much thought.

'Which one... it feels like when I use telekinesis, the object becomes imprinted into my mind like a memory, and I manipulate it by transforming that memory, but that feels too abstract, not to mention extremely taxing...'

Sylas frowned.

Whenever he used telekinesis, accuracy was never a problem. He could always bring an object to exactly the location he wanted, and he had never had to practice that. That was why his dagger, or arrow in some cases, always struck true.

Of course, so long as it was within his 20-meter range.

Now he realized that the reason for this accuracy was due to this memory-imprinting process. He reflected not only the object in his mind, but the environment it was in as well.

'Is that how it's supposed to work?' Sylas thought to himself. 'Let's try and simplify it, maybe?'

Sylas tried stripping it down, removing all the extra steps and frilly bits until he was down to nothing more than a thin, barely perceptible energy connecting himself and this dagger.

The dagger trembled.

'This... is terrible.'

That was the first thing Sylas thought. When it was stripped of that innate visualization he was doing, it felt like he was trying to use his left hand to write. Or it would have, had he not been ambidextrous.

When he rebuilt that visualization again, the dagger stopped trembling and was as steady as a stone statue.

'In that case, why not try imagining myself in the visualization as well?'

The only thing missing from the memory he was imprinting was himself, but that made sense. He couldn't "see" himself; he could only feel himself. But if he used his proprioception, an innate sixth sense everyone had for the position of their limbs, it should be possible.

Sylas slowly got out of his bed, moving as he carried the dagger around with him.

He found that the feeling was awkward, but not as awkward as it had been to try to draw three shapes at the same time. And yet, he was certain that this was the far more difficult feat.

Ever since he learned to walk, he had already gotten used to just doing things with his body. He didn't think about how to walk or how to run, he just did it.

But taking a step back, didn't he envision those fighters while he was in battle and try to emulate them? Instead of taking that extra step, why not just trying to envision himself?

Sylas sent out a punch. It was tight, and the form was good, but it was nothing amazing.

What was amazing, though, was the dagger floating beside him that made the motion of a hook even though his punch was a jab.

He pulled back his hand and sent a hook with his left. The dagger moved at the same time in the motion of an uppercut.

The more Sylas moved, the faster he became. The dagger was like an extension of himself, moving with his thoughts as fluidly as his body itself.

His leg whipped out, and the dagger followed an arc coming from the opposite side, as though he had sent out two roundhouse kicks at the same time.

Just when it seemed like he would pierce his own foot, they both came to a stop, his foot and the dagger hovering just a few inches from each other.