World of Laws and Magic

Nick held Lana firmly, his left hand around her waist and his right hand kneading her ass gently. Lana continued to moan softly, her warm breath flowing towards Nick's neck as he held her closely. Nick's thoughts were simple at this moment, it seemed to him that his only concern right now was to enjoy Lana's body for as long as he could until he was satisfied; this was Nick's first time being so intimate with a woman and to him it felt as pleasant as he thought it would be, all his pent up stress was slowly going away as he felt up Lana's body.

(This feels great but its sort of unexpected. I know that women tend to go after guys who they think are better than them but I didn't think that my new ranking would have this sort of effect.)

Nick then released Lana and told her to get on his bed. Lana complied with his demands obediently, saying:

"I'll do whatever you want. Maybe after we're done we can talk about magic together, I'd like to see the scrolls that you make, rumors are going around that they are pretty unique. Is it okay if I see them?"

Lana said this as she was lying on the bed while on her back with her knees bent pointing towards the ceiling and her legs locked together, as Nick was trying to part her legs she held them firmly together refusing to let Nick have his way at the moment, seemingly waiting for an answer. Maybe it was due to his lack of experience but Nick didn't care about what she was saying and didn't think too much about the implications before answering:

"Sure, don't waste anymore time, open your legs."

Lana smiled and parted her legs letting Nick see beyond her pleated shirt. She was wearing plain white panties and the split of her vagina was clearly visible to Nick. Nick reached out his right hand and caressed her private part.

"Ahhhhhhh."

Lana began to moan softly as Nick played with her. As Nick continued to move his right hand's fingers and listened to Lana's moaning, the fog in his mind began to clear. Something about this situation started to appear fundamentally wrong to him. Since he was a child he had never received that much positive special attention from others so now that he was receiving that from a woman his age, something in his mind started to 'poke' at him, telling him that something was wrong. For some reason Nick started thinking about the scenes from his experience with his soul's laws in the dean's office, from start to end.

(Betrayal...Complacency. I haven't really achieved anything, this woman is clearly tempting me so that she can have a look at my spells, the thing that got me my ranking. She says that rumors have been going around, that's probably Don Bartholomew's doing. Anyway, just like what Uncertainty warned against, this woman is trying to tempt me with comfort and pleasure, disrupting my thoughts and threatening my goals for her own benefit. I know I'm inexperienced but I cant believe that I let things get this far.)

Nick retracted his hand from Lana's pussy, his fingers having now become wet from the experience. Lana noticed the change and stopped her moaning.

(Huh? What's wrong, he's just standing at the side of the bed now?)

She looked at Nick's now stiff standing posture and shifted her attention to his eyes. What she saw was a cold expression, as if Nick was looking at a block of wood and not a young woman on his bed.

(What is wrong with him?)

Nick felt horrible in this moment, not especially because Lana had tried to trick him but because he had almost betrayed himself for a worthless comfort. His heart had chilled and he looked and Lana Parsely with abject indifference and thought:

(You are nothing, just mud on my path yet you wanted to use me. Mud using me? Hmph!)

Uncharacteristically, Nick took the initiative to reach out and grab Lana by her hair, lifting her off of the bed and bringing her face close to his. He spoke in an almost menacing tone, the malice rolling off his tongue:

"I'm going to warn you once and only once. Don't ever try to impede me on my road to 'success' ever again. Get out!"

Nick's indifferent gaze and strange actions scared Lana. Nick released her from his grip and stood aside and watched as Lana quickly ran out of his room. Nick stood next to his bed staring at the closed room door for about 20 minutes, thoughts swirling in his mind. It was about 7:30 pm before he snapped out of his trance like state.

"FFFFUUUUCCCCKKKKK!"

"I almost let myself be used and for what? Some zesty pussy?"

Nick shook his head and attempted to calm down.

(That can't happen again. I don't mind others obtaining advantages from me but I absolutely can't let myself fall into indulging in cheap and harmful pleasures like that.)

Nick thought back to when he first met Norman and Lana.

(I don't want to be like that fucker Norman and I should definitely keep away from women like Lana. Both of those people seem to have a sort of poison inside of them and it makes them degenerates as Magicians.)

While Norman was probably a decent potion master, the fact that he was in this academy answering to the dean meant that he was a subpar Magician at best. Nick wanted to be the best, there was no way he was going to soften his advantage because of cheap thrills.

(To be the best...that's definitely what I want. I want to be someone who can ignore all the bullshit and keep a calm mind that gets increasingly calmer as things get more 'interesting'. Wait...)

As Nick had this thought, he turned to look at the book, Theory of Meditation, on his desk.

(Maybe...)

Nick felt that he was on to something with his previous line of thinking. Nick didn't waste anymore time, he read the book on meditation until 11 pm then went to sleep. He woke up at 3 am and after doing pushups, showering, reading one of his math texts for 2 hours and having breakfast, he dived into the book on meditation again. He followed a similar routine until he was finished with the book one and a half weeks later. At that point Nick was locked in his room, thinking:

(So that's it, I wanted to create my own meditation, thinking that I would end up creating something that had the structure of the academy's meditation. The academy's mediation is written in Valteese and mostly involves some kind of idealistic mantra on what it is to be a Magician stating obvious things like: to pursue the truth of the world, to battle and destroy our enemies and to become stronger through our continued enlightenment. All that sounds very good but it as actually all vanilla. It doesn't involve the specific will and desires of the Magician. I doesn't detail what magic means to the Magician and their purpose for wanting to use magic. None of that is stated in the academy's meditation but it seems to me that those things are what the meditation should be about, that is, a perpetual reminder to the Magician on why his magic should be the way it is, why it must grow stronger and how his mentality and convictions should influence that growth. In other words, to create his own meditation with the chance of forming at least a divergent mindscape, he has to determine all of these things with his own being in mind.)

"What does magic mean to me?"

(Magic is the method through which I can have limitless adventure and limitless learning. It's both knowledge and power wrapped up into one. The thought of it gives me peace and reassurance that my future is boundless and something that I can control. It is almost like I am contributing in making laws by which the universe is governed by and that influences people's lives.)

Nick thought back to his last interaction with Rules in his 'soul state' while he was in the dean's office. Rules said, "I am the rules!". Nick thought for a minute and laughed.

"Ha, Ha. No, I am the rules!"

Nick didn't notice but the moment that he said this, his eyes became eerily calm, his irises almost dark and still like the night sky. Nick picked up his notebook and used his new magic language that he has decided to call 'Nickel' and made his notes in regards to his meditation. He didn't leave his desk for the next day and a half except to use the bathroom and do pushups, he ate at the desk. He just wrote and rewrote notes using Nickel. At the end of this long session he looked at his papers filled with the language that seemed similar to Valteese and smiled. He read the first line out loud:

"My path is limitless. I am the rules."

Nick took a shower and went out to buy a large amount of snacks from the academy's convenience store. When he came back, he immediately dived into continuing to work on his meditation. Unbeknownst to Nick, the magic in his room started moving in irregular patterns as he wrote and rewrote his notes. For the next almost two months, Nick followed a routine of working on his meditation, reading math books, doing pushups, practicing writing magic scrolls and occasionally going to the spell creation club; that was literally all he did besides the things that he had to do like eating and sleeping. At the end of that almost two months, one night Nick held up a page with words written in Nickel on it. This was Nick's new 'meditation technique' and it had taken him hundreds of hours of writing tens of thousands of words and two months to finish. All that work was now condensed into a single page, every word being like written gold - for some reason the words were literally glowing in a gold color. Nick took that as a good sign, it's not like he could go around asking the value of what he had written, so now he has to take a risk in using the meditation. If he notices even the slightest negative effect, he would immediately rewrite the whole thing even if it would take another two months. The survival challenge would be in another two months so he hoped that wouldn't be the case.

"It's time."

Nick had already memorized the words.He sat at his desk, closed his eyes and started to chant.

"...I am the rules..."

Nothing seemed to happen for what seemed like an hour. Nick felt a little frustrated but persevered anyway.

(Nothing truly good or special comes easily.)

Suddenly, almost like he had lost control of his own body, he could no longer move. he felt like his consciousness had been forced into a world that he only barely recognized. The world was mostly empty with what seemed like the night sky.

"Empty skies? No, that's not right. There are several stars shining brightly in this sky with the biggest star giving out a bluish red glow."

Nick could also see a human figure made of what seemed like pure darkness hovering in the sky. Nick moved his consciousness closer to better observe and saw that the figure was in fact not hovering, it was walking on what seemed to be a floating road. This road looked like it was made of a thin layer of concrete but it was riddled with cracks and pieces of it kept crumbling away and falling off. The pieces that fell off seemed to turn into dust and seemed to flow to the end of the road where it was reformed as part of the road and so when it seemed like the figure would have to stop because he had no more road to walk on, he kept walking on a road newly formed but still full of cracks - a never ending road. Nick looked on for what felt like hours but nothing changed. Soon his consciousness was forced out of the space and and he could move his body again. Nick didn't feel much different, however, before he could properly move his body away from his desk, he noticed something.

"Why does the air in here seem so perceptible now like there are waves of it subtly flowing around me?"

The phenomenon was subtle enough that everything seemed almost normal but Nick could definitely tell that some kind of formless miasma like substance was flowing around him.

"Hold on, is this the magic in the atmosphere? Does that mean that my meditation worked?"

"Success?"