Because Nem had his own room, he could do a lot of things without people noticing (except the obvious as he was still too young). From practicing hand-to-hand combat to a few more exercises if he really couldn't sleep. Meditation was a possibility too.
He pulled out the scroll from the corner he had throw it into and unrolled it. There wasn't really much space to write on and it began with a drawing of a crossed-legged man and a sentence. Both together took half of the scroll, it read : "Meditation : to Tier 9 and others".
'Hard to believe this is the key to getting superpowers. Also, his Tier 9 some kind of power ranking ? It's true that there seemed to be differences between Mr. Clark and big Ivan. As for 'others', I've got no clue.'
The second half was filled with the exact respiration patterns and general tips to succeed. In the end, a few sentences were scribbled conspicuously. Nem read them out loud :
"Final note : To become a Blessed of a certain God, one needs the corresponding faith. One can force himself to worship a certain god, but the loss of faith will always lead to disastrous consequences. To become a Cursed, one only needs the resolution to lose everything, or excessively bad luck."
"Cursed", uh ?
Nem looked through his narrow window, the sun would still be up for at least an hour, but he didn't get much of its light in the evening. He became lost in thoughts.
'Is a Cursed someone who made a deal with a demon for power ? I remembered Sarth saying something about Blessed not having a "True Form"... Is this some kind of demon thing, like the hallucination I had that time ? But how could I see something that doesn't exist ? Sigh... I wish the authors of the scroll could be a bit more talkative.'
He looked back at the meditation scroll and run his finger through his hair.
'I'm actually tempted to become a Cursed. Losing everything seems scary, but it shouldn't be a synonym for death. Also, Sarth Robinson was probably a Cursed too. Even if he didn't look very demonic, he was clearly confident enough to meet with a bunch of Blessed without belonging to any church. Hum, now that I think about it, he was a bit scary... Of course, I can't rule out that he has faith in a god without belonging to its church, similar to Lana.'
'This internal monologue is ultimately useless, I'll just try the thing first.'
He started seriously memorizing the instructions. Nem wasn't completely unfamiliar with the act of meditation back in his world, but he had to admit that this particular method was quite strange and interesting.
The instructions were oddly specific and seemed to have an objective of making the person practicing fully concentrated on his breathing and to tire him or her out at the same time. Trying a few patterns out, Nem found out that he wasn't confident at all in doing it perfectly.
'It's not all in the lungs, the breathing patterns are designed to make me lose my concentration. Oh, this advice is actually pretty good, I used to do it sometimes when I was too tired to concentrate on my high school tests.'
The advice in question was to find a certain hand gesture that had the effect of affecting one's concentration. Nem had once the habit one joining the tip of his fingers to increase his focus and to completely join his palms when he needed to really concentrate for a short period of time. It was a sort of trigger that he conditioned himself to follow.
Having taken conscience of the difficulty of the task, he kept practicing bits and pieces until he fell asleep.
His following week's evenings were dedicated to this practice, while the days of training made him fantasize about being a member of the CIA, the major difference being that he didn't actually have any idea what was going on in the world. Also, the lack of guns kind of ruined his fun.
'Come on, I know you have guns ! A flintlock is actually quite advanced too, with the popularization of the steam machine, I wouldn't even be surprised if someone invented the revolver already. Is this some kind of religious thing again ?'
In fact, the extent of the training made him believe that there were indeed secret services in this world or at least special forces.
A thought came to his mind.
'This is probably a training aimed at the rare orphans who will become Blessed. In that case, with their superpowers, guns might not be the best weapons.'
This evening, he attempted the complete meditation for the third time. He was quite optimistic about the result this time.
'Third time's the charm, right ?'
Nem relaxed his shoulder muscles, took the right position and inhaled deeply, fully inflating his lungs. As the sound of respiration resonated at strange intervals, his brain went from perfectly oxygenated to struggling to hold on. The effects of this meditation method were truly harsh.
Nem was completely focused on his breathing, ignoring everything else, until he finally entered was what described in the scroll as the "proper meditative state". He was instantly aware of it, because his consciousness seemed to dissociate from his body, bringing Nem to a peaceful state of mind... right before he was thrown out of it.
Nem's mind was in chaos as he struggled to breathe, an expression of panic on his face.
This short experience had brought him to two conclusions. First, succeeding in meditation required one to be able to maintain the 'true meditative state' for a long time, which was very hard. Second...
'There is definitely something wrong with me.'
When he was in that immersed in that feeling of peace, he realized that his emotions were abnormal since his reincarnation. To be direct, he was always excited about everything, all the time. During these two weeks, Nem was stuck in a monastery with technology close to the middle ages without being able to talk and doing repetitive exercises. He couldn't even read books.
Yet, he wasn't bored. For a modern man accustomed to the strong stimulus everywhere he looked, this was really abnormal. In fact, he even listened attentively to the mathematics teachings of Mr. Haynes, even as most of the orphans themselves couldn't help but nod off.
'And we're talking about the same children who lived in a silent monastery for most of their lives !'
'It's like a weird illness that forces me to be happy. Is this related to the monastery and the brainwashing powers ?'
Nem progressively regained his calm.
'No, as I mentioned before, the other orphans aren't like this. There is no reason anyone would personally target me, especially with such a strange method. I was even the same kind of strange when I woke up on the farm, getting all excited about those fantasy animals... Actually, I probably would anyway, bad example. Dragons are awesome.'
He connected this with his dreams, which were infused with the same feeling of freedom and happiness almost every night. A strange thought crossed his mind :
'It's like something happened between my death on Earth and the moment I woke up here. Hum... like a prisoner finally getting out to see the world, yes, like that.'
Although he had finally noticed this problem, Nem didn't have any idea on how to fix it. Besides, should he really fix it ? It wasn't like it impacted his personality too much... Not able to come to a conclusion, Nem simply went to sleep.
The next day, to try to manage the problem, Nem went out to explore the monastery on his own, not even realizing that his decision was clearly influenced by his "illness" until the meditation in the evening.
'Damn, I guess I really should fix it, fortunately, I didn't run into anything interesting this time... Wait, maybe it's a bad thing ?'
Two days later, Nem grew a bit tired of socializing with the orphans and found an excuse to go explore the monastery again, rationalizing it as something he had to do if he was forced to escape one day.
This time, he found something.