As the years passed with ease, Jason's lessons with Erog grew in complexity to the subjects of physics, calculus, geography, chemistry, and even some basic history's of both the world and Rowbal.
As the subjects Erog taught him grew in complexity, he began to notice some inconsistency's with the taught materials and the world he observed around himself. He found that humans currently lacked the required tools to see things to the level that he could. Though this didn't stop them from coming up with ideas they could test based off their previously confirmed knowledge. So, even if they couldn't actually see the things they needed, their ideas weren't far off from the truth either.
The idea of atoms as they called them was a rather interesting one, they called the small substances that made up everything around them such. To the best of their knowledge, they thought them to be small balls that stuck to one another, essentially of varying weights and organized into different property's based on what they reacted to in their purest forms.
This wasn't necessarily wrong, though they only had about 25 of these different atoms documented, yet Jason can tell you there were probably over 100 different atom types. Also they weren't all entirely different things, they were all made up of three different smaller particles that just were arranged differently.
Despite discrepancies such as this, he was still fully invested in Erog's lessons. He even hoped that someday using more human means he could prove to them what he was able to see without sounding crazy to them.
From this, he picked up the hobby of asking Erog questions that he hadn't thought about sort of leading him towards these ideas of how things really were. Sometimes Erog would react saying the things Jason was asking were flat out impossible because of this or that currently held belief about the world.
Jason found this immensely amusing, because of the irony that if Erog could see half the things he could, he'd be so embarrassed about his responses to his questions he'd probably quit being his teacher on the spot and ask him to teach him instead; though, maybe after a couple mental break downs over getting his world view flipped on its head.
The one thing Erog was almost never wrong about though was his engineering and various mechanisms. Jason had learned at one time that he was a feared, essentially physics and engineering researcher and teacher. The machines that Erog had come up with were part of the reason that the Rowbal military was so freighting today. Yet this was also why Erog fled his life in the capital, he had hated his designs being converted into weapons of war, and would lament to Jason about this a bit more often now that he was older.
Erog much preferred to build water mills, dams, gravity fed machines and other such machines that made his life or others easier. His farm was a great example, using the windmill on his barn he was able to pump water to a high up water tank in his barn. It could then be gravity released through another valve to let it pour down through his crops using clay pipes, he poked tiny holes in them to slowly release the water throughout his farm.
Jason being twelve now, and he had nearly learned all that Erog could teach him. The pair had switched to coming up with many unique designs and prototypes for machines that Erog had been working on for some time. With his help, Erog was now finally able to make some of the designs he'd only thought of creating a reality.
Erog's barn had been converted to a whole workshop dedicated to their efforts. Their most impressive feat was their steam-assisted Blacksmiths workshop, Erog being too old to swing a hammer with any strength, and Jason too young to. The two used the power they could gather from a steam engine to power a 'Steam Hammer' as they named it. They could also lift and pull things around the shop with ease using a steam engine assisted lift system.
The two made an unstoppable combination, using their creations to further other creations, they were able to make some remarkable things, like a small carriage that was steam powered. It wasn't the most efficient of machines, due to the weight of the carriage it couldn't go nearly as fast as a horse. Though it could move things much heavier than a horse could, only as long as it didn't get stuck in a ditch or hit a rough patch of dirt.
They tried many ways to avoid this caveat, eventually they came up with the idea to cut a grove in the wooden wheels and lay chain to combine the power of the wheels, while also preventing the earth from getting stuck between the wheels.
When they tested it on a river bank the results were exactly what they wanted. If anyone saw the pair from a distance they'd think Erog was the kid, not Jason with all the jumping.
Jason had gotten into a habit of writing down all his ideas in a book Erog had given him. Before he would even think to cheer, he had already dropped to his knees and began writing in his book. Erog never expected him to take to it so much, for Jason though, it was the perfect moment to stop and use his light to playback simulations of all he had just witnessed.
He was writing in the book solely to not just stare into space randomly, because before Erog would always take it as him being uninterested in something and move on, when in reality it was always the contrary.
The content in the book wasn't just nonsense either, it was usually sketches or notes of what interactions he had observed in detail, close as he should be able to perceive that is. Jason found this simplification process useful to make him think in a different way. Sometimes, it was what helped inspire him with ideas for their next tests or work.
Overall, both of them spent a lot of time together, and made for a rather odd pairing to anyone else who saw them. Jason's home life had progressed much the same, his parents had been making many strides on the farm, almost selling out of all their livestock this year through Erog.
Jason didn't understand why, but his parents hadn't made any effort to buy more animals either. When he asked them why, they told him it just wasn't time yet, and they didn't need to. They didn't say anymore than that, and despite living on the farm Jason hadn't spent much time learning from them, so he just took their word for it.
Truthfully though, his parents had been preparing to run once they saw an opportunity, they felt they couldn't tell him at the moment not to disrupt his learning. They both felt the look on his face everyday when he came back from Erog's was too sweet.
However, Jason was also using his lessons with Erog as an excuse. Every day when he came back he'd eat with his parents and immediately head to bed saying he was tired from his day. This had become so common over the years the two never even questioned him about it, and it filled them with more joy knowing he was applying his all so something.
Really, he was using as much time as he could get his hands on to accumulate more light. Over the past seven years he hadn't made any more huge breakthroughs. But slowly with time his routine had caused a drastic change to him physically.
Outside he appeared normal, but on the inside he was unrecognizable, with time his three separate energies had slowly assimilated and created a single channel across the pathways in his body. So now when he sat to accumulate light he had no choice but to use all three methods of absorption; using one alone was just far less effective for the same type of results.
Jason also noted the way in which he was absorbing the light was changing with time. To him originally it appeared like he was pouring a pale of water in reverse that the world around him would contort and light would materialize into millions of threads and were slowly pulled through their respective destination points, be that his pores, his lungs, or his eyes.
Now these threads would begin to form streams about twenty meters away from him, they would circle around him a few times before slowly making contact with one another forming larger and larger streams until they made contact with his body. It felt like the light was pouring over his body as it gluttonously drank up the light for hours.
When it entered through, for example his pores, it would wash through his muscles leaving a cooling sensation, revitalizing them from the days work with Erog of endless forging and tinkering. Then it would flow through to the smaller linking channels to the muscles and enter its final destination in the main channels that flowed through his body.
Similarly, his eyes and lungs would absorb the light the same way. The lungs would pull the energy into the blood, then wash through to the smaller channels connected to his heart and the various channels it flowed through.
His eyes pulled it through into his mind, down along his spin into the almost ever branching reactionary pathways network. Along this entire path it leaked away into tiny connections to his the lights main channel in his body.
With all this light he'd been accumulating he was no longer able to deplete it in one day without constantly using it. He noticed it was also improving the rest of his body the more he could accumulate.
His eyesight was a prime case, it had grown to be about twice as keen as it was originally. When he asked his parents how their eye sight changed as they grew they said not at all and if anything it got worse. Since Damir turned 20 he said he had to squint to see most things close to his face, so he worked leaning away from his hands when he used to sit as close to possible apparently before then.
His muscles weren't anything exquisite, especially in size like his dad's, yet he guessed when he was working with Erog he was able to lift almost as much as his dad nowadays.
The only caveat was still that while he was accumulating light like this he was completely unaware of what transpires around him. his senses were all cut off from him, it was like he was floating in darkness if not for the light he could clearly see and sense within his mind all around him.
It was because of this that Irina was currently viciously shaking him, shouting his name, luckily he wasn't asleep just disconnected from reality.
His eyes sprung open, before him his mother was on her knees quivering, holding his shoulders with tears running down, but a forced smile was being internally gripped and stretched across her face.
"Jay, honey, get up, get up. Quickly, I'm sorry you need to get your clothes on quickly here."
Jason quickly looked around in a daze as Irina pulled him from bed by his wrists. She moved her hands as fast as she could, pulling over a black tunic and cloak much like the one he just noticed she was wearing.
Irina was getting him into pants and he looked up a little more collected but not much from the cold fright he was feeling just looking at his mother.
"Where's Dad? Why are you crying? What's happening mom, why all black, what's wrong, tell me?" Jason couldn't tell why, as he kept speaking, tears kept welling up in his eyes and it got harder to speak.
Seeing his mother like this wasn't something normal by any means. Just as he asked this he noticed he could hear yelling and the loudest voice was his dad. He had moved his head over to look where it was coming from but his mom quickly pulled his head back to look right at her eyes.
"Your father is buying us time, a large group of my people trying to flee our country broke into and emptied out the town's winter store houses, the towns people are blaming us for telling them where all the food stores were." She spoke quickly yet calmly to him, never breaking eye contact or even blinking, anyone who saw though would easily see just how hard she was straining just to do so, as she shook all over.
She threw him up and over her back, carrying him starting to head straight out of the room not giving him a chance to ask anymore questions. As she moved out into their home's main room. The shouting more easily pierced through the windows, it filled the room and his ears as the door opened. Outside the front window he could see it was lit up with numerous lights like it was day yet he knew it should be pitch black out here right now.
Even in the face of all the shouting, Damir's voice still resounded louder than the rest. It echoed into his ears as he hung off each word.
"I told you we're here, at home, we live here, we rely on this town and those food stores to help make it through the winter too why would we do this!? WHY?"
A wave of voices roared back at him.
"Why? Why would you choose to marry one of those silver haired leeches unless you weren't on their side, huh!? How can we not suspect you?" The first audible voice called.
"We'd love to believe you Damir, you grew up around here we all loved you, but where's your Grenin bitch wife and your son?" Jason heard someone yell.
Another woman screamed, "I'd bet she left with her son and those traitors to our country knowing what they'd done wouldn't end well if they stayed!" He recognized that voice immediately, it was the school teacher, Orellin Upsen.
She looked the other way while the school kids threw rocks at him when Damir took him to Erog's.
Voices began to ring out, getting more violent and angry, calling for both him and his mother to come out. Jason held tightly around his mother's neck as they went down into the side cellar next to the bedroom, the voices being cut off to more mumbled bunches of words.