Connor was sitting on the black ground with puddles of water around him. Right now, he was practicing a "heat armor."
After creating a hot sphere, he figured out that it was quite ineffective to maintain it. First of all, it only covers half of his body, and secondly, it consumes a lot of energy. So Connor thought for a while and came up with an idea. He tried to cover himself with energy and make it constantly vibrate with low frequency, creating something like energy clothes, and it worked! It consumed much less energy, provided heat to every part of his body, but was quite tricky to maintain because this coverage required constant concentration.
Connor was practicing for a while. The first step of his plan was to learn to absorb energy constantly without even thinking about it. He needed a permanent income of purple energy to support the heat around him. It was quite a tricky thing. Energy will only listen to his will when he consciously routed it.
While trying to make energy flow like he wanted to, Connor noticed one interesting thing. Purple energy had some magnetism between itself. It seemed that free purple energy in the world slowly, very slowly flew in the direction of Connor. It was quite an exciting discovery. After thinking about it for some time, he came up with two hypotheses.
First: Energy flew to the places with a larger concentration of energy(Connor's body in our situation)
Second: Energy was moving naturally, and Connor misinterpreted this.
To check it out, he decided to experiment. Connor stretched out his arms and created a large, hand-sized sphere of purple energy and small dots of energy around the sphere with different distances between dots and sphere.
"Experiment number one begins!"
Connor let purple dots fly on their own, and after some time, he observed that dots were concentrating around the sphere. It was clearly visible that the sphere attracted small dots to itself.
"Yes! Experiment number one, success!"
Connor was beaming with excitement and happiness because of the experiment results! He was a very curious person, so it's only natural that successful experiments give him so much joy.
After making mental notes about future experiments and potential results usage, Connor sighed with relief. These results explained why earlier air became warmer only after accumulating some energy. The more energy he had inside him, the higher the absorption rate was.
After the little celebration, an idea suddenly popped inside his mind.
"What if I..... compress it?"
Immediately sphere of purple energy appeared again, along with dots at the exact same distances they initially were. After making initial preparations for another experiment, Connor inhaled deeply with his arms stretched out.
"Experiment number two... begins!"
The experiment started, and a large sphere started to shrink, constantly becoming smaller and smaller until it came from the hand-sized to the finger-sized. After the transformation of the sphere, it was like purple dots had gone mad. They flew to the sphere at a much faster rate than before, constantly bumping into each other, trying to be first to reach their goal. When dots contacted the purple sphere, they started to circulate around it, giving their energy to the sphere! Purple pressurized sphere not only attracted the dots, but it also was gradually consuming them! If in the first experiment, dots were like turtles, slowly walking to the sphere, then in the second experiment, dots were like horses running for their lives! The difference was as clear as day!
"Yeeess!!!!! Experiment number two, extreme success!"
There was a reason for such a euphoric reaction from Connor. If pressurized purple energy could attract smaller portions of energy to itself, then that meant if Connor accumulated and pressurized enough energy inside his stomach, then the energy-supply problem was solved automatically!
Connor immediately started to analyze the results of the experiment. If the magnetic-compression phenomenon(He named it that way in his mind) could be applied to his inner energy, it would solve his problems with energy consumption! He wouldn't need to make his body instinctively absorb the energy anymore. This phenomenon could do all of the work for him!
Connor immediately started to absorb energy inside the hollow space inside his stomach, now he was not only absorbing, but he was also compressing all of the energy that was inside him.
Purple portions of energy were rotating around the center of his stomach. After some time, a small, pure bright-purple ball slowly formed. It was a highly condensed purple energy. Right now, this ball was even smaller than a finger, but it could already absorb some energy on itself, so it was another success!
But, of course, it was only the first step to his initial goal. Aware of that, Connor didn't stop and continued to pressurize and absorb the energy around him. He would compress purple energy as much as he could, and when he felt that it couldn't be compressed further, he absorbed more energy, and the cycle will start over.
Connor fell into a state of trance, didn't aware of the flow of time. Gradually, the small bright-purple ball became a medium bright-purple ball. After a time, the medium bright-purple ball inside the hollow space in his stomach transformed into a large bright-purple ball.
While Connor was busy absorbing energy, the night in the snow plateau gradually started transforming into the day. First rays of sunlight started to break through the horizon, illuminating the snow and reflecting from it. That was quite a beautiful view!
Connor slowly opened his eyes to see how the top of the small-red sun was rising from the horizon.
"I didn't even think that night here could have ended....."
After enjoying the picture in front of him, Connor checked his body and was quite surprised.
Bright-purple ball automatically absorbed all of the energy he was inhaling! Even more, because of it, he was inhaling more energy than ever!
"Nice!"
That means the first step of his plan was completed. Energy supply was more than enough to maintain his heat coverage. Connor used some time to adjust the energy consumption of heat clothes by optimizing some areas that provided more heat than they should. Finally, Connor could use all of his concentration on heat coverage, so he noticed not-so-obvious problems that he couldn't notice before and fixed them, improving his invention even more.
"First step is completed, moving to step two...."
Step number two goal was to learn how to walk!
Connor was in the body of a small child, and he still didn't learn to move on his own, but if he wanted to leave this now-bright snowy wasteland, he needed to learn how to do it.
At this moment, he has met all of the conditions. Thanks to the purple energy, freezing to death wasn't a threat anymore. He didn't need to concentrate on absorbing anymore, and yet again, thanks to the purple energy!
Connor was quite motivated, his earlier attempts were a failure because he was afraid, shocked, and couldn't think properly at the moment, plus it was pretty challenging to move when your little body was shaking hardly because of cold.
Well, that was how Connor thought.
In reality, after another twenty attempts to walk, Connor shouted inwardly
"WHAT THE HELL????"
He still couldn't walk normally! It seems like his body just turned off after a few steps. It wasn't something like that. He couldn't maintain balance properly. It's just he couldn't make his muscles do something! Frustrating!
Connor was lying on the ground and thinking, why couldn't he move? That was such a simple action for a human, yet all of his attempts seemed inefficient. Connor tried to wave his hands for a while just out of curiosity. He was interested. Was it only his legs didn't want to work or was it his entire body? After doing some actions with his hands for a while, his hands lost all of their energy, just like legs!
"What. The. Hell. I can't even move my hands normally?"
It was quite a frustrating result for Connor, but at the same time, it was informative.
"That means my entire body couldn't be moved, well, at least it makes sense."
He was staring aimlessly in the sky, trying to figure out a solution for this situation.
"Well, all of my body isn't working properly, so what options do I have... Wait, all my body?"
The sudden realization came to Connor's mind.
"No! It's not all my body! It's just limbs! If all my body was lacking energy, then I couldn't think properly and even live because my inner organs wouldn't have energy!"
It explains a lot in this situation. Realization of it unfolded many mysteries.
This body of Connor's was in this wasteland for god knows how long, without any food or water! So how could he feel normal? He was still a human, after all.
The answer was, as usual - purple energy.
All of his purple energy was stored near his stomach, providing energy to his inner organs.
Connor didn't know how exactly purple energy converts into the nutrients, but by existing of channels for purple energy and hollow space inside the stomach, one could quickly tell that this body differs from that of Earth humans, so it is entirely possible that the body has its own ways to interact with purple energy.
In his first attempts, he couldn't walk normally because he hadn't had enough food, nor purple energy.
Connor's limbs had some energy for moving right now because he was constantly supplying his heat coverage with energy, so it seems his limbs absorbed a small part of it.
With this knowledge, the only thing left for Connor was to route his purple energy inside his limbs and stand up!
"Take it slowly, Connor. No need to fall again only because of excitement."
He carefully directed energy from the hollow space to the limbs, filling the channels with an abundant amount of energy.
Slowly, he stood up and took a step.
One step
Two steps
Three steps
Four steps
Five steps
Ten steps
He was walking! Finally, he could do the essential human thing! If someone earlier told Connor that he would be so happy about his walking ability, Connor would laugh at him, but it was reality right now!
"It feels good, very good. I won't freeze to death. I don't need food at the moment, so I'll definitely leave this god-forgotten wasteland!"
Connor completed all the steps of his plan, so he could finally leave that place!