Chereads / Fractal Psyche / Chapter 5 - Breathing ain't that easy

Chapter 5 - Breathing ain't that easy

[Man, this is hard...] Janette's expression was a bit troubled.

[Im supposed to breathe in and out, and in and out, and in and out... I may as well be on a ventilator!]

[And what the hell is this "You will understand eventually" stuff... I'm going to pop like a balloon at this point!]

[There must be something I'm not understanding, Eric said that by controlling the power of our souls we could use some kind of power but what does that mean?]

After enjoying a warm meal with Eric and Nana, Janette decided to keep repeating the same breathing exercise Eric showed her throughout the night.

Her emotions were still burning her from the inside, She has seen how Eric has accomplished some inexplicable feats throughout the years and every time she asked him to teach her his answer was always the same.

'Given enough time you will be able to do all this and even more, be patient.'

After repeating these words mocking Eric and his uptight personality something seemed to have clicked inside her brain

[Hold up, wait a minute... Something ain't right!]

[Given enough time... be patient...]

[!!!]

[Those were not lame excuses... They were pointers!]

[I'm such an absolute moron!]

After that sudden realization, Janette started practicing even more enthusiastically. She felt like a detective looking for clues in the most remote places!

So the breathing exercises began once more.

Janette paid close attention to her emotions and posture, as she started to believe that those were the first step she needed to achieve her goal.

With each passing moment her posture became more relaxed and her expression became peaceful and quiet, her eyebrows unfurrowed and breathing became easier and easier with each breath. Who would have thought that even breathing could be improved?

And so it began, an energizing feeling filled her lungs and started to dissipate into her body, and without realizing a few hours had passed.

Janette realized that she could somewhat control this feeling inside of her, but every time she tried to focus on it, it would disappear and she would be struck by a wave of exhaustion.

[It seems it's not worth it to interrupt the exercise too early, I wonder if I keep doing this, would it become easier?] Janette thought for a moment when she stopped...

[Anyway it's getting late I should probably go to sleep...]

When she looked outside she realized it was well past midnight...

[Damn... I f-d up...]

~~~~~~Early in the morning ~~~~~~

"Janette, it's time, Let's go."

Janette woke up in a hurry, after sleeping for about two hours, her eyes felt heavy, and a bit of a headache was brewing.

Thankfully such a young body had its own benefits, so even after putting on an all-nighter she didn't feel near as tired as she taught she would be, maybe those breathing exercises even helped a little. On the other hand, she will need to do all her daily chores anyway so not everything was 'absolutely awesome'...

After putting on some clothes Janette strolled confidently outside to where her father was waiting for her.

Eric only gave a glance at that smug face of hers and said...

"I know you stayed up all night. You need to be careful and follow instructions."

[Crap...] Janette's expression froze and she looked quite embarrassed of herself.

"I will let it slide, I did the same thing when I started my training as well, although you picked it up quite fast."

"The reason I'm telling you this is because your body will need time to recover from the training, if you overwork yourself, getting injured is a big possibility."

Eric's expression was serious just like usual but he was quite comfortable because he could tell Janette will keep those words at heart.

"We will be doing this for at least a week, after you have reached a certain point I will show you the next part of your training."

And so the training began once more, instead of focusing on the feeling and trying to control the energy within herself, Janette let it do as it pleases, after a few days she felt as if everything was going where it needed to go.

This energy traveled through her veins into every organ, and every cell of her body, and after it got to a certain point it started to dissipate once more.

Slowly but surely this energy was strengthening her at a cellular level and because of that, the difference was almost indistinguishable.

Days slowly passed and this training became nothing but a routine.

Until the day this energy stopped dissipating completely and started storing itself inside of Janette's body.

[It's so weird, I feel like if I could punch a lion on its face... This feeling is quite addicting that's no bueno...]

The next day at the start of Janette's training routine Eric started giving her pointers about the next step she needed to follow.

"Up to this point, everything should have been pretty simple. The energy our souls radiate slowly dissipate into the surroundings and affect our environment, some people think that areas rich with this energy give birth to stronger creatures while others think that it's the energy these stronger creatures emit that creates these areas of high concentration of energy.

Why I'm telling you this? Even if these places give a lot of good opportunities they are also far more dangerous than the others, so be careful of not biting more than you can chew..."

"Now that you know how to keep this energy inside of your body I will show you how to direct it to use it in different ways."

When Eric said this he started to radiate a weird pressure once again, as if somewhere behind him a huge and bloodthirsty beast was looking right back at Janette...

"This is where you are right now, but your soul can't emit as much energy as mine at the moment, now you need to cover yourself with this energy, try to imagine as if you were to be submerged in a pond, you need to cover yourself like the water does while remaining flexible and malleable as well."

"When you are able to do this much we will continue to do something more fun."