C108: Recovery and Mind
Overall Word count = 1381 on 7/4/2024.
"You know kid, maybe don't tear a hole in your own soul if you don't have experience with it."
Axel looks over and finds Stein looking down the same hallway he is.
"What do you mean my soul?" Axel asks.
"This entire place is your mind, yes?" Axel nods.
"Well the mind is a pathway to the soul, which is how we all got here. You as the owner, we as the soul fragments." Axel nods again when Stein smacks his head.
"If you understand then why are you creating holes in your own mind which are connected to your soul?!" Stein unleashes an iconic 'reaper chop' on Axel's head. He falls over again and his vision turns murky. Stein says his last words before Axel is kicked out of his mind space.
"Fix your body first since your actions blew it up too. Don't come back until you get your head on straight. Can't keep your big teacher worried and waiting."
Axel opens his eyes to find Gorgon is kneeling down next to him as a series of wipes and towels are pressed against his body. After a moment he feels the pain emitting from his body due to his injuries caused by the backlash of his actions.
He suddenly has a better understanding of what he actually did. When he broke the barrier in his own mind, he had caused a spiritual injury on himself and with gluttony and his ring always working to keep him safe, failing in this task caused a backlash on his body as well. As such, the chest pain was a spiritual injury while his physical ones are caused by his magic and skills going haywire.
A sizable puppet begins to form right above Axel. It possessed a black bowl cut style hair that goes just past the head. It has a bulky body with a cross stitched '+' on both it's shoulders. Its boney hands elongate into threads and various medical tools as it begins to treat Axel. This is naturally Dr. Blythe that Axel summoned with his Nen that was not affected. Though his spiritual injury is messing with his concentration, as such, he is wasting energy when using his other magical abilities but with his ring supporting his energy that becomes less of a problem.
Axel's injuries are closed over the course of a few minutes and under Gorgon's gaze. Though because of the size of some of the injuries, he had to get dissolvable stitches put in. Axel would take a lesser healing potion to clean up his wounds when he returns. But for now he dispels the good doctor and lies down.
"I'm very sorry for making a mess of your home teacher. I didn't mean to do this." Gorgon sighs seeing that he is fine now.
"At least tell me what you did that was so stupid that you injured yourself like this" She demands answers and Axel begins to describe how he had found the affinity space but did not know how to proceed. He explains how a new unknown space was made in his mind space. He went down it and then broke the wall he encountered.
To which Gorgon facepalms with a groan. She gets up and heads for the kitchen. She takes out a few herbs and begins to grind them into paste. She dumps it all into a smaller bowl before returning and handing it over to Axel.
"Eat this, it will speed up your mental recovery and maybe eating some greens will help develop your brain while we are at it" She hands Axel the bowl and sarcastically dismisses Axel's mental prowess for doing something so dumb.
"Heyyyy, I eat my greens"
"Then where is it all going? Definitely not into your brain if you thought brute force was the answer when you are already inside your own mind and knew that. Honestly, Murasaki-san put too much faith in all your skills. Must be why she didn't bother to teach you how to develop your mind space. From now on ignore mana burst, we will focus on training your mind so we do not get a repeat of today" Gorgon sets the rules of what her next lessons are before she realizes that he is still recovering.
"Oh, you might as well continue with your story until you finish recovering, now eat." Axel begins to chew on the grimy paste he was handed, he cant feel any immediate results but decides to believe in Gorgon's medical paste. He continues explaining the series of events he encountered within the newly revealed space.
She frowns as he describes the space and even more so when he encountered the first 'guardian'. Her reaction becomes most severe when he mentions how he defeated the guardian and then learned how to use mana burst instantly but still played it safe by testing out how it works with his own body.
'Did his body already know mana burst but he forgot it with his "amnesia" or is his body simply responding to his desires and giving him the technique?' Gorgon ponders to herself but forces herself to snap out of her own thoughts when she hears how the encounter with the second guardian went.
'That's not a normal mana burst, that's clearly a specialization type. Is he meant to challenge the guardian multiple times to figure out how to use it himself and then once defeated would provide the full understanding of the technique?' She cant help but ponder, she understands that Axel did not use his full set of skills in that fight but would it have made any difference
Gorgon sighs as Axel finishes up his story.
"You're sighing a lot today" Axel brings up.
"And whose fault is it that I have such a dumb student?"
"Hai Hai. It's my fault. I'm the dumb student"
"Humph, since you so readily agreed, then there is no point in demeaning you further, Ill just add this to the list of things that Raikou messed up." Gorgon throws an unexpected jab at Axel's first 'goddess'. Axel himself can only offer a wry smile as he thinks that his thinking has indeed been skewed for a long time.
Over the course of the next 2 hours, Gorgon has chosen to explain what type of mental exercises that Axel would have to do before the duo would delve into Mind Magic. Axel finishes eating his greens in the meantime and finally recovers from his mental injury he gave himself.
Axel spent the rest of the day doing the exercises that Gorgon recommended to him. They varied from trying to sense his own mental energies to actually using them like muscles where he had to lift various items of increasing weight and size. Gorgon said that such an exercise would be useful in learning mana threads in the future since they share similar 'properties'.
Axel can only take her words at face value but he on the other hand has a massive headache due to using up all his mental energies since his technique is crude. His, still damaged, ring also doesnt help at all in recovering mental energy so that is another thing he needs to add to his creation.
"Alright teacher, I should start making my way home." Axel says as he fixes his clothes, shaking off all the sweat that has spread onto his body due to all the mental exercises he has been doing the past few hours.
"Yes yes. Now you be careful. Have someone be near you if you decide to challenge that guardian again. Who knows if any of your injuries from that fight passed over to your physical body." Gorgon warns as a precaution since she knows Axel is the hasty type. Axel nevertheless nods as he wants Raikou's advice on mana burst anyways.
If he can figure out what the second guardian did then he can begin to counter it which would help him survive longer. Though he would first have to suffer a few losses to understand what he can and can't do against it.
Axel teleports back home where he has two ravenous women waiting for him to claim.