Later that same night, while the rest of the squad was asleep, Sol was in his room in a meditative posture. While his body rested, his mind was in the white room created through [Reinterpret]. Ever since they had returned from the ancient dwarven city, he had been doing this every night, working towards one goal, and it was finally bearing fruit.
In the white room, which was designed to resemble a small clearing in a grove, Sol was facing an assortment of rocks of different sizes.
He focused on sending wisps of an energy different from the mana he normally wielded toward one of the smaller rocks, causing it to gently roll on the ground. His face strained as he tried to eke out more of that energy to go a step further and lift the rock into the air, but something blocked him from doing so.
'Today I'll break through this barrier.' he thought as he strained his mind further, trying to squeeze out more of that energy.
More energy than before left his body and headed toward the small rock, causing it to actually levitate off the ground. Though it could be considered a victory to make the rock float, Sol felt he had much more of this energy trapped inside him and didn't stop pushing until he felt the wall preventing it from leaving his body begin to crack.
'Come on… just a little more…'
Bit by bit, the wall broke, allowing even more energy to escape, until it finally crumbled under the pressure, and a deluge of energy broke free from within him all at once, slamming straight into the rock. The rock wasn't launched away as he had originally intended; instead, it shattered under the force, turning to dust in an instant.
After destroying the helpless rock, Sol suddenly felt dizzy and weak. Even though the white room could replenish his energy infinitely, this wasn't caused by spending all that energy, but by the act of breaking the wall.
It took him a short moment to recover, but once he did and checked his state, he smiled. He turned his gaze to the other rocks, and with a single thought, they all began to levitate simultaneously.
Satisfied, he said, "It took me the whole week, but I broke through the mental barrier, and I can finally use my real psychic energy."
When Fabio told him that psychic energy wasn't the same as mana, Sol had wanted to find out how to gain access to this dormant form of energy. Before, his psychic skills were performed using mana, which was extremely inefficient since he was converting mana into psychic energy.
Sadly, he hadn't known this until Fabio pointed it out. When he siphoned the skill, the previous user had also been a beginner and had passed on misguided knowledge. It took a while to break the bad habits he had inherited before searching within himself for the real psychic energy. But that wasn't even the real hurdle, it only took him one night to find it. The real challenge came afterward.
"I can't believe Dad's mental barrier, which was meant to protect me, was also inadvertently suppressing my psychic energy. If not for that, I would've found it sooner."
The mental barrier his father had placed on him was, in a way, too good at blocking psychic interference, it also blocked his own psychic energy from leaving. Even though that barrier had long since dissipated, remnants of Roman's energy remained and continued to block his psychic energy. It took almost a full week to break through the remnants of the mental barrier, but now that he had, he had full access to all his psychic energy.
It flowed from within him seamlessly and was incredibly easy to control. What he had found difficult with [Basic Psychic Mastery] before was now child's play. He tested his psychic energy with various exercises, from moving boulders to searching through his memories and vividly recalling books he had read years ago.
He then spent the rest of the night's [Reinterpret] session exploring everything he could do with his psychic energy. When the sun began to rise, Sol left the white room and was greeted by a flood of system messages.
[[Basic Psychic Mastery] leveled up! (8 -> 10)]
[[Basic Psychic Mastery] evolved into [Intermediate Psychic Mastery]!]
[[Intermediate Psychic Mastery] leveled up! (1 -> 6)]
[Learned [Telekinesis] Lv 7!]
[Learned [Memory Engraving] Lv 5!]
[Learned [Mental Acceleration] Lv 6!]
[Learned [Mental Scrying] Lv 4!]
[[Telepathy] leveled up! (3 -> 4)]
[Learned [Psy Blast] Lv 4!]
As he read through the messages, he thought in amazement, 'Wow. I think that's my best white room session yet. That's gonna be hard to top.'
He had gained many new skills, but [Memory Engraving] and [Mental Acceleration] stood out, as he had technically used them before, but the system hadn't recognized them as skills. This was because he had been using them incorrectly. While the end result had been similar, since he wasn't using real psychic energy and his control was sloppy, they never made the cut until now.
And although he had gained many new skills, he hadn't even tried everything he had in mind. There were a few ideas that required another person, like [Telepathy]. He tried it nonetheless, but the results were lackluster. When he created other beings in the white room, he controlled all their actions and couldn't fully simulate their minds, so using psychic energy on them had little effect.
Not wanting to waste time on a skill he couldn't properly practice, he stopped and worked on a new attack, which was how he learned [Psy Blast]. It was a straightforward attack, sending a wave of psychic energy similar to how he had destroyed the small rock earlier, but this time on purpose.
He was very satisfied with his progress. After checking his status page, he realized something.
'I didn't think of it before, but it's too easy to use psychic energy and skills. Is it because my attributes are so high? No, that can't be it…'
It was only now that he noticed something odd. He thought it might be because he was in the white room of [Reinterpret], but he shook his head at the theory. [Terra Manipulation] was also given similar treatment, and it wasn't nearly as easy to level up. Plus, he had encountered multiple bottlenecks with it.
Then he remembered something from over a month ago when he had been debating which talent skill to pursue for his first law technique. His eyes widened in realization.
'[Siphon] felt like a psychic skill because it is one! Which means that [Siphoner] is actually a psychic talent!'