Nick felt that he had definitely succeeded. He gave himself a few minutes to rest from the previous attempt. After about ten minutes, he used his meditation once again; his consciousness moved into the same space from before and Nick decided to look at the entire environment. Like before there was a seemingly vast night sky with five stars shining brightly with the largest of them emanating a bluish red light. There was also the floating concrete road with a figure made of darkness walking endlessly along it. There was something else that Nick did not notice before, below the floating road there seemed to be nothing but darkness but upon closer inspection, the darkness turned out to be really dark colored, still water.
"This is a strange sight. The difference between my mindscape and empty skies seem to be the five stars, the concrete road, the dark figure and this 'sea'. Hmmm...What does all this all mean?"
Nick was curious and puzzled at the same time.
"Unfortunately, this space can't process and hold magic energy without a set of foundation laws. I also can't identify its effects without being able to use magic assuming this is not a basic mindscape."
Nick felt that there was a low possibility of this being a basic mindscape. In fact he would be very surprised if it was.
"Following persistent and informed effort, successfully achieving your goal becomes the natural conclusion. My mindscape may have formed but without the magic energy, it seems like it's in an inactive state. I read from a book before that that would be the case so I'm not so surprised about all the darkness in here."
Nick willed for his consciousness to leave his mindscape and the sight of his room appeared to him again.
(Alright, I was successful in forming my mindscape, now I need to work on modifying the Laws of Syracuse into something suitable for me. I'll be pretty much shooting in the dark since I don't even know the effects of my mindscape but improving the Laws of Syracuse by even a little bit would be a major success.)
Nick felt incredibly excited, his hard work for all these months was not wasted. He got up from his desk in the hopes that he could go to the cafeteria to get something to eat as a form of celebration but as soon as he got up, he was hit by a wave of fatigue. His mind became almost a completely fuzzy mess, his muscles also felt like they were weakening. Nick used the last bit of his strength to walk over to his bed and lie down in it. Nick then fell into a deep sleep almost like he was forced into it by something that he didn't understand.
......................
When Nick woke up, he first reached for his phone without thinking too much and the first thing that he noticed was that it was now midday on Thursday. Nick knew that he had formed his mindscape on Monday night so he had apparently been sleeping for over two days
"Does forming a mindscape cause extreme fatigue?"
Nick wasn't sure since he had not seen information stating that in any of the books that he read. The second thing Nick noticed was that he was hungry...very, very hungry, almost unbearably hungry. Nick quickly took a shower and got dressed and then proceeded to the cafeteria. He ordered two portions of fried chicken, gravy, vegetables and brown rice. Nick sat in the cafeteria since he didn't think that he had the strength to carry his food back to his room. Nick ignored what was going on around him and just ate, not caring to pace himself. His hurried and messy eating attracted the attention of the nearby students, at which point some of them sent sneers in Nick's direction. Most of them had come from privileged backgrounds and they saw the way Nick was eating as disgraceful. Among the students in the cafeteria that noticed Nick was Don Bartholomew. He looked at Nick but lost interest as soon as he saw how he was eating.
(Did I really lose to that boor?)
Before he turned his head away completely, he notice something subtle. Some of the magic energy in this area of the cafeteria was seemingly being drawn into Nick's direction while he ate and the amount of magic energy that was being drawn seemed to increase as time went on. This went on for twenty five minutes until Nick finished eating his food. Nick then got up from the lunch desk, threw his trash away and left the cafeteria. The whole seen played back in Don's mind; because of training that he had received from his family, he was especially attuned to the flow of magic energy wherever he went and that's why he noticed the strangeness of Nick's circumstance. Don looked around and seeing that a few others had watched Nick leave the cafeteria, it probably wasn't just him that noticed.
(All that magic energy being attracted to him meant that he has definitely formed his mindscape. He's probably more difficult to deal with now, I should also continue improving my skills.)
Don ignored the girls around him including his 'special' maid Marcia and headed for his room. Marcia shouted after him:
"Don, where are you going? We are supposed to meet up with Josh's group after this to discuss magic spells."
Don heard her question and was immediately annoyed.
(At first I thought that interacting with the children of other influential families would be absolutely beneficial but most of what we did was not discussing magic. The meetings actually took the form of social gatherings where most would boast about their power and make jokes. Most of my peers were simply put, time wasters. All that was fine before the exam but after I lost and I got a dog shit rank, the effects of wasting my time with those sort of people became apparent. They might all become Magicians in the future but they would never be exceptional people; that's not the kind of life I want, I may have been born to wealthy parents but I refuse to be just another rich kid. I have my own dreams too! This bitch Marcia was the one who encouraged me into these meet ups saying, 'Master Don, you can't make it in this world alone, magic power is secondary, you need to make sure that you develop a network of support to give you protection and security.'
I should have known better than to listen to a woman with the mentality of a bitch. In this world, only results matter, period. Hard workers are really the ones that run things and no amount of fucking around and socializing is going to change that.)
Don looked towards the direction that Nick left in and knew that his thoughts were correct. He continued walking and spoke to Marcia with his back turned:
"You meet up with them if you want. I'm going to my room to study. From now on, do not disturb me unless it is an emergency."
With that, Don left the cafeteria with Marcia staring blankly in his direction.
She quickly snapped out of her stupor and bit her lip in anger; blood flowed from her lip to her chin.
................................
Nick got back to his room and sat at his desk. Maybe it was his imagination but he felt as if something changed while he was eating in the cafeteria; this feeling was very similar to intuition, it just poked at Nick from out of nowhere. Nick closed his eyes and started using his meditation and his consciousness moved into his mindscape. Nick was slightly surprised at what he saw, his mindscape had changed somewhat since the last time he was here. There were now around twenty stars shining in the night sky and the figure of darkness was now a figure of golden light. The dark sea below was also no longer still and continuous waves on its surface could now be seen.
"Hmmm...is my mindscape still developing and on its own?"
Nick was puzzled for sure. The literature stated that one had to actively use their meditation along with their foundation laws to develop the mindscape further after it was formed. Nick's mindscape was behaving differently. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere golden clouds appeared in the sky and moved towards the now golden figure walking on the road; when the clouds reached the figure it slowly dispersed flowing into the figure and into the crumbling road. The figure glowed slightly before going back to normal when the clouds had fully dispersed; the road also seemed thicker and a large portion of the cracks in it now seemed to be mended.
"Those clouds...I think they must be raw magic energy that is entering my mindscape and nourishing the surroundings; they feel exactly the same as the magic I sensed when I first formed my mindscape, although, I haven't actively had the same feeling since I woke up. It seems that this space has not been fully formed yet and is continuing to do so as it is being nurtured by that magic energy; the magic energy is being converted into the surroundings and not being kept in its original form. That makes sense since magic energy has to be processed by foundation laws before it can be stored for use in the mindscape."
Nick had seen enough for now, he willed it and his consciousness left his mindscape. Nick smiled because of his progress.
"My mindscape is definitely not basic, a basic mindscape would not continue developing on its own after being formed. I know that at least."
Nick looked at his phone and saw that it was almost 2 pm.
"I should make an appearance at the spell creation club. I'll need more special papers to practice making scrolls with and since I intend to work on my foundation laws next, I don't want to be leaving my room unnecessarily so I should request that my tasks be related to things I can do from here. With my newly formed mindscape, Norman definitely won't be able to come up with a good enough excuse that he can use to refuse my request."
Nick left his room full of confidence, heading towards the spell creation club.