The first thought the no-longer-a-man had was one of confusion. Following that was the thought that it was dreaming. 

Then it realized that it wasn't.

It wondered if this was the afterlife. If so, it seemed to be a pretty terrible one. After all, being unable to move with a bizarre sense of self would not have been what the once-a-man would have expected of heaven or hell. Perhaps purgatory.

After examining itself for some time, it came to the conclusion it may be purgatory.

It was a rock. That was all it understood. It did not understand why or how it became a stone, only that now it was one. 

The rock found this incredibly frustrating. Its memory seemed to be fuzzy as to many things, such as its previous identity and history. Despite probing its "mind" for answers, it found none.

So, it found itself forced to confront the reality that it was now "living" in.

It was a rock. 

"Fuck."

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

The rock found itself painfully bored. This was nearly not figurative, as it was unable to move itself or sense anything other than its new body. With nothing else to do, the rock was focusing on the one thing it could, that being itself. It examined every crack and groove in its surface, what its stony body seemed to be made of, and whether or not it could figure out a way to move. It was unsurprising, though highly disappointing, that stones were unable to achieve locomotion without an outside influence affecting it.

It was boring. It was no geologist so most of what it examined meant nothing.

Nonetheless, it was eventually rewarded for its actions.

For a moment the rock didn't think anything at all, shock overwhelming it. Then its mind burst into a flurry of thought, trying to figure out where the new “thing” had come from. 

Eventually, it found what it was searching for.

“Status.” The stone intoned within its thoughts.

It was interesting to the stone. Looking at the words and numbers it didn’t understand the purpose of was wonderful.

Those feelings were because it had been examining stone for the past few hours. Even the sweet relief of death would have been a welcome reprieve for the nameless rock. 

And it most definitely did not have a name. The weird text that it summoned from the aether confirmed that fact. The rock understood that it could definitely trust the text, after all, it was so kindly explaining everything to the stone in such a clear and trustworthy manner, showing just how much it cared about the stone. 

…

No, the stone decided to take what it could see with a grain of salt. It understood that as it was not always a rock, it probably had held a name before. The fact that the text was unable to say what its name was meant that it was not all knowing. The fact that the text couldn’t pin down an age confirmed that as well. 

The most useful things the stone could “see” were its classification and the evolution category. The classification defined the stone not as a rock, but a “Stonebound Soul.” Disregarding the philosophical importance of souls truly existing, the soul was pleased to know that it wasn’t really a rock, but just possessing the rock. After considering that for longer, the stone realized that you could argue that a person was just a soul possessing a meat suit, and decided to keep referring to itself as a rock. 

The other important thing, evolutions, suggested the possibility of evolving. What did that mean for that rock? It wasn’t certain, but it remembered enough about Pokémon to guess that evolution would allow it to become something else.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t certain whether or not evolutions referred to how many potential evolutions a “Stonebound Soul” would have, how many evolutionary options the stone specifically had, or how many evolutions it had gone through previously. The first two options were extremely negative, as it meant that the stone would never evolve, but the last one was the one the stone was the most hopeful was an accurate guess. 

As for the “Potential” section, it seemed to be measuring something. The sections on the right the stone could intuit were strength, dexterity, constitution, and agility, each with an “N/A” for reasons the stone found obvious, but the sections on the right were more difficult. The best guess the stone had was that they were will, instinct, memory, and maybe comprehension. The numbers didn’t exactly mean anything though, as there were two numbers in each section. 

However, the stone still had its most powerful ability, speculation. The word used to describe the numbers was potential. This would mean that it represented what the rock could become, rather than what it was. The higher number most likely referred to its maximum potential, while the lower number referred to how close it was to fulfilling that potential. Displaying it as a number seemed fairly pointless however, as displaying “instinct” as twenty meant absolutely nothing to the stone. What’s the point of having numbers if you don’t know what they mean?

(Despite not knowing what exactly the numbers were supposed to be compared to, it found something deeply ironic in the fact that apparently its memory was the closest to reaching its potential, even though it could barely remember anything. Ha ha.)

Loath to return to looking at rock, the stone attempted to discern anything else it could from the numbers, and noticed that it was missing the section involving the skill the Stonebound Soul seemed to have gained. So, after some mental fumbling, it managed to find that.

“Skills.”

Once again, the stone found the window to be incredibly helpful, perfectly explaining everything.

After considering the window, the stone realized that the only thing it had managed to accomplish was figuring out what stone was like. It had taken several hours and the stone doubted it would take the same amount of time to level it further.

It felt the urge to scream despite its lack of vocal cords. 

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

The stone wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the stone was sure that god must hate average people more than bad people. Boredom was a torture worse than any it had ever experienced. Of course, the stone was unsure whether or not it could even feel pain anymore and did not wish to experience any.

It had heard of how when humans were bored, they might seek minor pain as a way to alleviate their boredom if they were unable to find an alternative. The stone wondered why it could remember something so obscure and yet not be able to remember its own name. After thinking about it, the stone concluded that it was bullshit and moved on with its not-a-life.

The stone had continued to examine itself and it had been unable to discern anything new at first. Eventually, it realized it was being an idiot and stopped just looking at its surface and tried examining its insides. That was when it started making some real progress. 

Stone was interesting to look at. The way it was structured such that it would break with a well placed blow and just the right amount of force was interesting.

It was also terrifying for someone made out of stone to realize how fragile stone really is. 

However, the stone was rewarded for this in reaching level four in [Earth: Conceptualization]. It felt such pride in its spectacular accomplishment.

The stone had come to the conclusion that everything it had been doing so far was mostly worthless. How did understanding rock help him? It needed to be focusing on moving himself.

The obvious conclusion to come to was magic.

Now, this would be a leap of logic for some, after all, the stone didn’t know any magic and did not know of magic existing before this point in time, but that hardly matters when you’re a soul stuck in a rock you’ve got some weird text being broadcasted into your brain.

There was also the possibility this was some sort of simulation and that the rock had no magic available to it. It wouldn’t hurt to try it though. At least, that was what the rock thought. 

So, first thing first, the rock decided to try meditating in order to grasp the “deep energies” within itself, or something like that. Step one, find a good place to sit. 

… 

Step two, breathe deeply and slowly.

… 

Step three, try to cut off all your senses and focus only on yourself. 

… 

Step four…

Yeah, the rock wasn’t sure what it should be doing next. It had been doing some deep self examination for god knows how long, and it wasn’t sure where to go next.

Well, if applying “mystical, magical shit” logic, it would have been something like energy circulation, trying to find your soul, delving deep within your own mind, or something like that.

Well, if it was something like that, the stone would exhaust every option available to itself until it found the answer. It needed to if it was going to be able to move.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Magic did exist, and the stone began to grasp a faint energy it could sense. It began by trying to find its soul, but after noticing something wispy and ethereal, the only thing the stone got was

The problem was that sensing magic and manipulating it seemed to be entirely different skills. Watching mana, or magic, or whatever, as it faintly did… something, was challenging. The stone could only sense it so long as the mana was within itself. Otherwise, it could sense nothing. The stone guessed that mana perception overlayed over its existing senses. 

The stone noticed that most of what it was discovering was made up of guesses and inferences based off of magical text that would appear in its mind.

The stone found this frustrating, but didn’t see an alternative. After all it-

It paused its train of thought as it sensed something.

…

There it was again! What was that? 

The stone tried to discern exactly what was happening when it noticed that its insides were faintly trembling. Not as though they were going to burst, but they would vibrate for a moment before stopping. It was almost as if a pulse was going through its body.

Ah, so that was what the stone was sensing! Vibration. The stone noticed that it lined up with what it was experiencing. 

It wondered if maybe it would have gotten the skill as a human just by being able to hear noise.

…

The stone decided that that was probably not how it worked. Probably. Maybe. It wasn’t sure, but it seemed a little weird to have the ability to hear as a skill.

So, doing the only thing it could, the stone decided to-

The stone paused as it sensed the vibrations were becoming stronger.

“Oh no.”

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

The tremors eventually ended, but not before the stone convinced itself that the apocalypse had begun and soon it would be shattered to bits. Being unable to see what was actually happening was terrifying for the rock. 

If there was one good thing that came from it, it was figuring out which direction the ground was in. The stone guessed it was the direction the vibrations were originating from. 

The other good thing was leveling up vibration perception twice, though it was pretty useless at the moment.

So, with nothing left to do, the stone continued to try and discern something else from its senses.