The first thing he did was to take a few moments to rest his mind. He even tried to sleep, but had no luck. Perhaps he had lost the habit of sleeping for so long his brain had forgotten where the entrance to the end of dreams was, or perhaps his new state of existence was entirely incapable of sleep; whatever the case, he stayed regretfully awake.
Refusing to get annoyed at something so trivial, he decided to quit chasing the elusive land of dreams. Falling asleep was not something you could do by trying really hard, so he forgot about it and let his thoughts wander uncontrolled.
He was expecting to get lost in thousands of random thoughts, flowing in myriads of different directions, but a single monolithic idea reigned supreme in his subconscious. It seemed that he had been so focused on the Tao for so long, it had become the only thing he could think about.
Very soon, he found himself dreamingly reminiscing at his various encounters with the Great Way. The only difference from what he normally did was that this time, he was not incessantly chasing the supreme truth, exhausting himself trying to better himself and become worthy of the Great Way. He was content to simply lay in it's sublime presence, silently admiring something so beautiful it gave meaning to the entire world.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Avery realized that his headache had abated, and that he had unknowingly adapted to his extended perception sphere, to the point it felt like he had been born with it. It did not mean that he had crystal clear vision in a radius of ten meters, as most of it worked like peripheral vision in which he was only vaguely aware of what was happening, but even that was incredible. He supposed this would be a godlike ability for any warrior, though he had to admit that it was currently useless to him.
What he really valued was the ability to focus and directly study the building blocks of the universe in a way no mortal would understand. This was what he was relying on to avoid cultivating into a dead end. Even if he learned false truths in his virtual world, he would systematically compare and verify them with what he saw in the real world, and rectify his understanding. This was what allowed him to confidently enlighten in his inner world, without fear of losing his way.
He was slightly curious as to how long he must have spent daydreaming for such a change to occur, but he quickly discarded those useless thoughts. What mattered right now was that he was feeling great, and he was ready and eager to finally try engraving again.
Smiling slightly, he stood up, walked toward the cliff face, and extended a finger, preparing to use it to draw a rune.
He was briefly tempted to draw the rune in the shape of a Sil’piceus, curious to find out what would happen if he truly brought that virtual rune into reality. He hesitated for an instant, before restraining himself. There was no need to take risks finding answers to uncertain questions when he already had endless mysteries he could look forward to solving.
He just chose the rune he was the most familiar with, the first rune he had ever gotten. His current visualisation had little to do with the concept of storage, so that rune would not be different from any other, but it brought him this far, and it would feel wrong to suddenly decide to use a different one.
Turning his attention inward, he imagined a majestic intent gushing out of his inner world, adding all of the profound understandings he had cultivated to it. With how rough and primitive his control of intent was, it completely ignored his order to gather into a formless river gently flowing into his soul.
The countless laws that formed his virtual world, as well as all his insights into the Tao, were far too powerful for him to control. The only thing he could do was to direct them to merge with the concept of Sil’piceus, in the hopes that that would let him control them.
However, perhaps unsurprisingly, merging everything into a single superpowered concept had the opposite effect. A godlike figure of a planet sized Silpiceus suddenly painted the sky of his inner world in various shades of black and red.
The terrifying figure was filled with an indescribable majesty, and a powerful cultivator would see that its very flesh was made of thousands of intersecting rules. Under the shocked gaze of the entire world, the creature slowly wrapped his tentacles around the globe, and violently drove his limbs through the earth to reach the core of the planet. Then, it pulsed brightly, before fading away without leaving any traces, as if everything had been a dream.
The eerie vision had only lasted a few seconds, and had left no visible trace, but Avery could already tell it had had a profound impact on his inner world.
Apart from one obvious exception, there was no actual change he could see, but he could feel that his inner world was no longer completely his anymore, as if it had started to become independent. He did not understand how that was possible, as it was not a possession or a magically bonded item. There was no distinction between Avery and his visualisation, so what would happen if they separated?
Despite this alarming new development, Avery wasn't very worried. This was just another thing he would have to pay attention to and try to fix, but he did not seem to be in immediate danger. He was mostly annoyed at himself, for once again senslessly acting on baseless hopes, believing everything would go according to an ignorant plan.
He had rushed to engrave a new rune, without proper consideration. He'd simply never considered if there were uncontrollable factors or dangers in guiding intent. Blinded by his goal, he had somehow just assumed that since his stylus was able to create spiritual ink without harming him, he would be able to do the same without any problems.
He had been lucky once again, having survived, and even gaining a lot, but the odds would not be in his favor forever. By then, he had to make sure he had learned his lesson, or he would lose himself in one such reckless gambit.
It was not enough to not do anything impulsive, he needed to make a conscious effort to think critically to make sure what he was doing was not reckless. Perhaps this had been a risk worth taking. Engraving runes was still very important to him, and in hindsight, he did not regret his actions. What he did regret was that there had been no thought behind these actions, only hopeful assumptions devoid of evidence.
After making sure he had learned what he could from his mistake, he turned his attention to what he had gained. The first positive he could see was his increased detachment from his virtual world. While it might become a hidden danger later on, for now it was a great relief for him who had been concerned about how much his personality was affected by his visualisation.
The second and most important reward was the result of the huge vision of the Sil’piceus interacting with the world’s heart. Instead of the mundane core of melted rock, the center of the planet was now occupied by a mysterious pool of glowing silver ink gathering around a translucent rune.
He had originally intended for intent to rise up and gently guide mana out of his soul, but things had gotten out of hand, and the opposite was now happening. Intent had somehow crystallized and become permanent, and it was radiating a sort of gravitational pull, steadily sucking mana out and forcing it to accumulate, forming a mystical lake.
He would no longer need to spend time producing and guiding intent every time he drew a rune. He now had an easily accessed reserve of spiritual ink, and judging by how it was constantly sucking mana out of his soul, he would wager that it would automatically fill itself up.
There was much to discover about how exactly this new mana pool would work, but that would have to wait. He still had some blacksmithing to do. There was a slight risk that something would happen when he guided mana through his flesh, but time warps were supreme healing items, so it was worth the risk.
His attention returned to the real world, where he was still standing in a drawing pose, and he gently moved to finish engraving his rune on the cliff surface.
His finger had the weight of an entire world behind it, and he briefly had the illusion he was overwriting reality. Then, the rune was complete, and he fell into enlightenment.
