TF Chapter 36 A Difficult Task

Celeste clenched her hand and the metallic ball started to shrink amid our amazed gazes. 

The reason for the amazement came from the fact that we had already tried to do the same, but failed. Shouldn't a solid be something without any gaps, or few gaps? How was she doing it this easily?

When she was done with it, the sphere had been shrunk to the size of a tennis ball and was floating in front of her face.

"...now, try to catch it with your spirits." 

Without warning the sphere was thrown our way, with me scrambling to release my spirit and merge with the other two to recreate our amalgam. But as the spiritual appendage came in contact with the ball, all our confidence was crushed as the moment we tried to hold the thing, our spirits screamed at us in strain, causing us to withdraw them in a split second.

Ting! Ting!

That sound of it bouncing upon the grey stone floor was a song of mockery in our ears.

"Why? Why did it become so heavy?! And our spirit couldn't even permeate within the space between atoms, as if it was one whole!" Danny shouted out, his tone suggesting genuine shock.

"Compression doesn't increase mass. The reason you feel that its heavy is simple. Your weak spiritual powers can't permeate the dense sphere like before, that's why you feel as if the weight has increased...yet in reality its still the same." Celeste explained.

"I doubt we will be able to even lift that thing by the end of year." Bora spoke with skepticisim.

"I know...and this is what I wanted to teach you. What I want you to do is to try to find a way to compress the metal you extract. It will be even better if you first try it out individually. I see that you have accumulated quite the stash here. You can try it on them." She gave a glance to the metallic spheres accumulated in one corner. 

We had debated whether to place them back into the molten stream, and ultimately, we had come upon the decision to simply pile the things in a corner.

"I am going out for a bit. You can experiment at your leisure, but if I don't see any tangible results from you by the end of seven days, you will be booted out of this camp!"

I was stunned by her words even as she turned on her heel and went away. Wasn't this too drastic a motivator? Kicked out? Where had the good and bubbly Celeste gone?! Bring her back!

"She has changed drastically..." Bora spoke the obvious, except her brows were furrowed.

"...I don't like the new." She finished.

"Yeah!" I subconsciously nodded. This Celeste was far from someone likable. And I think this change of hers has just entered the beginning stages.

"I thought compression was only attempted during the second year! Right now we aren't even ready! We should protest!" Danny spoke, though, I could read between the lines that he was only joking. 

"We might be at the edge of a new era. What we lack right now is information. If only she had told us what the forgers had been up to during the past few months!" I spoke with a lament. Changes don't simply spring up from nothing. We had to find the key, the reason the forgers had been gloomy, the reason our tutor had changed and what had killed that Ross family old man.

"We should start experimenting with what Celeste has suggested right away, after all, we only have a week." Bora spoke while making for the metallic spheres in the corner. 

I shivered at the deadline that had been imposed, so I decided to put everything to the back of my mind, and think about how I was going to survive at the end of the week.

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Compression is an act of applying pressure evenly around an object inwards, causing its particles to become closer with each other...like lovers. Hmmm...lovers...I shouldn't think of that. I am a 45 year old virgin for God's sake! 

Putting such thoughts to the back of my mind, I was currently staring closely at one of the spheres we had created during our times of successful extraction. Right now, it had cooled enough to become solid, with even I only managing to have limited influence upon it. Celeste was really crazy to ask us to try and compress particles with almost no energy, or in other words at low frequency. I don't think first years were even capable of doing this, right?

Now, let's first break down what I and the others can do. Due to the lighter nature of high energy particles, our spirits can influence them to a good extent, but once they start to lose that energy state, our control slips until it becomes almost non existent.

An example would be an object in a free fall. I can shift its course a bit even if its weight is greater than mine, when not directly underneath it. But once it touches ground and they ask me to lift it, then the task becomes harder.

Here lies the difficulty in our task. First, we will have to push our spiritual powers to the point of influencing the atoms in this solid metal, then, we will have to use our spirit to try and push them into each other, thereby, eliminating the spaces between...

Just thinking of the hardwork involved was enough to cause me to feel like giving up.

That was why, my gaze was currently boring into this metallic sphere, treating it as if it were my arch enemy. I should try to influence the particles with my spirit first, and see whether I can...

As I released it and allowed it to permeate the metallic sphere, I took stock of the spacing between the atoms. Yes, even a solid had gaps, though minuscule in nature. If I was being honest here, the science that was broken, or left intact when the metallic sphere was compressed by Celeste was beyond me. Trying to comprehend such things would be hard, but I could observe, though, right now, my spirit couldn't even penetrate the outer layer of the sphere she had compressed, a testament to how far, we were from her level.