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'Not this either,' Markus concluded with his eyes closed. He was currently sitting in a cross-legged posture in his room. He'd entered seclusion two weeks back and had effectively shut himself off from all outside communication. Markus could feel that he was at the cusp of a breakthrough. It was so close he could grab it, but it was yet to enter his reach. To bridge this gap, Markus considered a long-standing tradition amongst cultivators nearing advancement: Closed-Door Cultivation.

Usually, the phrase closed-door is a placeholder implying isolation from all forms of intrusions and disturbances. It means to espouse an optimal environment for a cultivator to piece together scattered insights to develop new, more robust ones and as a result, achieve a breakthrough in their cultivation. It didn't necessitate foregoing nourishment as it was often counterproductive to the assimilation process.

However, Markus wasn't having any of it! From his first steps into his arduous cultivation journey, Markus had realised one fact, which was that he wasn't gifted with talent. Every success he'd achieved was through gruelling effort and grinding. Only those gifted with genius-level comprehension skills, special physiques or bloodlines, monumental inheritances, or support from powerful structures like sects, clans and organisations could get away with the standard seclusion methods. He was not afforded that luxury.

Hence, Markus completely isolated himself from everything and delved deeper and deeper into his own thoughts. He could not afford to be distracted, so he started to forcefully slow down his metabolism and completely shut off most non-essential bodily functions, especially his senses. He then set up a thin layer of mana around his skin to reduce water wastage and slowed down his heart rate. He forcefully entered a comatose state where only his brain operated with its full functionality intact.

This technique should not be possible for a Mana Condensation realm mage who is yet to properly comprehend their body. However, thanks to Markus' Junior Sister and his Master's teachings, he was able to gain a better understanding of the human anatomy. Then, with collaborative experiments with his Junior Sister, Markus determined the extent of abuse he could put his body through before incurring horrible consequences.

After reaching a state of complete isolation, Markus started to summarise his insights and planned his next steps. The reason he felt a breakthrough nearing, he concluded, most likely had to do with the fact that he was getting close to replicating Gaige's attack. That spell was the bottleneck to his advancement. However, Markus was also feeling conflicted. He had tried countless approaches to the spell, only to end up short in the last step. For every step taken, he ended up returning to where he started off from.

Markus determined that his dogged venture to create a contingency for his first public loss had been an exercise in futility. Was he wasting his time all along?

But upon aggregating everything he had learned till now in his comatose state, Markus came face to face with the sheer quantity of insights housed in his mind, all of which had been accumulated within a short span of two years. He WAS in fact wasting his time because he hadn't taken a step back to observe the problem with a broader lens. Now that he had done so, Markus zeroed in on the optimal solution to his bottleneck.

His inspiration was drawn from the way Marie achieved her breakthrough, and it had to do with how he perceived the world he lived in. When scientists conduct experiments, one of the things they need to determine is the variable or characteristic that they intend to measure or observe. One cannot start an experiment if they don't have a way to measure the results of changing the independent variable - how else can they gauge their efforts? His Master always said that the difference between science and random trial and error is proper observation and note-taking. Hence sensors, tools, and measuring equipment are an absolute prerequisite to any scientific endeavour.

All this time, Markus had been going about his "experiments" without this key ingredient. He had no way to measure the accuracy of his recreation of Gaige's attack. On that note, he had no gauge of Gaige's original attack to act as a basis for comparison. Hence Markus opted to use another basis that was familiar to him and vividly embedded into his memories: the vision of the black hole.

Oftentimes, Markus would reminisce about his observation of that unfathomable monstrosity during his meditation sessions. Interestingly, he could easily recollect every single detail. It was exactly like how a martial artist could retaliate against an attack through muscle memory alone.

Therefore, Markus first started his closed-door cultivation by perfectly recreating his memory of the black hole. He wanted to relive it, deconstruct it down to the minutiae and figure out a more direct way to observe it without the use of his natural sensors. Markus figured that if he could achieve this goal, he could augment his spells further.

The high-gravity phenomenon formed in his mind gradually. Deprived of every other external distraction, the comatose Markus managed to essentially regress back to the time he was first dropped into the virtual reality experience. He started with the complete vision, and then from it, he incrementally deducted the inputs captured by his natural senses. As he expected, even without them, he could feel "something". It surprised him how his memories could grasp details that were beyond the limits of his senses, this wasn't naturally possible.

When someone recollects a memory, the information is firmly tethered to key points captured by their senses. But in this case, Markus' memory reached realms bordering on extrasensory. He figured that it may be a quirk of his Master's special |Soul Imprint|. But this was good, he could now flex his mana senses to filter through different sensory data. Markus lacked the ability to abstract information in his mind like Marie, thus he could only brute force through the inputs in hopes of stumbling upon an answer.

Two weeks passed like that. Markus' mana senses would isolate a sensory bandwidth, apply it to the memory of the black hole and observe for any relevant inputs. Most of the time, he was unsuccessful. Once or twice, he managed to capture something faintly, but Markus did not pursue it further as his goal wasn't to follow a pointless tangent. Whatever he was looking for wouldn't be faint, it would blare at him!

'This isn't it,' Markus repeated. 'Next one.'

Markus concentrated on his mana sense. Although he'd spent two whole weeks, he had barely scratched the surface of what his mana sense could capture. It was a frustrating process, but Markus took it in stride.

'What's this?' Suddenly, Markus was bombarded with a rush of data through his mana sense. 'Was it a lucky break?'

With faint optimism, Markus tuned out all background noise and focused on the current bandwidth. As the surrounding static dissipated, he was confronted by a convoluted mess of data in an unintelligible raw form. Markus hypothesised that this may be what he'd been searching for. Now the only problem that remained was to decipher it, assimilate it, and apply it.

Sensing has a lot to do with how people perceive what is observed, and how they connect it to their reality. Just like how Marie viewed the waves of fate as literal signal waves, Markus pondered over how he could transpose this gibberish to something substantial and interpretable.

'Gravity,' Markus thought to himself. 'What does it mean?' He repeated.

'How does gravity affect the world?'

'How can I visualise gravity?'

Markus traced back everything he'd learned up till now and started collating details on the theory of gravitation.

'Gravity is a type of force. It is observed within a field that exists naturally around masses. Large masses have stronger fields, thus exert greater higher gravitational forces. But how do entities in a gravitational field know that they are in a field?' Markus proposed. To that, he recollected an overlooked explanation his Master proposed.

"Field-based forces are hard to conceptualise. But an apt analogy is to consider an infinitely stretched roll of cloth. On this cloth, you place a mass of some kind. What do you think will happen to the cloth?" His Master asked. "The cloth would dip where the mass is placed. Now, if you were to place a much, much smaller mass next to this larger mass in any close location. What will happen? This smaller mass will roll along the dip which is centred at the larger mass."

After further discussion, Markus learned that this "cloth" could be referred to as spacetime. Or the representation of three-dimensional space as the singular dimension of time, in an abstract four-dimensional manifold. It took some mental gymnastics to wrangle this understanding since naturally, humans aren't able to visualise it. Humans live in a three-dimensional world, while the fourth dimension of time flows through us. To observe in four dimensions, we will need to know all states of a system at ALL points in time, all at one instance. Therefore, Markus simplified this 4D manifold into snapshots, where each snapshot in 3D space represents the state of the system in time.

Incrementally, Markus started to apply this visualisation to the data his mana senses were capturing. He didn't have the same capacity to abstract as Marie, so he had to repeatedly conceptualise, deconstruct and reinforce the representation. As he did so, in his mind, a vague meshgrid started to materialise.

The meshgrid extended infinitely in all three dimensions. Markus followed the faintly drawn lines demarcating the meshgrid as it approached the black hole. Right as it approached its proximity, Markus observed the most absurd interaction where the meshgrid literally warped in place. The warping was not only spatial but temporal as well. As in, with every new snapshot, there were discontinuities in the mesh which indicated that the region wasn't being updated at the same rate as the rest of the mesh. This tearing became more egregious the further Markus approached the black hole.

'This is it!' Markus exclaimed internally. Almost instantaneously, Markus released the holds on his bodily function, letting the mana flow freely through his channels. As he did so, a massive influx of mana activated from the surroundings towards his core. A whirlwind of mana formed above his body, which was regaining its functions, and rushed in through his mana channels. His nascent, gaseous, core started to settle and adorn a liquid state while dark steam of waste ejected through his pores.

Markus was partially unaware of this because he was preoccupied with applying his new technique. He activated the meshgrid through his mana sense and overlaid it on his regular vision. Unlike in front of the black hole, there weren't any warping regions this time. The grid was fairly consistent, barring a small dip centred on him.

An imperceptible explosion of insights occurred in Markus' mind as everything started to fall into place. His eyes widened and sparkled as he entered an inspired state at the zenith of his breakthrough. With a familiar motion, Markus reached forward with both hands and grabbed the abstract meshgrid as seen though in his senses and pushed it outwards.

As he did so, a sudden sense of weightlessness assaulted him. It was completely in contrast to what he felt when under the influence of Gaige's spell or the black hole. It was as if every fibre of his body had suddenly lost a percentage of its mass. Markus' body accelerated off the ground as the momentary difference of force acting on him and by him resulted in a net force upwards.

"Woah!" Markus exclaimed in surprise. The minor distraction dissipated his inspired state. By this time, his advancement had settled as well. However, because of the momentary lapse, Markus' levitation was destabilised, causing him to fall face-first into the ground.

He tried to control his fall with his arms, but they refused to budge. Evidently, his weeks of hibernation without sustenance and movement had caused his muscles to atrophy lightly.

"Ah!" Markus exclaimed. "Help!" He called out weakly. He cleared his hoarse throat and cried out again, "Help!"

Helpless, Markus decided to try out Mana Transmission through his increased mana sensory range and caught his Junior Sister nearby. "Jean! Please, help me."

Through his amplified sense, he could hear hurried footsteps approaching him.

"Senior Brother?" Jean's flat voice called faintly. "Did you call?"

"I need help," Markus uttered.

Jean tried pushing the door open, only to face resistance. "Umm, it's locked."

"Just burst through. I will fix it later."

"Matron Reva will get mad," Jean warned.

"It's fine, I will take the blame."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, yes. Please, help."

With an apprehensive push, Jean forced open the door.

"Senior Brother!" Jean exclaimed as she hurriedly closed her eyes. Markus observed a crimson shade blooming across her face. The girl turned around abruptly and ran away.

"Jean!" Markus screamed. "Where are you going?"

At that moment, Dora happened to pass by and peeked in.

"Ewww!" The little girl exclaimed. "Big Brother, why are you naked?"

She then grasped her nose in disgust before adding, "And you stink!"

The girl giggled loudly and ran away, leaving Markus splayed on the floor with his bare bottom exposed.

"Help me..." Markus whined as tears of shame descended his cheeks.

"You naughty boy!" Matron Reva's voice bellowed from the distance. "I oughta spank you! How could you traumatise your sisters like that?"

"Help me..." Markus whimpered, as the despair of having to experience Matron Reva's corporal punishment dawned on him.

"Hehehehe," a sly chuckle echoed in his ears. "This oughta be good," Marie mocked from outside his room. She was clearly enjoying seeing Markus' predicament.

"Help me..." Markus sighed. "Please..."

____

A/N: End of Volume 2

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