Chapter 101 – Solving issues
"Okay," Said Tessa, coming closer to Noah. "You're ready?"
"Let's try. But be very careful. Take your time, don't hurry." Said Noah.
"I know." Answered Tessa looking him in the eyes standing just a few steps away from him.
"Let's do it then. But if you feel any pain or discomfort, stop it immediately." Said Noah with a note of worry in his voice.
"Alright." Answered Tessa and leaned forward, gently touching her forehead to Noah's forehead and placed her hand on the bite mark that she left on him. Noah covered her hand with his own.
Both of them closed their eyes and concentrated on their feelings.
Forehead to forehead they stood in the weaving training room in total silence for a long time until Noah suddenly disappeared from the room.
Tessa stood there a few minutes more without moving, while Noah, appearing in his mind realm, stood in place without movement, concentrating on his feelings. He felt a slight discomfort in his mind but could not discern the source of it.
/Ugy, you feel it?/ Asked Noah in his mind.
*Yes. I am on it.* Answered back his system in his head. Gradually the feeling of discomfort in Noah's mind started to change to something else, now from a constant feeling of something abstract it changed to a feeling of clearly discernible tugging at his mind. As if someone somewhere was pulling the hem of invisible clothes that he wore. A few more moments passed and it gradually changed into something that reminded him of a knock on the door, only this door was in his mind.
/Tessa/ Said Noah in his mind and suddenly Tessa appeared in his mind's realm in front of him.
"We did it!" Said Tessa smiling the brightest smile at him. "It really worked!"
"You are incredible, Tessa." Said Noah, smiling back at her.
"Oh, stop it." She said with a slight blush. "Ugy did the most of the job."
"No, he only filtered the signal, you did the most amazing part of it. You weaved the path." Said Noah.
Ugy sitting in the armchair opened his mouth raising a hand to object but a 'mute' sign that appeared above his head stopped him, making Yuko sitting on the couch giggle looking at him.
"Alright, let's bring Bri and Priscilla here." Said Noah and a moment later both of them appeared in the weaving training room, where Brianna and Priscilla stood waiting for them with a bit of worry on their faces.
When Tessa and Noah returned with faces full of smiles, they could finally breathe out sensing that their experiment succeeded.
After another couple of minutes they all finally entered Noah's mind realm and immediately heard a sound of notification that spread throughout the whole realm.
*Ding.*
*New skill has been created: Establishing connection.*
Noah raised an eyebrow at that and opened the skill list to read the description of the new skill.
/Active Skill: Establishing connection./
/Allows to establish a connection with people and objects./
Unlike all the previous skills that Noah got from the system, this one was very much intentionally made.
After Tessa mentioned how he should address the problem of Dryads coming and going into his mind realm as they please, the five of them including Ugy made a brainstorm session on how to solve this issue. As a result they came with a two step solution.
First Tessa could help 'weave' a barrier in Noah's mind realm as she is almost pearless master in that regard, while Ugy would learn and create a skill to protect Noah's mind from any outside influence. For that however they would need to find a way for her and girls to enter his mind realm without the help of Dryads.
To solve this issue they came up with an idea of using an already established connection between them. All three girls left a mate bite mark on Noah's body. Which connected them at a very intricate level.
As a master puppeteer, that was used to pulling strings to get a result from the puppet, Brianna offered an idea to, as she called it, 'tug' at the connection that they had between them and make his system recognize this pull as a condition for the 'call' of his skill 'he who hears the call', which would allow them to connect.
However even though that sounded easy in theory, there were a bit of complications as to this method's implementation.
First: they needed to find a way to as they called it 'pull' at the connection.
Second: they had to address the danger that this method bore as well. What would happen if they 'pulled' too hard and damaged the connection? Would that have a negative effect on any of them?
After a long session of discussion that took them the better part of the day, Tessa and Ugy found a solution in using the skill 'on the same wavelength' as a medium to make them feel the connection of bite mark more clearly. After synchronizing minds on that connection they would feel minute disturbances of the connection that would allow them to make slight 'pulls' that would not bring harm to this connection.
For that however Tessa had to learn to use that same skill on her end of the connection. Through a long explanation of the skill intricacies that Noah did not understand a single thing off and simply related to Tessa what Ugy said word by word, Tessa managed to weave a magic with a similar effect.
Finally after everything was ready to establish connection they tuned their mind through this skill and managed to concentrate on that ephemeral connection that they had between them. Starting with the weakest magical influence on this connection they slowly found a way to safely use it as a sort of small signal. Whenever Tessa influenced that connection a bit, Noah felt it in his mind. After Ugy filtered all the senses he could finally recognize this signal as a 'call' and opened the path for Tessa and girls to come into Noah's mind realm without the help of Dryads.
However the description of the skill made Noah a bit surprised.
"System this skill a bit different from what I expected. What else did you include in it?"
"Basically, it is the same method that you have just used, however I felt there was one more skill we could have used. Specifically your skill to breathe in the spec of life into objects. Once you breathe life into objects you gain a connection that allows you to put them away into the pocket dimension from some shiort distance. Also it provides them with life energy while they are in close distance. I updated this connection with the information I gained from the bite mark, that lets you feel a connection with the girls even from the huge distance and implemented it into this skill. In other words you can put a mark on some object and make a path to it through the dream realm. Also all girls made a slightly different 'call' when they established a connection with you. Learning from that I found a way to make multiple connections that we can discern between." Explained Ugy.
"Hold on!" Said Noah with excitement. "Are you telling me, I can use the same dream travel method to any object that I have a connection to?"
"Yes" said Ugy.
"I can instant travel across the country with it?"
"Yes."
"Holy crap!" Said Priscilla hearing that. "That's OP!"
"Agree." Said Tessa.
"There is a catch though." Added Ugy.
"I knew there would be." Said Noah with a sigh. "Let's hear it."
"As I explained, this marking would use life energy. And as I already said, life energy would not be transferred over a big distance. The slimes that you left with the adventurers back in the labyrinth city are mostly dead by now as the source of their life energy has disappeared. So to keep this mark of connection working for a long time you would have to imbue a lot of life energy into it. And then revitalize these marks from time to time. Meaning you would use your vitality a lot for that. Small losses of life force are not dangerous as they are easily replenished over time. However if too many connections are established this way at the same time, it could very well drain you and harm your own life force." Explained Ugy.
"I see." Said Noah.
"It is still a good skill to have a backup emergency exit. If you are attacked, you can escape to the mind realm and reappear in some place far far away." Said Tessa.
Noah nodded at her as he was thinking the same.
"Also there is a way to make a temporary objects with connection." Said Brianna.
"What do you mean?" Asked Noah looking at Brianna.
"Imagine you only need to get past some place unnoticed. You make a temporary mark with weak life force. And make someone bring it somewhere for you. Once you pass the barrier or guard station you wanted to go through totally unnoticed, you appear at that mark and voila, you are the most sneaky guy in the world."
Everyone looked at Brianna with strange looks in their eyes.
"What?" Asked Bri with a bit of flush in her cheeks from everyone's gazes. "Didn't you ever think of sneaking somewhere where you can't go?"
"And where would you dream of sneaking to?" Said Tessa raising an eyebrow at her daughter.
Brianna's eyes started to run from side to side as she felt her mother was on to something.
"You were not thinking of sneaking past the basement barrier to the pseudo core sealing room, weren't you?" Said Tessa looking at her daughter with her piercing gaze.
"What? No! Of course not! What?! Basemen? Why would I? No!" Chattered Brianna quickly with a nervous voice.
"Grounded!" Said Tessa with a commanding voice.
"What? But I didn't…."
"Grounded, for thinking of doing it!" Said Tessa.
"Moooom! I am an adult now, you can't be serious?" Whined Brianna, making Noah and Priscilla laugh out loud.
*****
"So what do you think?" Asked Noah sipping a cocktail through the straw sitting on the couch. Priscilla and Brianna sat on the two sides of him with happy expressions, sipping cocktails through the straw as well.
"This is tasty." Whispered Brianna.
"I know right." Whispered Priscilla. "Even though this is just an imaginary beverage, I can't help being addicted."
"I wasn't talking about this." Said Noah rolling his eyes.
"Well…" said Tessa sitting on a cushion pad in front of the TV watching the screen intently. "It is quite hard to understand this all. It is a lot harder than weaving and also reminds me of human magic. This is my first time seeing such devine works of magic. Even with Ugy's explanations I barely get the basics of this code he uses to create this all. Codes that create skills. This is incredible. No one has ever witnessed something like that before. I am too excited about what we can do here. But we need to concentrate on solving your unprotected mind issue first. I more or less have a few solutions, but it would be by far not the best we could do. We will have to improve it later when I learn it all better." She said, watching through the countless codes that passed on the screen.
"First we can try to put some barriers in front of the already established connections you have. This way only when you allow it others would be able to pass through the path that connects you. Second we need an emergency action in case these barriers may be breached. Something that would severe the connection by interfering with it. And third we need to make sure all new connections are established only with your knowledge. This way we will make a sort of artificial mind barrier that we will be able to update and improve when I understand these codes better. What do you say Ugy?" Said Tessa.
Ugy sat on Yuko's lap near her watching the screen as well while scratching his chin.
"Indeed. The problem is I am not very good with barriers. I do have a thought on how to make an interference for emergency connection breaking. Also now that we found a way to discern different connections I can easily find all hidden connections like Dryad Queen's mark on us that she uses to create a path to our mind realm." Said Ugy.
"I will take care of the barrier then. You take care of the other things." Said Tessa and she and Ugy started to talk "coding" language rather than human.
"Noah, do you get a single thing these two say?" Said Yuko turning to him after a few moments.
"Sorry. No idea." Said Noah sipping from his glass.
"I am mom's disciple and even I don't get a thing. This level of weaving is too profound. Forget it. Let them two magic weaving geeks do their job." Said Priscilla while sipping her cocktail.
Yuko sighed and put Ugy down to the floor, standing up and walking away.
"Who wants a round of mortal kombat?" She said, watching the other girls.
"Don't know what it is. But I bet it is better than watching this." Said Brianna.
All four of them went down to Yuko's basement and soon screams and laughs sounded from the basement. Tessa and Ugy however were so busy with their discussion they did not even notice that everyone left.