Draft: 59 Meditation Struggles

In the past couple of hours, James had faced two foes: a goblin and a plant. Both had treated her to a surprise attack, and both had been defeated without the use of her ultimate Skill. Still, one of the two left her on the ground panting while the other let her continue going about her day.

The goblin, for all that it was the clear enemy since the beginning of the Tutorial, was not the harder of the two adversaries. That had been the plant. The plant that lacked teeth, claws, and any sentience. That little, innocuous looking, green, leafy thing that she had decided to make into an innocent salad.

Did any of those points in intelligence or wisdom even do anything? What was she thinking testing random plants?! So, she wanted something green on her plate. Life sucked, sometimes you just couldn’t eat your vegetables.

Laying there on the ground, sure that she was only able to breathe at the moment because it was instinct, her body still feeling numb from the poison. That left her with a problem, James didn’t know what to do. Ever since she had set off on her own, she had always had some direction. First, she had to build her own shelter and figure out her food situation. Then she had decided to scout around, leading her to find one dungeon and then a weird cottage. Now she was stuck on the ground, sure that she should stay immobile for a while longer.

Reflecting on it, not knowing what to do wasn’t the worst-case scenario, clearly her choices had led to her remaining alive. If she hadn’t invested those points in vitality that surely wouldn’t have been the case. Beyond that, throwing up the plant had clearly been the correct choice, if not based on System logic. However, that left her with another conundrum. She was hungry again, and completely lacking any energy (or ability) to get up and get more fish. At least she could think, if she were attacked, she’d be able to release a Mana Blast.

She hated feeling powerless. Years of being unable to do anything about her social anxiety had taken care of that. She was a burden. A hanger-on.

On her own, she wasn’t risking anyone else. Thinking about it, she wasn’t sure how Louis had escaped her first Mana Blast. Probably had something to do with intent. Even while directing him and Jean Paul away from the clearing, she hadn’t actually wanted to harm either of them.

She really had all the tools to figure out intent; she should have figured out that piece of the puzzle earlier. It would have really helped in her earlier adventures.

Laying there, she concentrated on her mana sense. At least the view that it afforded was somewhat interesting. Compared to her eyes, which she had been using her whole life, this new perception of the world was completely new. Approximately a month since getting the Skill and she still wasn’t completely used to it. With every new thing she learned about mana, the Skill continued to evolve.

With nothing but time and an unmoving body, James tried to enter a meditative state. While many recommended meditating to her in the past (with a couple of “it completely transformed my life, I’m sure you’ll get there!”, “you’ve been breathing all your life, it can’t be that bad!” and her personal favorite, courtesy of her mom, “you’re only struggling because you haven’t tried meditating, dear. Sometimes you have to put in a real effort.”) it had never worked. Trying to bring to focus inwards would have theoretically been the best way to treat her problem with social anxiety. After all, it was supposed to stem from her perception of how the world viewed her. Turns out, that wasn’t the case.

Turning her attention inwards had resulted only in James becoming more and more self-conscious. Thoughts of how stupid she must look sitting there, not doing anything plagued her, wonderings if her heart was supposed to be beating that fast if she was supposedly calm, and wishes she were asleep instead of staying up for another ten minutes in order to try meditation crossed her mind regularly.

Of course, she would then try to ignore those thoughts as per mediation’s rules, but she wasn’t very good at it. Therefore, meditation was an adversary, though not nearly as dangerous as the goblin or plant. She had yet to have a close brush with death as a result of meditation, though she was sure this post-System world might try to find a way. She’d prefer it didn’t, but you didn’t always get your choice.

Still, there was nobody around. No triggers. Absolutely nothing for her to do. And she was sure that meditating might help her focus more on the mana around her. If anything, that meant that meditating might be the safest thing she could do at the moment.

So, taking a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, she started to try and meditate, bringing her focus inwards. Slowly, the outside world stopped being as distracting, though she could never fully turn off Mana Sense and could therefore still somewhat “see” a lot of things around her despite her eyes being closed.

As her observation turned inwards, she could start to sense her own mana for once, swinging inside of her. Swirling wasn’t exactly the right word, though, as it moved around sluggishly inside a deep well inside of her.  She doubted that was a good thing. Could she use her mana manipulation Skill to make it move more naturally? Well, she certainly intended to try.