Rlyis looked thoughtfully between Lassim, his elemental companions, and the two constructs on the table, her expression quiet yet intense as she mulled over the idea of intent.
Eno crossed his arms, observing the constructs as though searching for some hidden answer in their carefully crafted forms.
The concept of intent seemed to elude them no matter how they approached it, leaving a void that even Lassim’s fused mana couldn’t fill.
Rlyis finally broke the silence, her gaze shifting to Lassim, then back to his mana, where the tiny fish darted and swam freely, "Lassim, maybe if you take a little time for you to study your own abilities, you might discover something. You only just fused it and we’ve kept you busy with the mission and constructs and array education. Possibly, if you take a step back, you might discover if there’s something we’re missing."
Eno added with a slight nod, "Sometimes answers reveal themselves when you’re not trying to force them, but rather letting them speak for themselves."
He exchanged a glance with Rlyis, then looked back to Lassim. "Take the afternoon and focus on your own abilities. We’ll pick up again when you return, and see if there’s something you can bring back to help us."
Lassim agreed, "Alright. I’ll see if there’s anything I can figure out."
Stepping outside and away from the confines of the workshop to let his mind settle, he entered the quiet of the freshly regrown tree line that was only interrupted by the faint hum of the barrier arrays that surrounded the outpost.
Mari and Zaphy took that moment to return to his inner heart world.
Finding a shaded spot under one of the tall trees nearby, he let his senses quiet, breathing in the afternoon air as he focused inward.
Lassim summoned his fused mana into his palm once more, watching as the familiar swirling wave materialized, the tiny fish that came along with it was darting with a life of their own.
As he observed, he let go of any specific command and tried to free his mind of all thought, allowing the fish to move however freely within the wave it wished.
The lightning fish seemed to sense this shift, gliding in unpredictable arcs, yet somehow always responding subtly to his attention when he observed one or the other.
Without intending to, Lassim found his focus drifting, his gaze following the fish as they moved from left to right, responding in kind to each shift in his concentration. There was something natural in their movement, something instinctive that matched his attention.
It was a strange thing to feel connected to something that wasn’t bound by his physical form, something almost psychic and yet connected to the core of his being.
"Wait…" Lassim seemed to realize something at that moment.
His Spirit Sense.
Maybe it wasn’t just an external tool for perception, he realized, but also a tangible expression of his will? Spirit sense is a magical usage of the spirit pressure, an external sense allowing the Spirit Warrior to interact with objects to pull items out of magic pouches or see 360° around them in the middle of a fight or even see objects clearly defined from hundreds of meters or even tens of kilometers away if developed enough.
The thought stirred a new understanding within him: his Spirit Sense and will were most likely intertwined.
What was spirit sense anything but just an extension of the intention or thoughts being expressed on the mana and surroundings from himself?
The fish moved with an almost uncanny synchronicity to his spirit sense; a link was certainly there. Testing the idea some more, he shifted his gaze to the right, the fish followed with a quick, responsive dart, and then to the left, with a smooth, almost seamless reaction.
He let his focus narrow on this thought, these creatures were born somehow out of spirit sense when the mana fused. There must be more to it like serendipity in the moment that the nix of the divine mana and the elements combining together while affected and shaped by his Spirit Sense.
The revelation settled into him. He realized that his Spirit Sense was the link—quite possibly the key factor in creating the invisible effect that was intent in skills used by Spirit Mystic stage warriors and his own little fish.
Excitement surged through him as he held this new understanding. He dispelled the gathering of mana in his palm and the fish along with it with a quick thought and rose from his spot beneath the tree, feeling the joy of discovery drive him back toward the workshop in a rush.
Rlyis looked up as Lassim entered, her expression curious but alert as he crossed the threshold with an unmistakable enthusiasm in his steps.
Eno too glanced over from his workbench, his eyes narrowing in interest as Lassim approached.
Without waiting for them to speak, Lassim began, "I think I figured it out," he said. "The fish in my mana—they aren’t exactly just ideas or emotions like we thought. I mean they are, but the mechanism is different! They follow my Spirit Sense, almost as if they’re extensions of it!"
He paused, catching his breath as he organized his thoughts. "When I move my Spirit Sense, they respond without any deliberate command. It’s like… they understand my mind directly, and react to it. They follow my focus and where my attention goes."
Rlyis’s eyes lit up with intrigue. She glanced briefly at Eno, then back at Lassim. "Show us what you mean," she said simply.
Lassim nodded, summoning his fused mana into his palm once again for the demonstration.
New n𝙤vel chapters are published on freewebnovel.cσ๓.
The fish emerged within the swirling wave, and without a word, he directed his Spirit Sense toward them, letting his intent guide their movement.
Rlyis and Eno watched intently as the fish responded in perfect synchronicity to his gaze and attention, their movements precise and fluid, following every subtle shift in Lassim’s Spirit Sense’s focal point.
Eno’s expression turned thoughtful, his gaze fixed on the fish as he seemed to weigh Lassim’s words. "So it’s your Spirit Sense that binds them to your mana. It’s a natural extension of your own mana control, rather than something forced."
He looked to Rlyis, "If we can somehow anchor a construct to Spirit Sense, it might be able to respond and display intent directly, just as these fish do. Spirit Sense must be the deciding factor when it comes to the creation of intent in general."
Rlyis exhaled, her fingers tracing the faint lines of the engraving she’d been working on, brow furrowing as she considered Lassim’s discovery.
Beside her, Eno studied Lassim’s fish intently, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
"If Spirit Sense really is the link between your mana and intent," Rlyis began, "then we’re facing a different challenge altogether. Spirit Sense isn’t like mana or energy that you can channel into something else; it’s part of you. How do you connect something so personal to a construct that’s purely mechanical?"
She looked at Eno with a questioning gaze, "How would we even begin?"
Eno crossed his arms, his gaze drifting from Lassim’s mana to the empty plates and construct skeletons and scattered ingots on the workbench.
"To try to force Spirit Sense into something that isn’t alive, that doesn’t naturally resonate with it… it’s almost like asking a mirror to hold your thoughts," he said as he thought about how to make this possible. "Spirit Sense is connected to the self, to awareness—it’s a perception and an effect of a cultivator’s mana reaching a certain threshold of innate spiritual pressure, not a tangible element or something you can program like an array."
Lassim watched the two of them discuss the problem while feeling the enormity of the task set before them.
As he tried to imagine his own Spirit Sense merging with the cold, lifeless structure of a construct, it seemed absurd, almost laughable.
Spirit Sense was as much a part of his mind as his thoughts were. How could it be tied to something outside of him, something that didn’t even know what Spirit Sense was?
"It seems a bit ridiculous," he admitted, looking at the tiny fish still darting around in his mana. "They follow my Spirit Sense, but that’s because they’re born out of it. It’s natural for them. A construct… it would need more than just a command, more than a piece of my energy."
He lifted his head and looked back at Rlyis and Eno. "It would need a way to understand Spirit Sense on some level. But is that even possible?"
Rlyis nodded in agreement of how difficult the issue was, "Even if we tried to ’embed’ some sense of connection, it might not mean anything to a construct." She tapped her fingers against the table, her thoughts racing. "We’re asking a machine to be aware of something it has no frame of reference for."
"Maybe the problem," Eno added, "is that we’re still thinking of Spirit Sense as an addition. What if it needs to be integral to the construct’s design? Not just something added to it through an array, but something it’s built to resonate with from the start."
Rlyis raised an eyebrow, considering this idea. "And how would you even begin to design something like that? Like we said, the problem is that Spirit Sense isn’t like mana—it’s personal, intangible." She sighed, glancing at Lassim.
"You can’t engrave Spirit Sense. You can’t write down Spirit Sense in an array and tell the machine to just magically have it. Even if we found a way to replicate it, we wouldn’t be able to make it truly ’see’ or ’sense’ us or use it effectively."
The weight of the impossibility settled over them, a silence filled with their shared realization. To expect a construct to tap into it, to feel it without understanding… it felt like trying to teach a stone to speak.
"It’s like teaching a sense to something that has no senses," he said finally, voicing the impossibility they all felt.
"Exactly. We’d be trying to create an artificial awareness. Constructs aren’t aware, and that’s not something we can change with mere mechanics."
Eno tapped the table with a thoughtful rhythm, his face thoughtful as he weighed their options. "Unless… we somehow created an anchor, something that could ’translate’ your Spirit Sense in a way the construct could understand. Some kind of proxy that could carry a Spirit Sense and the intent to it without requiring true awareness."
Rlyis looked intrigued but skeptical. "A bridge between Spirit Sense and the array, you mean? Some kind of… vessel to store it?"
Eno nodded slowly. "But not a vessel in the way we think of one. I mean something designed to hold and transmit Spirit Sense, like a mind of its own of sorts. It would have to be a structure that resonates with Spirit Sense somehow."
Rlyis shook her head, the enormity of Eno’s suggestion hanging in the air. "But even if we managed to create something like that, what would we use? And more importantly, would it even work?"
Lassim, caught between admiration and confusion at the idea, tried to imagine such a vessel—a mind within a construct, perhaps. But the complexity felt overwhelming for what little he knew about arrays as an apprentice. This was way above his foundational knowledge, but at least he felt a bit satisfied, like he’d helped somehow.