As I understood from Arkadia, my new Talent allowed me to manipulate dirt clods, pebbles, and tiny rocks under the guise of calling it a bullet. However, I knew there was much more to this basic skill than meets the eye.
In a sense, if I was clever and imaginative enough, there should be no reason at all as to why I couldn’t, say, form a 9 mm handgun bullet out of dirt or rock. As my control over my new Talent grew, along with its rank, I would be able to do more important things, such as adding rotation and speed into the mix and turning my projectiles lethal.
But that was all something that would come in due time because, for now, all I was doing was staring at a pile of dirt, hovering my hand inches from the ground, and turning red in the face as if trying to push out a massive shit.
It all comes back to my earlier remark about how knowing something was vastly different from executing what you know.
Thirty minutes, that’s how long I sat there like a weirdo trying to raise a tiny rock the size of my pinky nail, to no avail.
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"Coomme… on… you Stupid… FUCKING… PIECE OF SHHHHHIT!" Howling through teeth clenched so tight my gums were leaking blood, I felt the veins on my neck and temple bulge with strain until I eventually gave up a task that involved quite a bit of frustrated huffing and puffing.
"I must be going about this the wrong way; let’s stop and think about this logically; what am I missing." Crossing my arms over my chest, I sat ramrod straight, facing the small lake of particle water.
"Activating a Talent should be second nature, no different from flexing your muscles or balling up your fingers to make a fist. One must let the particles go to the part of your body you wish to use as a medium using your will, not force, then boom, activation. Saying skill names or even your Talent’s name isn’t mandatory, but it helps visualize what you wish to do."
"You aren’t FORCING anything, but instead coaxing and asking the particles for aid." Closing my eyes, I allowed my arms to uncross and drop to my sides before resting my hands on the ground, palms facing down.
"I am supposed to mold the earth, bringing it to me, not try and rip it up…" Slowly, I moved particles toward all five of the fingers on my left hand.
"Geomancy, Geo-Bullet…" Without opening my eyes, I brought my hand up off the combination of dirty, rocky terrain before feeling the familiar sensation of particles leaving my body and shooting toward the ground.
Yet, in my haste and excitement, I snapped my eyes open, hoping to see a small pebble or something hovering off the ground, only to see instead a thin thread-sized trail of dirt floating up to my hand.
Instantly snapping back into a focused state of mind, my left hand trembled with strain as I watched the dirt coalesce barely an inch away from my palm.
Meanwhile, I could feel my PC rapidly draining each second that I drew the dirt up off the ground, yet, since this was only a test, I paid it no mind, especially since I was still in a particle-enriched environment.
Just like the saying dictates, one must first learn to walk before learning to run, and using my new Talent was no different.
Once a few minutes had passed, and I noticed there was no new influx of dirt adding to the liquid-type blob hovering just under my palm, I began the next step of the skill: refinement.
My Geo-Bullet skill could be broken down into three distinct steps: collection, refinement, and expulsion.
With the collection step complete, I was now supposed to move on to the refinement step and begin manipulating the collected material into the shape or form I wished; in this case, as I previously stated, I was going the simple route of forming a crude and rudimentary musket ball.
Picturing two hands forming a snowball out of fresh powder, I noticed the blob of liquified dirt jiggle multiple times before condensing and hardening into my desired form.
The process was by no means quick, being my first successful activation, and after about two minutes, floating less and two inches from my palm, was a compact dirtball, one which barely made the cut to earn the name of a bullet.
"Ok, on to step three, arguably the most complicated one," ever so carefully, I rotated my palm toward the ceiling, dragging along with it my new creation while subconsciously gripping my left wrist with my right hand.
Alright, ima be honest. I want to say it was to stabilize my hand to stop the trembling and all, but that would be a blatant lie.
The true purpose of my actions, along with the oddly suspicious and familiar stance I was striking, was that my inner weeb was beginning to leak out.
I couldn’t resist the intrusive thoughts rapidly firing around my brain. I even went so far as to curl my fingers up in a claw with the tiny earthen ball floating dead center of my palm as if it were some anime attack, and I was the main character of a Shonen series.
Wearing a cheesy smirk, I once again twisted my hand, this time using my full arm until it was locked straight as if I were holding a pistol, and with some added effort, soon enough, I was standing in a dropped-down stance, left leg forward, right back, knees bent, and making a finger gun pointing out over the lake.
Floating just in front of my extended index and middle fingers was my very first Geo-Bullet. My thumb was pointing toward the sky, and the giddiness I was experiencing was completely apparent on my face.
’What should I say… hm, if I were Xipher right now, it would probably be a killer one-liner like, "You should probably dodge this; I wouldn’t want your viscera spilling all over my new outfit," but since I don’t want anyone knowing I’m Xipher yet, I have to craft a new persona for Nexus…so how about.
"Bang!"