372 To See Without Sight
"Missed again!" Kevan yelled, as the |Fireball| coming his way missed him by a complete arm's length. "But it was closer this time."
"You don't have to rub it in my face each time, you know?" Yohn groaned back with a tired sigh. "I hope you realise that aiming while blind is as hard as it sounds."
"I get that, but like-" Kevan paused to carefully measure his next words before saying, "Can't you aim in the general direction of my voice?"
"What do you think I'm doing?" Yohn snapped back.
"But you aren't even looking my way," Kevan argued.
"What benefit would that do me? I'm using my ears to find you, aren't I?" Yohn scoffed.
"I've read studies that show that looking in the direction you are trying to shoot improves your aim," Kevan narrated from memory.
To that, Yohn let out a sarcastic chuckle and said, "If you haven't noticed-" he pried apart his closed eyelids to reveal his empty continued, "-but I don't have eyes to 'look' at something."
Kevan scratched his head wryly and admitted, "I'm just trying to help, you know?"
"I understand," Yohn responded. "But you have to tell me something I haven't already tried, Kevan."
"What about your mana senses?" Kevan shot back while snapping his finger.
"It doesn't extend far enough," Yohn answered disappointedly. "That was the first thing I tried after I broke through to the Middle stage. However, my mana sense barely extends past an extended arm's length. I can see everything within clearly, even more so than when I still had my eyes, but anything beyond that I'm as blind as a bat."
"Interesting fact," Kevan chimed in. "Bats aren't actually blind. Studies have shown that their visual acuity is far superior to a human's."
There was silence as Kevan finished his sentence. He looked towards Yohn, and he could see the unimpressed sarcasm oozing out of his friend. It was clear that the "interesting fact" was unwelcome.
"I'm just saying," Kevan defended himself. "People assume that just because bats use echolocation and hunt at night, that they are blind in nature. But that is not actually true."
"You make a good point," Yohn mumbled while scratching his chin in thought.
"Okay," Kevan said with a loud exhale. "You don't have to keep mocking me-"
"I'm not!" Yohn corrected. "Echolocation sounds interesting. It's basically what we're trying to do right now."
"But bats use the reflection of emitted ultrasound," Kevan corrected. "We're just using the environmental noise to position ourselves."
"So if I were to, hypothetically, emit ultrasound and then analyse the reflection, I should be able to see?" Yohn proposed.
"Hypothetically, sure," Kevan affirmed. "But how do you plan on doing that? Humans can't generate sounds at that frequency."
"Humans can't control gravity either, but that didn't stop Senior Brother Markus," Yohn argued.
"Yeah, but..." Kevan evaluated his next words carefully and said, "Senior Brother Markus' circumstances were different."
20:41
"How so?" Yohn challenged.
"I don't know," Kevan answered with a sigh. "What do I even know-" he then said in defeat, "Let's just go hear it straight from the horse's mouth."
The duo then packed up and left for Markus' usual spot, which was the staff's preparation room. The room was a short walk away from the recreation hall and was empty except for the single lad working away by himself. No other staff member of the Sect liked working in the staff's preparation room. For Marie, it was too enclosed and claustrophobic, for Shuri it was far too public desk separators, and for Jean, it was devoid of people. Markus felt right at home here. There wasn't any distraction, and the environment carried an aura of productivity that encouraged him to finish his work on time.
Yohn and Kevan beelined towards Markus, drawing his attention away from the stack of papers he was correcting before him.
"What's up, guys?" Markus greeted.
"We had a question regarding your cultivation," Yohn blurted out immediately.
"Woah!" Markus exclaimed while gesturing playfully with his hands raised. "No small talk; cutting straight to the chase, I see? Alright, take a seat. What do you want to know?"
"How are you able to see gravitational fields? And how are you able to manipulate them?" Yohn inquired.
"Seeing isn't the right word," Markus corrected. "I sense them more specifically through my mana sense. My mana senses can decipher these fields-"
"Is it similar to how Senior Sister Marie senses the waves of fate?" Yohn interjected agitatedly.
"Ah, I see that you've read the article Marie submitted to the Library. To answer your question, yes and no. Marie relies on her mana senses to observe the waves of fate, but there's also a component of analysis in her method. She basically sends out a signal and captures and analyses the response- And he's gone."
Yohn had stood up and left the room while tapping his walking stick around.
"What's gotten into him?" Markus asked the befuddled Kevan, who was also observing his friend's receding back.
"He's just getting agitated. It was different when there was little hope in his career as a mage. But now that there's a possibility, it's really lit a flame under him," Kevan explained with an apologetic tone. "Please forgive him for his rudeness."
"It is kind of rude to leave when in the middle of a conversation," Markus admitted. "But I can understand where his emotion is coming from. I've been there too, you know? Anyway, don't let me bore you with the details of my past. You should probably follow your friend. If I'm not mistaken he should be going to where Marie is situated."
True to Markus' predictions, Yohn had arrived at Marie's location at the recreation hall.
"Ah! Yohn! I was expecting you," Marie said while mysteriously fiddling with her fingers.
"Y-You were?"
"No," she responded while letting out a mirthful laugh. "Did catch you off guard, didn't I? Man, you should have seen the look on your face as you stormed into the hall. You looked like a man on a mission."
"W-Well... Umm... I forgot what I was here for," Yohn said with a confused expression.
"Take a seat. It will come to you eventually," Marie said while offering the chair near her. By this point, Kevan had arrived at the recreation centre.
"Senior Sister!" The out of breath boy greeted. "I apologise for Yohn's rudeness."
"He hasn't done anything rude yet that needs apologising," Marie dismissed. "You should sit down too."
The two boys sat next to each other. Kevan observed Yohn's silence and probed, "Did you ask her about her cultivation already?"
"Oh right!" Yohn exclaimed. "Senior Sister, can you please explain how your cultivation works, more specifically with regard to the waves of fate."
"I wrote an article all about it," Marie said.
"I read it," Yohn volleyed. "I want to understand how the analysis works in particular."
"This would have been really hard to explain before, but thanks to Shuri's contributions in the field of Automagy, it made my life easier," Marie prefaced. "If we simplify the definition of what cultivation is, it can be taken as the concrete form of a person's understanding of their reality. What you see the world to be, is stored inside your cultivation. For instance, a large part of Markus' understanding of reality is derived from the concept of gravity, therefore his cultivation is biased in that direction. Because of that, he is able to perceive and manipulate gravity more easily than others. Of course, you and I also have the ability to do it, but it will require a lot of active effort from our end since our reality isn't defined based on the same concepts. My understanding of reality is based on signals and systems. Jean's is based on microbiology. Shuri's is based on logic and controls. Training your will to adhere to a certain understanding of reality is cultivation, plain and simple."
"Can you train your cultivation to do anything?" Yohn followed up.
"It's not as easy as that. It's not like you are training your core to do a trick like a pet. For a dog, the command to 'sit' is not the same as for a human. To the animal, the 'sit' command is basically a signal that will give it a treat or reward as long as it does an associated action. They match the sound to an action-reward pair. For humans, 'sit' is associated with an action alone. To put it another way, for the animal, following the command is how it gets a treat. I could train a dog to sit down when it hears 'stand' and it will obey me because it is being rewarded. Humans don't do that."
"What does it mean to train your core, then?" Yohn inquired.
"To train your core means to commit to an understanding of reality. To say that 'this is what the world is around me' and actually living with that realisation," Marie summarised. "If there is even an ounce of uncertainty in your chosen understanding of reality, it will result in failure or worse, an unstable cultivation."
"But if I can commit, then will I be able to train my core in any way I want? Let's say, I want it to emit and analyse ultrasound, will I be able to achieve that?" Yohn asked excitedly.
Marie hummed in thought before saying, "I can already guess where you're going with this. So I'd like to caution you against narrowing your understanding of reality. I want you to look up the allegory of the cave when you're free, and it should clarify what I mean. In fact, let me ask you this: if you're planning to see using echolocation, what will you do if you're faced with opponents who can travel faster than the speed of sound?"
Marie let out an amused chuckle upon seeing the speechless expressions on the duo's face. "That's something for you to think about in the meantime."
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