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A/N: HODL, squeeze imminent. For those of you who don't understand, don't bother looking it up, it means nothing, good day.
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I dropped my gym bag on the ground and looked around the dark warehouse. This one had been made to hold inventory. The metal shelves were still here, surprisingly. Where I used to live, they would've been stolen while the warehouse was still being operated.
Anyways, I needed a place to myself to get things done. Granted, my parents were gone all day from the apartment, but I wanted something to myself that I could change and edit as much as I liked. Buying a warehouse in the future was under consideration.
I sat next to my gym bag and pulled a notebook and pen from it. Written in the notebook was a checklist. 'Break a leg' and 'torch my hand' were a few examples, and these were meant to broaden my understanding of my Divine Spark. So far I've just discovered one ability related to the Divine Spark. One hundred percent regeneration after a full night's sleep. Even though I spent nine hours working out yesterday doing a full-body exercise, I woke up fully rejuvenated and feeling great, in fact a tiny bit better than the day before. No crippling DOMS whatsoever. I looked down to the bottom of the list, 'Does knocking myself out/fainting count as sleeping?' then put my notepad and pen away.
I stood up and stretched, bent over and brought a five-pound sledge hammer wrapped in a boxing hand-wrap out of my gym bag, took a deep breath, then bashed it against -
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I opened my eyes and stared up at the dark warehouse rafters.
"... Did it work?"
I wiggled my arms, then felt my head. There was no pain, no post-concussion after-effects, everything was... A-okay?
I stood up and stretched everything. So far so good...
"Did I really just find a bug in God's design?" I laughed incredulously.
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Ten minutes had passed.
"So if I don't die in ten minutes..." I said slowly. "I'm..."
I dropped my phone, then let out a stunned breath and ran my hands through my messy hair.
"Quasi-immortality." I whispered, holding handfuls of my hair. "This is... fucked up!"
I made a disbelieving noise and shifted from side to side then let out a harsh laugh and took out another five-pound sledge hammer from my bag, but this one without a boxing hand-wrap. I could now do what I was about to do "safely".
I put my right forearm against the nearest I-beam supporting the warehouse, then smashed it with the hammer as hard as I could. A scream tore itself from my throat. The pain was awful, and I stood there for a few moments, trying to suppress my unprompted pain-wrought noises. Eventually I sat on my butt, steeled my nerve and smashed my right leg. Another pained scream. I hated the pain so much. I didn't want to keep going, but I did. I broke my right knee-cap, stifled the scream as best as I could, then broke my left leg and kneecap.
The pain was overwhelming. My vision was blinded by pain and tears as I reached for the wrapped sledge-hammer. I would've never thought that I would find solace in wrapping my fingers around the handle of a hammer and hitting it against my head, but -
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I opened my eyes and once again stared up at the warehouse rafters. I lay still for a few moments, thinking about what I just did.
Soon, I sighed and decided to check myself. I felt my right forearm. My dread evaporated when I felt it was completely normal. I sat up and checked my legs. Also normal. I sighed in relief, then stood up and bent over my bag once more. I pulled out my dumb bells, a blow torch on a blue can of butane, and a taser.
It was now time to streamline this process. I would exercise, burn myself, break my limbs, knock myself out or tasor myself, then do it all again. My goal was to see if I could actually build up resistances to blunt force, fire, and electricity. If my Divine Spark didn't work like that then my time was spent properly, since I was exercising fairly efficiently. I didn't know when I would see results, but I planned on going at it for at least a week to make absolutely sure that I wasn't building up resistances, in the case that my Divine Spark didn't work like that.
Anyways, I was building up at least one tolerance.
Pain tolerance.
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Two weeks. I had been exercising, breaking my legs, and frying my body for two. Whole. Weeks.
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And was it worth it?
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Hell. Fucking.
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Yes.
First. I was up twenty pounds of muscle. That meant I built muscle twenty times faster than the average two pounds of muscle a month. Very soon, I would not have any trouble with a strength deficit, and more of a problem with too much muscle. Baggy clothes could hide only so much muscle.
Second. The blunt force resistance was still coming along, but I could accurately say I wouldn't be cut by a regular knife. Besides stabbing myself, I also bought a nail gun, a circular saw, and a power drill with a bore bit set to - ahem - further develop my melee resistance. I was now invulnerable to anything below those power tools. My skin would probably be pierced if I got shot, but seriously, I now had fucking decent melee resistance. I was pretty damn proud, especially when I cleaned up the ridiculous amount of blood after my sessions. Let's just say I may or may not also have an immunity to dying by bleeding out. Strangely enough, I started bleeding noticeably less after the first week.
Third. I was no longer affected by the blow torch or the taser. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I T-posed over my blow-torch and taser. Gaining resistance to fire and electricity justified me though, right?
Anyways, the past two weeks checked off some very important things in my notepad, and I now wanted to move onto something else.
Fourth. My Divine Spark. What else could it do? That was the first question under 'Divine Spark' in my notepad.
I put my hands behind my head, leaned back in my desk chair, and sighed. I wanted to find a way to interact with my Divine Spark. I wanted to know if there was any way to direct its energy manually. I was pretty satisfied with its OP functions already, but I wouldn't know if there were more OP functions if I didn't look.
So the question after the question about what it could do was 'Would learning to meditate enable me to interact with my Divine Spark?'
I loathed meditating. Not because of the action itself, but because I couldn't do it. I couldn't focus on a single thing for an extended period of time, much less nothing. It was too hard for me, because my brain was often the last thing I had to rely on in many bad situations in the past. It was my main power and my emergency power.
But I had nothing else I could do except try. And try I did.
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Oh Lord, meditating was fucking hard.
It took me two days of trying to find a conducive state, which I then used to brute-force my thoughts to focus on one thing. It was painful. Not the same kind of pain caused by breaking my kneecaps, but it was equally awful. It was brain exertion.
In my past life, I was blessed with unusually sharp common sense skills, so I could connect dots easily as a child, which helped huge amounts in school. Except when it didn't, then I got a brain aneurysm, and I wouldn't find the proper answer until I used my brain so hard that it felt raw.
In the case of meditating, the idea of not thinking, or thinking of only one thing was just - incredibly counter-intuitive to me, and I didn't get it until I forced myself to dumb it down to very simple terms.
'Rock good.
Take rock.
Take more rock.
Hit rock with rock.
Rock make more rock.
Rock good.'
That summed up my entire thought process to meditating. Now all I had to do was edit the script to my needs.
'Think Spark.
Spark good.
Know where Spark.
See Spark.
Spark good.'
This was perfect. Now all I had to do was repeat it.
'Think Spark.
Spark good.
Know where Spark.
See Spark.
Spark good.'
'Spark.
Spark good.
Know where Spark.
See Spark.
Spark good.'
Eventually, with my closed eyes, I saw a tiny speck of blue light far away. I didn't want to screw this up by trying to figure out what it was, so I focused on my mantra.
'Spark.
Spark good.
Know where Spark.
See Spark.
Spark good.'
The speck of blue light slowly came nearer.
'Spark.
Spark good.
Know where Spark.
See Spark.
Spark good.'
Up close, it was still tiny, but it was vibrantly bright, and it was beautiful. It looked like a mini blue sun, slowly revolving as arcs of light that looked like solar flares curled around it. It was beautiful, and it was mine.
I slowly reigned in myself from my entranced state, and brought my attention back to my purpose. Study it. Understand it. Discover what it can do. Discover what I can do. Do what it takes to make it to the big leagues, because there's no other way except forwards.
Forwards, and up.
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