Sitting cross legged on a empty patch of land, in my personal training room, I meditated.
For what I needed for my next task was absolute calm.
But-
-She likes you.
The sentence continued to resound in my head like a broken record, disrupting my concentration and mood.
In the end, there was nothing I could do here.
Whether she liked me or not, it didn't matter.
For I didn't.
Yes, I didn't.
I was attracted to her, yes, but that was only to her body.
Simply put, I was horny.
The teen hormones firing up in my body were going haywire at her sight, that along with our close proximity for the past month, hmmmm, it was understandable that there was a spark there.
But, as I said, I didn't have a leeway, I literally had a world to save, so for now, I couldn't accept her feelings.
-Haaahhhhh
I slumped backwards after that thought.
I wasn't like I planned to stay alone all my life, but simply put, this was not the time.
Really!, There was still a week before I turn 14 dammit!!
Just what the hell is wrong with her!?
Is that girl a shota-con or something!?
Anyways, whatever it was, it didn't matter.
Plus, I shouldn't judge her based on what someone else thinks.
So, yes let's leave that for later.
I thought as I sat back again, and reigned in my thoughts, going into a meditative state.
It wasn't that easy to do so, but I used a trick here, using Parallel Mind I split those various thoughts of mine into multiple thought processes, and then extinguished these processes, reducing the difficulty of the task.
After all, when I extinguished them, all I had to was stay focused on the on-going processes to keep new thoughts from springing up.
And when, I only had the thoughts about my task, I deactivated my skill.
For the next few moments, I just channeled the Mana and Mental Power through my body, while maintaining my state of mind. Then after a minute when I thought that this was enough, I started my task.
My task being...setting up my Mental Avatar.
With closed eyes and steady mind, I activated my Mana sense, once again, diving into the blurry foggy world.
The Mental world, was just the same as I remembered, but it appeared a lot different to me.
It was notably less foggy and blurry, also my range of control of my Mental sense had increased by quite a lot too.
The reason for that was quite obvious, the more I used Mana sense the more my familiarity with it increased, giving me the much-needed experience with my mysterious new sense.
And just like how your level increases quickly when you are low leveled the same happened with me, just instead of my level my mental abilities increased quite a bit.
Now that I think about it, my super strong soul should also have an hand in my fast growth, after all, all things in the domain of control are more or less connected with the soul.
Anyways, I continued sensing and continued feeling the mysterious world around me, before I started cutting of my senses.
Smell, touch, taste, hearing, and vision, one by one, I blocked all of them and with each sense I blocked, the better I was able to perceive the Mental world.
Feeling the mysterious world around me, I wanted to understand it, to unravel its mysteries, but I held the impulse in and concentrated on my 'self'.
On my reflection of 'self', in this world.
Using a whole lot of Mental Power that I normally wouldn't use for any of my spell, I pumped it in my 'self'.
My reflection fed on my Mental Power, absorbing it like a sponge, using it as fuel to grow as it continued gulping it down like a thirsty traveler.
But like all good things, this one ended too, only because I had to, though.
Stopping when I had around 150 of my Mental Power left, I moved on to the next part of the process.
Un-shaping of my 'self'.
My 'self' looked the same as me. I mean, he had the same silhouette as me, albeit without any facial features or skin color, rather, it was like an outline of me filled with smoke. Right now, though, it was surrounded by surrounded by a strange but same colored flame of darker color that arose with him as the center, but surprisingly he didn't get burned.
And why would he be burned?, After all, this flame was the flame it feed on.
Yes, it was the mental Power he fed on.
Concentrating on my-'self', I controlled my Mana sense, and simply made it lose shape.
My 'self' in the Mental World burst into smoke and combined with the flames of Mental Power around it.
But naturally, not everything burst into smoke, rather, a small spherical body was was still there, floating just where my chest used to be.
This was my actual 'self', my default 'self', a part of myself, that existed in the Mental World from the moment I was born.
Second process completed.
Next was obviously, shaping my 'self'.
Through the small floating sphere, I controlled the raging flames of Mental Power, subdued them, tamed them.
The process was difficult, the flames resisted a lot, trying to escape, lashing out on me, disrupting my mental state...
But in the end, they were tied to me. So, after a long struggle, after a long metal tug of war, I succeeded.
Releasing the breath I was holding in, took a few deep breaths.
'That was close, very close, much closer than I would have liked.'
As expected directly trying the second transformation was quite difficult.
But, I didn't dwell on it too much.
For the process wasn't completed, the shaping wasn't done.
So, taking another deep breath, I concentrated again, and started shaping my 'self'.
Unraveling the structure that had been theorized for more than a month now, I shaped my Mental Avatar after it.
With the flames, no, they looked more like cloud of smoke now. So, with the cloud of smoke under my control now, I gathered them around the sphere, and from there I started shaping my Mental Avatar, carefully.
Thankfully, the structure I chose wasn't something complex or hard to make, so after just a while, I finished shaping it.
-Huuuuu
'Just the final step.'
I thought, as I started the last process there was, Finalizing.
Just as it sounded, the process was nothing but finalizing the Mental Avatar.
Once again, I pumped Mental Power into the Avatar, but this time it wasn't pure Mental Power, rather, it was mixture of Mana and Mental Power.
An extremely small amount of Mana.
The Mana I injected, didn't do much, it was just injected there to brand my Mental Avatar as mine.
Which happened quite easily, since there was no rejection.
And as soon as I did, I felt small tremble coming from my Mana sense confirming the establishment of my Mental Avatar.
-Huuuuuuu
-Thump
I slumped on the ground, the next moment, before I connecting back all my senses back.
That was surprisingly difficult.
But the hurdle had somehow passed.
Anyways, with this, I have done everything I needed to do.
Except for my sword, which I planned to enchant after my 'Coming of Age' ceremony, all was done.
I picked the powers I needed to acquire.
I decided who my comrades will be.
I stocked on different artifacts and items.
And most importantly I decided the things with which I will interfere.
So, I did all I could, so all I needed to do was wait, train and get stronger.
Jerking myself, I jumped off the ground and stood up.
'But first, I need a shower.'
I thought, as I felt myself being drenched with sweat.
As for any countermeasures against the Empress?
I didn't bother.
That was an useless venture.
Any last-minute measure, any last-minute plans, or any last-minute struggle I could muster.
All of it was useless.
For she was an Eternal magus.
The strongest human.
It would a shame on her name if any of my last minute, no, even any of my well-planned struggles actually worked.
After all, I was just a small boy in the end, if just my planning was enough to impede even a single of her objectives, she still won't be the woman who unified the world and ruled it.
But still, I was sure about one thing.
Whatever her objective was I didn't know, but I was damn sure she had one.
She was simply such a person, if she didn't have any motives, interests or objectives, she wouldn't even look into the matter.
So, my plan, and the best way to handle the ceremony, was to simply go with the flow, to simply do whatever she wants, and to simply not antagonize her.
After all, it was foolish to fight the inevitable, right?
With that I prepared myself, and dove into training.
Trying to get as strong as I could without wasting a single minute, and before I knew it.