[SS] Chapter 15: "That one time I got reincarnated as a slime that aged 100 years an hour, but I got by, by shooting out my Astra"

Astra. What was it? A lot of things. At its core, we can safely say that it’s an energy that all beings have and all beings generate. But even calling it an energy might be vastly incorrect.

What does it do? It does a lot of things. It naturally ages everything and everyone, even including regular monsters in a way. It’s responsible for a child becoming an adult, an adult becoming a senior citizen, and a senior citizen becoming a skeleton. But even undead produce astra and, for regular monsters, will eventually die because they have too much, unless they consistently evolve.

And that’s another thing it can do.

It can allow monsters to continuously evolve. Even for me, A Crowned Monster without an Astra Cap, would die if I didn’t evolve or didn’t have Astra Manipulation. The specifics being told to me was that I would “Explode.” So, it can also blow things up in too large amounts, somehow.

Knowing all of this, seeing all of this, even in my disoriented state, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to manipulate it. And then I had poured nearly all of my skills points, things that could have gone to plenty of other great skills, into increasing my Astra Generation. Something that most would have called crazy. After all, there were some really great skills in there and we all generated Astra naturally anyway. But to me, I knew I’d need more to get further. I even worry that a 128x boost isn’t enough. Luckily, I’m able to drain Astra from things but not quickly, not yet.

This skill is, different. It’s like a Magic Skill but far more, necessary. Maybe, someone could eventually discover how to naturally manipulate Astra. But they’d have to be truly, truly ancient, nigh immortal already. Mainly because without having a ludicrous amount of Astra, I don’t think you’d ever develop the prerequisite [Astra Acclimation].

I could feel it in me but, vaguely. Even having over 1000 astra, I still felt like I was a fragment of a fragment of a fragment. Less than a grain of sand on a beach. I focused, really, really focused and grabbed one Astra. I brought it forth, slowly, painstakingly. The smallest flicker of life appeared in front of me. It was a green sort of, soul like energy. I couldn’t describe it any better than that. It was just something you knew when you saw it. That it looked soul like. Wispy and wavy might also be good terms but that could just be due to how small it was. This was the day one amount for a newborn human being. The literal first spark of life. Without this, they would be dead. Literally, lifeless.

In, many, many ways, Astra was life itself.

I slowly pushed my single Astra into the grass and saw it be effortlessly fused with it. Then I sucked it back out. But I failed. Not in pulling it, but in only pulling one. I pulled three. That rankled because when I was on top of the wolf, I instantly failed to pull any out at all. Pulling someone’s very life force from them, seemed to be harder than pulling from something without a will of its own.

I slowly tried to pull just a single Astra at a time from the grass and succeeded after a little bit. I kept the stream constant, trying to hold it steady, while increasing the flow. I didn’t want more to be pulled in, I wanted what I was already pulling in to be pulled faster. A fast but thin stream. It was like trying to corral a river. At first, the grass actually seemed to look a little healthier. And then it just, died. It didn’t look wrong or out of place, besides it drooping down. But I could tell, the grass was dead, just like that. It had no more sparks of life. Death from Astra loss was like, well, Death from loss of life itself. Instant and simple. You were alive and then you were not.

Next, I took my Astra and tried to put some into the dead grass. I sensed, potential there. But it failed miserably, like I tried to shove my hand through a solid rock. I don’t think I could bring someone back to life like this, but, I don’t think I could make a zombie either. I had some guesses but I really just didn’t know enough. I was a caveman exploring with electricity and trying to create a nuclear reactor. I wasn’t just slow and steady because I was holding this in great esteem, I was being careful. Astra was age and life itself. If I had none, I was going to die. If I had too much, I was going to die. Technically, I aged 128x a normal slime did every day. If I was a human, I’d go from just being born to 128 in only a single year. The only reason I was going to live past a week was because I could shoot my Astra out of myself. Which I had to do periodically. Eventually, I’d become an evolution that naturally had a higher maximum age, so I could store more and be less at risk of death from it, but that was a far ways off.

When I had pulled from the grass and gotten multiple Astra at once, I had a small thing of panic. I didn’t know how much Astra grass had. A slime generates 4 a day, humans 1 a day, what if grass was 10? Or more? What if it pulled from all the grass around me in a mile area instead of in about a square foot worth? What if I had tried a tree instead? I was playing with my own life in a very direct way here.

I sighed. I had to be careful.

I pushed a bunch of Astra into the grass, and watched. Soon, it grew dull and then brown and then, it wilted and died of old age. I had only used a few dozen Astra. I thought about it. That didn’t quite make sense. Most things seem to generate multiple Astra a day and die when they hit the cap. The cap is the natural lifespan as I already know it. So a human lives around 80-100 years and so they have, roughly, a cap around 35,000. Grass, if it lived for multiple years like grass does, would have a cap of around 1000. Unless, grass doesn’t generate multiple Astra a day? Can something do that? I thought one was the minimum but just because you generate Astra, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be less than one right? I don’t have Astra suddenly generating all at once after 24 hours, it comes over time. But is 1 Astra the limit of generation? Can there be smaller amounts?

I focused, trying to draw out half an Astra.

It didn’t work and the worst part was, I didn’t know whether I should continue trying. I was alone in this, I had no roadmaps, and I wasn’t going to get any any time soon. With Magic, I had a leg up with my magic cuffs and more than that, I knew I was going to find some books or research or fellow mages eventually. Maybe even somehow do an apprenticeship by being really sneaky or finding a friendly monster.

With Astra, I knew that if anyone knew anything about it, they would be thousands of years old. The amount of strength they’d have, even at a passive level, would be intense. To say nothing of the fact that they would be a master of Astra. Killing me might only take a slight effort of will and glancing my way. After all, I hadn’t been touching the grass I had pulled Astra out of, and I hadn’t even realized that fact till right now. Sure, I had been close, very very close. But not touching. So what if I could draw Astra out from across a room? What if I could do it stealthily?

Yeah, meeting a master of Astra would be a constant potential death sentence. Suicide to seek one out. I’ll have to spend gods knows how long testing and learning by myself. Which is why the half astra problem bothers me so much. It could fully be possible and lead to some amazing discoveries. Or it could be totally impossible for reasons I can’t understand and I could waste an unbelievable amount of time on it. Or it could be something that’s actually quite advanced and takes a master decades to master but is actually fully possible. I just didn’t know.

I felt, melancholy. I was excited to learn and dreading the countless years I’d spend doing so and hitting up against walls. Is this how scientists felt when they first realized that now that they had discovered electricity or something new, they’d actually have to work for their whole lives to figure anything out? I suspect the fervor of discovery for most things can only last a year at most. And that’s with other people around you. The first scientists, the first ones to want to know why and were alone, I respect you and acknowledge you.

Because this truly sucks despite how much I care about it.

I shook myself out of my thoughts and went back to my training. Best to work on low hanging, safe fruit first. I’d already discovered that Astra seems to have distance pulling but why? How far? I tried to pull from across my ‘yard’ and it didn’t work. I very, very carefully, continuously pulled in a straight line till I hit a wall. Well, no, not exactly a wall. A, drop. I was reaching out in an, an area that was available to me and then suddenly, that was it. The area a single grass more, was not available to me. I very carefully went in all four directions and then around me. I was a perfect circle around myself.

I had an invisible Astra Aura. Or, at least a specific amount of distance I could pull from. I focused on that line and tried to increase it. To drift my channel pulling from one blade of glass to the next that was outside my reach. I failed. But that wasn’t the point. I focused, trying to feel. Feel with a sense I had but couldn’t understand. I felt like it was there. Like I could almost reach out and touch it.

I pulled back to myself. It was night again. I had been focusing for hours. I frowned. That was a lot of hours to sit and try to feel out an aura. It wasn’t even early in the night. I was kinda understanding why those old monks seemed to sit on rocks or up in mountains forever. Your sense of time kinda dropped when you were focusing on Astra.

I went into the cave to rest. There’d be more days to train magic, Astra, and my skills later. Right now it was time to sleep. I was actually feeling, pretty good. Sure, ignoring all the horrible shit that had happened to me overall wasn’t pleasant or easy, but I felt like I was making real genuine progress in something that was both interesting and that would matter. Astra left me feeling like a scientist, while magic left me feeling awe and a pure joy I hadn’t felt since I was a child. That sensation of watching myself summon and fire off magic was just, unbelievable. I could cry tears of pure happiness from it. Training my skills made me feel like I, myself, was getting better at something. There would come a day I’d probably really have a thousand eyes that could roam the land and a thousand hands that would blot out the sky, provided I had the mana for it.

In many ways, I always thought going to a medieval land of might and magic would be so utterly boring. And for many, maybe it is. But I had real, actual things I could work on, that I actually wanted to do here. I didn’t have much of that back home. No, most of my day to day life was a boring generic slog of A to be B. I played the guitar, but didn’t care much about it. I ate okay meals but never really cooked nor wanted to. I worked a boring job doing paperwork that was just entertaining enough, surprisingly, that I didn’t hate the job nor quit it but I’d have burst out laughing if anyone had said I had a passion or an interest in it. No, I had just been, drifting without a care and that was all well and good but not great for long term satisfaction. What was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Biological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. Well, I did most of the steps, all the way up to esteem before I had got here. I wouldn’t say I had very much esteem at all actually. Not much respect or status, but plenty of freedom so I guess it kinda all evened out maybe. But what I definitely didn’t have, was self-actualization. In short, it means to have a drive or passion. A want to become or do something. To want to improve or at least having some part of you that yearns to be more than you currently are. To make the most of your potential and constantly strive forward. Yeah I had none of that. But now? Now I really, really do. Even going to sleep feels like a waste when I could be up training. I want to know more about Astra, I want to feel that bliss of magic, I want that burst of joy and feeling of accomplishment and victory from making real ground on improving my skills.

I fell asleep with a smile on my face and to the howls of wolves. I raised a mental middle finger to them as I drifted off.