Alright, alright, alright. Let’s get this training party started, said other-Terry in an accent.

  Terry could not, for the life of him, figure out what that accent was supposed to be. It was only when he remembered hearing that alright, alright, alright phrase back on Earth that he put two and two together and asked the question.

  Was that your Matthew McConaughey impression?

  Pretty good, right?

  No, said Terry. It wasn’t even kind of good, which I do not understand. How can you possibly be bad at accents that you’re pulling from my memory?

  Maybe you just heard it badly, countered other-Terry. Don’t blame me if your organic processing isn’t up to snuff.

  You don’t actually expect me to buy that, do you?

  Ugh. I keep telling you I’m not an AI. Why do you keep expecting me to be like one?

  Terry almost let himself go down the road to the inevitable argument but cut himself off. He wouldn’t learn anything from that and, now that he was ready to learn, he wanted to get on with it.

  “Yes, fine. Not an artificial intelligence. Can we please get on with the training before Kelima wakes up and starts talking again?”

  What? Did you think this was going to be some training montage where you master your power in a series of jump cuts set to exciting music?

  Yes, Terry half-asked. I mean, isn’t that a—

  Not a trope. It’s a film editing method. It might look like a trope, but it isn’t.

  Well, that blows.

  Quit whining. You’re already way ahead of the curve with practically no effort.

  No effort? Do you not recall me fighting my way through that forest?

  Fine. Fine. You’re way ahead of the curve with a minuscule amount of effort. But the rest won’t come free. You’re going to have to try, and this is just day one, warned other-Terry. You'd best settle in for the long haul, Buttercup!

  “Joy,” grumbled Terry.

  First things first, you’re going to practice that ice technique, commanded other-Terry.

  Why that?

  I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the only thing you know how to do.

  I know how to do other things, objected Terry.

  Like what?

  Well— started Terry as he thought back.

  He was a little dismayed to realize that he didn’t actually know how to do anything else. He could use a sword, but he also knew he was borrowing on some kind of intuitive understanding and zero actual knowledge. Most of what he could do either borrowed on strength that he’d fallen ass backwards into or it just kind of happened. The lone thing he had personally accomplished in terms of magical know-how since arriving in this world was figuring out that ice technique. Even that was something he’d only done the one time. Given how much everyone with even a modicum of authority in this world seemed to rely on magic either directly or indirectly, it gave him pause.

  You might have a point, Terry conceded.

  Exactly. So, now that we got that minor tantrum out of the way with a minimum of tears, let’s start with the one and only thing that you won’t be learning from ground zero. Just for giggles, let’s see if you can do it without covering the camp, part of the river, and a comatose girl in inches of ice.

  Couldn’t you have just said to try to make it smaller?

  I could have. Sure.

  Again, Terry resisted the urge to say something that would just lead to bickering. That, however, proved a close damn thing that called for much jaw clenching and teeth grinding. It was only after he’d gotten his temper back under control that an idea sprang into Terry's mind.

  You’re being intentionally irritating. Is it so that I’ll call off this whole training thing, and you can go back to slacking?

  There was a too-long beat of silence before other-Terry said, No.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Try to be less obvious next time.

  Alright. I guess if you’re going to be all responsible and make me work, we should move away from the campsite a bit.

  Terry almost asked why, but it didn’t take much thought to work it out. The stupid construct had told him why. It mostly boiled down to not killing Kelima by accident. Terry put about a hundred yards between himself and the campsite while moving away from the river. It was still close enough that he could intervene if some monster wandered into the camp, but probably far enough away that he wouldn’t inadvertently create a Kelimasicle. He sat down in a cross-legged pose and did his best to steady his breathing. He was at least partly convinced that the ridiculous amount of ground that the ice technique had covered the last time was due to his emotional state.

  He hadn’t been quite at the level of panic, but it had been close enough that it could easily have been mistaken for panic by an observer. If he wanted to exert better control over the size of it, he figured being calm was a good place to start. He expected other-Terry to make some comment, but the construct was oddly quiet and patient for once. That probably meant that he was on the right track. Either that, or he was way off track and other-Terry was waiting to spring some new insult. Terry shook off that thought and just took controlled breaths for most of a minute.

  He’d never been into things like meditation in his old life, but now he thought that it would have been a useful skill to learn. In a land of magic, it probably would have paid dividends to be able to focus or calm his mind on demand, instead of stumbling his way toward inner calm with the most basic possible breathing exercise. It occurred to him that there were certainly people in this world who could teach him, but that idea didn’t exactly excite him. He already dealt with more people than he wanted to. Adding another to that pile would not enhance his well-being. Then, he frowned.

  “Can you teach me how to meditate?” he asked other-Terry.

  Well, yes and no. I can give you techniques, but it’s not the kind of thing someone can teach. Meditation is, almost by definition, a personal and internal journey. And while I do live inside your consciousness, I won’t be able to tell if you’re reaching the right mental states.

  I’m not looking to achieve enlightenment. I just need a semi-reliable way to calm my mind and improve focus.

  Oh, well, those are easier. For calming your mind, the breathing thing is actually pretty effective. It gets your parasympathetic nervous system up and running, which helps you relax. Visualization is also good for that. You know the whole thing about imagining yourself on the beach or by a waterfall or in the cold depths of the void.

  How do you know— Terry started before the construct’s final words sank in. The cold depths of the void? Seriously?

  Hey, there are some species out there who find the idea of a space devoid of all life and matter to be quite soothing.

  Terry thought that over for longer than was strictly necessary.

  I’m going to choose to ignore that, he finally answered. But how did you know about that parasympathesis nervous system thing?

  First of all, it’s parasympathetic. And I didn’t know that’s what meditation did for your meat cage. You knew it.

  I did?

  I could explain the exact details, said other-Terry, but I don’t want to. So, just accept that you encountered the information at some point in your old life and move on.

  Terry ground his teeth some more before, as directed, he accepted it and moved on.

  Whatever. How do I do the calming meditation?

  Terry spent the next half-hour trying out different meditation techniques before deciding that the breathing exercise was the most helpful. Every time he tried visualization, slathering monsters kept storming into the scene and shattering his calm. He thought that mantra meditation and body scan meditation might prove helpful in the long term, but he was too scattered to make good use of them at the moment. In the end, he went back to taking controlled breaths. It seemed strange to him to spend so much attention on breathing, but it did work. His thoughts started to slow and, eventually, he reached something that at least shared a neighborhood with calm. He knew that this approach wasn’t going to be useful during actual fights. It took too damn long. For right now, though, it was enough.

  He tried to think back about how he’d made the ice technique work before, only to find that he couldn’t. Not exactly. It wasn’t that his memory was faulty. He remembered the events with the dire wolves with an almost disturbing level of clarity. The problem was that the ice technique was something that had happened inside of him. It had been visceral as much as it had been a thought process, and his recall of those visceral feelings was largely absent. He supposed it was a lot like trying to remember pain or exercise. Any time he tried to recall pain, what he got was a memory that told him that he had felt pain, but nothing about what the experience of that pain was like.

  He could dredge up times he had gone hiking, and endless walking since arriving in Chinese Period Drama Hell, but the sensations of the ground beneath his feet were vague, fleeting, always on the edge of recall but never within grasp. He spent several futile minutes trying to glean some insight from those imperfect memories of the fight with the dire wolves before glumly acknowledging that he was going to have to do it the hard way. He focused inward on that spot where he assumed he had some kind of a core. That’s what usually powered magic in those isekai and litRPG books and shows.

  Oddly, once he started the process, he discovered that he wasn’t starting from scratch the way he’d expected to do. Things felt familiar as he did them, even if he was a long way from understanding what he was doing. Not that doing it was easy. It was anything but easy. Grasping even a tiny piece of the kind of energy that gave off the correct aura was maddeningly difficult. Getting that power to move where he wanted it to go was equally frustrating. But, inch by aggravating inch, he dragged that power from his core to his hand. His one consolation in all of this was the sure knowledge that he wasn’t going to accidentally cover twenty acres of land in ice.

  That moment of distraction nearly cost Terry whatever tenuous control he had over the mana. In desperation, he simply pushed it out of his hand. He didn’t try to do anything specific with it. He could work on that later. Right now, he just needed to see if he could get that inside energy to become outside energy. There was a sharp sense of something leaving his hand, which felt strangely light afterwards. Terry took a couple of heaving breaths. Controlling even that tiny bit of mana, or whatever they called it here, had been a mental and physical struggle. Terry glanced in the direction he’d pushed the energy, only to have other-Terry burst into maniacal laughter.

  Well done, oh master of magic. You succeeded in making that most deadly of substances— other-Terry paused for effect. Frost.