Page 3423

His meditations, therefore, had begun to feel a bit different. While he still wanted to keep to the core principle of clearing his mind, freeing himself of all distraction, Hector was also starting to feel himself... wandering a bit, in some sense.

He didn’t know how else to describe it, exactly. If the purpose of his meditations was to create a vast, empty expanse within his mind, then it now felt like he was floating through the empty vastness. Exploring it, perhaps.

In search of something? Maybe so. But to what end? By design, there was nothing to discover. The point of the exercise was to make sure it stayed empty. So what point could there be in exploration?

That was an odd question. Why did there have to be a point in it? Couldn’t the exploration itself just be... enjoyable on its own? The sensation of floating through his own mind was certainly... something. In fact, it might’ve been making it even easier to free himself of distractions.

It was like a new level of relaxation. So much so, in fact, that he sometimes had trouble telling if he was meditating or simply asleep.

And weirder still, he found himself feeling extra refreshed after such deep meditations. Almost like waking up from a full night’s rest, despite only an hour or two having passed.

He read about some people being able to forego sleep almost entirely, in favor of deep meditation. It had seemed an exaggeration to him before, but maybe there was something to it, after all. If only a little. Even if his mind felt refreshed, he highly doubted that the rest of his body wouldn’t still be dead tired after a heavy day of fighting or training, for example.

But hell, maybe this, too, could be considered one of those altered states of consciousness. A hyper resting state. Or something.

Eh, he was just making shit up at this point. Would’ve been neat, though. What might he call such a thing?

Re-Sto?

Ha. Probably not.

Aside from his meditations, there was also the matter of this new armor at his disposal. Haqq Najir had been following him around in order to study it and report back to Abbas, who was still in Lorent, working on the Candle.

Needless to say, Hector was quite curious what conclusions Haqq would arrive at; and yet at the same time, he also wasn’t holding his breath. But not because he thought Haqq’s skill was lacking.

Rather, there was just something... well, otherwordly about that armor. And he felt, in some strange way, that it might resist analysis.