I cut the canvas at the back of my tent using Threadwork.

There was an easy method to do this, where I just created a lattice that mimicked a blade. It would not be very sharp, but with enough force behind it, I could tear through my tent.

However, what I did was different; instead of creating a blade, I summoned a single thread. Normally, a single thread with this discipline was very fragile, almost like a spider’s silk, but focusing all my attention on the tip of the thread, it began to glow.

This glow was the sign that I was hardening the structure of the thread until it was almost as durable as metal and sharper than a blade, and although what I was changing was less than an inch, I had to use all my concentration in this task.

I ran my finger down the canvas, and the sharpened thread cut through the reinforced material as if it were made from bubbles.

This was one of the small experiments I made with Threadwork by the side, and I had never been able to make it work before, until the previous loop.

There was a small vibration from my Status Screen, but I had learned to unconsciously suppress all updates that were just related to the growth of my disciplines or skills, and only if something new arrived would anything pop up in my vision.

In this manner, I would not be distracted by every notification that would be arriving as I wield my magic.

I slipped through the tear and crouched down before slowly finding my way away from the camp. When I moved past a hundred meters, I began to walk.

Glancing back at the pyramid itself, which was thirty kilometers of stone running into the sky to the east, a light shudder passed through me at the immense scale of it.

I was heading west for a thousand meters, beyond the line of sight of anyone in the camp, and the reach of any Adept’s casual perception.

There was a fold of ground where the western face of the ridge dipped into a small grass cup, maybe forty meters across, resembling a big green bowl. I had sighted this place for the first time when our expedition reached the campsite, and I walked over there with Bari before returning.

The thousand meters took me eleven minutes at the careful pace I was holding, and the slight tension in my back that someone would notice my presence soon vanished when I reached it.

I descended into the bowl and walked directly to its center, where I sat down with the staff across my knees.

Freeing my mind from any distracting thoughts, I began Lightning Resonance practice. After Mortal Shell, my most important asset would have to be Lightning Resonance, as it would enhance my abilities faster than any other skills I had at the moment.

The practice was not like meditation; it was a bit more active. Lightning Resonance had bonded to my flesh and had grown to rank fourteen in the last loop, and the discipline now sat in my flesh as something half-finished.

Pathways begun but not yet fully encoded, channels widening but not yet fully bedded into the body’s architecture. The practice was the work of finishing what the loop had started.

Recall that this was a skill that a mage would gain when they were nearing the Adept level, and the growth of this skill usually happened at the Adept stage, so I was grateful that I had instinctive knowledge of this skill, else I would be fumbling in the dark.

I drew a small thread of Anima from the reservoir inside my soul and sent it through my left hand.

The hand lit faintly, as small blue-white threads of lightning began to emerge from my skin like tiny worms. I was not casting a spell, just running Anima through the tiny channels that Lightning Resonance had created in my flesh, and this marvelous sight was being displayed.

An Acolyte without a Resonance skill would have had to cast dozens of Spark Spells to barely replicate what I was doing with just a single thread of Anima.

I sent a little more juice to my left palm, and tiny snakes of lightning rose from my palm, causing it to glow blue. I could imagine the wondrous look in my parents’ eyes if I were to show them something like this.

I held the discharge open. The Anima flowed through the channels of the hand and the wrist and the forearm and the elbow, finding the pathways the discipline had been carving since the previous loop’s channel-shredding death.

The pathways were there, but they were narrow and rough at the edges. They were the new architecture that my body was building, and with this practice, I was helping it to complete the task

I let the small discharge run for thirty seconds, and I felt the channels widen, with the walls becoming smoother, subtle vibrations were coming from the status screen that I ignored... I did not need it to know that I was making progress.

I switched the cast to my right hand and ran it again, using the same method, and I closed my eyes to properly feel this growth.

Realization came to me as I continued my practice, and I understood why there was such a large leap of power from an Acolyte to an Adept.

As an Acolyte, we only had seven primary channels running through our bodies, and if we were lucky or gifted, we had a little extra, but as an Adept, there were countless channels now running through our bodies that we could excavate as our Elemental Resonance grew stronger.

This was what Lightning Resonance practice was. The Attunement Skill arrived in the soul as a shape, but the body had to be re-architected to carry the shape, and the re-architecting could only be done by running the discipline through the body until the body learned what the discipline wanted it to be.

The practice was repetitive and slow, and at the end of an hour, my body would be a slightly different body than at the beginning.

I ran small currents through both hands for ten minutes, and I could feel the pathways encoding these changes, and I knew that soon I would begin to draw this lightning across my lower limbs, torso, and head.