Playing around with a puppet he had bought a few days ago, clumsily trying to imitate human movements, his fingers held the wooden cross it was strapped to, with unpracticed prowess.
And still he enjoyed it, the humane struggle to learn and fail.
The puppet was a wooden doll without a face, clothes, or any distinguishing features. Its joints were plain to see, similar to what artists would draw as the basis for a character.
He watched the clumsy movements, holding a wooden cross in his hands, threads not of his own making, pulling the puppet along as it made its exaggerated steps, twirling into a similarly exaggerated bow, tumbling lifelessly repeatedly to the ground in its numerous attempts.
Nox would have been better at controlling the pore thing if he had led it by his own threads. However, after some thought, he decided against it.
He believed he had more to gain by learning it the proper way, especially considering that the second stage of the Assimilation was the assimilation of the mind.
This might have been a long shot, and it was a long way to go to reach that stage, but understanding his symbolism better didn't seem to hurt either way.
Well, he may have been better off focusing on the match he was going to have with Reinhard in a not-so-distant future, but he had made his preparations, and going in with a bit of randomness accompanying him sounded more interesting than planning out every small part.
Moving his hand holding the cross, he made a sudden pulling motion, and the puppet flew upward, before he moved his free hand to grasp it, ending the performance.
Looking at it for a few seconds with a tilt of his head, he carelessly disregarded it and threw it onto the bed. The floor was covered with a few similarly carelessly discarded clothes.
Seeing this mess, Nox suppressed a groan, thinking about the giant pile of thread pressed into his one and only closet, filling it to the brim.
He had been creating this thread in mass to, on the one hand, experiment and, on the other, familiarize himself with the motion of creating it.
This had been quite effective and was working well. He was finally getting a feel for allocating attributes when creating the threads.
Nox had made a breakthrough by imagining the threads to have ten points scattered evenly across five stats, similarly to how one would do in a game, and as he already knew how to reallocate or strengthen certain stats when weaving the threads, only having a problem with the overwhelming alien sensations, making the process much easier to visualize and master.
Of course, the metaphorical way he imagined the threads had its limits, but it would get him through the initial stages of familiarisation, making his control much more refined for the time being, until the day he would disregard these flimsily created training wheels.
These experiments had a big drawback, however.
Just as everything had its ups, it also had its downs: in this case, it was a bunch of silk piling up in his room, and, on top of that, he had no idea what to do with the substance he'd created.
Now that he had bought a few things, his need for the closet, which he was using as a storage for the silk at the moment, had grown as well.
This rendered his original strategy for dealing with the threats all but useless.
Man, I need to take care of that sometime in the near future! Well, let future Nox worry about it.
Thinking about throwing it out, there were so many uncertainties. He had yet to find out whether it had any monetary value or could even be sold as a luxury good! It was, after all, woven out of Notium with a tendency towards fate, even if he had no idea what positives this would bring.
But still, this was literal money!
Additionally, while Trisha was tutoring him on the topic of rituals, he discovered that Symbolisms and other parts, like his blood, had a strong mystical connection to him.
Which, if disregarded carelessly, would open him to attack.
It could be used as a medium to help or affect him, via ritual.
It was truly a fascinating topic, for which Noctis sadly had not the slightest talent. Very unlike Trisha, who truly thrived in the field, explaining her first place in the academic rankings.
Throwing the problem to the back of his head, planning to let his future self handle it, Nox stood up slowly, going through his daily chores.
Taking a short trip to the training grounds, where a few students had been sparing, Nox put on the converter he owned, throwing his daily five moon sickles, barely able to hit the manikan, leaving a few cuts on its feet and the ground.
The converter's moon sickles would start dispersing at a certain distance when fully charged and thrown as far as possible. The max range was about 15 meters.
It was truly more of a medium to close-range tool. At the moment, however, Nox barely managed to hit the dummy from ten meters away every fourth hit or so, hitting the intended spot.
Clearly not viable in a real confrontation, with its high expenditure.
Lamenting his lack of talent once more, he let out a disgruntled sigh, lamenting how long it would take to master this newly acquired skill.
Thinking about it, the memory of Elisa's skilled movements ran through his mind's eye, the difference between their skill like night and day. Noctis could not simply imitate the movements by watching alone, as his body needed to be accustomed to each and every move, for it to work smoothly.
And still, Elisa lost without the slightest chance to defend himself.
After using up half of his Notium conserves, Nox had a small dinner, sometimes meeting Trisha by coincidence and having a few entertaining conversations, playing cards, with her winning more often than not.
This perplexed Nox greatly, with his experience repeatedly getting horribly, horribly unlucky, to the point he was just about to accuse her of cheating.
Holding himself back, only barely knowing that nothing could come of it, at most, her teasing would strengthen exponentially.
Yet, despite her sharp tongue and quick wit, Nox found her company strangely comforting—a break from the relentless pressures of training and weaving. A rare chance to just be a little foolish together.
Afterward, Nox sat down in his room, entering his soulsea as he strengthened the connection between soul and fragment, weaving the threads and grafting them to one another.
Looking up, Nox saw the web above, which had clearly grown much closer. It might take him at most a year to finish the soul assimilation at this rate, and he might even have to work on the second part of the process in the not-so-distant future.
The center of the web was now bulging inward a bit, at most a hundred meters above the surface of the silent sea.
As he looked at this with a satisfied smile, Nox let himself fall back into the still waters swallowed by them in the blink of an eye.
Slowly opening his eyes, swelging in the fascination he felt every time he entered his soul, he felt a new sensation in the darkness. Everything was pitch-black as he saw a single golden thread, a silent beacon in his inner world, as if placed there just for him.
"What is this?"
Reaching towards the thread, simultaneously feeling the new sensation growing closer, he opened his eyes once more, this time for real. The sensation was now completely in his grasp, yet impossible to explain.
As he opened his eyes, something seemed off, but before he could put his finger on it, Bang!!
In his vision, nothing but golden threads could be seen. An endless sea of golden threads clouded everything, overshadowing every part of the physical world.
He stared into the sea of gold, his mind slowed down, and a near-infinite influx of information revealed itself before him, overwhelming him in an instant.
"AAAAHhhhhhhhhh"
At the same moment, a terrible scream escaped his lips.
He covered his eyes with his hands, yet it was not enough!
Clenching his face, clawing at it, and a stream of blood flowed out of his eyes, as eight distinct rip marks were left in the wake of his nails. Blood flowed down the eight lines below his eyes, as they quickly became very distinct.
"Bang"
Throwing himself to the ground, curling up in a fetal position, Nox felt his consciousness grow fainter.
His head had collided with something hard.
His vision blurred up a, as the golden lines grew indistinct, his last thought escaping his weakening consciousness. He said in a weak, begrudging voice, before growing motionless.
"Not… again!"