Chen Na shook her head and said, "I think it worked after I recited ’Activate,’ but it disappeared right away."
"’Your Psychic Power might be depleted. Open your terminal and check,’ Guan Tong suggested."
Hearing this, Chen Na mentally called up her personal terminal. She looked at her Psychic Power value and saw that it was, indeed, at 0.
"Yep! It’s 0!"
"It’s probably because your [Perception Realm] was active the whole time the boar was here... This kind of wide-area ’Domain-type’ ability must consume a huge amount of Psychic Power. Na, you should wait until your Psychic Power has recovered before trying again."
"Okay, thanks, Guan!" Chen Na said, mischievously changing how she addressed him.
"What do you mean, Guan?" Wang Yan gently chided. "A little kid like you shouldn’t be calling him Guan."
"It’s fine." Guan Tong didn’t mind. "Let Na call me whatever she likes."
"Hee hee, then I’ll call you Guan from now on." Chen Na made a face at her mother, Wang Yan, then looked toward the wild boar’s corpse on the path.
"What should we do with this big black pig? I’ve seen people roast wild boar in movies before. Are we going to have a barbecue?"
"No," Wang Yan and Guan Tong said in near-perfect unison.
Wang Yan explained, "We can’t eat this boar meat, it’s full of bacteria and parasites! Nana, if you want to eat meat, there’s still some jerky in the truck. You can have that."
"Wang is right. Unless we have absolutely nothing else to eat, we should avoid eating wild animals as much as possible. Not just boars, but wild rabbits and things like that, too."
"Ah, bunnies are so cute, why would anyone eat bunnies!" Chen Na shook her head repeatedly.
Guan Tong was taken aback for a second, then said, "We can’t just leave the boar on the path. We should move it, put it aside, and let the snow bury it."
"Okay, I’ll lend a hand. Let’s move it together."
"Then I’ll have to trouble you, Wang."
Together, Guan Tong and Wang Yan struggled to lift the boar’s corpse from the small path onto a nearby snowbank. Then, each grabbing a hind leg, they dragged the body to a spot far from the camp and the truck, shoveling snow over it to bury it.
After all that effort, the three of them were quite tired.
Wang Yan and Chen Na went back to the truck to rest. Guan Tong also returned to his camp and tidied up his backpack, which the boar had rooted through.
Fortunately, he had dealt with the boar quickly enough. Only a bag of crackers had been crushed and a bottle of water punctured; the rest was saved.
If Guan Tong had hidden in the truck and ignored it, his entire pack of food would have been destroyed in no time.
After tidying up, Guan Tong unzipped his sleeping bag, lay down to rest, and kept thinking about Chen Na’s [Perception Realm] ability.
’He felt the ability had high potential; it was just limited by her low Psychic Power cap right now. Once her Psychic Power increased in the future, if the range and the ability itself were further enhanced, it would have many uses.’
Guan Tong thought to himself, ’If I write a similar ability name in the [Wordless Book], can I obtain a similar ability? I can try it later, but it feels like a long shot...’
Having held the [Wordless Book] for so long, Guan Tong had figured out some things about its power. Its core was likely ’the ability to manifest written concepts into reality by consuming Psychic Power’—in other words, it possessed a kind of extremely powerful reality-warping force.
The more complex, powerful, or abstract the concept, the more Psychic Power was required to manifest it.
If he forced a manifestation, one possibility was a scaled-down version. For example, even though the first page clearly said "Guan Tong," the initial manifestation was just an intangible Shadow with his outline.
The ’Sublimation Coins’ he wrote on the second page were also a scaled-down version—this was reflected in the quantity, as he only got 10 Binding Coins.
’The problem is, I only wrote the two words "Sublimation Coin"; I didn’t write a quantifier like "X number" in front of it. Getting only 10 coins after writing that means this is the current limit of what I can manifest in a single go.’
’A second possibility is complete failure. For example, I once tried to have the incorporeal Shadow merge with a car’s shadow and then materialize it. The result was that my Psychic Power was instantly drained, and the materialization failed.’
’My current plan is to write ’Shotgun.’ Manifesting the concept of a gun shouldn’t be beyond my capabilities. The problem is that writing it out is complex and would take too long.’
’Could I simplify it to ’multi-shot gun,’ or ’scatter gun,’ or even just the single word ’gun’? Would the [Wordless Book] manifest it according to my intent? Or would it randomly create something that doesn’t fit my requirements... I’ll have to try it out later.’
As Guan Tong thought about this, his mind drifted back to Chen Na’s [Perception Realm] ability.
’Knowing that this kind of Domain-type ability existed had really opened up his thinking.’
’Could I create a similar ability too? Starting a new page in the [Wordless Book] to write it would consume too much... so could I keep milking the Shadow, developing it further based on what I already have?’
’The previous success of adding the word ’corporeal’ gave me the idea to add something else, but I never had any good ideas.’
Now, Chen Na’s Domain ability had him tempted as well.
’In its incorporeal state, the Shadow can merge with other shadows to expand its area. If I let the Shadow continuously merge and expand over a short period until it’s big enough... and if I have enough Psychic Power to manifest it as a physical entity, could I form my own kind of Domain... for example, a ’Shadow Realm’?’