The lone boarling was confused. He was looking at a wavy criss cross pattern the chieftain drew, while thinking about what it tried to convey.

  ‘Link breathing, heartbeat and the pulsing of Jak together to make yourself bigger?’ He clarified to himself before murmuring ‘But that’s.. impossible’

  ‘How does the chieftain have Jak all over his body? Wasn’t that what he was stuck on? He could only do one spot at a time, and it would disappear a second after he decides to switch its location’

  Still confused, Torin at least decided to try the first part of the technique. Syncing heartbeat, breathing and Jak may sound difficult but it really wasn’t that bad.

  He spent hundreds of lives living in his body so the heartbeat and breathing weren’t a problem, he succeeded just at the fifth attempt, but it was bound to be a couple times more difficult syncing all three.

  And reality proved true as it took him a couple of days just to get it down. His first few attempts seemed random, but the more he practiced the more he noticed a pattern, the less he was focused on his body, the easier it was to manipulate Jak, but the harder it was to sync heartbeat and breathing and vice versa.

  This might seem obvious, and he had never given it much thought before this, after all, when he used to practice Jak manipulation in the past he only focused on it specifically, not noticing that his control over his body would slightly weaken.

  ‘Maybe this was why his ice was stronger the closer he was to death?’ His first fight against the giant centipede came to memory.

  ‘So the current clues I have are, one, the closer I am to death the stronger my Jak manipulation is, and two, focusing on Jak loosens my control over my body.’ His face scrunched up in thought.

  ‘This could all be explained with allocation of focus, but then equal split of focus between heartbeat and breath should be as difficult as heartbeat and Jak or breath and Jak and well it’s clearly not’

  ‘From this we can say that focus on Jak is a different category than focus on body. What do I have besides my body then, my mind, so Jak could be contained there perhaps?’

  Eventually Torin reached a conclusion that there must be something else between mind and body. When he was but a boar running on instincts did he really have a mind back then? What about all the other beasts and animals he met along the way?

  Some could utilize Jak to grow just as well or even better than he with a far weaker mind. Even the toad chieftain, for example, was able to move comparatively large quantities of this resource despite not having even developed its own language.

  ‘Let’s call this inbetween state.. The Soul!’

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  This didn’t really help him right now, but at least that cleared his confusion. Now it was time to figure out the second part of the technique, or rather change it to suit himself.

  Since he couldn’t manifest Jak all at once his only option was to work with the concentrated points of ice he could do.

  After all, transferring the output of Jak into another location wouldn't make the previous one dissipate instantly so in theory, if he chained the rapid changes of Jak he could simulate a similar pattern to what the chief had achieved.

  And so another couple of months long training session followed.

  ***

  *ARghhh*

  Torin let out a grunt, the pain getting more and more unbearable by the second.

  It felt like someone was stabbing his flesh from the inside out, bumps of ice rapidly protruding and disappearing from his left arm.

  ‘six…’ He gritted his teeth, tasting iron in his mouth.

  ‘seven…’

  ‘Just one more!’

  Blood started pouring from his cracked skin, blood red saliva dripped from his mouth and tears mixed with snot were running down his face.

  ‘eight’

  *Wooosh*

  The pain vanished for a second before his whole arm erupted in ice.

  “NNNNGH!”

  He yelled as he slammed his frozen arm into the ground.

  *BOOMM*

  The ground around the area of impact froze before a shallow crack split it apart.

  ‘FINALLY!’

  Torin thought before spurts of blood shot out of the cracks in his frozen arm and his vision grew dark.

  ***

  It was true that the boarling was ruthless towards others, but he was even more ruthless towards himself. To think hundreds of lives wouldn’t drive one at least slightly insane would be a joke.

  Not to mention the foreigners of his own body, it was more akin to clothes or a tool rather than anything pertaining to him as a being.

  It would rather be a question of what he considered not a tool. His mind? A tool. His emotions, soul, flesh all were tools. Everything was a tool for him to get stronger and strength was a tool to make others suffer and make his kind suffer not.

  But was that truly his end goal or was it just another tool to vent his suppressed anger, like a child who has been abused?

  ***

  The next few days the boarling spent being taken care of by the Mudid tribe. After waking up he spent a couple more days lying in bed and recuperating before finally being able to train once more.

  To his dismay he hit a bottle neck again, he could only do eight ice circles in the form of a chain for his burst of power, of course this time he didn’t do it all on the same arm but spread over his body so as to not misactivate the ability.

  The technique’s name he came up with was quite simply going to be ‘ice burst’ and it would be separated by the amount of ‘moons’ one could form, with right now him achieving minor success with eight moons and according to his prediction he would need thirty six moons to fully cover his body and achieve major success.