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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/DrDoritosMD on 2025-11-10 22:02:52+00:00.
Blurb:
When a fantasy kingdom needs heroes, they skip the high schoolers and summon hardened Delta Force operators.
Lieutenant Cole Mercer and his team are no strangers to sacrifice. After all, what are four men compared to millions of lives saved from a nuclear disaster? But as they make their last stand against insurgents, they’re unexpectedly pulled into another world—one on the brink of a demonic incursion.
Thrust into Tenria's realm of magic and steam engines, Cole discovers a power beyond anything he'd imagined: magic—a way to finally win without sacrifice, a power fantasy made real by ancient mana and perfected by modern science.
But his new world might not be so different from the old one, and the stakes remain the same: there are people who depend on him more than ever; people he might not be able to save. Cole and his team are but men, facing unimaginable odds. Even so, they may yet prove history's truth: that, at their core, the greatest heroes are always just human.
Arcane Exfil Chapter 52: Mind Over Matter (2)
The wooden sphere came easy enough. Cole lifted it with the same mental grip he'd been using on rocks, and it responded predictably – center of mass right where it should be, weight distributed evenly. After all the movies and shows they’d consumed over the years, lifting random objects felt almost anticlimactic. As fun as it was, Luke struggling with his X-wing had set expectations that reality wasn’t meeting.
“Like riding a bike,” Miles muttered, floating his own sphere in lazy circles. “Kept expectin’ this to be harder.”
Verna addressed him with a smug smile. “The cubes, I think, will not be so forgiving.”
And she was right. Or rather, she wasn’t wrong.
The metal cubes were another story. They weren’t heavy, exactly – maybe five pounds each – but dense in a way that made them slippery to grip mentally.
Cole found himself thinking about those plate pinches he used to do in the gym. It was pretty easy to lift a forty-five-pound plate normally, but try holding it by the rim with just your fingers and it became a whole different exercise. Same weight, different leverage, way more effort. This felt similar – the mental grip had to work harder when the mass was compressed.
“What you confront,” Verna remarked, watching Miles wrestle with the cube, “is the difference between mere force and true command. Any dullard may stir the air; few indeed can lay hold of iron.”
She pulled out progressively larger, but equally dense, cubes. The scaling problem hit immediately – classic square-cube law. Double the size meant eight times the weight but only four times the surface area to grip. No wonder telekinetic mages hit hard ceilings.
“There exists a natural boundary,” Verna explained, lifting a cube the size of a small box fan. She set it down with a thump, a big ‘100’ imprinted on the top. “Not of mana, but of the mind’s endurance to compel order upon matter. Most meet that limit and resign themselves. A rarer few find means to alter the frame of their working, and so press further.”
She paused, hunting for the right words. “It is, perhaps, as the difference between rope and chain. Both may bear a burden, yet chain sustains the greater weight by virtue of its fashion – the material with which it is made. The force is the same; it is the arrangement that grants strength.”
Not the worst analogy, actually. Cole could see what she was getting at – some mental structures could handle more load than others. Much like how steel could bear a hell of a lot more load than timber, even for columns that were the same size.
They gave the crate a shot.
Cole managed to rock it slightly, felt his mental grip sliding off like trying to palm a basketball with sweaty hands. Miles got it about an inch up before dropping it with a grunt. Ethan didn’t even manage that.
Mack got it maybe six inches before setting it down, but Cole noticed he was the only one who lowered it with control instead of dropping it.
Verna gave a small laugh, apparently satisfied with their failure. “Well concluded. Let us turn to precision.”
She produced a needle and thread.
“Oh, fuck me,” Miles complained immediately.
And for good reason. Threading a needle with one’s mind was exactly as irritating as it sounded. Cole could bench press two-fifty and put rounds through a dime at fifty yards, but trying to push a piece of thread through a hole barely bigger than the thread itself? Different beast entirely.
The thread buckled immediately, which, yeah, obvious in hindsight. Trying to push rope with his mind wasn’t exactly a winning strategy. He tried gripping closer to the tip for rigidity, but that just turned the rest into an unruly garden hose, whipping around like it wanted to resist the whole process.
Man, this was entering grandma territory. How many thousand hours had his grandmother spent threading needles without even looking, fingers working by pure feel while she watched her soaps? And here he was, tactical operator extraordinaire, bested by a piece of string.
He watched Mack work – three distinct pressure points creating a rigid line without overstressing any point. Right, same principle as guide wires in surgery.
But Cole didn’t have that experience. To him, this was more like using a dead blow hammer for precision mechanical work, where he needed controlled force at specific points without any rebound fucking up his alignment. Where the tolerance was only a few thousandths of an inch at most.
Cole applied the technique and missed the eye by a millimeter, then caught the edge and slipped off, then finally pushed through with a satisfying mental click. Took him six tries. Not his proudest moment, but whatever.
“Years of suturing,” Mack explained, offering nothing else.
Ethan was about as impressive; Lord knew just how delicate EOD work was. And it apparently translated really well to this exercise.
Miles, though… He’d figured out the physics just as the rest of them had, but kept slamming his thread into everything except the target. “This some bullshit,” he muttered.
Verna stepped in. “Crude power may set a stone in motion. But to guide a thread, you must forsake the figurative hammer. Fix your will upon the smallest part, and the rest will follow. And… do be patient. Haste shall avail you little.”
He kept at it, finally threading the needle after about ten tries.
Miles sighed, letting the needle drop as soon as it was through. “Fuckin’ hell.”
Verna had them practice a bit more, just until they could replicate success within three tries. Then, she shifted.
“Now then,” Verna said, something in her tone grabbing Cole’s attention. “Let us consider what force may achieve, apart from mere motion.”
She held up a ball of clay. Without touching it, the ball compressed into a cube, stretched into a rope, twisted into a spiral. “These are the disciplines of force – to compress, to stretch, to twist. Beyond directional motion, this is where mastery begins.”
She handed them each a clay ball. “Begin with compression. Squeeze from all sides evenly.”
This was harder than it looked. Cole’s first attempt compressed one side more than the others, creating a lopsided mess. The problem was obvious once he thought about it – applying equal force from multiple vectors simultaneously. He ended up with something that looked more like a lightbulb than a sphere.
“Think of it as you would a barrier-sphere – you have cast them oft enough, particularly for your fireballs,” Verna suggested.
That helped. Cole managed to compress his clay into something roughly spherical. Not perfect – looked more like a tumor had tried to become a ball and given up halfway – but better than his initial attempt.
Stretching came easier – just pull from opposite ends like he would a rubber band. Though keeping it from snapping required finesse. Too much force too fast and the clay would tear. He had to ease into it, like taffy pulling.
Torsion was straightforward – hold one end, rotate the other. Same motion as wringing water from a cloth or applying torque to a stuck bolt. The clay twisted into a neat spiral on the first try. Miles muttered something about it being ‘fucky’ but Cole didn’t see the issue. He just visualized the twist and applied it.
“Such refinements are not without their uses,” Verna remarked as they practiced. “A well-placed pressure may unseat a mechanism, guide a delicate spell at distance, or unravel a trap that brute force would only inflame. Yet I confess… Those who master such finesse are more often found in the workshop than upon the field.
As if she recognized their doubt, she added, “As King Alexander was accustomed to say, ‘It is ever wiser to hold a skill one may never employ, than to be found without it in the hour of demand.’”
She let that sink in before continuing. “Now, with regards to living beings.”
She gestured to herself. “Attempt to lift me.”
Cole tried. It was like trying to grab water – his mental grip found no purchase whatsoever. The force just… slid off.
“A living being may resist – but only when it perceives the attempt. Perception gives leverage; with it, one may drive the force away. Without it, resistance is no more than flailing.”
That tracked with yesterday – Elina had yanked them around like ragdolls, no resistance at all. They hadn't known to res...
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