After p for a bit longer, she decided to first attempt the idea of “feeling outwards,” even if she had no idea how that would be aplished.

  If this fails, then I’ll try “feeling the fog” . If that fails too, then, hopefully by then, I’ll have uncovered enough new information to e up with something new, because if not… Chara didn’t finish her thought. There was ivity allowed.

  After putting ao her musings, she re-entered a state of meditation. This time, rather than fog on her senses, she redirected her efforts towards trying to feel “outwards”, as unusual and superstitious as that sounded.

  As if responding to her iion, her awareness started to expand in every dire. Soon, a chaotic tempest of distinct hues and impressions had materialized within her purview. Although she wasn’t sure how, she found that she could now perceive everything around her.

  I— I see~!! excimed Chara, full of delight.

  This delight was short-lived, however, as she soon realized that “everything around her” wasn’t very far. For some reason, anything beyond a certain radius just gradually faded away until it disappeared, as if it were being cealed by a b of darkness. Moreover, evetle she could sense, was only an unintelligible mess of “colors” that she couldn’t make any sense of.

  To say she was utterly disillusioned—would be a plete uatement.

  Lamentably, the greatly sought after, simple-to-uand, state of the art, auto-updating, enemy highlight, magical 3D map of her surroundings that she had hoped for, did not materialize. What she got instead was more akin to an impressionist painting from the fourth dimension. Except, instead of using color, her surroundings were expressed using ahereal dream-like fog.

  That was to say… it was really blurry.

  This…! This is pletely useless!! I literally ’t see anything! If my senses look like this, then I won’t be able to tell a cat from a dog!

  Haahh… No! calm down me…!

  Chara took a moment to collect herself before tinuing.

  The vision of babies is very different from that of adults. I don’t remember the specifics, but there is a reason baby toys are desighe way they look…

  Teically, what I did just now, is simir to a baby opening their eyes for the first time. In other words, as long as I atiently, everything will gradually clear up over time!

  Having e up with a suitable excuse, Chara found some room to rex. As, during her escape from reality, she fot to sider that babies don’t grow up in a day, or even a week. At least, humahat is.

  As she waited for the wave of new sensations to burn in, the myriad of colors aions slowly started to beore coherent. Even if the se in front of her was far from prehensible, it was still clear enough for her to start making some basic observations.

  For example, things did not flicker in and out of existence. Everything was extremely tinuous and stable. If she felt so ined, she could even track a specific trail of mist, and watch as it traveled across her perception until it disappeared oher side.

  Additionally, although the way the oved around was seemingly chaotid random, when she zoomed out, it was also extremely uniform. Even if she was unaware of its underlying meics, there was undoubtedly a method to the madness!

  Although she didn’t quite uand the se in front of her, it did help her crify that she probably wasn’t in a dream. Chara thought very highly of herself, but even she wasn’t shameless enough to believe her brain was big enough to produething so intricate aailed, this sistently. She would probably have a stroke.

  Oh! I think I’m getting somewhere. I think I might have turned out to be a peerless genius after all. Uwehehe~! Chara ughed.

  Feeling reinvigorated by the quick results, she quickly increased her momentum. Little by little, she started to uand more about the strange and mysterious fog. But the more she gleahe more fused she got over time!

  She had no idea how to interpret the ream of information. It was like she could feel everything around her simultaneously, like gusts of wind brushing against her skin. Except unlike wind where all she could feel ressure, what she was feeling now was expoially more plex and sophisticated. And to her dismay, the additional detail didn’t ma in the form of something easy to prehend like higher sensitivity. Instead, she was given its plete opposite, a broader spectrum!

  It could clearly be seen that her new form of perception had taken a vastly different shape from anything like her previous senses. Right now, she felt like someone had taken her sense of vision, removed her blind spots; making it 360-degree, made it more tactile… And then removed all the colors! Instead, repg them with something akin to smell, givihe ability to ihe “sts” of anything that entered her eyesight, or more accurately, area of dete.

  The influx of sensations and impressions she experienced felt overwhelming. For Chara, this was pletely unbearable!

  Actually, in her current situation where she’s essentially blind, having a robust new form of perception with a diverse palette was extremely beneficial. She was just too inexperieo take advantage of all its bes. With only her current level of uanding, all the additional detail did was fuse her.

  In fact, it was no different from handing her a giant spreadsheet filled with tens of thousands of data points, and then askio make a detailed map visualizing the forecast for tomorrow’s weather. It was absolutely impossible!

  In this moment of vulnerability, Chara could clearly picture a bunch of Chibi versions of herself, running around inside her head like a flock of headless chis. The se felt very amusing, but once she realized the se was a mockery of herself, she quickly imagined a Ch*mp chasing around the little girls aing them one by o was very refreshing.

  After procrastinating for about one more minute, Chara finally got bored and gave in to her fate.

  ***

  Chara tio focus on her newfound “vision” to see if she could uncover any insights.

  After spending ages just staring into space, Chara figured out that the “mist” that poputes her perception could be divided into several fual “colors.” These hues were not truly colors, at least not like any she had entered before. She simply thought of them as “colors” for the sake of venience.

  However, what intrigued her the most was the fact that each “cave her a distinct impression, making her uo mistake one for the other.

  The first color felt very free and urained.

  The sed color seemed very solid and stable.

  The third color was very calm and chilly.

  And the fourth color felt slightly dark and gloomy.

  The reason she found this intriguing was because she obviously didn’t have any prior impressions of any of these “colors”, as she had never seen them before. This was important because it meant that either she had new instincts, or the impressions were an innate characteristic of whatever it was she was sensing.

  Additionally, Chara could intuitively guess that there were probably more “colors” than only the ones around her.

  I mean, if there’s a cold color, the that mean there’s a hot color? And if there’s a dark color, then shouldn’t there be a light color?

  Umm… I guess it’s also possible that separate hot and light colors do. Instead, they could just be different shades of the cold and dark colors…

  Although she had made remarkable progress, Chara still ended up bei with more questions than answers. Her current uanding was that there are several different hues of mist, with each civing her a distinct “impression”.

  These differently colored mists dispyed a tendency to want to verge towards other mists of the same color. However, ohis actually took pce, they would then be separated by mist of a different color. She didn’t really know what to make of this. Either way, she was fident she would figure it out once she started looking around.

  Still iation, Chara tried to shift her focus from “feeling” around her in every dire, t to “feel” only in one dire. Her surroundings quietly dimmed, and a couple of seds ter, all she could perceive was a e in front of her, just much farther and much more detailed.

  Whoa…

  She had no clue how she did that, but she wasn’t pining. Very few things had been ve for her since waking up.

  Once she was done marveling at how amazing and talented she was, she tried molding her e of perception into different shapes just to get an idea of how it worked.

  To her surprise, it just kind of worked, albeit clumsily. It was a bit finicky, but when she willed it, her area of perception would morph into a sphere, a e, a cube, and any other ceivable shape. Unfortunately, her trol was a bit clumsy, so all of her shapes could be found with fuzzy edges.

  While she was fooling around, one of the things she noticed, is that what she calls her “perception,” appears to have a limit. She move around and dispce her awareness in any way she wishes, but the amount of things she perceive at once is always fixed.

  This means, that if she ihe volume of her perception past a certain limit, it will cause her surroundings to bee fuzzy and indistinct, like she doesn’t have enough sensors to fill the entire area.

  In a simir way, if she crams all of her perception into a smaller area, everything will look clear and precise, like she’s looking through a microscope.

  That said, these are things she has to go out of her way to do iionally.

  Although she doesn’t quite uand how it works, her perceptive pressure seems to have a kind of equilibrium. So, if she doesn’t sciously direct her seo focus on a smaller area, or expand them past their limit, they will always retain roughly the same volume.

  The only exception to this is wheracts her senses pletely, returning the world to darkness, like when she first woke up.

  Wait, if I retract my senses pletely, then where are they going? Shouldn’t they inate from “me”? wondered Chara, slightly perplexed.

  With her curiosity sparked, she quickly thought of a quick experiment to firm her theory. First, she retracted y pert of her perception. Then, by rexing the remaining ten pert, due to its equilibrium, it naturally settled into the form of a sphere, like a bubble trying to overe surface tension.

  There, at the ter of the sphere, rested an iridest vortex full of life and energy, both brighter and dehan anything she had seen since waking up. Iridest particles swirled in and out of her form, some of them wisping off her lost to the greater unknown, while others rejoined her like she was a cloud.

  Holy crap! Is that me?!

  maury