Chapter 3210: Playing Chess, Art Of Fortifying One’s Mind, Goodbye

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Cosmos Corridor, Unknow

In the vast white landscape, BoBo and I were engaged in a clash of wits over a game of chess, each with our favorite drink. BoBo loved her cold Calamity Leaf Tea with extra Calamity Fruit essence, while I enjoyed the spirit liquor she had helped me retrieve from my dimensional storage card. I wasn’t being irresponsible; there wasn’t any tea in there.

"Yay, I win again!"

BoBo danced in the air in celebration after defeating me in chess for the hundredth time. Even though I had introduced and taught her the game, I hadn’t won a single match against her.

Her winning streak mostly had to do with her ability to read my mind. She knew every move I would make before I even made it, before it was even my turn. I used every method I could think of to mask my next move from BoBo, but it was of no use.

I tried hiding my original thought process by thinking of various other things simultaneously, but she homed in on my original thought with ease.

I tried to think of hundreds of strategies to ensure she did not know which one I would use, but as the game drew closer to the end, the number of strategies grew narrower and narrower until it simply became predictable.

For BoBo, the game of chess wasn’t about strategizing, predicting her enemy’s moves, and countering them, but about trying to solve the puzzle that was my mind. As long as she solved that puzzle, she got the answers to winning the game.

For me, these hundred matches against BoBo weren’t about winning, but about training my mind. And it was working. The only reason I wasn’t able to get a single win was that BoBo was a genius. The more competent I became at fortifying my mind, the more experienced and skilled BoBo became at infiltrating it, always keeping me on my toes and finding more room for me to grow. And to keep up with her, I challenged her each time.

This was why we both could play hundreds of chess matches without feeling bored and look forward to playing hundreds more. The important part was that we were enjoying each other’s company and growing.

I sure was growing proficient in fortifying my mind, but I don’t know about BoBo. I think she was more interested in enjoying the company and the servings of Calamity Fruit, tea, and incense.

Fearing she might get bored doing the same thing over and over again, I even taught her how various people enjoyed their tea to keep her engaged, from the stuck-up way of English tea to the grounded way of Japanese tea. Still, she preferred to drink it all in one sip.

There was more to why I didn’t ask BoBo to stop reading my mind than just training my mind.

Just like how our senses come naturally to us, the Primordial Pixies’ senses came naturally to them. And among those senses of theirs was the ability to sense our minds. Asking her to stop reading my mind would be like asking me to stop seeing, asking dogs to stop sniffing, and so on.

I’m sure that if I asked her to, BoBo would try to accommodate my request to make me feel comfortable around her. After all, the Primordial Pixies were the most considerate beings.

However, I, too, wanted her to feel comfortable around me.

Besides, BoBo had no malice toward me. And it was clear to me that even if I was thinking about the Myriad Cosmos and its corridor, she would only ask if I was sure about it and not try to persuade me otherwise. Not because she knew I wasn’t yet capable of it, but because if it was meant to end that way, so be it. If not, things had a way of falling into place.

Like with the Myriad Realms, for example. She watched as the Barred Beings brought it closer to its end. She didn’t intervene and just watched. Even now, she doesn’t intervene, except to relay information to the right person, and continues to watch. Just as she said, she had done her job. The choice of saving the Myriad Realms was still up to me.

I guess what I was trying to say was that her reading my thoughts didn’t affect me as much as it would have affected another being who was capable of sensing others’ thoughts.

I didn’t mind the Pixies being in my head, as they were harmless, but with other beings, I needed to be prepared for such a possibility. And BoBo was the perfect whetstone for me to sharpen my mind against them. I don’t think I could find a better replacement, even if I tried to search for or create one.

BoBo and I continued for another thousand chess matches, during which I came close to securing draws, but BoBo seemed to have gotten the hang of chess enough to turn what appeared to be ending in a draw into a win.

That was when I began to see the rush of thrill in BoBo’s eyes. Her face turned bright red as she won the match that was about to end in a draw. I could see that these wins mattered to her more than the thousand she had secured previously.

We continued to play hundreds more. These matches weren’t as fun, because I had long since arrived at a bottleneck and failed to keep BoBo out of my mind completely. Though she didn’t say it, BoBo appeared to want to quit. I decided to take a break for now and try again during my next visit.

Stopping the game, we talked about each other’s insights. Though it was mostly me asking questions and trying to understand how she was able to infiltrate my mind and thoughts, her answers were no help because all she could say was that she just could. This made me realize that I had never actually succeeded in keeping BoBo out of my mind, not even once. All I had managed to do was confuse her.

After having small talk for a while, I decided to return to the Myriad Realms, leaving BoBo loads of Calamity Fruits, Calamity Incense, and Calamity Leaf Tea to enjoy with her tribe.

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