Jason took a while to make dinner. It wasn't anything too fancy, but a proper stew needed time to, well, stew. Sure, throw some jerky in a pot of boiling water with some veg and you'll get something stew-like and filling. Compared to a proper slow boiled stew made from fresh ingredients and a few spices? There isn't anything quite like it in Jason's opinion. Plus, it isn't like the fresh supplies he just got would last all that long so might as well use them now that he was reasonably safe.

After dinner was over and an alarm ritual was carved around the camp Jason took one final look around before logging out. It had been multiple days irl since the last time getting out of the pod and that didn't sit right with him, even if the need was great. Sure, most of humanity at this point would spend weeks, if not months at a time in a pod, but Jason wasn't going to let his actual body falter.

With that he lets the pod finish logging him out and then as the lid swings open he rolls out and onto his feet. From there he heads into the kitchen to see if his mom left any more notes, she didn't, and then into the living room. A series of stretches later and he is frowning.

In theory with the level of service Jason was paying for, the pod should have kept him in tip top shape with no need for recovery time. For most people that was probably even true, but Jason could feel a difference. Not a physical one, but rather it felt like his body was slightly out of sync with his mind. A symptom that felt similar to something he had heard about in his past life.

Jason groaned, not even letting the thought enter his mind. It was too early to make guesses and instead time to find if this was the only thing wrong or not. Plus, there was only so much time he could reasonably spend irl. Even if he did want to keep things going here, the five to one difference in the passage of time between NeoRealm and here kind of forced his hand.

So Jason continued through a series of exercises before settling down to cultivate. Inside of himself things are progressing, if slowly for it is here that he discovers the second problem. In normal circumstances, even if someone doesn't cultivate for a few days, or even years, they wouldn't regress. And sure, his cultivation hadn't actually slid backwards, but unlike a normal body with a mind to keep things in place, much of his work on digging out his meridians had basically been lost.

It was as if he had dug out a hole only for someone to later on come by and shove some of the dirt back in. Sure, it wasn't packed in solid like before and so removing it again was easier, but it was still work he shouldn't have to do. There was nothing he could do about it though, even if it did make his suspicions grow deeper, and so he continued to dig out his main meridians.

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Not for long though as the alarm went off and he had to get back to NeoRealm. Back to test something he had been avoiding. Because while the technology was solid, he had played other games and they weren't like NeoRealm. Jason had figured this was because the other games were meant for kids and so less realistic, but now he wasn't sure.

The pod closed and welcomed him into darkness as certain thoughts percolated in his mind. How real was NeoRealm? Not just whether it was reality, but was it truly a budded reality formed from his own or a reality drawn in from elsewhere?

There had to be a ton of nearby realities for humanity to have introduced such a mess of powers. So why was NeoRealm unique? None of the others had a game. At least not that he knew of. There had to be a reason NeoRealm remained on top despite centuries of time. Not everyone liked fantasy so you would think there would be a more "modern" themed game or a scifi game up there to share the spotlight. Even just another fantasy game from a different angle.

But no, there was only NeoRealm. Jason had noticed this from the start, but put it down to the government supporting it. Naive! Why would the government support it? Jason can't even begin to answer these questions yet and so focuses on one thing to test, that connection between him and his body that he noticed.

At the time he had thoughts about his soul being connected and what not, but what if there was more to it? Just now, irl, he felt a disconnect between his body and had problems with his cultivation. These symptoms could mean any number of things, but there was one specifically that caused him worry. It felt like what one book had described.

Jason hadn't really read too much of that book though, after all, it was meant for those with a much higher cultivation than him. It was about those whose soul was strong enough to leave their body and the particular passage described what it felt like to return to your body if you stayed away too long.

"Without a soul, even if the body lives there will be troubles lurking. Even when kept in perfect condition the lack of a soul will cause certain metaphysical connections to breakdown within the brain, limiting your responsiveness. While worrying, worse still is that progress not solidified by advancement to a new cultivation realm has a habit of reversing. Without the soul, the body will gravitate towards the lowest state of being, even with proper precautions."

After that the book went onto talk about a bunch of other threats for those who might practice things in the vein of astral projection, but it mostly went over his head and if not for the mention of regressing cultivation the passage might have completely escaped his memory.

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