Chapter 148: Relative Coordinates

Instead of explaining anything further, Rhovan pointed toward the two golden markers again. "Tell me the exact distance between them."

Marek looked from one marker to the other and tried to estimate it based on what he could see. "About six meters."

"Wrong."

"Five and a half?"

"Still wrong."

Marek frowned at him. "You’re supposed to teach me."

"I am now."

"No, you’re making me guess. I’m not some type of measuring device."

Rhovan smiled as if that was exactly what he wanted. "And you’re already learning why guessing isn’t good enough."

Marek sighed.

It was going to be a long morning.

According to Rhovan, Spatial Parallax required two valid references. For now, the golden markers would be enough because they were stationary, clearly visible, and easy for Marek to distinguish from everything surrounding them.

The problem started when Rhovan told him to stop measuring their positions relative to himself. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Marek didn’t understand what he meant at first.

People naturally judged everything from where they were standing. Something was ahead, behind, farther to the left, closer to the right, several steps away, or completely out of reach. Even if someone was estimating the distance between two separate objects, they still saw both of those things from their own perspective.

Spatial Parallax apparently wanted him to remove himself from the relationship.

"The Technique doesn’t care where you’re standing unless you deliberately choose yourself as one of the references," Rhovan explained. "If those two markers are your references, then the relationship you’re examining is between them."

Marek looked at the pieces again. "That sounds simple."

"It is."

"Then why do I feel like you’re about to tell me it isn’t?"

Rhovan smiled.

The first marker was close to the garden wall, while the second sat nearer to the middle of the grass. Marek focused on both positions and tried to use his Space Authority the same way he normally did whenever he examined his surroundings.

Nothing happened even after several seconds, so he tried again, concentrating harder this time. The result was exactly the same.

"You keep putting yourself between them," Rhovan said.

Marek frowned. "I’m not."

"You are."

"How would you know?"

"Because you keep looking at your feet every few seconds."

Marek instinctively glanced down again before realizing what he’d just done. He hadn’t even noticed that he was using his own position as a reference.

On the third attempt, he deliberately treated the first marker as the beginning of the relationship instead of his own body. The second became something that existed relative to that first position.

It felt awkward at first.

His mind kept trying to convert everything back into ordinary distance, which was exactly what Rhovan told him not to do.

After several attempts, something finally changed.

There wasn’t any dramatic reaction from his Astral Mark, and neither of the objects started glowing. The garden looked exactly the same as before. The difference was in how Marek perceived the space separating the two markers.

Before, there had simply been empty ground between them. Now, he could feel that interval as something measurable.

It was such a strange feeling. The sensation was difficult to describe because nothing had actually appeared in front of him. He simply understood the relationship more clearly than his eyes could provide on their own.

Rhovan noticed the moment it happened. "Good. Hold it."

Marek concentrated. "Distance?"

This time, he didn’t estimate.

The answer somehow became obvious after several seconds.

"Six point four meters," he said.

Kellan immediately checked using something on his communication device.

His eyebrows rose. "He’s right."

Marek glanced toward him.

"Exactly six point four," Kellan confirmed.

Rhovan moved the second marker slightly with his shoe.

Marek felt the change immediately. "Five point nine."

Rhovan moved the marker again, and Marek measured the new relationship using Spatial Parallax. "Six point one."

Rhovan pushed it closer to the wall.

"The direction changed," Marek said.

"By how much?"

Marek concentrated harder. "About thirty centimeters toward the wall."

Rhovan nodded.

That was when Marek finally began seeing why the Technique could be useful. Because he wasn’t guessing anymore. His eyes could tell him when an object moved, but Spatial Parallax told him exactly how the relationship changed without forcing him to estimate everything afterward.

Rhovan eventually added a third marker.

He was only supposed to maintain two valid references at a time, so Rhovan made him switch between different pairs. The first few attempts became confusing because Marek kept carrying part of the previous relationship into the next one.

At one point, Marek’s answer was wrong by almost an entire meter.

Rhovan responded by throwing a small piece of gold straight toward Marek’s forehead, though Marek caught it before it could hit him.

"Was that necessary?"

"It got you to stop thinking about the wrong marker," Rhovan said, as if that explained everything.

Marek frowned before throwing the piece of gold back at him.

Rhovan casually tilted his head aside and let it pass. "Remember, violence against your teacher will not improve your Technique."

"You’re not a normal one, so it’s okay," Marek reasoned.

By late morning, some of the others had already gone back inside.

Eren received a notification concerning one of their temporary accounts and left first, while Rafe returned to whatever route he had been studying earlier. Dario stayed until he finished everything on his plate, then disappeared almost immediately afterward.

Silas lasted longer, although Marek suspected he was only watching because he wanted to see whether something interesting would happen, while Kellan and Nadia remained because they had nothing better to do.

That was until Rhovan replaced the stationary markers with two floating spheres, which immediately drew their attention.

Marek immediately understood where the lesson was going. "Oh, great."

Rhovan grinned. "Movement."

The two golden spheres floated several meters apart. Marek established both references, waited until the relationship settled properly, then nodded.

Rhovan moved the first one away from the second, and Marek immediately focused on the changing distance between them. "Separation increasing."

The second sphere followed in the same direction, though not at the same speed. Marek tracked both for a few seconds before answering, "They’re both moving, but the first one’s faster."

Then, one of the spheres suddenly rose several feet into the air, forcing him to adjust again. "The angle changed."

Rhovan accelerated both of them without warning. Marek tried to keep up, but the relationship between the two positions slipped away from him almost immediately.

"Damn it."

"Again," Rhovan said.

The next attempt lasted longer.

Marek gradually stopped watching the spheres the same way he normally watched moving objects and concentrated more on what existed between them. His eyes still helped establish the references, but the Technique supplied information ordinary vision couldn’t give him with the same precision.

When the spheres moved farther apart, he knew exactly how quickly the interval changed. When one traveled slightly behind the other, the angle shifted along with it.

Rhovan then walked between Marek and one of the floating spheres, blocking it from view. The reference immediately became weaker, but Marek tried to maintain the Technique using the position he had already established.

"Stop."

Both spheres froze, and Marek released the Technique before looking at him. "What?"

"You lost certainty," Rhovan explained. "You weren’t tracking where the sphere was anymore. You were relying on where you last knew it to be."

Marek frowned. "But I still knew where it was."

"No. You knew where it had been."

Rhovan explained that Spatial Parallax wasn’t some omniscient tracking ability. A valid reference needed enough spatial evidence for Marek’s Authority to recognize its position properly. If an object disappeared and moved somewhere he couldn’t verify, the Technique wouldn’t magically tell him what happened afterward.

Marek could still remember the last valid relationship, estimate where the object might have gone, and reacquire it the moment he had enough information again. What he couldn’t do was expect Space to give him information he had never obtained in the first place.

He actually liked that limitation. It made the Technique easier to understand because he knew exactly where it stopped being reliable.

Rhovan started the exercise again and deliberately passed in front of the spheres several times. Whenever Marek lost certainty, he released the reference and established it again once it became valid. After several rounds, the interruption became shorter, and he was beginning to think he had gotten used to it.

Then Rhovan told him to move, which immediately made everything more difficult.

Marek’s own body kept becoming a reference without him intending it to. He would establish both spheres properly, walk several steps, then realize he was thinking about where each one was relative to himself instead of maintaining the relationship between the two. The result would become inaccurate almost immediately.

Rhovan didn’t always correct him either. Sometimes, he simply let Marek continue until the mistake became obvious enough that even Marek could no longer ignore it.

By the fifth attempt, he was already getting annoyed, but by the seventh, he had started recognizing the problem before Rhovan pointed it out.

Eventually, Marek managed to cross most of the garden while maintaining both moving references without dragging himself into the calculation.