Jules thought about how hard it was to make telekinesis useful in combat. Although it had been somewhat helpful, he still wasn’t powerful enough or agile enough. Part of the problem was the way in which it functioned. It wasn’t like a hand, grasping onto an object and moving it as he willed. Instead, it was closer to pushing a wall up against something, thereby causing it to move. It wasn’t even certain that he would continue pushing an object in a direction he wanted, especially if something else caused it to move. Basically, Jules created an area of force, which was essentially a rectangle that transferred force to everything passing through it, or a three dimensional version that pushed anything in the area it occupied.
This meant he was capable of deflecting things to the side quite easily, since he only cared about it going away from somewhere. However, throwing something straight was somewhat problematic, since many things would swerve off to the side. Jules did have some feeling of the way things were moving, though, and would subconsciously create more forces to keep things straight, but it wasn’t as good as he wanted.
Jules had gotten pretty good at creating something like 3 walls meeting, like one corner of a cube, pushing an object from several directions, leaving it only one way to go. He ended up with pretty good control this way, but there was a lot of wasted energy. In addition, he still didn’t have good control over the object’s rotation. However, as he practiced more, he gradually became able to create more forces, and more precision. The easiest way to ensure he kept control over an object was to push on the inside of it, but this took much more energy. It was an almost exponential increase based on the depth he was trying to reach, though it also depended on the density of the material. However, this meant that it was pretty much impractical to try at his current level of power.
Another aspect Jules worked on was range. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do to improve this on its own. It wasn’t technique, but just power. When controlling something’s movement, he could use many smaller forces as long as he could control that many at a time, but using telekinesis further away had the same problem as holding up something at the end of a long stick. It was heavier, or at least felt heavier. Jules doubted he could come up with anyway to fake being closer to something. Realistically, he could just move closer.
Based on his current needs, Jules decided to distribute future levels solely between Intelligence and Wisdom, as they were described in game terms. Power and finesse were what he needed. Willpower and Focus, durability and quantity… wouldn’t be as important. He didn’t expect to be facing much in the way of mental attacks, at least not at this point. He wasn’t even sure what those would be, but it seemed likely they would be uncommon. It wasn’t like he was particularly lacking in Willpower at this point either. Focus would always be useful, but having extra energy to use wasn’t important if he couldn’t complete the tasks he wanted to begin with.
Jules thought about specific situations he had encountered. The spined horrors, specifically, had launched large numbers of spines at once. There were two ways to deal with their attacks. He could create large fields in front of people, in a V shape, deflecting all of the spines to the side. This was the simplest way, but it also consumed a lot of energy. Force was wasted on all the areas that didn’t have spines, in addition to the fact that the energy wasn’t deflecting in exactly the right direction. If people were next to each other, there were even more problems, since spines would be deflected to the middle of them, and the forces would push against each other. Depending on how close people were, the spines might still hit one of them. Deflecting them up would work, but then gravity had to be worked against, and the spines could also hit people behind. Though, most of these problems were academic, since Jules could barely even cover one person with such defenses against an attack, because he just didn’t have enough power. He had enough to bring to bear if he deflected individual spines, especially if he could precisely target them. However, that was part of the problem, since it was hard to keep a force on a moving target, especially many at once. Most of the problems would be solved with levels, but Jules still needed to practice. After all, it would do no good if he had enough force to deflect all of the spines, or the finesse to individually deflect them, if he wasn’t prepared to actually do those things, and at the right time.
Jules didn’t just practice when he was in Many Worlds, though. It was nice to have a job where he was basically alone. He could practice telekinesis while on the job. He was still getting work done… if a bit more slowly. It was also possible that some books were slightly damaged, but Jules doubted that it would ever matter. Only a few were actually significantly damaged, and he had those reprinted. It was a good thing that nobody every came to his section, or they would have seen a whirlwind of books floating around Jules. Well, maybe a small dust storm, if he was being honest with himself.
There were actually relatively few monsters who had left the caves at this point. It was still almost 6 weeks until the landshift, after all. Jules also had the feeling that the more dangerous monsters would take longer to surface, as they likely lived deeper underground. Though, that was mostly his gaming sense talking. Perhaps the most dangerous monsters would appear earlier than expected, since they weren’t actually bound by the rules of a game. Based on what he’d heard from the Uesmethi, though, he was at least somewhat right. At least, nobody looked particularly worried yet.