Then there was the Force itself.
A bitch. But a lovely, tantalizing bitch.
It had depth I hadn't even scratched. You didn't need a saber to bend the universe.
I rembered the World Between Worlds. That strange liminal space. Pure cosmic power layered in sound and ti. If I could access that again? I could walk into the past. Raid ancient Jedi libraries. Pull knowledge out of eras lost to ash and legend.
Just had to keep low. Quiet. Hidden. Like Hermione with the ti turner. Except, you know, not screwing it up like she did.
Or maybe I could dip into the taphysical rivers of Mortis and go full demigod. Beco the second coming of Abeloth—wait, did Abeloth even exist in canon? I couldn't rember. She was never ntioned in any show.
But then again, I wasn't in the Legends tiline.
Those people were on another level entirely. Everyone jacked, Force horrors around every corner, galaxy-ending invasions every Wednesday.
Disney canon? Safer.
Worse writing, sure, especially in the sequels, but at least you weren't getting war-crid by the Yuuzhan Vong every year.
In canon, the big villain was a failed emo kid who threw temper tantrums and cosplayed his granddad.
And that "grandmaster" version of Luke? What a joke. All that character developnt from the original trilogy—just flushed straight out the airlock.
So maybe I should go full preventive strike.
Cuck Han Solo.
No Kylo Ren. No problem.
I could take one for the team. My body, willingly sacrificed to show the Alderaan princess the pleasures of the flesh, distract her from farmboys and scruffy-looking nerf herders. All for galactic peace.
As for Rey? The other half of the franchise's collapse?
If I had my way, she'd stay on that desert planet forever, happily scavenging junk and never awakening a single Force neuron.
Hell, if I could, I'd go far enough back to make sure her parents never even t. Though with Palpatine's creepy cloning habits, who knows where in the past he planted his weird DNA bombs.
Still—those god-tier options? They were there.
But trying to access the World Between Worlds at this stage?
That was like a level one player planning a solo raid on the final boss.
The Sith way was always an option. Power through passion. Use my anger, my fear. Let the hate flow through . It was the fast track, the express lane to power. But man, it was bad for the skin. I'd seen what it did to Palpatine. Dude went from a dignified politician to a cackling raisin in a bathrobe. The rage, the constant simring hatred… it corroded you from the inside out. A funny thought popped into my head: what these guys really needed was the Sharingan. All the power from emotional trauma without the unfortunate side effect of looking like a lted candle.
The idea of mixing Force powers with ani bullshit tickled sothing deep in my brain. Imagine—Force Susanoo. Or pulling a Kylo Ren and stopping blaster bolts mid-air, but with style, like so JoJo stand. I could already see the possibilities: Force-enhanced genjutsu, chakra-infused lightsaber swings, a Force Chidori through so arrogant Sith's chest. Yeah, okay, maybe I was spiraling. But the point was: there were ways to be powerful without turning into a Sith gargoyle.
Still, passion had its place. The Jedi preached detachnt, but detachnt got them a front-row seat to genocide. The Sith overdosed on emotion and blew themselves up with their own ambition. Both sides were terminally stupid in their own ways. Balance wasn't just so mythical bullshit reserved for Chosen Ones. It was strategy. Take what worked from both sides. Leave the cult-like nonsense behind.
Problem was, I needed knowledge. Real knowledge. Not the garbage half-whispers from Force visions or cryptic ancient droids vomiting riddles. I needed books. Holocrons. Archives. Temple ruins. Dark side vaults. Whatever. Anything that could tell how the Force really worked—not just what the Jedi or Sith wanted to believe.
But the Empire had scrubbed most of that clean. Palpatine had a nasty habit of collecting anything useful and locking it up tighter than his wrinkled sphincter. So I needed to get creative. Maybe find remnants—like Jocasta Nu's hidden archive, or hit up places like Ossus, Jedha, or Malachor. Yeah, they were dangerous. So was everything else in this galaxy. I'd just need a fast ship, a decent pilot, and maybe a blaster or two.
One step at a ti. Build the body. Train the reflexes. Accumulate knowledge. And stay the hell under the radar while doing it. No waving lightsabers around like a cosplay reject. No grand Force gestures unless absolutely necessary. Subtle. Quiet. Deadly.
Because while the Jedi and Sith played their stupid ga of space chess, I was playing poker. And I was planning to rig the deck.
Besides, their magic had a price. It always did. You didn't just chant so words and glow green for free—there were spirits involved, blood offerings, pacts with ancient horrors that whispered in dreams. Nightsister "blessings" could just as easily turn you into a at puppet for so long-dead crone buried beneath Dathomir's crust. And if I had to choose between a migraine and a ghostly possession ending in ritual suicide? I'd take the migraine. Every ti.
Still, the idea of augnting myself wasn't off the table. Just—controlled augntation. Smart modifications. Less "beco a monster to fight monsters," more "hack the ga with legal mods." The Force was part of it, sure, but there were other avenues. Cybernetics. Biotech. Old Republic muscle-stim enhancent protocols. Shit even the Kaminoans cooked up in their weird cloning labs.
Hell, even Mandalorians had a system. Their armor was their Force. They didn't rely on mystical whispers or emotional tantrums—they trained, they geared up, they fought smart. I could respect that. No robes, no dogma. Just practicality and rocket boots.
But even if I leaned into that, I had to be careful. Power drew attention. Attention ant eyes on . Eyes on ant Inquisitors—or worse. I didn't want a one-way ticket to Palpatine's hobby dungeon. That man collected Force-sensitive weirdos the way a serial killer collects teeth.
So no, not the Sith. Not the Nightsisters. Not even the ancient Rakatan psycho-tech cults. I'd have to walk a thin line—one foot in knowledge, the other in survival. Gather what worked. Leave
—or worse, a main character in a Disney sequel.
So what did that leave with? Fringe Force philosophies. The gray stuff. The off-brand, open-source Jedi knockoffs.
The Baran Do sages on Dorin? They used the Force for foresight, taught calm over chaos. Not bad, but their whole culture depended on living in a toxic atmosphere and having lungs like industrial air scrubbers. I liked breathing. Pass.
The Matukai? Now that had potential. Physical enhancent through the Force. They used ditation and body training to push themselves past normal limits. It was basically Force-powered martial arts mixed with monk vibes. No magic tattoos or blood rituals required, just sweat, discipline, and so funky chant-work. Best of all, most people thought they were extinct. Which ant no angry orders or councils telling what I could or couldn't do.
Then there were the Jensaarai. Gray armor-wearing weirdos who blended Jedi and Sith teachings. Conflicted, secretive, and probably a little too culty for my taste—but their emphasis on protection and pragmatism could be useful. I'd just have to avoid getting recruited and branded with so ideological dog collar.
And beyond them? Independent Force adepts. Force witches not from Dathomir. Healers. Seers. Smugglers who could twist probability in their favor. There was a whole undercurrent of people out there who touched the Force without ever needing a lightsaber or a master's blessing. That was my in. Not flashy. Not loud. Just smart. Quiet power.
Step one? Start gathering knowledge. Old texts, fragnts, crashed archives. Sith holocrons were a no-go for now, unless I had a death wish, but Jedi ruins still dotted the galaxy—so buried, so forgotten. Even the Empire couldn't erase everything. I'd raid what I could, digitize what I found, and piece together my own curriculum.
It wouldn't be fast. It wouldn't be clean. But it'd be mine.
Let the galaxy worship their empires, their legends, their destined Skywalker-shaped icons.
I'd build sothing better. Sothing that didn't fall apart the mont soone threw lightning.
Maybe I was going about it wrong. Maybe brute-forcing my way into so flashy Force school wasn't the only path. What if I leaned into what I already had?
Hyper Perception gave absurd sensory input within a five-ter radius. I could feel the tension in soone's calves before they leapt, the micro-adjustnts in their balance before a punch, the disturbance in air pressure before a strike even landed. It was like having a proto-Spider Sense—raw, twitchy, and completely unrefined. I was drowning in data, but had no clue how to translate it into reflexes or tactics. It was like reading ten books at once in languages I only half understood.
Then it hit .
Hard.
Psychotry.
Of course. I'd been using it to absorb knowledge from old tech manuals, pulling half-erased equations and workshop diagrams straight from the page, residual impressions from the people who'd studied them before. So why the hell hadn't I ever tried that with weapons?
Not tools—I'd already tried hydrospanners, pliers, random junk from maintenance lockers. The feedback was junk: scattered, useless fragnts. Just muscle mory of twisting bolts and muttered curses in ten dialects.
But a weapon?
Weapons carried weight. Not just physical mass—emotional mass. Blood, fear, rage, desperation. A blade used in war, or even just in a single kill-or-be-killed mont, would have soaked up all of that. A sword wasn't just steel. It was a vessel. A story. Sotis, an entire life.
And stories… stories left echoes.
I'd been a complete idiot.
I'd been sitting on a goldmine of experience—free training—and ignoring it because I was too caught up in schematics and body mods. Like buying an ancient Jedi library and using it to level a wobbly table.
The plan ford itself instantly.
Step one: Find the right weapon. Not a fresh factory-made blade, but sothing used. A rc's battered vibroknife. A dueling saber from so dead noble. Hell, even a rusted machete from a backwater militia, as long as it had history soaked into its grip.
Step two: Deep scan. No light brush with the Force—go all in. Push my Psychotry into the object, dig through the emotional sedint, sift through mories burned into every scratch and dent. Feel the muscle mory, the fighting instinct, the rhythm of battle etched into the weapon by hands that lived it.
Step three: Copy. Practice. Drill those ghostly motions into my real muscles. Fuse it with my Hyper Perception and start building true, functional technique—not from scratch, but from the fragnts of killers and survivors who ca before .
It wouldn't make a master overnight, but it was better than fumbling around blind. I could steal the feel of skill long before I earned it.
Still, I wasn't stupid enough to think it'd be enough on its own. Even with phantom sword training and hypersense reflexes, the first ti I ran into a real Inquisitor, they'd just yoink the blade out of my hand and choke mid-sentence.
I'd be left standing like a jackass with great form and zero survivability.
That was the wall I kept slamming into, over and over again. The problem wasn't tactics or talent—it was raw power. I could feel everything, but I couldn't do anything. Hyper-perception gave every ounce of detail in a fight, but that was all it gave. My body wasn't strong enough to act on it fast enough. My Force reservoir wasn't deep enough to move the world with my will.
The question ca spiraling back to the sa bitter center: how the hell was I supposed to increase my Force powers? Especially the kind that mattered in actual fights—externalization, projection, the push-pull-grab-hurl kind. The kind that let you survive an Inquisitor's arrival, not just sense it a second before death.
The default Jedi answer was patience. Growth. Wait until your body caught up, let your midichlorians multiply with age and maturity, and soday you'd bloom into your true potential. That was fine when the galaxy wasn't actively trying to murder you before puberty.
I didn't have ti. I might not even have weeks.
And sure, there were ruins—ancient Jedi enclaves buried under dust and silence. There were holocrons, lost techniques, even whispers of half-mad hermits or forgotten sects like the Baran Do or the Zeffo monks. Maybe even more exotic ones like the Sorcerers of Tund, or the Silent Path. But they were scattered across systems, buried under centuries of wreckage and Imperial lockdowns. So might not even exist anymore. Others would take months just to find, let alone study. Even if I left now, what was I gonna do? Hitchhike to Dathomir and ask the Nightsisters to pretty-please teach blood magic?
Every direction I looked in was a maybe. A gamble. A slow path I didn't have the luxury of walking. And even if I found one, I'd still be starting from a place of weakness—low potential, low volu, low Force saturation.
That was the part that stung the most. It wasn't just the clock ticking. It was the ceiling I could already feel above , even if I managed to get stronger. Even if I pushed myself through every form, ditated till my brain turned to soup, wrung every drop of knowledge from long-dead Jedi weapons or cursed Sith tos—I'd still be bound by the limits of what I was. The limits of what I had been born with.
And even worse? There was no way to know how far I'd ever be able to go. No readout. No stat screen. Just gut feelings and guesswork. Maybe my potential capped at 'decent Jedi Padawan.' Maybe it didn't. But I couldn't risk being wrong.
I slumped back against the wall, my thoughts spinning tighter and darker. Vasha was still sleeping beside , her face half-buried in my neck as she hugged my erging teenage body to death, unaware(or maybe aware)) of effects she had on ,snoring like she sold her horses in fair, calm in a way I couldn't afford to be.
That was the truth that sat like a rock in my chest: no matter which path I took—study, training, ancient knowledge, obscure Force cults—it would all still be filtered through . And what if just wasn't enough?
I didn't want to reach my potential.
I wanted to break it. I wanted to crack it open with a hamr, scoop out the limits, and rewrite what I was from the inside out.
Because if I didn't, then I was already dead.
Ga over. Thanks for playing. Insert credit to respawn as a moisture farr on Tatooine. Enjoy the sand.
Fuck. That.
diocrity wasn't an option. Survival wasn't enough. I didn't just want to be Ezra Bridger with upgraded senses. I wanted to be more. Faster. Stronger. Unignorable. I needed sothing offensive. Sothing that could hit back. I wanted to bend the kriffing rules of this ga before the Empire decided my player character was glitching and hit the 'delete' button.
The question wasn't if I needed more power. It was how the hell to get it without getting myself, or worse, Vasha, turned into a very dead footnote. (Preferably before my hormones staged a full-scale rebellion and I did sothing monuntally stupid involving that damn shared bed and my newfound, completely useless-for-this-situation Excalibur.)
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Tomorrow's the fated day when the ranking resets. I beseech thee to throw thou powerstone in my general direction or I will have you told that your father slled of elderberries! (For WN folks)
And just for information, in the next 5 chapters, 3 would be of similar kind as above after which sothing's gonna happen (spoiler: bad) and we can then begin the adventures!
And I have also introduced an Faction of Force users in ch 30-31, who ever can guess it will get an free patreon mbership for a month. (ps: an friend gave this idea, whoever wins, thank that guy lol)
If you want to support or read advanced chapters, you can do so at Patreon. I would be highly appreciative of that and it would support very much in my writing endeavors.
Link: www(dot)patreon(dot)com/Abstracto101
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