  A non-trivial balance between Coulomb repulsion and kinematic effects
determines the electronic structure of correlated electron materials. The use
electromagnetic fields strong enough to rival these native microscopic
interactions allows us to study the electronic response as well as the
timescales and energies involved in using quantum effects for possible
applications. We use element-specific transient x-ray absorption spectroscopy
and high-harmonic generation to measure the response to ultrashort off-resonant
optical fields in the prototypical correlated electron insulator NiO.
Surprisingly, fields of up to 0.22 V/{\AA} leads to no detectable changes on
the correlated Ni 3d-orbitals contrary to previous predictions. A transient
directional charge transfer is uncovered, a behavior that is captured by
first-principles theory. Our results highlight the importance of retardation
effects in electronic screening, and pinpoints a key challenge in
functionalizing correlated materials for ultrafast device operation.
