The Over-Break System

Cynrik waited until Gabby disappeared into another room before letting Brance into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him with considerably more care than usual. To be honest, it was more a reason not to give Gabby another excuse to interfere than anything else.

With a faint scrape of wood, Brance took the desk chair while Selene settled onto the bed, wearing the satisfied expression she got whenever someone was about to ask Cynrik a question he didn’t want to answer, prompting him to remove the sunglasses and place them beside his brother on the desk.

{{Alright, Cyn. You going to explain what the hell those things do, or do I have to drag it out of you?}}

{{I built myself a second processor.}} Cynrik tapped the frame, letting the Runic channels buried beneath its matte-black finish glow for an instant.

{{A second...what?}}

{{Brain, Brancie. A spare one, just for me.}}

{{He’s talking about his ocular Skills,}} Selene supplied, leaning back on her hands. {{Although I wouldn’t mind getting him an actual spare brain. The one he’s got is defective.}}

{{Love you too, Sel.}} He grinned at her before returning his attention to Brance. {{Anyway, you know how much garbage Mana Sight picks up, right? Now add Dynamic Lens, Inspection, Filtration, and all the other shit I’ve modified over the years. Every single one wants to tell me something, and all that information still has to get through my nerves and into my head before I can decide whether I give a damn about it. You can probably imagine how much fun THAT gets when somebody is trying to cave my skull in.}}

Understanding finally replaced Brance’s skepticism as his attention returned to the glasses. {{So instead of trying to improve your processing speed again, you moved some of the work outside your body.}}

{{Ding, ding, ding. Give the man a prize.}} Cynrik turned the frame around to expose its inner edge. {{Started with Sel’s Inspection enchantment. Pulled the useful parts out, then went back through the Runic structures behind a bunch of my ocular Skills and figured out which bits I could get away with reproducing. The lenses handle the incoming scans, these little bastards route the information, and I wrote enough processing code to make the whole thing work without asking my Mana Circuits to carry every fucking reading. Getting it to stop screaming about every speck of dust took longer than building the damn frame.}}

{{And that’s before the Database,}} Selene added, having spent more evenings than she cared to remember watching him feed recordings into the runic algorithm while muttering at his Watcet.

{{Database? Oh lord, don’t tell me THAT’S why you’ve been gazing off into nothing for the longest time}} Brance complained, massaging his temples.

{{A….YEP, five years of inspecting weapons, materials, Runic inscriptions, enchantments, Mana signatures, and whatever else happened to cross my path. If something looks like shit I’ve seen before, I check it against the Database and toss it to the back. If it doesn’t match, that’s when I actually want the notification. I’m not wasting half my attention on the same security ward every time I walk past a classroom.}}

{{Which means these are scanning the entire time you’re wearing them?}} Brance asked, extending his hand toward the frame.

{{And how the hell are you powering that without draining yourself dry?}}

{{WELLLL…they don’t take nearly as much Mana as you’d think…}} Cynrik raised one finger, drawing together a microscopic speck of OdinForce before feeding it into the glasses, whose hidden channels flashed beneath the frame. {{Mana keeps everything ticking over under normal conditions. It’s only when I need more range, or the number-crunching starts getting ridiculous, that I feed it one of these. One particle does a hell of a lot more than dumping a shitload of Mana into the same circuit.}}

The hand Brance had extended toward the glasses stopped moving. {{Please tell me you didn’t spend weeks pumping Odinforce into an untested enchantment.}}

{{Weeks? Nah.}} Cynrik considered the question for a moment, deciding there were several answers his Brother probably wouldn’t appreciate. {{And I learned pretty damn quickly that several little particles at once were a bad idea.}}

{{Fourteen times, Darling. You learned that lesson fourteen times.}} Selene sounded far too pleased to remind him of every ruined prototype and the mess left behind.

{{Fourteen?}} Brance repeated, looking between them as though one of them might admit it was a joke.

{{Experimental science is a dangerous profession, Sel.}}

{{So is standing next to you when your Workshop explodes,}} she countered, earning a deeply offended look that failed to impress her in the slightest.

{{Oh, for fuck’s sake. Put them on already.}} Cynrik tossed Brance the glasses before his Brother could change his mind, watching closely as he slid the dark lenses into place. Brance possessed Mana Sight, but not the rest of Cynrik’s personalized ocular Skills, so that meant they wouldn’t run nearly as smoothly for him, but the charge remaining inside the frame would be more than enough to handle the demonstration.

[ENVIRONMENTAL BASELINE RESTORED]

[PASSIVE COMPARISON RESUMED]

[SECONDARY USER IDENTIFIED]

[VERIFICATION ACCEPTED, USER BRANCE JETLENSR IDENTIFIED]

[ADJUSTING FOR LACK OF SECONDARY SCANNING FEATURES]

For a few seconds Brance stared at the wall, turning his head toward the desk before examining the room’s defensive formations again. Cynrik remembered doing the same thing when familiar Mana signatures first slipped out of priority without disappearing from reach; only he hadn’t had someone else sitting across from him waiting to laugh at the expression on his face.

{{Holy shit...}} Brance leaned forward, studying the wards woven into the walls. {{I can still pick everything out, but it’s not making me look at the same details over and over. The wall, the wards, the equipment... they’re there, but unless I actually focus on something, it doesn’t keep throwing the information at me.}}

{{That’s the whole point. I’m not trying to see less, Brancie. I’m trying to stop wasting time on things I already fucking know.}} Cynrik took the frame back and slid it over his own eyes, relieved to have the familiar filter working again.

{{Which worked beautifully,}} Selene cut in, {{right up until his first calibration decided our coffee table was an enemy artifact.}}

{{It had an inconsistent Mana reflection,}} Cynrik argued, already knowing where this was headed.

{{Because you spilled something on it. You spent twenty minutes investigating a stain.}}

{{You investigated a stain for twenty minutes?}} Brance asked, staring at his Brother.

{{LISTTENNN, Stain, enemy symbiote trying to eat my table, who knows, coulda been either, science isn’t an infallible art; factors outside of my control pop up from time to time.}} In Cynrik’s mind, that was still a perfectly reasonable defense, regardless of what either of them thought.

{{You know what fixes those factors, Darling? A towel.}}

{{So what happens when it comes across something it doesn’t recognize?}} Brance asked once he’d finished rubbing his forehead.

{{It stays in front of me. That’s the fucking point.}} He’d fought enough enemies to know what one missed signature could cost, making that little safeguard more important than all his other clever improvements. Cynrik was only half listening by then, since Selene had stretched across the bed with her skirt riding up, and the glimpse of purple lace beneath it demanded considerably more attention than Brance’s latest lecture.

Noticing his attention on her thighs, Selene faintly smiled before opening her legs slightly to give him a better look, earning a ’Ohh, purple lace, can’t wait to tear those off later,’ from him through their bond.

---

Getting the glasses to behave over the following three days proved considerably less entertaining when the first morning brought alerts for every changed classroom ward, unfamiliar Professor, repaired training platform, and piece of equipment without enough recorded scans, leaving Cynrik ready to throw his entire Database into the nearest Egress.

Instead, he spent his breaks adjusting thresholds through his Watcet while Tobs sorted incoming records, slowly teaching the algorithm that ordinary changes weren’t invitations to start screaming for his attention. The second day was better, with familiar security arrays and training-room formations falling into recognizable patterns as he crossed campus, although new faces still demanded the occasional second look.

By the third day, Cynrik could walk into Class without sorting through a mountain of readings he’d already seen, leaving his attention available for anything that genuinely didn’t belong, which was worth every ruined prototype even if Selene kept reminding him exactly how many he’d destroyed.

{{You know, Darling,}} she remarked over lunch while inspecting the frame, {{I think those might be the most Cynrik thing you’ve ever invented.}}

{{Bullshit. Hárauður-Virki exists, Sel. You can’t tell me a pair of fancy sunglasses beats a whole-ass Crimson Fortress.}}

{{Hmm...fair point. The Fortress wins. For now.}} Selene leaned against him and returned to eating, leaving Brance to stare at them for several seconds before deciding there was nothing worth saying.

Meanwhile, Cynrik was already wondering what else he could teach the damn things to ignore.