Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 882: Very, very troublesome

What is there to be said about all of this, other than what I experienced not that long ago?

It hurts, and it feels like it takes forever. In a way, it does, as each second for me is longer thanks to my thought acceleration. But I need it to deal with everything that is happening to my body. In a way, it is like a game. I observe the processes and prepare measures to deal with them and keep my feeble body from breaking apart. And though my mind races fast, I need to take into consideration that each countermeasure will be applied much slower.

Usually, before I deal with one problem, another part of me starts to deal with the next one.

Lily is near me as well, but she knows better than to try to heal me, no matter how much damage I take. Her healing would just ruin it. I need these changes to cause damage and force alterations, and her mana would mess with that.

Though even if she wouldn’t tell me out loud, I have a feeling she would heal me if it seemed too dangerous, no matter how angry I might be in the end.

While the strengthening continues to apply, that incredibly pure Empyrean Ichor injected inside of my body doesn’t even try to fight with my own, it almost fully ignores it. It is just that much denser. My ichor weakly tries to fight back, and if I were focusing on it instead of the Mana Vessel, I could probably make it even stronger. At some other time.

The blood, taken from the baby wyvern and further purified, clashes with my ichor in interesting ways, and both of them attack my body in what can only be described as three way combat.

I, of course, continue my mana Cycling, which at this point feels extremely natural to me. I almost don’t have to think about it as long as I’m not channeling exceedingly silly amounts of mana. But that is the case now, so I put more attention into that.

That cycling of mana through my extremely mana conductive body pushes back against the foreign liquids I’ve injected. Not a drop of my mana seeps out as I keep it all inside to fight back, and the ongoing strengthening reacts to the situation.

Honestly, I don’t know what to expect. I don’t even know how powerful of a trait Mana Vessel is. Even if I were to call it average, I might as well be wrong, as after meeting so many powerful people, my views on the matter are probably skewed.

Even then, the solution is simple: to do my best. That’s what I like about all of this. I do my best, and I get rewarded for it. No one will take it from me, and no one will make these merits their own. And that’s what makes it so addicting to me.

The thought acceleration deepens as I observe my body and continue to reroute constructs, hold back my mana, and restrain both of my hearts as they threaten to go wild. I push against the wyvern blood and Empyrean Ichor, and time begins to lose its meaning to me.

It continues for hours, perhaps days, but my mind is used to this. I can stay for this long in a state of absolute focus, I can channel that long without slipping or making a mistake I would not be able to take care of.

And for doing so, I am rewarded.

Due to the latest enhancements to your body, additional adjustments have been applied to your status to reflect your current state more accurately.

Mana Vessel 2/3 > Mana Vessel 2/4

Your trait, Preeminence Eyes, has begun forcefully strengthening!

The strengthening is influenced by your Mana Vessel, ongoing external factors, trait synchronization, and is being altered to more accurately reflect your capabilities and the state of your body.

Preeminence Eyes 2/5 > Preeminence Eyes 3/5

Your trait, Empyrean Ichor, has begun further purification. While the number of strengthenings has not been affected, nor does the name, the Ichor has become purer, a step closer towards the original.

The number of strengthenings has been reduced to 2/5 to more accurately reflect the change, while the Ichor has grown more powerful without losing any of its previous potency.

A new substatus for Empyrean Ichor has been unlocked, serving to show its level of concentration.

Current Empyrean Ichor purity: 26%

I feel exhausted, so I’m not even sure if I should feel happy or not. Expecting an evolution was probably too much, or at least it means Mana Vessel is just that good a trait.

The strengthening of my eyes is unexpected and bothersome in its own way, forcing me once again to filter out an overload of information. And here I thought my low pristine Cognitive Hyperprocessing Vector would last me a while longer.

The problem is I can only buy up to low pristine skills from the system shop, though I wonder if that’s really the limit and if there won’t be opportunities to unlock mid pristine variants through some sort of reward or achievement. Until then, I can try to get my hands on a low pristine passive skill combination token, and creating some unique pristine passive could make me even more powerful than a simple mid pristine if I choose well.

It is something I’ll just have to deal with when the time comes, but for now, I stop Lily from healing me. After days of sitting there, I stand up, realizing some members of group 4 have waited up this entire time. I stretch my body and shake out the stiffness, only to find clothes lying on the ground next to me, black sweatpants and a light brown earth tone shirt entirely covered in cute yellow geckos.

I do not hesitate at all and put them on. The shirt feels a bit baggier than usual, though it is my size, and as my hand slides into the short sleeve and out, I stop to look at the fragment of the Nameless Tree embedded in the back of my hand.

The fragment is still a translucent light green with swirls of soft yellow, blue, and deeper green within, and it might be me, but there is more blue than usual.

When I bring it closer to my face and observe the lights inside, it even seems to react to me, and that blue deepens further, pulling closer as if to reach towards me. But this wasn’t my intent, so as before, I cut it off from my mana entirely, as much as I can with my skill at level 86.

It does not even take long for that blue light to weaken slightly and pull back. Then, instead of mana, I feed it a continuous stream of kinetic energy, which I’ve been doing nonstop, outside the most dangerous of situations, when I need all my brain power just to keep myself alive.

I give a thankful nod to my friends gathered around me, in response to which I get a nonchalant wave, as if to say “nothing to it”. I don’t know how to respond, so I say nothing.

Though it can be nice to say things out loud, I’ve always felt that actions speak louder than words, and I always make sure to pay them back in kind.

I start peeling off the remains of the inscriptions that didn’t evaporate, dissolve, or absorb into me during my enhancements, and as I do, I go over my notifications.

[Redistribution - lvl 81 > Redistribution - lvl 82]

[Focus - lvl 83 > Focus - lvl 84]

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 27 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 28]

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 28 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 29]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 64 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 65]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 65 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 66]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 66 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 67]

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

[Weave - lvl 36 > Weave - lvl 37]

[Weave - lvl 37 > Weave - lvl 38]

[Weave - lvl 38 > Weave - lvl 39]

[Manifestation - lvl 54 > Manifestation - lvl 55]

I think all I need is a slight prod. Wait for my body to settle down, lower my constitution by 50% or so, get a few more spicy syringes, and I can push my Mana Vessel to evolve. But I still can’t help but feel disappointed. Maybe with the Lycan’s knuckle they’ve been keeping for me, maybe with my possible reward for entering the 12th floor of Beyond, I could evolve it today.

I then take a moment to observe my Mana Heart, which I’ve apparently damaged somewhat during the strengthening in my attempt to more directly connect it to my body. I’ve got a theory that it should be possible to bridge that gap or entirely remove it to convert my entire body into one huge mana heart instead.

It’s probably too early, even I realize that. I don’t think I could make it work, even with Lily’s help. But in time, when I let my [Mana Manipulation] affect me more, when I weaken my constitution, at that point… maybe.

Until then, I’ll just have to deal with the uneven beating of my Mana Heart I damaged in the attempt. If it had worked, I would have declared this floor’s Nathaniel to be better than third floor Nathaniel, but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

As I allow myself to slide and seat myself in the chair, I close my eyes and allow myself to adapt to the damage and reroute some of the pathways, while making a few on the fly changes to my Mana Circulation.

Then I force my way into my mental space and find myself opening the door to the replica of my old room on Earth, looking for that silly child.

Of course, he’s nowhere to be seen, but the door is pressed into a narrow V-shaped wedge between the back of the open door and the wall. I can tell he’s there because I can see those ragged socks peeking through the gap between the door and the floor.

And I can hear him breathing.

With a finger, I poke the door, and it disappears, dissolving like mist, and there’s Sneakythaniel standing there in his typical old, washed up clothes and that holey, bleached, once red blanket over his shoulders.

As he sees me seeing him, he closes his eyes quickly, as if that accomplishes anything. As if I couldn’t possibly see him if he can’t see me.

Reaching out, I pinch his nose and shake him. “You know why I’m here.”

“I h-have n-no eye-dee-uh!”

I let go of him. “What?”

“I said I have no idea!” he says, opening his eyes that mirror mine, though possessing no trait.

“Sure you don’t,” I say as I grab and pull his ear. “Now, tell me why the hell I haven’t been able to get a 10th skill for so long, no matter how much I tried.”

“Hehe, there you go again! That’s four times already,” he giggles and then twitches his face, “Ouch, that stings!” as I pull on his ear.

“So?” I let go with a sigh.

“You told me to hide it from you, so I’m doing it. Blame yourself! Now go, you have a visitor!” he pushes me, and the space around me blurs as I find myself pulled back to the desert and see Aant and Zant coming closer.

Before they reach me, I quickly open my status and check my active skills.

Active skills (10/10):

Focus - Lvl 84

Perception - Lvl 79

Redistribution - Lvl 82

Eclipse (Pride) - Lvl 76

Empyrean Lance - Lvl 67

Manifestation - Lvl 55

??? - Lvl ??

Weave - Lvl 39

Mana Manipulation - Lvl 86

Selective Adaptation - Lvl 29

Haaa, what am I even doing?

I realize this isnʼt system censorship. It is just Sneaky and Redacthaniel hiding it from me. Well, ultimately it’s me, hiding it from me. And the longer I stare at it, the blurrier it grows until the skill disappears from its spot, and the number of active skills changes back.

Then I get the feeling that I’ve forgotten something, and I donʼt even know what.

What was I doing, again?

“Sir Gwyn?” A young voice says, getting my attention, and I look at Zant standing next to his brother.

“Yes?”

“Please, come with us.”

And after a moment of looking at his scary, serious brother, I follow them.

Ten minutes later, through a bit of teleportation and passing through many defenses and setting up a number of defensive shields around me, I find myself standing on the cold side of Xyphos.

It’s dark and much, much colder here, though thanks to the field they’ve placed around me, I feel comfortable as I find myself standing at the center of a huge glass-like surface reflecting the dark sky. Everywhere around us there’s nothing but sand, though this mile or so wide circle has been rendered perfectly smooth.

On it rests a building sized, one winged pale gray wyvern with the faint, purple shine of its scales visible even here, and across from it is a similarly sized black ant whose carapace seems to be made of the darkest material possible.

Even then, I don’t think Diligence is actually here in person. He’s just too shrewd, too careful, for that. And I don’t think this is all he can show off either, I bet he can get much bigger, much like the wyvern opposite him. It’s like they’re restraining their true forms to avoid destroying lesser realms.

Diligence does not skip a beat and turns to me. “The one winged wyvern says one of its requirements in our negotiations is that you be allowed to check on your bond.”

“Huh,” I mutter, and look at the wyvern.

“Yes, this is indeed unexpected,” Diligence says. “Usually, I would just agree and simply attempt to organize a beyond quest taking you to that place. But the problem is that your bond is in the care of a certain clan… which could become very troublesome.” He pauses and emphasizes, “Very, very troublesome.”

“I see,” I answer shortly, prompting him to talk in an effort to avoid showing my cards.

Diligence, of course, realizes this, and one of his antennae twitches in a motion that seems annoyed. “The one winged said it would be capable of making the trip and is willing to take you there and back. Safely even, not through a system vow, but by giving their word in one of the old ways, so I am confident in that.”

“In exchange for helping with negotiations, I want three disciple communication tokens.”

“How utterly shameless. We both know you would go there for nothing. In fact, I suspect you would crawl back to me, begging, and gladly forfeit that knuckle you’re still owed, along with a great many other things, just for the opportunity.”

“Yes, that is why I’ve avoided asking for anything too shameless. It is just communication tokens, Dili,” I say and return his gaze as he stares me down.

In the end, he gives up and says, “Deal, then.”

He doesnʼt even have to agree to that, and both of us know it. And yet, I sense something like understanding and gentleness. Maybe it is because he lost one of his vessels not long ago, maybe there is some other reason for it, but he seems to understand my longing.

So I say, “I think you should be careful about Lissandra, even if the wyvern removes its domain and you move to trap her.”

“Did she tell you about her plans while you were in the thought accelerated space?” he asks, and of course, he knows that happened. All the rulers are nosy like that.

“She’s not the type to talk about that sort of thing often, nor would I care. I mean, that doesn’t mean I’m not curious, I just happened to think of it, that’s all.”

Diligence does not wave me off and instead watches me curiously. “So what did you think of?”

“There are three of her in the Labyrinth, correct?”

If he could, I bet the Ruler would squint his eyes, and even the wyvern and Aant take to watching me curiously.

“How would you know that?” Diligence asks.

“It just makes the most sense,” I shrug. “She wants a heart from an avatar of her original, and at the same time, I can’t help but think she’s just too different from her original, so it would generate a copy of her as well. That is how the labyrinth works, correct?”

“Correct.”

“She must know that’s going to happen too, and if I were her…” I pause. “I would probably take the heads of my avatars. I would use them as bits of external hardware, prepare some fucked up array or something, and let a few extra calculations pass through the heads of my avatars to greatly increase my potency. Knowing her, she’s going to do something even more fucked up.”

“And you donʼt mind betraying her like that?” Diligence lowers himself, moving his face closer to me. He even sounds a bit surprised, and in a way, shocked by the possibilities I’ve just revealed.

The accusation makes me chuckle. “I donʼt think she’ll care at all, and I donʼt think your knowing will change anything. Even if she fails now, she’ll just keep trying. You canʼt stop her. But if I am correct and this information helps you, well, remember that you owe me.”

Once I return to our usual space, I tell Group 4 I need some rest, and they seem to understand as I move a bit further and sit down, resting against one of the extremely heated stones. Yet it feels nice, even as I allow some heat to pass into my body.

Plus, it’s not that far away from one of the many blocked off entrances to the Labyrinth of Xyphos.

I look towards the entrance and think of many things before muttering in my mind.

As per our deal.