chapter 107
During the mana break, I managed to figure out how to turn one of the grenade launchers into a good enough net launcher. The net itself was made out of woven metal strands. It weighed quite a lot, but it retained its flexibility.
It should be good enough for an F-rank monster that didn’t have any skills.
“Sam, can you test this for me? I need to go meditate,” I yelled towards the training ground, where Sam was currently doing some testing of something.
He raised his hand and waved towards me in the affirmative. I left the net gun there and went to the meditation room. Who would have guessed that my biggest problem during these portal runs was actually handling all the mana I was getting that would allow me to improve myself.
Going into my own world, or more correctly, looking into my own soul, was a strange experience. It was like everything outside became dull, which allowed me to see my inner self.
The borders of this space weren’t finely defined. The mana that I got from kills or from manually pulling from the environment seeped in, getting clearer the closer it got to the core.
It then started to orbit my core, needing my input so I could start incorporating it and improve my own core. From there, the core started to improve the three aspects everyone had—body, mind, and soul.
Right now, I was fully focusing on my mind, as that was increasing my capabilities the most. The reason for that is that basically all my affinities used my mind aspect quite a lot.
This is why I was able to get so many more bonded AIs, even though most of them didn't count as full bonds.
Eventually, the ship started to move, so I knew we were heading towards the next portal location. Two droids came to guide me as I walked while still meditating on my core. There was another influx of mana that didn't stop.
The sound of my footsteps changed from a metal floor to a more natural one. There were also some sounds of battle somewhere distant. None of that mattered, because if I stopped for a moment, the mana surrounding my core would overfill, starting to disperse as it got too far away from my core.
Time lost its meaning until there was another huge flood that I could barely keep up with. Some of it slipped away, but I could do nothing about it. The rush of mana wasn’t too long, after which I continued to process what I had as fast as possible.
During all of this, one thing that was constant was the feedback I was getting from my bonds. Even if it was most muted, I was getting flashes, especially when their emotional processes were heightened.
This helped my understanding of my mechanist affinity. Inside my core, there were six things that I could improve. It was easy to divert mana into my aspects. With my affinities, I constantly ran a stream of mana through them, but they barely accepted anything. But now the mechanist affinity drank greedily each drop of mana that passed through it.
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Understanding what my mechanist affinity influenced in my creations helped me figure out what I was missing to advance it. It seems that this affinity liked making stuff—especially stuff that could improve over time—and the way I had made my AI’s was something that really resonated well with it.
This helped me discover that there was no reason for me to have wasted some of the mana that had slipped away. It seems that only focusing on one aspect limited how much mana I could absorb, as improving two things helped get rid of the excess mana faster.
When there was another rush of mana, not only did I focus it on my mind aspect and mechanist affinity, for a short while, I also needed to channel it into my body aspect so none of it would go to waste.
That made me quite happy, but it taxed my mind quite a lot. With every new portal, my mind got more tired until it was getting hard to channel mana without it losing its shape and starting to spill everywhere.
Eventually, it seemed that it wasn’t strong enough to channel my mana, as all of it missed the mind aspect. Strangely enough, I was still able to channel it into the other aspects and my mechanist affinity.
Then all the streams were disrupted as a pulse was sent out from the part of my core that represented my mind aspect.
Oh, I finally managed to rank it up. Blackness came immediately after that thought.
“Captain, captain, are you awake?” I heard Lola’s voice, my eyes opening to the bright surroundings.
“Yes, I think so. What happened?”
“Pretty sure you overdid it. It seems like we have another limitation for how many portals we can run. We are already inside the city and soon will be in the base.”
Looking inside myself, I did find that my mind aspect had ranked up. Now, when I looked inside me, one part of my core was a deeper colour than the rest. Another thing I realised was that now I had even more room for bonds, which I will need to fill as soon as possible, so that I could expand that part of me even more.
Lola knocked on my head, which kind of hurt.
“Stop that. Focus on having a rest; we aren’t in that much of a hurry.”
Looking into her eyes, I knew that she was serious and right. There’s no point in pushing myself that hard. What if I had messed something up? Yeah, definitely needed to take more breaks, but I have been trying to do that for quite a while now, and it was not sticking.
“Lola, I might need some more active help in taking some breaks, but I don’t know how, as my mind always seems to start figuring out another problem.”
She continued to work, fixing one of the water combat drones. Looking around, there were also a lot of materials in different containers.
“Where did all those come from?”
She stopped what she was doing, turned fully towards me, and stared me in the eye.
“You do remember that you were still constantly using your looting ability, right? The ship is filled almost to the brim with materials.”
I think my dead-faced blinking clued her in that I had no idea that I had kept up properly, looting everything. How did I even manage that?
“You know what, you can be my assistant for a while. You were never good at the biological side of things, so keeping up with me will occupy your mind enough that it won’t wander.”
“Sure, that’s a good idea. But right now I think resting is the thing to do. But please, speak to me about what you are currently doing.”
“That’s good enough, I guess. Currently, I’m fixing one of the drones that got damaged during a portal raid. After that, I have a lot of samples to test, and then I will continue with the development of a new bio-cybernetic neural net prototype.”
That perked me up a bit. “Estimated properties?”
“Too early to tell exactly, but pretty sure it will be able to handle more power and more complex signals. It should be really good as a substitute for our current wiring. This should give our bodies an even quicker response time with more power delivery.”
She sent me over some of the data on this bio-cybernetic neural net. She was right; while I could understand what it would do and how it was achieving it, how to actually make something like this and improve it was outside my skill set.
“How is this thing not burning up? None of the materials we have should be able to handle this load.”
All she did was point towards the large amount of materials that we had collected inside the portals. Oh, that makes sense.
“Looks like we won’t only be upgrading our bodies but the ship’s as well, if the predictions are anywhere close to reality. We are going to need to clear a lot more portals, it seems.”
This time, she flicked me on my head.
“Fine, I won’t think about it for a while.”