Episode-948
Chapter : 1895
"This is going to hurt," she warned him. "I am going to force a massive amount of raw data directly into your brain. I am going to rewrite the way your mind processes movement. If you are weak, your mind will break. You will forget who you are. You will become a vegetable in a metal suit."
Ben didn't flinch. A slow, arrogant grin spread across his face. It was the grin of a man who had walked into an enemy base with nothing but a knife and walked out with their flag.
"I survived the Fire Fly training camps," Ben said. "I survived the wilderness. I survived your husband’s cooking. I think I can handle a little data."
Eun-ha smirked. "Good answer."
She didn't hesitate. She reached out and slammed her glowing palm against Ben’s forehead.
Whirrrrrrrr.
There was no sound of a slap. Instead, there was a high-pitched, electronic whine that seemed to come from inside their heads. It was the sound of a server room powering up, amplified a thousand times.
Ben’s body went stiff. His eyes rolled back in his head. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
For Ben, the room disappeared. The darkness of the Abyss vanished. He was no longer standing on crystal. He was floating in a sea of white, blinding light.
He saw streams of numbers. He saw geometric shapes. He saw complex blueprints flying past him at the speed of light. It wasn't magic. It wasn't the vague, mystical feeling of spirit power. It was math. It was physics. It was pure logic.
He saw the schematics of his own arms, but they were different. The clumsy runes Lloyd had carved were gone. In their place were glowing lines of light—circuits that looked like veins, nervous systems made of code.
He felt a presence in his mind—Eun-ha’s mind. It was cold, vast, and incredibly organized. She wasn't attacking him; she was organizing him. She was taking the messy, chaotic way he fought—the rage, the instinct, the pain—and filing it into neat little boxes. She was defragmenting his soul.
Logic Gate Open, a voice whispered in his head. It sounded like her, but it also sounded like a machine. Latency reduced. Optimization beginning.
He felt the connection to his metal arms change. Before, they felt like tools—heavy things he had to drag around. Now, the feeling changed. He could feel the cold air on the metal plating as if it were his own skin. He could feel the hum of the magic in the joints as if it were his own blood. The wall between flesh and steel disappeared.
The pain was terrible. It felt like someone was carving lines into his brain with a hot needle. It felt like his neurons were being stripped bare and rewired. But Ben didn't fight it. He welcomed it. He drank the knowledge in.
He saw the memories attached to the data. He saw flashes of Eun-ha’s life on Earth—laboratories, chalkboards, sleepless nights writing the code that would one day define him. He realized that this power wasn't magic she found in a book; it was her life's work. She was giving him her legacy.
You are the Uncrowned King, the voice whispered. Now, wear your crown.
In the real world, the transfer only lasted ten seconds.
Eun-ha pulled her hand back. The light faded instantly.
Ben collapsed. He hit the floor hard, his metal limbs clattering against the crystal. He gasped for air, his chest heaving. Sweat poured down his face, soaking his shirt.
Lloyd rushed forward to help him, but Eun-ha held up a hand.
"Wait," she ordered. "Let him reboot."
Ben lay on the floor for a long moment, staring up at the dark ceiling. His breathing slowed down. His shaking stopped. His eyes, which had been wild and unfocused, suddenly snapped sharp. They were clearer than Lloyd had ever seen them.
Slowly, Ben raised his right hand—his metal hand. He moved the fingers. They didn't whir. They didn't click. They moved silently, instantly, with the smooth, terrifying grace of a spider.
Ben sat up. He looked at his hand. He made a fist, and the air around it seemed to warp slightly from how fast it closed.
"It's..." Ben whispered, his voice full of wonder. "It's silent. The noise in my head... the delay... it's gone."
He looked at Eun-ha. The arrogance was back in his eyes, but it was sharper now. It wasn't the arrogance of a bully; it was the arrogance of a master. It was earned.
Chapter : 1896
"You gave me the root access," Ben said, using a term from their old world. "You didn't just patch the system; you gave me the admin keys."
"I gave you control," Eun-ha said, crossing her arms. "Lloyd can forge the metal, but you? You have to build the pathways in your mind. I gave you the map, Ben. You have to drive the car."
Ben stood up. He moved differently now. The heaviness was gone. He moved like a cat. He felt faster. He felt smarter. He felt like he had just traded a stone axe for a laser rifle.
He bowed to her again. This time, there was a smirk on his face.
"Thank you, Professor," Ben said. "I think I'm going to enjoy this war."
Eun-ha turned to Lloyd, a satisfied look on her face. "He took the update well. Most subjects vomit when they receive that much raw data."
Lloyd looked at Ben, who was testing the rotation of his wrist with a look of pure, lethal joy. Lloyd felt a sudden chill. He realized that Eun-ha hadn't just healed Ben; she had evolved him.
"You realized what you just did, right?" Lloyd asked Eun-ha, watching Ben shadowbox with invisible enemies, his metal fists moving faster than the eye could follow. "You didn't just fix his arms. You just made him the most dangerous thing on two legs."
"I know," Eun-ha said, her eyes gleaming in the dark light of the Abyss. "We're going to need him. The things coming for us... they don't have lag. Now, neither does he."
Lloyd nodded, looking between his wife and his best friend. The reunion was over. The team was assembled. And looking at Ben's new speed, Lloyd knew one thing for sure: the Fire Fly Corporation wasn't going to know what hit them.
________________________________________
The light from Eun-ha’s fingertip faded, leaving Ben standing in the center of the dark crystal hall, blinking rapidly. He looked like a man who had just woken up from a very long, very vivid dream. He stared at his own hands—the metal prosthetics that Lloyd had forged for him—as if he were seeing them for the first time.
Lloyd stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. He wasn't looking at Ben’s physical body; he was looking at the invisible data stream that was currently settling into Ben’s mind. Thanks to his link with the System and his own high-level perception, Lloyd could almost feel the information transfer. It wasn't just a spell or a memory. It was a manual. A blueprint. A complete operating system written in the language of the soul.
"Ben?" Lloyd asked, his voice low. "Status report."
Ben didn't answer immediately. He flexed his metal fingers. Usually, when Ben moved his prosthetics, there was a tiny, almost imperceptible sound—the whir of a mana-servo, the click of a rune activating. It was the sound of a machine reacting to a command. It was the sound of a split-second delay.
But this time, there was silence.
The metal fingers moved with a fluidity that was unnerving. They didn't jerk or snap into place. They flowed. It looked less like machinery and more like liquid silver obeying the laws of gravity. It looked biological.
"It’s... gone," Ben whispered, his voice thick with disbelief. He rotated his wrist, watching the plates slide over each other seamlessly. "The echo. The lag. It’s gone."
Lloyd looked at Eun-ha. The Devil Queen was watching Ben with a critical, academic eye, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked like a lead engineer watching a prototype run its first diagnostic cycle.
"What did you give him?" Lloyd asked. "I see the data structure. It looks like... logic gates? But they aren't written on stone or paper. They're written on his aura."
"I gave him the bridge," Eun-ha said simply. She walked over to Lloyd, standing close enough that he could smell the ozone scent of her power. "You’re a brilliant mechanic, Evan. You built him a Ferrari. But you were trying to drive it using a horse’s reins."
Lloyd frowned, his mind racing to catch up. "The latency issue. I knew about it. The delay between the neural impulse—the brain saying 'move'—and the magical rune interpreting that command. It’s about twelve milliseconds. In a normal fight, it’s negligible. But against a Fire Fly agent or a high-level demon?"