Chapter 500

Matt was mid-meditation when Max’s ship entered the Delta Nine Axim system, but despite that he still noticed the transfer. As connected to space as he was, he wasn’t too surprised. He was, however, thoroughly impressed.

The Tier 17 black hole the system was named after dominated reality.

Its presence warped everything around it in large and small ways, all of which he could feel through his Domain. More than that, the black hole called to him. Or rather, his Intent.

It beckoned him in a way no other celestial body ever had.

As locked into his meditation as he was, they were docking by the time he was able to carefully extract himself from the stretching exercise, but he was pretty sure that was Max’s intention in the first place. He’d already checked their estimated arrival timing, and the exercise hadn’t been longer than planned, which meant their ship had been faster.

He debated making a comment about that but held himself back. He appreciated Max and her assistance, but he wasn’t exactly happy with her at the moment. While recovering, he’d spent dedicated time reviewing his Quill memories and interactions. He wanted to make sure nothing could catch him off guard and was glad he did.

Matt didn’t love the fact he’d told Max his Talent while under the influence of having his name removed, but he’d been well prepared for that eventuality. That wasn’t what really bothered him.

It was how eager she'd been.

It hadn’t even registered to Quill, who was simply happy to have someone to brag at, but it bothered Matt. He couldn't say what he’d expected her reaction to be, but he wasn’t pleased with the result.

In fact, he’d been meaning to bring it up with her throughout their journey between any of their preparatory sessions. He’d never been able to find what felt like the right time. There was always something that came up.

Like the black hole.

Matt checked how much time it would take before they could exit the ship into the space station proper as they waited for permission to land. He wanted to address the situation before they went inside and lost their privacy, but right before he could say anything, Max did so instead.

“Matt, I meant every word I said to Quill. I won’t apologize for any of that.” Her words were firm and direct, without a sliver of compassion or mercy. “I may have been speaking to Quill and addressing them personally, but I meant every word for both him and yourself.”

Before he could respond, she continued with a softer, more neutral expression, though it was far from gentle. “However, that doesn't mean I said everything I wanted to say. Quill is, well, I bet I don’t have to explain to you the ways that he is only a fraction of your totality, but he didn’t need to hear this, you do.”

Max turned to face him, causing him to do the same as she said. “I’m sorry.”

Of all the things she could have said, he wasn’t expecting that. Which maybe he should have expected? “Sorry about… what, exactly?”

“I’m sorry that you have the Talent you do.”

“You have to know this is just making me more confused.”

“More confusion means you’ll think about this more.” Her eyes met his with piercing intensity, the little flickers of light behind her gaze hinting at some grand picture he couldn’t even begin to understand. “I’m sorry that, due to something completely out of your control, you’ve had to spend your whole life looking over your shoulder for how people might use you, might exploit you, might hurt you. Nobody deserves that. You have, to be absolutely clear, done positively wonderful things with it, both in terms of managing fear, paranoia, and sheer accomplishments. That’s what defines you as an Ascender. But I am sorry that you need to live with that fear.”

Matt worked his jaw as he considered his answer. It was… almost exactly what he wanted before he’d brought the topic up. He’d thought he’d done a better job controlling his micro expressions during their trip, but he also knew that was only one of her methods of reading people's minds.

“Did you really wait for me to nearly bring it up before doing it yourself?” Max had already started nodding before he finished, so he continued, “You couldn’t have brought it up earlier?”

Max never broke eye contact as she tapped and opened the door, letting them into space directly instead of the space station he expected to enter.

“I could have, but would that have solved anything?”

“And what did doing it this way solve?” Matt tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Max dashed it as she floated out into space. “Maybe nothing. Maybe something. We'll have to see.”

Matt followed her after a moment to forcefully let go of his irritation. For all that Max was a foreign Ascender, she was also a friend. Additionally, while he could push, if she didn’t want to address the why’s, he had no way to make her.

He had something far more interesting to inspect.

A settled black hole.

Delta Nine Axim wasn’t the largest, or smallest, Tiered black hole he’d ever seen, but it was unquestioningly the first settled one he came across.

The space station was simultaneously miniscule and massive.

It was tiny in front of the backdrop of a celestial body like Delta Nine Axim, but massive in comparison to most space stations. Like an inverted drop of water, the top layers were the largest and kept well outside the event horizon. The bottom half of the space station stretched downward, growing narrower as its lower quarter dipped deep inside the event horizon and beyond where it vanished from sight.

While Matt's vision couldn’t see it, his spiritual sense had no problems feeling the smaller mirror teardrop that housed the true space station. Down below the event horizon where the only time that mattered was a person's subjective experience.

Delta Nine Axim hadn’t earned its nickname as The Tomb for no reason.

If someone went deep enough, an hour of their time could be decades or even centuries at the top for everyone else.

Matt found the space station inspiring. He’d once considered turning his Concept’s white hole image into the heart of his Intent’s image, copying Minkalla. While his Domain had taken another path, seeing the space station harness a black hole's properties and power brought up the old memories.

Instead of trying to sense the black hole, he let himself take a moment to reminisce.

In another life, he could easily see himself with such an Intent. It wouldn’t have been a bad Intent by any means. There was even a world where his aspect followed that same trend, also tapping into his white hole and its Endless power. It just wasn’t this one and he was okay with that.

When he’d finished, Matt pushed aside all of his other distracting thoughts and focused on the black hole with his Intent, trying to harmonize with it. Once he’d familiarized with the local celestial body and thought he understood it, he brought out his Concept.

Before he created his Meld, with his Concept being the total opposite of the black hole, its existence in the same real space would have led to a violent clash between Domain and reality. It would have been a fight for dominance. However, he’d already taken the critical step to unify the opposites, and so he faced zero rejection.

Having that confirmed was a welcome affirmation of his previous hard work, and he took a moment to savor it.

Matt had originally only intended to harmonize his Domain with the new black hole for a moment to get familiar. It was something he’d done dozens of times, but as he was doing so, he realized just how different this black hole was from all of the others he’d seen.

He hadn’t consciously registered it at first, but Delta Nine Axim, despite only being Tier 17, was the highest Tier black hole he’d encountered. It wasn’t all too different from any other black hole he’d encountered physically, but his Domain noticed a… liveliness about the black hole he couldn’t quite place.

That would have been interesting but understandable. Except it wasn’t either his Concept or Intent that noticed the oddity. It was his Meld.

Matt tried to follow that feeling and sensed the world through its unique perspective. He would have loved to activate it and get a proper experience, but he held himself back. He didn’t want to cause trouble before even getting inside.

His restraint made his investigation take longer, but didn’t hinder it as the answer wasn’t hidden.

Delta Nine Axim was an old black hole in an already very old universe.

From his study, Matt didn’t think Delta Nine Axim was ‘saw the birth of this universe old’, but he was confident it was old enough to have talked with such black holes in their final eons. Old didn’t begin to describe how long it had drifted throughout the local universe as it carved a path of destruction and rebirth.

Thanks to Delta Nine Axim’s vigorous core moving essence around its entire mass, random units of essence were occasionally spat from the event horizon as the black hole swallowed long dead stars and whatever remained in their orbit. That essence would then go on to multiply as it reached another celestial body and started the cycle over in a slightly different manner.

Something it would continue to do… forever. Delta Nine Axim was over Tier 15, and therefore immortal unless someone deliberately destroyed its cultivation core.

Matt wished anyone but strong Tier 45’s good luck in their attempts to reach that deep. Even he wouldn’t risk getting close enough to a Tier 17 black hole's singularity so that he could interact with its cultivation core, until he was ready and able to ascend should something inevitably go wrong.

In total, it only took him a few moments to retract his senses, but Max was waiting with a small grin.

Being helpful, she explained without him needing to ask. “There was a bet on how long it would take you to pick up on The Tomb's age. Maya won, having bet the lowest time, if you care to know.”

Matt didn’t mind. He even sent the Republic Ascender a congratulatory private message, obliquely trying to see if she got anything good in her victory. When he learned her items were all too high of a Tier, he let it go. His time was much better spent getting ready to start digging in his own head.

He was about to get them back on topic when they entered the space station, where his plans were interrupted by the delegation that was waiting for them. Most of them were in the lower immortal Tiers, but they all had a single unifying feature. They all wore at least one piece of deep burgundy clothing; be it a sash, armband, or a pinned-on ribbon.

Max stepped forward, making introductions with a restrained smile towards the silent group. “Chosen Titan, the Silent. The Silent, Chosen Titan. They are a branch of the Custodians of Delta Nine Axim, and handle much of the more delicate deep retrieval work. They also happen to be fans of yours. You helped a lot of their residents leave of their own volition, which is pretty rare for them.”

Matt had a million questions, but he didn’t let any of that show as he gave the most inoffensive answer he could. “I’m always happy to spread happiness.”

He didn’t expect one of the men to step forward and speak, given their name, but after the first person did, several others followed suit.

Most just offered a small thanks or other minor quick conversation, but it wasn’t until they’d dispersed into the bustling crowds that Max explained what had happened as they walked deeper into the station.

“The Silent are a bunch of particulars who work at the Plunge because they like the ability to dip below whenever they want. I’ve talked to a few who have been dark side for thousands of subjective years. To give you some context in how long that’s in real time… Those same people have been down there since before the Empire’s changes in leadership by a long margin, but to them… it's only been a few thousand years. The ones we met were the social types who volunteer for the human work. There are other groups, but by their nature we won’t be meeting any of them.”

Matt only needed to raise an eyebrow for her to continue.

“The Plunge—” Max read his expression as she pivoted to explain without missing a beat. “Try not to use the other name here, it can offend some people. Use that or the official name if you don’t want to undo all of your goodwill that your aura potions garnered. But yes, those potions gave a portion of the entombed the chance for immortality they were so desperately waiting for. Even for people who prefer solitude, it weighs on you to only have bodies leave your care. Knowing it's the expected outcome for everyone who tries to buy more time here only helps until a point. Normally, the only people they like are the ones who come to ascend locally, offering the peak Tier 14s at a chance. Even though we have more high Tiers than you guys in the Empire, ascensions aren’t exactly road side vegetables.”

That revelation and its implications kept him busy as they walked through the more open upper layers of the space station, but he still scanned his surroundings as they walked.

The uppermost three floors of the space station were basically a free-for-all for public companies to do as they pleased, but everything deeper was controlled. The fourth through sixth floors were rented out to anyone who could pay for access to the unique environment near, but not inside, the event horizon. However, everything below that was owned by the Corporations directly, which included access to the central shaft and therefore the desirable portion of the space station.

That was their destination, along with everyone else's. However, with Max, the initial checkpoints were breezed through. It didn’t last long, but he didn’t mind as it gave him the opportunity to scan the portion of the station that dipped below the event horizon.

Forged entirely of Tier 40 metals, the space station was a grand undertaking built to protect everyone inside from the crushing effects of the black hole's gravity without disrupting the phenomena that made the celestial body so desirable in the first place. It was a work of art from both an artistic and crafting aspect, the likes of which nearly caught his professional interest. That was until he remembered who ordered the original construction and helped make it, solidifying themselves in Corporation history.

Just below the event horizon, the same pattern repeated itself, with the top floors rented out to civilians who could pay. A small portion were mortals trying to stretch their lifespan limits, but most were immortals who wanted to pass time faster than normal.

They bypassed all checks by virtue of flying into the central shaft directly, where Matt got a good look down at the other bulbous end of the space station that completed a lopsided hourglass. The deep storage complex meant to house things too volatile to store around people and too valuable to destroy.

Matt would love to spend a few months exploring, but he didn’t even bother scanning with his spiritual sense. He could feel the shielding that was supposed to prevent people from doing exactly that parting around Max, but refrained. He saw no reason to annoy the Tier 47 watching them any more than their flight down the central shaft certainly had.

Instead of the room they were supposed to end up in, a gentle yet irresistible force redirected them deeper.

Matt only needed a single look to recognize their guide, and it actually managed to relieve him. It was Delphi, the Corporations’ resident [AI] expert. She was like Harper in more than a few ways. The head of Corporations Intelligence was secretive, and with a build entirely dominated by a massively powerful Talent-granted skill.

While her exact skill set was highly secret, she’d definitely gotten her signature skill Innately with her Tier 1 Talent, possibly with some kind of reservation-type modifier to it, given she’d never given any signs she was actively feeding it tons of mana.

Not that absence of evidence was any kind of signifier. Matt had discussions with Luna as to whether he should try passing off his own mana regeneration as making skills into reservation variants, so he knew it was at least theoretically possible to hide consistent mana expenditure.

No matter how she did it, what was undeniable was just how much she was the [AI] expert. She was also singlehandedly responsible for turning subconscious integration from a ludicrously niche procedure that only the absolute craziest people would attempt, into a very niche procedure that only crazy people would attempt.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Matt was self aware enough to know most people weren’t comfortable integrating a skill with their minds, but it was actually a lot safer than having his name removed. In raw numbers, there were a few hundred million people who’d integrated their [AI] into their subconscious across the Great Powers. It wasn’t common by any stretch, but it wasn’t unheard of either.

Delphi gave him a small barely perceptible nod before she looked at Max with a much harder gaze. “You know you aren’t supposed to fly down the central shaft. Protocols exist for a reason.”

Max dug a big toe into the ground and tried her best to look cute, but Delphi was having none of it. Her expression never changed as she watched the show without interrupting.

When the act was done, she delivered Max’s punishment without a hint of remorse. “That was your third warning, and so now you owe me three missions. Eventually, the price will get high enough that even you will have to stop showing off.”

Turning to face him, she continued, “Chosen Titan. How pleasant to see you. I hear you are preparing to integrate your mind with your [AI] and I like to take the time to welcome a new traveler upon this path whenever I can. Are there any questions you still have? I trust that Cosmind’s consultation has assuaged you of most concerns, but it is my habit not to assume about such things. Likewise, if you have any questions about the process, please feel free to ask me directly or reach out to one of my assistants if that makes you more comfortable. One of them was even in the same cycle of Minkalla as you, if familiarity helps.”

Matt was going to politely decline when the last words caught him off guard. “I’d be happy to meet whoever it is. Assuming they don’t hate me or something like that.”

Delphi shared with him the name, Jullian Escgo, who Matt actually remembered from the fourth floor, where he’d traded Genesis Energy in exchange for future promises. The Realm suddenly felt very small inside the black hole, but the Tier 47 was busy with her own work and saw them off after Max pilfered a few tools she insisted she needed.

Most of them looked like construction equipment, which didn’t excite him, but he didn’t try to stop her either.

When they were firmly sequestered in Max’s lab, he finally got something in the general shape of an answer. “I saw when you compared Delphi to Harper. I get the surface level similarities, but philosophically? Despite being a little reserved, she’s closer to Rusty than Harper. Care to guess why?”

Matt didn’t need to be a genius to understand what she was getting at. “You mean Delphi treats people who have their [AI] integrated with their subconscious the same way Rusty treats those who have their body modified thanks to Self Identify? So everyone who falls under her umbrella is one of her own people until proven otherwise? Is that why she actually spoke to me? I’m one of hers now, or so close to it that there isn't a difference?”

“On the credit. Well done. Or mostly so. She’d have talked to you no matter what, given your own status, but she was far more welcoming than she would have been otherwise. Honestly, I really didn’t expect her to catch us, but it's a good thing she did. We are going to need these.”

Matt jerked away from the drill that nearly took out one of his eyes as he asked. “I saw you pick them up, what are they and why do we need them in particular?”

Max stabbed him faster than he could react. Her improvised weapon hit a rib, where it skittered off the baseline armor instead of penetrating deeper. It did manage to take a line of his flesh with it earning her a glare.

“I’m not ruining my tools getting through your new armor. Yeah, don’t think I didn’t see you adjusting your weight. It's really obvious by the fact my ship burned way more mana than I expected to get us here, because someone wasn’t volunteering to take out their super fast personal ship.” Matt was going to ask how she knew about Lila’s gift, but she continued before he could. “You are really going to need to get a lot better at your gravity manipulation if you want it to be subtle and hide it.”

“I’m hardly the only person to weigh a lot.”

“Matthew, I can give you the Cosmind Guarantee that you are the only person in the entire realm with even a drop of neutronium inside your body. Oh by the way, when the news breaks, and the first time you get in any serious fight it will be obvious, Moe is going to be pissed.” Instead of looking upset, Max grinned and bounced in her seat. “It will be soooo great! He was actually thinking about doing something similar to what you did, except not at all because he's stupid. He wanted to use an entire ingot of neutronium to coat his bones like some kind of idiot before he settled on his current weapon.”

Matt couldn't imagine trying to move with that much weight, let alone the thought of trying to regrow that much metal should it be damaged. He was already stronger than his physical cultivation peers, and the corner of a single ingot was enough to be annoying.

Using the entire bar? That was lunacy, even for Moe, unless he wanted to be running a full suite of buffs all the time just so he was strong enough to move his own skeleton.

As they chatted, Max finished getting her room ready. He wanted to help, but he let her prepare her workshop as he sat in the chair with heavy manacles ready to hold him in place. Holding in his inner shudder, he strapped himself in before settling into a meditative state.

By the time Max was ready, so was he.

“Want me to preserve the hair or anything?”

Matt wanted to turn his head to look at Max, but his head was locked in place with a Tier 40 clamp attached directly to his skull, and he couldn’t even wiggle if he wanted to.

“I’ll just regrow it all anyway. Just save the skull so I don’t have to regrow the neutronium JR worked so hard to install.”

As Max worked, she complained with equal vigor, “And you expect me to do all of this work but you won’t explain this armor? Come on, it's not even armor. What the fuck is this, Matt? Seriously, this shit is wild. Armor isn’t even the right word with how tied into you it is. It's more like a full body augmentation. Yeah augment. I'd call it that instead of armor. Way cooler.”

When Matt still refused to respond, she continued unbothered, “Fine, even if you won't tell me, I’m going to pester the shit out of JR just because I can. How dare he make something like this for you and not even pull a few of my names out for training purposes. It's unfair. I’m going to buy out one of his so-called ‘hidden companies’ and bankrupt it just because I can.”

The moment he heard the idea, he couldn’t help but offer a way to make it hurt worse. “You should socialize the business. That would piss him off so much more.”

Max didn’t even blink. “Please. I have standards.”

A moment later, she followed that up, “Besides. It’s way easier to bankrupt it and frame it as his fault anyway. It was his business after all.”

“But wouldn’t you have to buy it in the first place?”

That question finally got Max to set down what she was doing to give him a look of deep pity before she moved on.

Two hours of idle banter later, Max was ready. Matt wasn’t quite so sure, but he wasn’t about to back down.

Logically, he understood what they were doing was orders of magnitude safer than what JR had been doing to his name, but he found that hard to believe. They were too close to his brain, and by necessity he couldn’t have [Regeneration] running while they worked.

Thinking about it more, he realized that while he probably could have it running, it would simply both add a lot of unnecessary pain and horribly complicate the procedure. That was the last thing he needed right now.

They started by building the temporary interface that would link his [AI] inside his spirit with his mind. The way they managed it was almost the inverse of what he’d done at a Tier 3.

Having been prepared, Matt synced and offloaded his now heavily modified [AI] into the massive system node he was within. And technically, a part of. It was similar to the AI chip he’d had inserted into his neck so many centuries ago, but instead of inserting a small piece of cybernetics into his body, he was effectively inserting his body into an absolutely massive piece of cybernetics. As far as his spirit was concerned, the enormous and intimidating array of arcing mana, pointy metal bits, and massive computation crystals, like the one as big as his torso embedded in the metal directly above his forehead, was just as much a part of him as his arms.

Or at least, it would be if he stayed plugged into the device for a few centuries. They didn’t need to go that far. The temporary blending of where his spirit was filled an important role as Matt carefully maneuvered his AI into the brand new skill slot that he could sense opening up in the device.

The initial transfer to the device was a lengthy process, even by the standards of skill migration. Not only was every partial step carefully monitored and fraught with quadruple checking a whole host of technical and medical readings, Matt’s [AI] was a frightfully unwieldy and monstrous behemoth. Even if he set aside the amount of regular modifications centuries of heavy and continuous usage had done to the skill structure, he’d spent an absolutely absurd amount of time since his war ended merging so, so many dedicated auxiliary skills into his [AI].

[Heads-Up Display] was at least a commonly merged skill. It was less common to merge into [AI] in the current Realm with the advancements in AI software, but it was something sane people did for a variety of reasons. He basically required it for the skills ability to help parse data for the users. [Storage] and [Library] were his following two. Very few people chose to absorb, let alone merge both into their [AI] but he’d never considered skipping either one. He then absorbed and merged the dozen [Simulate]-type skills rounding out the normal skill mergers.

[Data Link] was actually needed for the transfer process, but only because [Encrypt] would interfere with it. He’d managed to pry a [Cracked Decrypt] out of Frederic’s collection, which could reverse its functions to serve as an appropriate work around but that summed up the game he’d been forced to play as he built his ideal [AI].

And those were just the start. [Index] and [Pattern Recognition] added a decent amount of processing speed for a negligible mana cost. [Record] and [Antenna] were mostly made redundant thanks to technology, but their frameworks weren’t so replaceable for him. [Calculator] and [Abacus] was another amusing pair, the two skills just different enough to make it worthwhile to get them both. [Mental Map], [Ruler], and [Compass] to fill out spatial logic - he had wanted to tie in [Home]. However the lack of known modification patterns combined with its own insanely complicated skill structure made it kind of inadvisable and after some rudimentary testing, he’d scrapped the idea.

He’d learned his lesson after ruining three [Barrage] skill shards in his pursuit of modifying it into [Multithreading]. Which he had, he was proud to say, managed to make on the fourth try. Max had been surprised he’d gotten it that quickly, given it was infamously finicky. Though she had confessed she’d gotten it first try during her own attempt.

Max had other ideas for skills he could try to tie into his [AI], but Matt could recognize when he was hitting his upper limits, and right now he was very glad he hadn’t kept going. True to her word, once Max had been filled in on his Talent, she’d managed to make a few last minute adjustments to maximize performance at arbitrarily high mana rates.

That was ultimately their goal: get his [AI] into a state that it could properly utilize any amount of mana he threw at it. Then, once integrated into his subconscious, he could all but directly spend mana to augment his thoughts.

Max spent four months installing temporary connectors to various portions of his brain. As intrusive as they were, they would allow them to monitor the integration and correct any mistakes before they became possibly permanent problems.

The final step was the easiest and the hardest. Max only had one job, and it was the easiest of the day. She took the Spark of Intelligence and shook the bottle, as if listening for a rattling sound. There was none, but the moment he started moving his [AI] back from his temporary cybernetically-added skill slot back into his regular spirit, the transformation happened.

Light surged through the room, currents of mana arced out of the crystal like a blooming flower. They tethered themselves into Matt’s mind and into his skill, drawing himself and the machine tighter. Closer. A presence awoke, something not quite human, not quite monster, but that could best be described as a Thought Elemental.

It was an intrinsically curious entity. A novel being that Matt had both never seen before but was simultaneously intimately familiar with.

It regarded him questioningly, staring at him both physically and through his spirit, and Matt beckoned it closer. It wasn’t able to do anything but question. It could never know, not truly. It was the question with no answer. For that, it needed Matt. It was thought without form, a mind without a body.

Which made it perfectly suited to be his symbiotic mind.

And then, Max erased the bottle she was holding, and with a light puff of breath, blew the Spark of Intelligence it held into the center of the Thought Elemental.

It erupted into beautiful trills, its flowery body jumping and shining as though it was suddenly made of stardust. It looked at Matt all the more clearly, and he could almost feel its mind coalesce into… something. Still incomplete, but far more impressive than it had any right to be.

He felt like it was interrogating the world with far more intention than it had a mere moment before. It started asking new questions with every passing moment instead of the same ones over and over with only subtle variations.

Around him, Matt felt time pulling on him. This step was the one which made the entire procedure happen next to a black hole. Thought Elementals couldn’t live very long. Thoughts were inherently fleeting things, appearing and forever vanishing in less than the blink of an eye.

The same way as the longer a thought lingered, the stronger it could become. The longer the Thought Elemental existed, the more information it could gain from the world around it. Information from the universe and the Realm poured into the black hole beneath them, and passed through the elemental, letting it learn and grow.

There was a persistent ‘rumor’ that someone had once had an Inspiration during this stage of integration. From the gleam in Max's eye when she’d relayed the story, she at least wanted him to think it was about her, but he had verified the rumor was older than she was. According to the legend, the resulting flood of essence, carried knowledge from the Realm itself and had empowered their Thought Elemental to outright unheard-of levels of power. Some rumors went further, implying it had Awakened it, possibly granting it a Domain, or possibly resulting in it becoming outright sapient, depending on the exact version of the story being told.

No such miracle happened with Matt. He wasn’t Wun and hadn’t planned to rely on chance. Instead, he fed the hungry little thing as much knowledge as he could, filling the room with Thought and Knowledge mana.

As he fed it with an endless stream, he could almost sense it croon as it grew and matured at an ever accelerating rate.

Then, the flower finished blooming, and it collapsed in on itself, becoming a little seed. The sudden loss of the glory of the Thought Elemental and the brilliance of the mana momentarily left Matt feeling cold, until the seed became his [AI] skill slotting back into his spirit where it became a seedling, then a sprout.

A shiver passed through Matt’s spirit, and things became a little fuzzy. But the skill, once planted in his Innate skill slot, sprouted and dispersed. Roots spread through his entire being, from his heart and bones to his skin. Then it pooled on his skin and dripped down him like molten, frozen honey. The slow unnerving sensation was accompanied by his mouth producing far too much saliva that tasted like pickled cherries.

Then, all at once, everything vanished and Matt felt the world around him snap into its normal clarity. Or was it normal clarity? Everything looked how he remembered it, but now it all just seemed so… small. Like he’d doubled in size and could do so again by standing up. The skill was now a blossoming plant of indeterminate genus, its roots spread throughout his spirit, and its stem stretching into… Matt’s own perspective, the skill somehow stretching directly into his own spiritual proprioception and fuzzing out of perception.

Matt wanted to stretch. He just needed to… flex a little. It took all of his willpower, but he resisted the impulse until Max gave him the go-ahead. It was an agonizingly long process as the metal and crystal disconnected and withdrew from his head and brain that left his spirit achy in a manner he wasn’t eager to repeat.

In its place, dozens of more flexible arms came down and encased the back of Matt’s head like a more traditional helmet. It only probed his brain with mana as it started massaging everything into place.

“Okay. Let's start from the top with the first drill. Simple stuff. Your name. Begin.”

Before his experience with JR, he wouldn’t have put any weight on the reply, but now he had a much better understanding of himself and his name.

With confidence he stated. “Matthew Moore né Alexander.”

“Good. Now onto drill two. Slightly more complicated: 6,936x52? Begin.”

Matt barely had to think. “360,672.”

“Prime factors of 19,793,959? Begin.”

“6,703 and 2,953.”

“What is the leading cause of fatalities outside of delving statistics inside each of the Great Powers? Begin.”

“Solve the following shifted cipher. Your only hint is that it's five words without clear spaces indicated. Begin.”

The questions only grew harder as he answered the previous one, but each question was a test of his cognitive skills as they mapped out his brain. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Once they’d identified every sector, they started merging the two halves.

Matt found it easier than the reports indicated, but he wasn’t that surprised, though he was grateful. He’d been prepared to do the modifications in his core, but why would he? Few other people had flexible innate skills slots, but he did. Being that much closer to the true center of his spirit made everything easier, and he wouldn’t forfeit that.

The reduction in difficulty didn’t make Matt any more comfortable as they checked and smoothed the integration of his new [AI] into his brain and mind. After each connection, they repeated all of the drills and tests, growing their complexity with each repetition before moving onto the next, undoing any step if either of them weren’t happy with the result. With two perfectionists, the results were exceptional.

At one point he sensed Delphi checking in on them, but she didn’t probe or linger after doing the equivalent of listening outside the door. He’d only interacted with her once, but he found the royal equivalent a surprisingly considerate person, unlike her feathered leader.

Matt didn’t let himself linger on the brief interruption any more than she had.

He was far too busy.

“Solve this two thousand bit cipher at least nine ways. Begin.”

"Three nanoseconds. Good."

“Translate data set 143. It has seventy eight books from dead or fictional languages. I want them converted into all eight current Great Powers’ languages. Keep authorial intent as the highest priority during the translation. Begin.”

“Twenty milliseconds and 98.71% accuracy.” She directed the machine to adjust a couple of its probes, “Acceptable, but I think we can do better. Give me a moment to make some tweaks, and let’s try again with data set 149. Annnnd begin.”

“Calculate the economic impacts that would occur if a new Tier 0 healing skill was created and widely distributed. Use data set 8163c. Give me at least four reports based on the skill's difficulty curve, starting from a middling level and moving upward. Begin.”

Matt barely even felt his [AI] giving him assistance. It was just… how he thought now. The answers came quickly and easily, flashes of insight arrived spontaneously. Now instead of focusing, he simply directed a touch of mana to the problem like it was second nature. He barely even realized what he was doing until he stopped and considered it, like grabbing an object out of the air.

Max had described the process as turning a skill into a talent, turning [Assistative Intelligence] into [Actual Insight]. Into something more like an Innate Understanding Talent, where things just made sense, where things just worked. But whether because that description undersold it, or because of how much mana he was putting towards the project, or maybe because of the Spark of Intelligence, it seemed like both so much more and so much less.

Matt felt practically omniscient. He could just look at a thing and instantly know practically everything about it. He could glance at a piece of paneling and simply be aware of its material, its construction technique, the maintenance it had experienced, who had bumped into it recently, the exact sound it would make when struck in any particular way.

He understood everything.

If he wanted to connect to a network, no longer did he need to mentally scroll through [AI] menus and select the options he wanted. He could simply think about what he wanted the appliance or system to do, and it would happen. Or, he could take a mental step deeper and personally wade into the protocols and mana exchanges and enchantments that received his instructions, speaking the language of the machine as fluently as the one he grew up speaking.

Or he could do both. Or neither.

Matt could surprise himself now, which was itself a bit of a surprise. Several times, he’d gone to access an interface he thought he’d understood, only to find that he had already made a number of adjustments he didn’t know were even possible, completely redesigning the UI in a way that he had never considered, but in retrospect made total sense. In true retrospect, he could even know the exact steps taken to redesign the UI as well as how he had done it, just… another memory, tucked away in his mind as though it had always been there, and just as easy to access as literally anything else.

And then there were the ideas. Everywhere he looked, he could see things that he could change, that he could improve. Fortunately, those ideas also came with the knowledge as to why they were that way already, and why he shouldn’t mess with things that other people had made. Especially not ones with purposes that didn’t match what Matt would want out of them.

But when it came to his own stuff, well…

He’d already thought of a dozen ways to improve his sword before and after he replaced its core material with the rest of his neutronium ingot. A hundred optimizations for his workshop. A thousand tools that he should get, including some made by people he’d never met before.

Ten thousand ways he could pester Aster.

A million new ways to show Liz exactly how much he loved her.

It was, Matt knew, time to go home.