Staring up at the stone ceiling of his room, Orion realized that it was painted with the different phases of the moon, and that he’d never noticed before.
Have I become so accustomed to this kind of thing that I no longer notice it?
It was a small detail, and he could be forgiven for not noticing it, considering how little time he spent in this room besides sleeping, but it felt symbolic.
Even in his past life, he had been prone to forgetting his surroundings when something caught his attention, especially if that thing was related to his research.
Gaining direct access to the System, even for a brief moment, since he wasn’t its intended target, vastly exceeded any other instinct he had. It was no surprise he’d lost control, but now he had to accept that he’d risked his life for something uncertain in its outcome.
It hadn’t been a calculated gamble at all. He’d just gotten lost trying to parse through the seemingly endless amount of data that even just a brief look into the System’s processes involved. If it hadn’t been for Bart constantly healing him and Yue tearing the glasses off his face, he would have died—plain and simple.
Would it have been worth it? My ultimate goal is to understand the Truth hidden within the System, and I doubt I’ll get there by taking the safe route, but this was just plain stupid. I took no precautions, even though I should have expected something like this to happen. Every time I interacted with the System, my mind was overwhelmed by it. Why wouldn’t I assume this pattern would repeat? Or at least prepare for it.
The truth was, he’d become a bit arrogant. His recent successes with both the CC and metamagic, along with his dueling victories, made him confident in how much he’d grown. He even started planning the birth of a new faction, but he hadn’t paused to consider how to handle smaller steps like this.
Groaning, he pushed himself off the cushion, still feeling the aftereffects of his foolishness through his sore body, but at least he managed to stand up on his own. It had taken two whole days for his mother to finish brewing an elixir, and while that had been enough to heal his body completely, his metaphysical health was a different matter.
Casting [Gamma Ray] alone was already risky, but with enough effort, he managed to avoid repeating his previous mistake and prevented himself from getting a new case of mana burn. If the day had ended then, he would have been perfectly fine.
Unfortunately, his reckless handling of the SDGs exhausted his mana processing capacity. Coupled with the damage from the flood of System-related data he redirected into the CC, he nearly reached the point of no return.
It was only because his mother was now a [Divine Brewer] that he could avoid most of the consequences of his own actions. Yue certainly wouldn’t have helped him get out of the hole he’d dug for himself, not without demanding a hefty price.
The elixir she’d whipped up had been enough to fix almost every problem, so now he only had to wait a few days before he could be declared fully healthy. His body’s soreness could be solved with more potions, but that was not recommended after already taking a large dose of Light mana for healing, along with an elixir.
Apparently, toxicity could build up and cause bigger problems down the line, so it was better if he just endured it for a little while.
I can’t shake the feeling that this might be a punishment. It sounds very reasonable, and I’m sure Mom wouldn’t lie to me about this kind of thing, but the gleam of satisfaction in her eyes tells me she thinks I deserve it.
Still, not everything that happened that day was terrible. Orion had risked his life, yes, but he had also managed to recover a significant amount of data from the rank-up process, which was currently stored inside his CC and waiting for him to review.
That didn’t make it worth it, but it did make the soreness more bearable, especially since he’d kept his word and hadn’t used any mana for the past two days, all so he could study his hard-earned prize without being bothered.
The embassy’s spatial magic seemed to sense his desire and helped him cross the distance between his room and the lab he’d asked his mother to reserve for him in just a few steps, even though it should have taken him several minutes.
But that mystery wasn’t something Orion could be bothered to solve today, not when he had much bigger fish to fry.
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A glance to the side revealed that his previous lab was open and empty, and for a moment, he was tempted to go in there and reclaim his spot, but doing that would give Zinnia a pretext to complain about him again.
He doubted she would, given how she’d been lying low since his mother’s ascension to tier four, but he knew better than to bet on arrogant people’s reasonableness.
So he returned to his assigned lab and put the matter out of his mind.
Inside, he was greeted with a very familiar scene. With a large steel table, several cauldrons, ampoules, vials, and enough space to draw an enchanting circle if needed, it was nearly an exact copy of the other lab. It just needed a few scratches from his experiments, and it would feel like home.
Jumping onto the table, Orion groaned at the sensation of muscles pulling, which he knew was only a psychosomatic effect of his metaphysical tiredness, but it still felt very real.
The ruby red gem that composed the CC’s body shimmered under the artificial crystal light, looking like a deeper garnet than he was used to, but he knew it was his mind playing tricks on him.
Taking a deep breath, he focused his consciousness on it, looking for what he had gained after all his efforts.
A flood of information greeted him as soon as he found his bearings, but that only enhanced his focus, and Orion set about picking it apart.
He immediately noticed that much of it was nearly unintelligible. He hadn’t expected the entire thing to be readable, of course, and especially the last scans he received—which were what he was looking at now—had to have been heavily corrupted by the collapse of the SGDs’ enchantments.
However, as he examined it more closely, he began discovering fragments that remained sufficiently intact to give him something to work with, so Orion got to work.
The first thing he discovered was that his poor glasses had been more limited than he had initially thought. Not because his attempt at mimicking runic enchantment with computer code had failed, no, but because he kept encountering repeating data strings that showed they simply lacked access to the System needed for more than basic information.
“Of course,” he muttered. “I was only a tier zero when I made them, and I managed to improve them during the Class Ceremony, but that only increased the connection to tier one. I don't have the authorization for higher-level information.”
It was such a simple matter. He’d been confident it wouldn’t be a problem after managing to inspect people up to tier three, but apparently, that was more about their own connection to the Mana Field being more open than those in the upper ranks, who could easily shield themselves from such divinations.
With that mystery solved, Orion dived back in, if with the understanding that he probably wouldn’t find anything groundbreaking, given the constraints he’d been operating under.
Pushing more junk data aside and feeling very thankful for the huge storage capacity of the CC that easily allowed him to keep that information until he reached the next tier, where he could examine it again to confirm whether it was really useless or just encrypted beyond his understanding, he found another cluster that seemed readable.
Some fiddling revealed that it was data about the actual rank-up process, and Orion couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement.
He knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up, but this might be enough to turn the whole thing around.
Lines of numbers flashed past his eyes, and it took him a moment to understand that what he was holding was data about the sheer amount of mana that had passed through his mother during the process.
His mouth hung low as more and more kept coming, until finally, the flood petered out, and he was left to put the pieces back together.
With a sense of pure incredulity running through him, he pulled back from the CC and stared ahead. “That was... If my Attunement is enough to call mana to sustain an [Infinite Laser] for a dozen minutes, the amount that went through her could have kept such a spell active for a decade.”
The scale was truly insane. Just one instant of [Gamma Ray] was enough to drain him completely, and it was only a drop in the bucket compared to the mana his mother could now summon.
Orion had known that tier four was a big jump, but he hadn’t fully grasped what that really meant, or even more importantly, what it meant for the tiers above it.
Seraphina must be a real monster. Tier five… With that much mana in my hands, I could probably destroy the world by summoning a singularity.
It took him several minutes to regain his focus after that, but eventually, he dove back into the data.
Several hours flew by, and Orion learned a lot, from how the System stabilized the local Mana Field to how it carefully noticed the flavor imposed on it by Yue, before doing something to his mother that he was pretty sure was the class selection he remembered going through, to more useful stuff like how the level of mana somehow stayed the same despite the immense amount that was absorbed into his mother.
That showed that mana was not just a finite energy, but more like a byproduct of a fundamental law of nature. Although he lacked the depth to uncover more details, Orion was still very excited to pursue that line of research, especially when the System chimed in with its approval.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
+2 Mind
+19.500 Exp
The amount was paltry compared to the risk he had taken, and Orion probably wouldn’t do it again, even if it meant losing valuable data, but it wasn’t the entire haul.
After all, he now had many new concepts to experiment with, thanks to observing how Light mana behaved under the System’s control, and even more elements to enhance his existing spells.
Tier two is just around the corner. I’m sure this is enough to completely reshape my light spells. Especially Light Shield could—
“Young man, what have I told you about lab etiquette?!” His mother’s familiar voice boomed through the lab, and Orion jumped to his feet, standing at attention before he even realized what had happened.
“I don’t have anything actively magical right now!” He yelled back, more out of shock at her sudden appearance than any real anger.
Asteria looked at him with a raised eyebrow for a long moment, then her eyes shifted to the CC in his hands. She must have realized he was telling the truth, because she chose to drop the matter without further scolding.
“Well, it’s no good for you to stay cooped up in this musty old lab for too long while you’re still recovering,” she said, and he must have made a very funny face, because she snorted before walking up to him and gently guiding him toward the door. “Luckily for you, you have company. Now you get to explain to Elder Yue why you invited a vampire princess to the embassy.”
