Chapter 51

  Forced Update

  I was helpless to move or change my fate.

  No sooner had I understood the fact this Royal Seal being placed on me would be the equivalent of a countrywide electronic tracking bracelet, than I could already feel the odd system interacting with my body and all but forcefully binding itself into my own personal system.

  Icy cold chills ran down my body, as I felt the cold instruments and unique Skills of this old man, this Royal Seal Master forcefully grabbing hold of my system interface and all but forcing a new section to appear within my interface.

  There was a slight pressure, as a cold glowing metallic fluid began to enter my bloodstream. My mind instantly saw it as some kind of Metal magic, at least that is what I assumed, a strong form of Metal magic wrapped in a coating of blue Water magic that made it so the dark mass could enter my body and forcibly interact with my blood.

  “First we will begin by opening up the number of Seals your body can hold. For the full manifestation of this seal to take hold, you will need to open up five Seal Slots, but do not worry it will still be effective if you open one. That said, you must take this—” The Royal Seal Master began, but my mind blanked on his words as a burning hot pain began to tear its way through my body. Feeling such intense pain, I instinctively began healing with my own Rejuvenation Healing.

  Sizzle.

  Almost immediately the blood in my body began to burn away, only to be re-healed by my own efforts. Only now did I realize that this was not just marking of some kind, but it was a test.

  “Yes, very good,” the old crazy Seal Master stated, as he continued to hold my right arm permanently still with his right hand, while his left hand began flipping through lenses, ultimately stopping on a green lens, that he used to stare at me.

  This crazy bastard, not only was he holding me still with some form of earth magic grip, but he was using no less than two forms of magic within my body, metal and water. Before I could focus too intensely on the seal being forcefully injected into my body, he spoke.

  “This is good. Now cycle as many Healing related Skills as you can muster at this time,” the old man declared while staring at my arm like it was some form of rare gemstone being unearthed for the very first time and needing just a bit of polishing. For a moment I wanted to punch him, but I realized that he had that stone Skill going throughout his body, especially his face. As if he was almost anticipating my punch, a sign that he had likely done this before.

  Rather than having both a broken hand and having to focus on healing two areas, I pause and then a maniacal smile fills my lips as I realize he doesn’t know who he’s messing with.

  While continuing to use Rejuvenation Healing, I push my body further and use the expected Golden Life Ratio Mana Regeneration*, so I can continue to produce more healing attuned mana within my body. But I’m not done there. Instead, I begin using Mana Extraction on the foreign power entering my body. Focusing first on the sealed away metallic mana, which my body has an easier time interacting with than the odd water mana in the continued surge of energy. Then for kicks and giggles I begin using Life Reinforced Movements*, to continue to burn away my mana faster than I can recover, thus forcing me to drain more foreign mana, while also converting the foreign mana directly into Life mana, that my body can then use. As for how I use Life Reinforced Movements* that part is simple, I just circulate it throughout my body. Treating it like a concentrated poison entering my body, I try to disperse it as quickly as possible, letting my own circulatory system take the foreign mana and disperse it throughout my body.

  My efforts seem futile as the old Seal Master just seems to conjure even more of his crazy Mana concoction and inject it directly into my body.

  For a while it seemed like this would be it, that we would go off like this indefinitely. Until, I hear the faint tremor of fatigue in the Seal Master’s voice.

  “You sure are talented,” he began as he wiped away sweat from his forehead. Then as if calling upon every acting Skill I had, I just doubled down.

  “You tired?” I ask, playfully.

  “What? No, I—I just think that. . .” he began, but I quickly cut him off with a dismissive wave of my free right hand and an ultimate power move.

  “It’s okay,” I state, then feeling overconfident with myself, I do something stupid. I use a Fifth Skill, more importantly I use a Fifth Skill involving a different Mana resonance than the Life Mana I had been using for all of my other Class related Skills.

  The effect was instant, and almost catastrophic for me.

  Crackle.

  The moment I used Trash, a Skill that is clearly Earth attuned, I felt the strain on my body’s Mana supply crackle just a bit. Fortunately, I stopped myself after only removing a few beads of sweat from the Seal Master’s face.

  “Whoa,” everyone who was still watching this charade cried out in astonishment, their voices letting me know that I needed to appear strong to them at least. As I knew I still had at least two more nights of dealing with these fighters, and I didn’t want them seeing me cry or look weak. Which is why, I quickly regained my composure, used a bit of Rejuvenation Healing on my internal body. Only to realize that it would need to be altered slightly to heal my body. I felt I could do it, but not with so many different components and worse, math problems going off in my mind.

  Then to show I was still in control, I just stated my Fibonacci sequence number to him, “I haven’t even started yet, thirteen.”

  In my mind that sounded a lot cooler than it likely came across, still it was nowhere near my maximum cycles before needing to restart. By now these first few cycles were so routine that I could almost do them on autopilot, which was likely Madame Bloom’s intention when she first learned of this Skill and how she made me practice it.

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  While I still felt a few minor cracks in my astral body’s foundation, I could tell that nothing broke. That said, I would need to be careful, as I was already hitting my current limit with four Life attuned Class Skills all working in near perfect harmony. I also knew that I would likely have to avoid using Trash, along with my Class Skills for the foreseeable future until either my spirit shell healed on its own, or I found a way to heal my spirit shell. I am about to go deeper into this thought, when the old scientist continues.

  “Well then good, in that case I won’t hold back any longer,” he declared.

  With that declaration, a faint glow came from behind his eyes, as I could almost swear that I saw a rare bloodline ability sparking to life. The way to tell is that the eyes of the person manifesting the bloodline always glow when they are in use. In this case, the eyes looked almost demonic as a thick black film seemed to fill up the sclera of their eyes, creating an odd shadow effect that seemed to make the blue color of his Iris come to life with a brighter gleam.

  Seeing his change in posture and the fact that he seemed to now be taking this seriously, he continued pumping more energy into this dual affinity seal Skill that was ripping its way into my body and forcefully expanding my veins and most importantly pulling and tearing at my system interface. This is something that I didn’t think was possible before, but a quick glance showed I was wrong, as my system interface began to be altered right before my eyes, well, my mind’s eye that is.

  Then slowly, ever so slowly that number of available Seals began to rise.

  “Good, we are about halfway there,” the monster of a Seals master began, and like that I purposefully closed the constantly opening system’s block, as I realized this too was causing trouble with my internal system. Fortunately, I just needed to focus and shift my perspective. Not just focusing on Rejuvenation, that is replacing dead and abused cells in my body with newer ones.

  But instead, I needed to alter the process entirely by adding a sort of natural selection to the process of my Rejuvenation Healing. Not just Rejuvenating the cells that had been there before, but focusing on promoting rapid growth of the newer cells that were being forcefully converted. The cells that would need to no doubt reside within my body after this excruciating process was over.

  Unfortunately, my progress was almost stopped as white-hot pain seared through my brain and body as I tried to use a Skill. The same Skill that I had been using for days now, only to find that it had momentarily been cut off.

  Suddenly I felt burning from all over my body, as my already overtaxed Rejuvenation Healing was forcefully shut off as it underwent a quick update. Meanwhile, the mad professor continued to pump in his liquid fire concoction directly into my body.

  “Wait, stop!” A distant voice cried out, but that was far away. All I could do was sit back and focus on outlasting the pain. While that one Skill was and being forcefully stretched and altered within its Skill slot, I proceeded to use the other three Skills to their utmost. I began focusing Mana Extraction targeting the most corrosive parts of the Skill being used.

  Forcing myself to work through the pain, I could feel my old world’s knowledge of cells, how some cells were cancerous and others were healthy. How I would want to focus on the healthiest of the cells and promote their growth versus others, being pulled from my mind. As if the system was somehow sentient. Or at least if the system was somehow forced to be sentient by whatever actions this mad professor was enacting on my body. The result of this change was not only my want to generate a better overall healing effect to my body, but my system registering that want and somehow fusing my past life’s knowledge to make my desires happen. The result was a new Skill that sparked to life forcefully within my mind, as if even my body and its system knew I was going to be unable to keep up with the mad Seal Master’s maniacal push.

  My mind latched onto the fact that something seemed wrong with the Skill, it wasn’t until a moment later that I realized that the Skill was at the wrong level. Or at least it was off compared to previous iterations of my other Class Skills. There was a quick mental flash in my mind’s eye as all my Class Skills being realigned and reactivated.

  I forced the progress made and differences to be left off, as I didn’t have time to note the changes since my last update, but I did see that the change in tiers was not wrong as I apparently went from a Tier XL MAX to a Tier L MAX for my Streamline Healing* Skill. These were the things that stood out to me, but then my mind was able to take the Skill and activate it instantly.

  Soothing aloe.

  A feel that can only be described as the calming effect of cool aloe being applied to a dense sunburn hit my body, coating my insides and instantly repairing and protecting me as my Skill that had previously been at the Epic rarity of rating suddenly seemed to be at the Legendary rating.

  Granted it was a unique Skill meaning it was both supposed to evolve as my abilities and understandings evolved with the Skill. But this was on another level. Before what had been a slow corrosive burn, that was the equivalent of the worst heartburn of any of my past lives all manifested into my arm and body, was now slowly being soothed away.

  The more I healed, the easier it was to lay the groundwork to continue to expand out this otherwise poisonous Seal residue within my body.

  There was a slight pause, as first the Seal Master paused, breaking away his demonic tar colored sclera filled eyes to focus on Mandame Bloom. Only now did I see that she had apparently come to me, to my protection when my Healing Skill had lapsed and I was defenseless against these Seals being applied.

  Instantly, my eyes spun around and saw that this was not good. While it had been a good thing that Madame Bloom had stepped in when she did, when she thought I was defenseless, I could see that the princeling behind her was growing visibly irate at the apparent touching of Madame Bloom to his Seal Master.

  “I’m fine,” I wanted to say, and I did, though my voice was deeper, as if it was resonating with the deeper changes that were happening within my body.

  This new power, an evolution of my old Skill was far more powerful, as I could feel it finding the older cells within my body, the ones that might not be able to adapt to the forced changes that are being pushed on me, and breaking them down before the mad Seal Master’s process could burn them from the inside out. Instead of being burned as fuel for what could otherwise be considered a toxic internal fire, I felt my own Skill taking the old cells, breaking them down to core components, and then redistributing them with newer healthier cells. Cells that were more than capable of keeping up with the changes that my body was undergoing. Changes that still felt like liquid metal was being injected into my body.

  But rather than resisting the change, now my body was preparing for and welcoming the change to happen.

  Seeing that I was now okay, Madame Bloom gave one final scan with her glowing blue eyes. Only after seeing me did she gasp in astonishment, before quickly regaining her composure and backing away from the two of us, and reducing the amount of rage directed at her by the princeling.

  “I apologize, as you were,” Madame Bloom stated while giving a retreating bow.

  The Seal Master gave an annoyed sneer towards Madame Bloom, an act that I inwardly hated, but managed to regain control over my emotions before letting my true ire show. No one is mean to the Madame, she has been far better to me than I deserve to this point.

  Sad that it took until now to finally realize that truth. But I would now safely count Madame Bloom as one of the people whom I truly care for. It might not seem like much, but for me, that was everything.

  With that thought in mind, I once again locked gazes with the mad Seal Master, who was now looking even more tired than before, though he too seemed to be hiding his exhaustion with an air of annoyance. Seeing him, I felt that I could finally see and understand him as well.

  Realizing that I was back to an equilibrium of healing on myself, having managed to make up the difference of what I had been missing during that time of my Skill being forcefully upgraded. An act that likely took seconds, but felt like minutes of being branded alive by white hot pokers. I saw that the Seal Master was also getting winded.

  Then out of compassion I did likely the stupidest thing possible. I healed him, using my new and improved Streamline Healing* Skill.

  Not that healing him was wrong, but I seemed to have given him a second wind. A second wind that he then began putting to full force and effect. As I felt an even more intense round of white-hot pain sear through me.

  And so it continued.

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