59 – Compensated Date
"Hahaha…don't worry, I definitely didn't hear anything strange…relax," he said.
'Noooooo! He definitely heard it if he's reacting like that…!'
"Ah…" Yihwa hid her face in her hands. "I-I'm not that kind of girl, d-don't get the wrong i-idea—It's just I was already in debt and I have no money to pay you back and and—I thought you'd expect things—I don't just offer to rich strangers—I'm still a virgin!"
"…"
There was a long silence as Yihwa realized she had dug herself deeper into the hole. 'What am I saying?! I wasn't offering to do anything with him! But now he's going to think that's what I meant!'
"Relax, I can tell," he said.
"W-what? Tell what?" She peeked out from her fingers at his amused face.
"That you're a virgin. It's obvious that you've never done that sort of thing before, if you're acting this way," he said.
There was only a whimper for a response as she buried her face in her hands fully again.
"It's okay. I understand completely. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, really. You're in big debt, you're very pretty, and most guys might ask for something like that in this situation, which is why the thought crossed your mind. It's just a slip of the tongue, and I'm sure you didn't even really mean it that way, but sometimes our subconscious thoughts influence what we say accidentally, even if you're consciously opposed to it, like if somebody tells you, 'don't think about this', you'll inevitably wind up thinking about it," he said casually.
Yihwa finally let her hands drop and nodded meekly.
"I'm not the kind of sleaze that would try to use that to convince you that you secretly want it or something dumb like that, so don't worry."
'Of course I don't secretly want it! That's right, it was just a slip…I was trying to avoid being that kind of man-stealing woman!'
She watched as he then just went back to eating as if nothing had happened.
"Um…then…a-about my question…? So…will you take me as your mistr—kyah?! TEAMMATE, TEAMMATE DAMN IT!" 'What is wrong with me? Don't tell me I actually secretly want it?!'
"Hahaha…hahaha!" Now the man laughed and put a hand to his forehead as if he couldn't stop laughing. "You're too cute!"
Yihwa did not realize her face could feel as hot as it did now without her flames.
"Sorry…It's been a while since I've had such a good laugh," he said after calming down. "But as for your question, I'm afraid the answer is no."
"Eh?" Yihwa looked dumbfounded, then disappointed. 'Was I wrong? He's not interested?'
"…at least not now," he said, clarifying.
'Not now? Does he prefer more experienced women?!'
"But I can be a great teammate! I'm from the Yeon family, one of the Great Families! See this? It's our family symbol," she said quickly, pointing to the flower on her headband. "I got all the way here without any support from my family, but once I become an E-Rank regular I can ask them for a few favors! Cash to pay you back if you want, and more!"
"Well if you put it like that…" He said, trailing off with a contemplative expression.
"Yes, you won't regret it if you take me!" Yihwa said,
"Miss Yeon, you have no idea just how tempting your offer is…but unfortunately I still really cannot be your teammate."
"But..why?!"
"It's because I actually passed this Floor's tests years ago," he said. "That's why I can't team up with you right now."
Yihwa took a moment to digest what she just heard.
"You're an E-Rank Regular already? But then, why are you down here on this floor?"
"Ah…I suppose I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Pri Dua Liti, but people just call me Dr. Dua around here, because I'm a healer and a researcher. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Yeon."
"I'm Yeon Yihwa. it's nice to meet you too, Dr. Dua," Yihwa said after realizing she hadn't introduced herself properly either. "You're a researcher? Like with the Workshop? But, I thought Regulars couldn't work for them?"
"Ah…no, I'm not with the Workshop. You're right, of course, the Workshop doesn't accept Regulars and any researchers that become Regulars are forced to leave their positions with their memories sealed. But I'm a private researcher. I do it out of personal interest, not on behalf of any organization," Dr. Dua said.
"Oh…then what do you research?"
"Primarily, I study healing, especially real-time on-the-field healing. But I also study the mysteries of Shinsoo, Shinheuh, and certain special powers that are rare in the Tower. The breadth of my interest is quite wide…this is my way of developing my skill set, rather than just simplistic training like other Regulars."
"Special powers? Like what?" Yihwa asked curiously.
"Have you heard of Spells or Sorcery?" He asked.
"A little bit…it's a way to use Shinsoo without having talent for it, right?" Yihwa asked. "But I don't know how it works."
"Well, I'm not surprised. Most people wouldn't. But allow me to demonstrate a small magic trick that is related to my research," he said. "Watch."
He ripped the small bag provided by the restaurant that contained toothpicks open, and took out the toothpicks inside, then laid them on the table side by side.
"First, check for yourself that I haven't tampered with these toothpicks. They're ordinary, aren't they? If you press it against some of that lobster shell, the point will bend, right? Then if you press too hard, it'll break."
Yihwa followed the instructions and verified that the toothpicks were just as he said.
"Now, observe very closely. I am going to put an enchantment on the toothpick. But more specifically, I am going to transfer some properties to the toothpick, to make it harder and sharper."
Then he touched the toothpick for a moment. After he removed his hand, he spoke again. "Now, check the toothpick, and see for yourself first that I did not reinforce it with any Shinsoo and I'm not manipulating it anymore in any way."
Yihwa already felt that he hadn't used any Shinsoo, but she grabbed the toothpick anyway to examine it closely. Just as he said, she couldn't feel any abnormal Shinsoo in or around the toothpick.
"Now, drag that toothpick point against the lobster shell again. Try to scratch it," he instructed.
When she did, she was surprised to see that the toothpick did not bend, instead, it actually scratched the lobster shell and made a clear mark on it.
"I know it probably doesn't seem amazing to you since it isn't very flashy and you don't know much about Sorcery to begin with so you wouldn't know why this is interesting, but—"
"No, no, this is actually really cool!" Yihwa said. "I've never seen anything like this."
"Haha, if you're impressed by that, then wait until you see what I'll do next. As I said, what I did earlier was to transfer some properties into that toothpick. Because it was very basic, I could just do it just like that, and it wasn't really even transference, but actually just using Sorcery to reinforce particular properties it already had. But my most recent research has been to study the Flowing and Transference of energy, properties, and even consciousness, by way of mystic bonds. Now, watch again."
Yihwa patiently watched as he spat a little bit of saliva onto his finger. She was slightly disgusted by the act, but he soon explained what he was doing.
"You see, bodily fluids are a good vessel to contain the essence of living beings like us, and so they're very useful for transference, and creating mystic bonds. Blood is much better as a catalyst, but I'm sure you're familiar with having a body that is too durable to easily draw blood, so saliva is a decent alternative, though its properties are a bit different."
"Oh…"
Then he pressed his finger with the saliva onto another toothpick.
"When most people think of saliva, the most obvious property that comes to mind is probably an aid for digestion, right?"
Yihwa nodded.
"But that's not a good demonstration because you might simply assume that my saliva itself was different from a normal person's. So what I will do instead, is use the saliva to form a mystic bond and then transfer a property of the original source—that is me, rather than the saliva itself, using my will and mental visualization to achieve the desired effect. As a living being, I have the potential to grow. This toothpick is made of wood, and it too formerly had that property when it was a tree. By suffusing the toothpick with mystic energy, I'm going to transfer the property of 'growth' to it, and revert it back to its original form as a tree."
Then he spoke a few incomprehensible words, and suddenly the toothpick began warping. Roots sprang out slowly as if it were actually growing.
"Wow…it's alive again?!"
"Haha, no, it isn't. Unfortunately I'm not quite capable of creating life like that, this is just a parlor trick. What's happening is that I temporarily gave it the property of growth, but it can't actually grow because it's still dead and doesn't have any sort of biology to support life. So, the shape of the wood is trying to mimic its original form that I envisioned. No new material has been created either, so it's really just deforming pointlessly."
"That's still pretty amazing…" Yihwa said with awe.
"Haha, thanks. Now let's finish this food before it gets cold."
They continued to eat for a bit, then Yihwa had another question. "Hey, Dr. Dua, your research is amazing, but why did you choose to do it on this Floor? Aren't there better facilities and things like that on higher Floors?"
"It's a bit complicated…and you're a member of the Great Families…if I tell you why, I hope you won't tell anyone," he said.
"Huh? I guess…since you've been so nice to me…it's not something bad is it?" Yihwa asked.
"In a way, it is. I said that I study healing and special powers, right? Well, research isn't just making theories, it has to be tested and observed, healing has to be done on living people. So sometimes that means I need to study people as they're using the powers, or I give them some experimental therapies to try. And unfortunately, I don't have a permit to give those treatments."
"You…you don't?" 'He's a criminal?! I'm sitting across from a criminal right now?!'
"Yes, I'm still just a Regular and I don't want to work for any organization so it's very tough to get that kind of permit. You asked me if I was with the Workshop earlier…well the truth is, there's a reason I never applied to join the Workshop. On a higher Floor, I know they abducted thousands of children from the Middle Area to experiment on, most of whom died in agony…and it's probably still happening right now. Those children were left abandoned mostly by Rankers abusing their power, especially powerful men from the Great Families that raped the lower class women and left the children behind. That's why the people who rule over those areas just turn a blind eye to it all…it's convenient if the Workshop gets rid of them, and they get to keep doing whatever they want with no consequences. After all…they won't bring shame to their families if the evidence of their crimes just disappears, right?" he said.
"…" Yihwa fell completely silent with wide eyes. 'What…that can't be…is he telling the truth? I knew the Great Families left a lot of abandoned children in the Middle Area…but this…!'
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be insensitive, you're also a member of the Great Families after all. But this is why I operate outside of the system. I don't want to be forced to help those sick monsters. I don't want to have to bribe and grovel in front of the same people that are overlooking these atrocities. It helps that I have a lot of money so I don't need to get funding from them either. So that's why I'm on this Floor. Well, I say that, but I can't avoid them entirely. Actually, they're also corrupt here…but by operating in the Inner Tower, it's difficult for Rankers to investigate me if I work with the right people. It's distasteful, but sometimes the only option is to compromise and choose the lesser evil."
"So it was like that…" Yihwa said quietly. 'Even though he's a criminal…there was a good reason for it…'
"The Tower is full of things like that. Not everything is what it seems," said Dr. Dua.
"Um…what you said about that experiment…do you have any proof of it?" Yihwa asked.
Dr. Dua looked at her for a moment, then a Lighthouse appeared. He began to type quickly on the materialized keyboard, then showed something on a screen panel to Yihwa.
She saw a picture of a large man, with a small glowing wing of light floating behind his right shoulder.
"This man is one of the results of that experiment. He is what they call a Living Ignition Weapon…someone who has had a 'devil' inserted into his body."
"Wait…is he the Devil of the Right Arm?" Yihwa asked, having heard that name before.
"Yes…this man has been on this Floor for a long time. He's still here. If you want, I can tell you how to find him…and you can ask him yourself about it. But don't tell him about me. I shouldn't know anything about this. If he asks you how you found out…just say that it was a concerned researcher who isn't with the Workshop."
Yihwa nodded. "Thank you. I want to know the truth…"
"What will you do once you confirm it? Even if you're from a Great Family, you can't do anything about it. You're only a Regular after all," said Dr. Dua.
"That's true…but…!" Yihwa clenched her fist. "If I tell my family…!"
"Don't do anything rash. Do you really think it's just a few bad apples? Listen, I'm not going to stop you, but if you tell your family and act all righteous about it, they probably won't like you too much anymore."
"No way…I'm a daughter of the Yeon family that's only born every hundred years!"
"So you are. Tell me, did you ever lose control of your flame around your family? Around the servants and lower class people working for you? When you hurt them, what did most of your family say? Did they admonish you for losing control and teach you how to control it? Or did they praise you for the strength of your flames, not caring how many of those worthless people were hurt by it?"
Yihwa drew back in shock and guilt.
"Arrgh! Save me, miss! It's too hot!" The woman's flesh melted down to bone while screaming in agony.
"That was amazing, miss!" "Congratulations, miss! That was such a powerful flame!" "You're the treasure of the family!" "You'll definitely become a princess of Zahard!"
"…t-they praised me…" Yihwa admitted in a small voice.
"Because of the Devil implanted into him, this man is quite strong. That research bore fruit, and he is only an early prototype. Now, do you think they will condemn the Workshop for what they've done, or praise them for their success? Even if they did publicly condemn it…do you really think it would stop there? That the Great Families wouldn't just secretly take the research for themselves to strengthen their own? I wonder if you know how princesses of Zahard are made? How many died when they couldn't accept Zahard's blood, until they finally succeeded in creating a procedure that works? Who do you think they used as the first test subjects, before they risked it on the trueborn children of the Great Families?"
"S-stop…t-that's enough…I-I get it…" Yihwa said, looking down in shame. "You don't have to say anymore."
"Sorry. I can tell that you're a good person. You're not to blame for any of these things. But this is the truth of the Tower…power and prestige built on the backs of countless sacrifices of others, lives trampled beneath the ambition of those who believe themselves better."
The rest of their meal went by mostly in silence.
Eventually Dr. Dua paid the bill and announced that he needed to go. "By the way, don't worry about the damages either…you don't need to pay me back for anything. Feel free to stay and continue eating or ask the staff to pack it up for you so you can take it home."
"R-really?!" Yihwa asked, shock mixed with relief and a feeling she couldn't quite identify, as she glanced between him and the still plentiful food at their over ordered table that she could probably use to cover a couple more meals. "Are you sure? But I can't just accept your kindness without doing anything…"
"You've already compensated me enough with this little dinner date. I'm glad to have met a good person like you, since they're so rare in this Tower."
Yihwa's face burned up again. "D-d-date?!"
"If you get into any more trouble, feel free to come find me and I can help you out. I'm just about done with the research I wanted to do here, so I'll have a lot of free time on my hands soon, before I leave this Floor in a couple of months," Dr. Dua said, giving her a card, before leaving.
'Is he offering to do this again…? Oh no…isn't this compensated dating already?!'
"W-w-wait…" Yihwa squeaked out in a tiny voice while he walked away, but he didn't seem to hear it.
As she sat there in silence, the sounds of chatter and other ambient background noises came back, as if reminding her that she was in a public place. Suddenly she looked around rapidly, trying to see if other people had caught any part of the embarrassing things she'd said earlier.
Most of the place was empty anyways and nobody gave her any odd looks.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
O O O
[Kaleidus]
Although I headed back towards my lab, I continued to monitor the girl who was an important subject of my next plan. There were many reasons to get close to her, because of her heritage and her great potential.
Her flames were immensely powerful, making her basic stats similar to Androssi. Those flames weren't just offensive either, somehow they also translated to superb durability, allowing her to survive an attack from a High Ranker originally intended to kill another High Ranker, later in the story, even if only momentarily.
In other words, she had as much power as a princess of Zahard, but without having Zahard's blood. Why she hadn't been chosen as a princess herself was a mystery, perhaps because of her lack of control and her personality—a fundamentally gentle person when not enraged, similar to the Family Head, Yeon Hana, who was said to be the most beautiful among the Ten Warriors, and an eternal virgin who asked the Guardians to curse her never to love a man because her heart had been broken once. All the children of the Yeon family were either adopted or instead descended from Yeon Ilarde, another great beauty who periodically ran "selections" to identify the most worthy men among Rankers who would compete for a chance to sleep with her so that she could produce children for the family.
Yihwa was a direct descendant of the line and inherited both the beauty and the flame, though strangely enough she hadn't received any support while climbing the Tower up to the 20th Floor, which got her into this debt situation.
Regardless, Yihwa would be a useful asset if turned to my side, even if I weren't going after the Zygaena's flower. I doubted that as a Regular she'd have the pull necessary to help me get it, as it seemed like she didn't even know the truth behind the flower in canon, but I was quite interested in her for other reasons, as a long term investment.
Over the last few years, my research had advanced in several ways. The trick I'd shown Yihwa was one of the failed avenues. Transferring properties was not something so easily accomplished, but even the many failures had improved my basic skills in magic. After grabbing all the low hanging fruits that culminated in the Clone Imprint Familiar I'd left with Androssi, I'd explored different uses of the concepts in the basic familiar spell. The mechanism of 'magic activated through a medium', for example.
I couldn't quite transfer complex properties to something else, but I could now imbue a medium or object with a spell, enchanting it with a spell such as Reinforcement or Break. Instead of having to touch-activate the effect, it could be activated remotely by establishing a mystic bond with the object in question through a medium that carried my mana, such as the saliva I'd used. It could even be imbued onto a Mystic Code that someone else could use—though in the case of Reinforcement, that required a Structural Analysis and scanning beforehand, depending on what needed to be Reinforced, I wasn't yet proficient enough to be able to imbue an auto-scan and Reinforce on something as complex as another living creature, for example.
One of my more strategically powerful successes though, had been massive improvements to my defense capability without the Armoriont, to the point where I could now go around without being heavily armored.
This was the result of multiple advances.
First was that I learned to do a limited form of Alteration that could probably be more accurately called "Shaping", or changing the basic form of something, especially a form that it remembered, which might be called "Restoration". Just like the toothpick that branched out, I could also adjust the shapes of other things with magic, and when applied to my body in combination with the Bionanite Swarm's existing capabilities, dramatically reduced the time it took to make small changes to my body.
The easiest use of this was in changing my appearance for a disguise, but it was also possible to use it in a defensive capacity because of some unique properties of my body.
The nanocellulose that the Bionanites and Armoriont could produce was very versatile with slight modifications to its crystalline structure. For example, the basic bacterial cellulose that natural bacteria could create was very similar to human skin. This meant that I could replace a lot of my skin with that type of softer flesh-like cellulose, slowly transform it into the super strong Armoriont version, then use Shaping/Restoration to near-instantly magically transform back between the two types, as a form that the skin remembered, via an inscribed Magic Crest. Well it wasn't really a Magic Crest in the Fate tradition, but just a sealed and prepared spell that could be released with a mana pulse.
Not only was it possible to do some healing with this, it was possible to go around with relatively normal flesh, and then trigger the inscribed spell whenever I needed it. I could even do that with clothes made from Armoriont cellulose fibres, dramatically enhancing their ability to look like different materials.
This was how I'd easily tanked Yihwa's uncontrolled burst of flame without the Armoriont covering me. It destroyed my clothes but it couldn't quite get past my skin, and where it did damage me, I simply healed too quickly to be noticed.
Of course, I could've also just blocked the attack completely with the water spirits' help using Shinsoo, but it had been a good chance to test out my new capabilities.
But that was just the improvement in my skills. If it were just that, the Armoriont still provided a much stronger defense due to thickness, and it was obviously more efficient to regenerate biologically than using magic.
However, I now had a far greater defense that gave me the confidence to go without the Armoriont entirely, using it as a tool in my repertoire than as my standard armor.
This new defense was a complete replacement of all my previous internal vital lining cellulose armor—the subdermal and bone mesh, arterial sheaths, organ sacks, etc. Because I now had access to a vastly superior material, which I'd learned to manipulate as well—the Endbringer flesh.
Just as Derflinger figured out how to manipulate the Endbringer crystal flesh with magic, so did I, eventually. It was, in fact, one of the things that helped me to learn Shaping and Restoration in the first place, because it had a natural Shaping capability, that seemed to be magical in nature, rather than purely biological. The fact that Endbringers had some form of magic did not come entirely as a surprise to me, since Agate had detected traces of mana in Worm from shard powers in the past. But regardless, it was a huge upgrade because of its spatially warped density.
After the Behemoth battle in which Derfinger cut Behemoth in half, he acquired parts of Behemoth, its skeletal frame in particular, that was magnitudes more hyperdense than the parts we'd salvaged from the Simurgh. Derflinger now had the equivalent of a small mountain's worth of mass, making him stupendously durable, while still weighing normal.
I, unfortunately, could not take nearly as much mass, due to a conflict with one of my most useful spells.
I would've dearly liked to buff myself with half a mountain, splitting it with Derflinger, but unfortunately the Omni-Flight, and more importantly the derivative Burstshift spell, could not be used with that much mass. Even though the gravitational weight was negated somehow, some of the mass still interfered with that spell, which could only carry up to a hard limit of one metric ton "worth" of mass. Just like the speed limit and the other peculiar properties of that spell, the hard limit couldn't be overcome with more mana. It just didn't work. In fact, it was probably because of this weird design that it was capable of having equally weird features like being able to ignore inertia and moving without propulsion or attraction. As far as I knew, even magecraft flight techniques typically needed to rely on physics concepts or some sort of analog, like brooms (anti-gravity), ether sails (wind pressure), but Zelretch's spell did not use any of that, instead basing on some convoluted, fixed concept of magical girl levitation.
Yet it still had a mass limit because apparently something with greater mass could not qualify as a magical girl, and obviously a magical girl would have other means of carrying heavy things.
Despite learning the spell "theory" I did not understand why it worked or how it could be modified, and so, to add any more than about 800 kg "worth" of recognized "spell mass" would render the spell unusable, as I had my regular mass plus things I might need to carry.
Still, that 800 kg of "worth" actually corresponded to about 100x the actual mass with spatial warping, which meant that I had approximately nine cubic meters of rock-like mass condensed into ultra thin layers in my internal armor. And that crystal could be further optimized to have a hardness and toughness similar to the Armoriont nanocellulose, so it was like having a meter's worth of armor protecting me under the skin, though the density varied with the densest around my head.
In addition, the spatial warping and density gave it some momentum mitigating effects, blocking most blunt force from transferring directly through to the internal parts being protected, even if my body as a whole was blown away.
With this setup, I could carry another person on top of my typical ~100kg of mass while carrying my standard basic equipment that I didn't store inside my Shinsoo inventory items.
But there were still other complications. One was that Reinforcement could not cover the whole armor due to it having too much mass, on top of the material itself being particularly difficult to Reinforce. It would cost about ten thousand times the MP to try Reinforcing the whole thing. At best I could afford to Reinforce the outer surface slightly to the point where it was comparable to my Reinforcement on the Armoriont. This would cost about 200 MP, ten times greater due to the material complexity and resistance, but the Endbringer crystal did have the upside of retaining the Reinforcement for longer as well, so each cast would last a whole day.
Another was that the extra mass still made the Omni-Flight spell proportionally almost ten times more expensive, to the point where using it at max speed now cost 200-220 MP/second depending on how much other stuff I was carrying.
That would have been impossible to use with my prior MP reserves, but once integrated with me and attuned to my will, these half-living crystals also became an extremely good vessel to store mana, raising my MP reserve capacity by an incredible 5,000. This, added to my existing 320 capacity from the FoZ blood circuits and another 300 I'd developed due to the refined Shinsoo and bonded water spirits saturating my body outside of the stone, brought my total to about 5600 MP. My personal recovery rate was still crap in comparison, but it had improved a little after I attained the ability to manipulate Shinsoo directly without using a circuit.
More importantly, the water spirits were absolute machines of Shinsoo conversion, capable of passively regenerating 100 MP per hour for me that way in addition to whatever they took for themselves, or 1,000 MP/hour if I meditated with them. So it was quite possible to recover my mana and that of Derflinger's in a reasonable amount of time, even if I didn't have access to huge amounts of biomass for an Armoriont farm to consume. Which was just as well because the Armoriont trick had gotten incredibly inefficient at providing mana that way; perhaps because I had outgrown the Armoriont to the point where it was more difficult to consider it a part of "me", or symbiotic with me anymore, on a conceptual/spiritual/historical level. I'd become closer to the water spirits, dramatically modified myself with Armoriont-incompatible things like the Endbringer crystal, and wore less of the Armoriont. I couldn't drain mana from other living things, after all—only my own "lifeforce", which was the original trick behind the Armoriont.
The last major complication was that I couldn't wield Derflinger at all if I wanted to use the Omni-Flight spell. That should be obvious seeing as Derf had a mass of billions of tons, but both of us considered it a reasonable trade-off for the massively enhanced durability and capability to enlarge himself to epic proportions.
It also helped that we both learned how to move him using Shinsoo, so it was far less of a problem in the Tower. I didn't have to carry him with the Omni-Flight spell, I could just fly by myself with magic and use Shinsoo to wield him separately.
One might wonder why I didn't just put all that mass in myself anyway and forget using the Omni-Flight spell. I would say that it would be the height of foolishness, because there were many things that could still damage me regardless or outright ignore it somehow. We'd cut the flesh off with Flechette's power, and there were undoubtedly other threats that might have similar offensive potential, such as Rankers, or an Anti-Castle attack that could actually destroy a mountain. Even a strategic level nuke might be able to do it, though obviously I hadn't tested that. It was much better to retain the high speed flight capability, especially as I'd only escaped the Beast in the FoZ because of that spell, while extra armor would probably have been of minimal help.
But an even more practical issue was that the process of bonding to and attuning the Endbringer crystal to my will was hard. Derflinger made it look easy because he was a purely spiritual being, made to possess things, and he had the weight of six thousand years of spiritual history and experience with which to impose his will on the crystal. It was a completely different matter for me. The whole process of bonding to the crystal, spreading my will across the amount of mass I'd put into my body, attuning it to me and gaining sufficient proficiency to manipulate it on the precision scale needed to implant it as my internal armor, and then to make sure it didn't interfere with my other bodily processes and spells—like making sure that my Bionanite Swarm could travel and maintain its mental connection with me through it or Omni-Flight…all that took five months, after I initially learned Shaping and Restoration, and manipulating the Endbringer crystals in small experimental quantities. Even if I enlisted the water spirits' help, trying to properly attune a billion tons of mass would probably take decades at the least.
The journey of self-improvement could not stop there, the things I'd discarded could be turned to other ends, which was why the Armoriont had been adapted into the Beastiont to be used for many other purposes, such as pretending to be a bird spying on the girl I wanted to become another summoner for me. It was, after all, much more efficient in terms of mana to use than sending out Agate, and let me keep the Kaleidostick close instead.
O O O
