A few hours ter, Emily and Juliana leave the dorms to head to dinner. Emily’s heart feels a little lighter, relieved to have finally talked to someone about her pent-up rage. Juliana is ed around Emily’s right arm, the left hanging in a makeshift sling Juliana made her while Emily was ig her various bruises.
As they walk through the cafeteria, they quickly spot Tom aer sitting together and make their way over to join them.
“What on Ulea happeo you, and why does Juliana seem so happy about it?” Tom asks incredulously as they sit down.
“Haha, two different questions,” Emily responds with a grin. “I got into a fight before my css.”
“Wow, they really did a number on you,” Hester ents dryly, fog on the sling.
“You should see the uys.”
The twins both ugh before Hester turtention to Juliana.
“And why are you so happy then? I would have thought you’d be upset about Emily getting battered, even if she’s not.”
“We’re dating!” Juliana chirps with a grin, ign Hester’s sed ent.
Tom looks slightly shocked, gng betweewo of them seeking firmation; whereas Hester nods sagely.
“About damn time. You’ve been all over each other since we met.”
“Hey! It’s not my fault Emi’s so oblivious!” Juliana cries.
“I’m not oblivious.”
Emily’s words are met with three unimpressed stares. Thinking ba it briefly, Emily remembers Juliana’s incessant need for physical tad repeated use of any excuse to spend time with her. She decides not to ent further.
“Anyway,” she says with a slight embarrassment. “Are you guys ready for the test tomorrow?”
Her question is met with three groans.
“You ’t seriously expect us to pass basic maths after only six lessons, right?” Tom asks while dropping his head onto the table.
“Why not? I’m pretty fident I pass it after only four lessons, so it should be fine for you,” Emily says with a sly grin before settling her gaze on Juliana. “As for you, you should have passed ages ago! Don’t think I didn’t know that you were skipping csses before I came here.”
Juliana blushes and looks away, refusing to ent. Rolling her eyes, Emily makes a suggestion.
“Why don’t you guys e over to my room tonight and I’ll help you revise?”
Everyo the table perks up immediately, looking at Emily with gratitude.
***
Following Emily’s tuition, she and Juliana are the only two to pass basic maths. Tom fails miserably, aer narrowly misses the mark. Juliana scrapes by, doing justice to her several-month advantage. Emily achieves a perfect grade, adding to her reputation as a prodigy within The Dome.
Giveate of Jeremy, Kyle, and their friends after their fight, nobody else is ined to challenge Emily. It takes a full week of recuperation before they return to css, where they give Emily a wide berth, not even daring to gre at her across the room. As a result, two months pass without i, and Emily rexes into her new retionship and spends her free time iing spells, ons, and armour.
Sitting in her room one m after an intermediate maths css, Emily stares at a newly finished creation before her, along with a series of system windows. She grins.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
[Cws {Gen.1}]
[Rank:] E
[Stats:] +2 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Agil
[Description:] A set of magical steam-powered wrist bdes.
[Effect:] Provides armour to the forearms aends bdes from the wrist when activated.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Status]
[Name:] Emily Coldstone
[Race:] Human
[Age:] 16
[Magic Circle:] First Circle
[Maa Cortex:] First Stage
[Attributes:] Strength 7 > 8, Dexterity 17 > 19, Agility 13 > 16, Vitality 8, Intelligence 27 > 34
[Health:] 120/120
[Stamina:] 200/200
[Mana:] 510/510
[Maa:] 510/510
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Skills:
[Intrinsic] Magietwork (passive)
[Intrinsic] Teancer's Breath (active)
-Parkour (passive)
-Basic Mae stru (passive)
-Intermediate Melee bat (passive)
-Basic Spellweave (active)
-Mental Fortitude (passive)
-Overdrive (active)
-Basic Metalw (passive)
-Basia Manipution (passive)
-Basiesmithing (passive)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Knowledge:
-Basic Clockwork
-Basic Steampower
-Basic Electrical Theory
-Basia Formation
-Basic Particle Physics
-Basic Material Sce
-Basiematics
-Basic Waves
-Basic Thermodynamics
-Basic Elemental Theory
-Internal Energy Colle
-Basic Alchemy
-Basic Array Formation
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Progression]
[Circle/Stage:] First
Requirements:
-Intelligence 34/35 (Not plete)
-Create 5/5 unique F rank maes (plete)
-Create 1/1 E rank mae (plete)
-Learn 5/5 first circle spells (plete)
-Learn 3/3 basic magiowledges (plete)
_____
So close, all I have left now is meditating till my intelligence reaches 35!
Excitedly, she stands up and leaves her dorm room, heading to the training rooms.
I haven’t earned many points retly; I may have to burn the rest of them tress quickly. I guess it’s time to start looking at taking some missions after this.
Arriving in the B-grade training hall, she finds an unoccupied room as a five times density gathering array. Entering the room, she sits down in the tre of the rge array and activates the Teancer’s Breath. She slowly draws in mana and cycles it through her system, feeling a mounting pressure build in her magic circle and cortex.
A few hours ter, she feels something click, and a strange sense of pletion fills her. Opening her eyes, still in a trance-like state, she reads the system notifications before her.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
Progression requirements met.
Would you like to begin stage assion? [Yes]/[No]
(Warning, it is reehat User finds a safe area with a high may to ehe best results of assion)
_____
The moment she selects yes, the pressure inside her bursts and the mana in the array rushes into her. Violent tendrils of searing lightnihrough the air around her as she begins to levitate. Fog oernal movement of her energies, she watches as mana gathers in a vortex around her first circle, slowly densing. Her saturated cortex starts to vibrate before a burning pain hits her as it begins to press.
The only thing preventing a scream from leaving her mouth is the maa that spreads through her body, immobilising her and distributing the pain as her Magietwork ges as well. Her vision ges, the room around her falling away to reveal a ic stream of energy, simir yet different from the Spellweave. Glistening steltions surround her, some pulsing with power, others shattering into scattered remnants. She feels her e with the mana around her deepening, and two flig senses of trol and helplessness fill her at the same time.
The vision fades as her assioers its final phase. The pain slowly starts to diminish as her cortex settles, and the vortex around her heart solidifies into a rotating circle of pure mana. The two link their cycles again, sending a wave of relief and pleasure through her body. The mana around her settles, and the lightning fades, leaving her sitting on the floor with her eyes shut, twitg as she acclimates to the ges in her body.
That was intense.
She stretches her fingers and slowly moves her arms, feeling a deeper e with her body and a finer trol over her movements. The energy saturating her body feels far more powerful than before as if it’s undergone a qualitative ge iy and purity at the same time.
Opening her eyes, she grins at the ges, about to look at her system’s notifications.
I think I could get addicted to this.
Then she freezes as she notices the oddity of two perfectly synced voices in her head.
Why am I thinking double?
Taking a deep breath to prevent herself from panig, she closes her eyes again and gathers her focus on her cortex. Watg tiny streams of maa run through folds anic matter, an instinctual uanding of her current state quickly es to her.
Disable internal monologue of core two. Set core two to assistive processing.
Opening her eyes again, she looks at the system windows before her.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
gratutions! Assion successful.
[Status]
[Name:] Emily Coldstone
[Race:] Human
[Age:] 16
[Magic Circle:] First > Sed Circle
[Maa Cortex:] First > Sed Stage
[Attributes:] Strength 8 > 12, Dexterity 19 > 32, Agility 16 > 25, Vitality 8 > 13, Intelligence 35 > 54
[Health:] 190/190
[Stamina:] 315/315
[Mana:] 3240/3240
[Maa:] 3240/3240
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sub-system updated: Progression
[Progression]
[Circle/Stage:] Sed
Requirements:
-Intelligence 54/75 (Not plete)
-Create 1/5 unique E rank maes (Not plete)
-Learn internal casting (Not plete)
-Create 0/3 sed circle spells (Not plete)
-Sy 0/1 third circle beast (Not plete)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hidde pleted: Ahead of the Times
[Ahead of the Times]
[Rank:] E
[Description:] Asd to the sed circle signifitly faster than the norm on your p.
Requirements:
-Asd within three months of awakening (plete)
Rewards:
-Sub-System: Notebook
_____
Woah, that’s a lot of stats. And a new sub-system?
Navigating her system, she quickly pulls up the new notebook tab. The window shimmers and turns a darker shade of blue, being slightly harder to see through, as a bnk space belled ‘Notebook’ appears.
Well, that’s disappointing. At least I move my important notes out of my notebook and remove the security devices from my room.
A hought occurs to her.
Actually, sihis is part of the system it shouldn’t reset with time-travel, right? I take it back – not disappointing at all.
Taking o breath of the dense mana ihering array, Emily stands up to disable it. As she rises, she feels an odd dissoween her perception and her body. Frowning, she reaches for her breast pocket to check The Clock. Staring at the timepiece’s face, she watches the seds hand tid quickly realises the issue.
My perception of time is off. I’m processing things too quickly, so it feels like time is moving at half-speed.
Assistive processing off.
The moment she sends the mental and, the strange feeling disappears, and her perceptiourns to normal.
That will surely be helpful iure.
With a slight skip iep, she quickly moves to the internal trol panel iraining room and disables the gathering array. She watches her point t on her crest decrease to ‘84’ with sadness, firming her resolve to plete a mission soon.
Before I leave, I should check for ara information the system will give me after my assion. I still have ten miill Jules should be back from her trip to Threads. Why don’t I test what this sed core do?
Core two, search the system for any post-assion ges.
Less than a sed ter, she feels a smooth flow of information transfer between her cores.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
[Maa Cortex]
The meic’s pan.
A meic's brain, optimised and partmentalised by maa, that dispys a meic’s stage of development.
Gees [Maa] and allows a meic a e to maes around them.
Split into two [Cores].
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Cores]
Each core that forms a meic’s cortex is an individual processing unit, capable of perf billions of microprocesses per sed.
Each core carries a number of [Threads], equal to the number of cores currently formed.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[Threads]
Individual parallel processes a core use at once.
_____
Each core should have two threads then. Wait, does that mean I do perfect silent casting now?
Excitedly, Emily raises her hands in front of her and begins trying to form the mental image and magic circle of burning hands at the same time. Unlike her failed past attempts, a glowing e and white magic circle forms above her hands and soon begins to rotate, fading away as a sheen of fmes appears across her palms.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
Skill created: Perfect Silent Casting (passive)
[Perfect Silent Casting (passive)]
User profitly form a mental image and magic circle simultaneously.
-Grants +10% casting speed when casting spells mentally.
_____
I guess gesture casting is kind of obsolete now. Wait, is it?
She tries silent casting again, this time while trying to perform a few basic martial forms Agaught her and finds herself tripping over her feet as her focus falters. The spell still forms, but much weaker than before. She tries it again, this time while weaving together gestures and trying to form a mental image, she finds herself able to perfectly follow her forms while casting the spell.
“So, one of core ohreads is handling the mental image, and the other is handling body movements whicludes the gestures,” she mumbles to herself while cutting off the mana flow to her hands, ending her spell early.
Gestures still have their uses then. Now to test out multicasting.
With a grin, she stands still and lifts her hands in front of her, palms fag away.
Core two cast air bst.
After giving the and, she quickly silent casts burning hands, watg the two magic circles form on top of each other. The strua but never join, and as they both start rotating, a yer of fire forms on her hands before being shot forward a few metres. Her eyes light up with joy and expectation.
“I double cast! And it also looks like I mix spells in the process.”
She proceeds to test mixiure casting and silent casting, managing to perfectly cast two spells while following her martial forms. With a grin, she moves on to mixing spells, finding a few intriguing binations that she adds to a mental list for further iigation.
After finishiests, she checks her mana pool.
ˉˉˉˉˉ
[Mana:] 2916/3240
_____
I cast so many spells now, but double-casting so many first-circle spells at the same time still adds up.
Happy with the results, she starts to leave while pulling out The Clock. Seeing twenty minutes have passed since she was meant to meet Juliana, she freezes on the spot, a chill running down her spine.
Shit, I got too engrossed in my testing. Actually, how would The Clock reay assion? If I reset, will I keep the skills I’ve gained since? I guess so because skills seemed to transfer with me… Only one way to find out.
With a choice made for the sake of research, and definitely not just to avoid upsetting her girlfriend, Emily presses the button on The Clock, watg as time slows to a halt. As time winds back, she feels more than she ever has before, yet still fails to glean any information from the gap between time.
Instead of a sudden jump to twenty-four hours prior, she finds herself shifted to the tre of the gathering array, having just finished her assion.
I see, I guess my assion marks a point of urn. I’ll have to make sure I’m careful when I progress iure, I couldn’t bear getting stu another inescapable situation.
Emily shivers slightly at the thought while standing up. Cheg the clock again as she deactivates and pays for the array, she firms she still has ten miill Juliaurns.
“Better take no ces this time,” she mutters, leaving the training room to make her way back to the dorms.
