Chapter 247: Quantum Forge

It took Nova slightly longer to log Aron in, since she needed to upgrade the sequence to fit his newly restructured brain before she could log him in.

"Arghhhh...." Aron woke up feeling as if he had slept for more than a year. His body felt very heavy as he placed his hand on his forehead and sat up.

Nova had refrained from making him feel refreshed, since she didn't have the complete upgraded brain data and doing something without it would be like firing an arrow as a blind person—even if the blind person hit the target, there was no guarantee they would do so on the first shot. Thus, the moment Aron fully opened his eyes and put his hands on his head, Nova wasted no time and attempted to access his brain data.

The moment she received access, she analyzed the new data, and after a few seconds, she had completely finished the check and wasted no time in making him feel refreshed. That resulted in him feeling better, but the moment he did, it was like a dam had been broken and system notifications started flooding his vision.

"Oh god," Aron couldn't help but say as he was forced to close his eyes due to the number of screens appearing in front of him.

[DING!]

[Congratulations on fulfilling the condition for upgrade and managing to sustain the energy needed for it to complete without interruption.]

[This upgrade allows you to buy knowledge that you couldn't afford piecemeal. You're limited to three subcategories before being required to buy the remainder of each piece of knowledge.]

[With this upgrade, you've satisfied one of the four requirements to awaken the system's consciousness and reveal many secrets. Keep up the good work!]

[ You can now....]

Just like that, Aron focused on reading the system notices one by one. He knew that each of them were important and engraved them in his memory. It was also at that time that he finally realized something huge had happened during his downtime. And among the many changes that had occurred, he came to the realization that the system's notices had... evolved. Their tone seemed slightly more human, if anything.

After reading every screen in front of him and dismissing them, he called for his status screen, wanting to see the changes.

[STATUS]

Name: Aron Michael

Age: 23

Height: 1.94m

System Class: Runemaster

Runic Heart: Active.

Mana: ∞

Evolutions: 1

[Shop: [Search]]

(SP: 107,456,485)

......

In the myriad of information, a few changes had occurred. First, he was taller. Second was the added section showing the system's evolution level. And third, the daily quests had disappeared.

Despite the appearance of the category for evolutions, there was no further information about what to do for the system to evolve again, or what benefits he would gain with each new evolution. Although he knew that the endgame was for the system's consciousness to be born, he was still curious as to what he would be rewarded with as he passed each checkpoint along the way. He was sure there would be some, and was a bit frustrated that the system hadn't seen fit to inform him of the evolution requirements.

It took a bit over half an hour for him to look through everything, trying to find anything hidden. He had also scanned the shop to see how the new feature worked before turning to Nova, who had been quietly observing him, and asked, "Did everything go well?"

[No. During the process, something happened and I was forced to pause it and....] She explained what had happened when he was inside the pod, including her unwarranted overreaction and everything else.

Aron calmly listened, trying not to miss a single detail. "Did any accidents happen due to the events?" he asked when he was finally caught up.

[Fortunately, nothing of real import,] she answered.

He released a sigh of relief and asked, "So what about my situation?"

[Although I was interrupted midway and couldn't continue, thanks to the changes in your brain, I still managed to remove the worst of the influence and leave what could be considered beneficial to you.

[This time, although part of the system's influence remained and it would now be risky to try the same process again, you can still feel most emotions. But you can also be ruthless when it's needed without having to deal with the heaviest brunt of doing such things... although a few things will still affect you,] she explained.

"That's fine, as I would need to become such a person in a few years anyway," Aron said with a wry smile. He felt like a child being admitted to Harvard when he wanted to go to Stanford and had been working hard toward that goal. "How many days passed?"

[Two days.]

"So what're we going to do for the next five days my body will be sleeping?" He needed to know if their previous plan was still viable, or if the interruption was going to cause any deviations.

[We can follow the previous plan. We might even finish it faster, since with the evolution of your brain we can do nearly everything at double the speed,] Nova said and immediately teleported Aron to a large time bubble with thirty times increased dilation. She began feeding his brain the knowledge she thought was important for him, like the combat art she had developed with his capabilities in mind.

Just like that, a sadistic child AI was created specifically to oversee his assimilation and training. The new AI had no respect for him—or anything at all, for that matter. Her only concern was to ensure that he practiced everything combat- or war-related that Nova had assimilated into his memory.

A man with monstrous brainpower, monstrous knowledge, and monstrous combat abilities was being forged in the fire of quantum qubits.

....

While that was happening, Vladımır was undergoing therapy that was going quite well for him as the healing rune that was on his pod had managed to soften the trauma, and he could be said to have been reborn as a new man.