As time passes, I start getting a bit nervous, not gonna lie. That asshat of a security lady will surely complain again, and Weslin won’t be happy either. And the branch leader… assuming I’m right, probably snuck something into the contract to use against me in situations like this.
Well, that only leaves one option.
I will lie.
I could probably damage my body a little or ask the others to do it for me. I'm sure some of them would do it gladly. Tess’s lightning and its remnants could be sensed on me. Since it would be recognized as Primordial Lightning, I could blame it on one of the demon tribes if I needed to.
The problem will be lying convincingly. A few of the members of the Primordial Knights currently stationed at Black Tower possess thermal and kinetic energy detection. They might try to sense my lie the same way I’ve been known to do with others.
Well, that’s a problem for the future. For now, I’m going to sit here with growing fascination and listen to Sophie as she speaks to Maya.
“The way Faora’s thought acceleration worked within her Mind Palace wasn’t all that hard for me to grasp, and I think I can mimic the effects somewhat. Even though I don’t have a skill like the one that made the Mind Palace, I know I can make it work, if not at the same level.”
“So you’re saying that bitch was able to make minutes pass in her mind while seconds passed outside?” Maya asks.
During the conversation, Sophie’s voice sounds weak, but the longer she stays here and the more Lily pumps her with healing mana, the better she looks. Everyone is probably watching for signs that something might be wrong with her, but Sophie seems to be alright. That’s even more apparent as we watch Izzy cling to her like a baby koala, completely forgetting about Noodle and Biscuit.
Her older sister doesn’t seem to mind at all and treats her with an incredible degree of care.“Yes, of course, you’d need to have a powerful mind to pull off something like that. But you have [Focus], and we have Lily in case anything goes wrong,” Sophie says.
“Okay, I get it. I get that you’re a maniac who can’t help but ramble about training mere moments after waking up from the dead. But what does that have to do with me? Wouldn’t Nat be better for all that mumbo jumbo?”
“That moment when you’re seconds away from death is, according to some people here, the moment you reach your peak performance.” As Sophie says that, most eyes glance between me and Lily, but I decide not to react to such slander, and Lily stays quiet too.
Sophie continues, “Nat can’t help me because he doesn’t have the skill you have, Maya. [Compounding]. You’re still using it only to increase damage, right?”
“Kind of? It levels very slowly, but the longer the fight goes on, the higher my damage gets, so that’s good. So what do you want with it?”
At this point, I already start getting an idea of what Sophie might want, and I really, really like it. To the point where I start thinking...
What if I stayed here a week or two longer?
And Sophie says, “I’ll make my own variation of thought acceleration. Then we’ll get you deep into [Focus], cooperate with the twins if needed, and use your [Compounding] to increase the effects of the resulting thought acceleration.”
That sounds way too cool, so I move closer and sit on the couch we stole from the Academy, next to Lily, nudging her slightly to the side so we can both fit.
“How much compounding do you expect to need?” I ask Sophie.
And she smiles. “I knew you’d like it. I’ll need to run more tests, but I think I can create something similar to your mental space and use thought acceleration there. Probably five seconds inside for every one second outside. Later, we could expand that to ten to one, and likely more with time. I’m not sure how long it will take Maya to be able to use [Compounding] that way, but it could probably compound the effect a few times at the first level. More at the second level, it should only increase more and more the deeper we go.”
“You’re already classifying it in levels?”
“Yes, before you try to give it some shitty name like you did with Manabloc.”
“Everyone loves my Manabloc chairs. So what kind of result are you hoping for and what do you think is going to be possible?”
Thinking for a moment, Sophie allows herself to dream.
“To make the math simple, let’s say my base, Level 0, is ten seconds inside of my mental space for everyone outside. That much I think should be reasonable with some simple training. Level 1 could be ten times that if Maya does her part as well, right?”
She doesn’t even wait for Maya to answer. “So at Level 1, that would be 100 seconds inside for every one second outside. Now what about Level 2? We compound it by ten times, once again, if her skill works the way I hope it does. That would make one second outside into about 16 minutes inside. That’s getting damn close to what that bitch could do.”
Sophie ignores Izzy’s less than enthusiastic complaints about her language. “And what if we compound it again, and go deeper? Level 3? That would make one second outside equal to almost three hours inside. Forget trading seconds for a minute. Ignore all that sexagesimal stuff, and just to keep it simple, say I could turn one hour of real time into ten hours in my head. At Level 0, that would be…”
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“What’s sexagesimal?” I ask.
Everyone, including her, ignores me and looks at Min-Jae.
“I was never good at math, you know that, right? Damn stereotypes,” he grumbles and takes some time to calculate it anyway. “At Level 0, it would be 10 hours with just Sophie and her Thought Acceleration. With Maya’s help at Level 1, it would be 100 hours. At Level 2, 1,000 hours or almost 42 days. At Level 3, 10,000 hours or about 1 year and 51 days, if I calculated it right.”
“So how likely is it that this will melt my brain, Sophie’s, and anyone else’s? And why would we want to spend a year in your head, Sophie?” Maya asks, crossing her legs and arms, leaning back.
I answer instead of Sophie, “To train? I don’t know if you could gain skill levels if your mind was out of your body and in Sophie’s mind instead, but likely yes. Or Sophie could learn some things and teach you. Or you could just spar, practise martial arts. Invite more people there. Do some recon on a city's defenses and then spend a few minutes outside while taking months' worth of time inside preparing countermeasures and stuff. And I could probably go on.”
“Not to be a party pooper, but I’m sure most of us would fry our brains after just a few seconds of something like that.” Aaron says, looking around and smiling, “But I will not lie, I want to try.”
“Nat seemed to have some good ideas for...”
“Okay, okay, okay, let’s calm down here, Sophie,” Dennis interrupts her, “Nothing sane ever starts with ‘Nat had an idea,’ as I’m sure most of us can agree.”
As he looks around, everyone solemnly nods. I even look down at puppy Biscuit in my arms, who watches and then mimics them, nodding clumsily a few times with his ears flopping as he does.
He senses me looking at him, so he twists his head and looks up at me in a way that almost makes it seem like he’s broken his neck.
I blink.
He blinks.
Lily, sitting next to me, giggles softly.
Then I boop Biscuit’s nose, and in response, he grabs my finger and starts biting it with his tiny, needle-like teeth. Then, for some reason, he does something I’ve never seen before: a small helmet made of purple mana forms around his head, with extra coverage for his ears.
Then he bites my finger with even more enthusiasm.
“Of course, we’ll tone it down,” Sophie says to Dennis. “But he’s started doing some sort of mental exercises. I’ll modify them and prepare some for you, too. Plus, everyone here could probably stand to replace some of their near-useless upper epic passive with something that boosts their mental resistances.”
Tess also adds, “I guess it’s not something you want us to add to our mainline training, it sounds more like some sort of side training.”
“Exactly. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish any of that anytime soon, but I’ll work on it and would like Maya to as well. We have the floor quest to deal with. And I want to go to Beyond, so it’s not the main focus.”
Izzy stiffens a bit when Sophie mentions Beyond, and her sister notices it. They look at each other, and Izzy, for a moment, seems like she wants to storm off in anger, but in the end, she just stays there. I’m sure she wanted to get mad, but at the same time, she can feel her sister’s emotions, so she can’t help but fully understand.
Sophie smiles at her, and the conversation is about to continue. I almost want to step in and stop it, but Tess intervenes instead.
“Izzy,” she says softly, and all eyes turn to her as she stands there.
Her blonde hair is long now. With no hairdresser to fix it, it falls straight down her back like a golden waterfall. The [Lightning Crown] above her head cracks softly, flashing with faint red and white light.
“It’s okay to be angry.” Tess stares intently at the little empath. I can sense her shielding her mind so Izzy won’t pick up on her emotions. “You don’t always have to be understanding, and you have the right to feel anger. It’s okay to be selfish and put your own emotions first.”
Izzy opens her mouth to say something, but Tess adds in a colder voice, “Sophie almost died out there, and she’s already talking about going back just a few hours after waking up from what could have been the end of her. It doesn’t matter if I, she, or anyone else, even you, thinks it’s the best course of action. It doesn’t matter if being angry at her is illogical or if it might hurt Sophie.”
Once silence fills the room, Izzy opens her mouth again, but no words come out. She just looks around as if desperate, searching to find what she should feel. But this time, there is someone else who isn’t allowing her to do it.
Biscuit’s eyes have a faint purple shine, and his shadow, which is usually so tiny it barely exists under his stubby frame, now stretches unnaturally across the entire room. At first, it slithers as if in slow motion, then begins to twist, bulge, and ripple, branching out into a myriad of delicate, flickering tentacles that reach for the edges of the walls, the ceiling, and even expanding beneath the furniture. It doesn’t feel threatening, but it has a kind of silent presence.
It fills the space with something that feels eerily similar to the way I sometimes hide my emotions from Izzy, just covering the entire room and hiding the emotions of the others.
Izzy is left to her own emotions, and her eyes water as she looks at the corgi on my legs, but Biscuit doesn’t stop. He just looks at her with what feels like a gentle smile.
And just like that, Izzy rushes out of the room, and no one tries to stop her.
When she’s gone, no one blames Tess. Even Sophie gradually begins to relax, and the anger she had toward the blonde fades, replaced by understanding.
I could probably stay a bit longer, maybe even go after Izzy, but I think it’s better to leave her with her own emotions. She’s always been kind to all of us, but lately, it’s started to feel selfish on our part. Her bottomless well of kindness was beginning to seem unhealthy for her. Tess saw it and acted, so it stands to reason that she’ll be there to help her from here on out.
I share the last bits of information I feel could prove useful, wish them luck with the ninth floor, and with the Beyond expedition they’ll be heading into soon. Then, with a promise to meet here again in 45 days or leave a message on one of the Beyond floors, I leave.
And as I use my Beyond stay token, I appear in that never-ending space under a sky filled with nebulae and beautiful stars.
There, my handler sits behind her old wooden table. This time, her black hair with red streaks is entirely red, and her irises are yellow with intricate patterns. Even her face is different.
But rather than giving the impression that this is someone else, it feels more like she’s finally dropping the mask I’ve known about for a while.