Chapter 20: Chapter 18 – The Morning After (Day 5)

[Capability to lead people to expressing unknown ability is Noted. Additional Paths are opened]

Serenity woke up at the same time the next morning. He felt a bit short on sleep, but much better than the night before. He took a few minutes to check over where he stood, and realized that despite the exhaustion and the low rewards per run, the sheer number of Trials had made it fairly lucrative.

It looked like the exertion had even pushed his stats forward a bit (at the cost of Ev, of course). He was quite pleased about that, since it was exactly the sort of changes he needed to counterbalance the mental improvements he’d made before the demonstration and reduce the amount of physical change he had.

He’d managed to refill his energy storage with a lot of small snacks between Trials the day before, so he didn’t need to stop at the staff break room for an early breakfast. That meant he had an hour or so before Lancaster and Echo would be at breakfast.

He reached into his pack and pulled out one of the monster cores from the boss slimes. It was irregularly shaped but smooth, almost like a river rock, and about an inch long at the widest part. He popped it in his mouth, swallowed, and felt a rush of energy stronger than the ones from the smaller slimes.

[Poor Grade Core material available. Commence Core initialization?]

Serenity wanted to say Yes, but something stopped him. It took him a moment, but he realized it was the word “Poor”.

Why did he want to say Yes so badly? That didn’t make sense.

Serenity didn’t know what it meant, but … he did know that all of the monsters he’d ever fought had a Core. As far as he could tell, he didn’t - but he did have that node in his brain, and he did seem to be half monster …

He’d accepted it, even though he still worried about it, but this seemed to be his last chance to not be a monster. If he had a core …

It was power. But as with anything, power didn’t come free.

Perhaps he needed to decide what really made a monster. Was it the core or was it the actions?

He’d wait on it and think about it.The question would probably be there when he decided - and even if it wasn’t, he had a bunch of cores from the Slime bosses. He could just use another.

He could already guess which way he was going to decide, but something made him hesitate. Maybe he was just afraid to commit. Other than increasing his stats, after all, he hadn’t really made the decision to change himself into a monster. Had he?

No, he needed to put that to the side.

There was one other thing he could do. One other way he could maybe convince himself that Heaven’s Order was pushing him instead of just providing tools.

He was pretty sure the node and its network were the result of his Altered Template. That was definitely a push, but at its root it was just a tool. A tool no one else had.

He’d started with a tougher body than he should have had. That was obvious when he was shot - the injury wasn’t as bad as it should have been, even before he started healing. He suspected he was also too strong; he had broken Macho’s skull with one blow, and Thomas hadn’t been all that strong. Perhaps he was wrong; he’d hit a weak point, after all.

That didn’t matter. Better physical stats - maybe even mental ones - were provided by the Voice, and he was pretty sure they were to carry his Aspect. He was feeling the strain of an awakened Concept already; he suspected that his Aspect was simply too heavy, and the Voice hadn’t had a choice.

He guessed the healing organ had started when he was shot. The question was - had he created it, or had the Voice? It didn’t seem like something the Voice would do. There was no reason for Heaven’s Order to care about having him heal faster. All it had done was save him some pain. So … had he already started using the node that early - and for something as complex as creating a new organ?

The increasing stats during the fight he knew had to be his instinctual use of the node. It must have come with that much knowledge, and the situation .. it just made sense. That was nothing he felt like worrying about; he’d accepted the use of Ev for stats. And it being instinctual would explain why it drained him so far - he didn’t consciously tell it to stop, and there was no reason to have a safeguard.

If he’d created the healing organ without realizing it … that would explain everything there too. The emergency … he’d probably unconsciously known the condition he was in and pulled help from the only place he had.

He could excuse those, though. What concerned him was his mouth and throat. He really enjoyed those changes, and they worked well with his other abilities. Yet there was no life-threatening reason to have them. Had he created them?

This was a question he could answer, and he still had most of the hour left. He pulled on his Time and Mind affinities. He needed to look back in Time and see what had happened. His Mind affinity would let him see what all levels of himself were doing. As an afterthought, he pulled a thread of his Life affinity, so that he could know exactly where he stood.

---

[Mind Concept unlocked]

[Time affinity increased]

When he returned to himself, he knew the answer to his questions. Every one of the changes had been chosen and triggered by himself - subconsciously, perhaps, but his Mind affinity was high enough to know that his subconscious was himself. There was a reason he enjoyed the abilities; that was why he’d picked them to be in the form they were.

He couldn’t blame the Voice for anything but giving him the ability to change himself in the first place.

Perhaps he could blame it for feeding him Ev instead of XP, as well.

No, any blame fell on him for using it. Which meant he would just have to get used to it.

Serenity looked at the piles where he’d dumped his monster core collection and produce bags and pulled out a spike-pear. He grinned widely, then swallowed it whole.

He might have to hide things for now, but eventually he wouldn’t have to. It was worth it.

He left the prompt about initiating a Core open and waiting. He was more sure than ever of his decision, but it was one that couldn’t be reversed. Waiting wouldn’t hurt anything.

 

Name: Serenity
Species: Human (Altered Template)
Path: Paths Available	Level: 44 (389/450)	Tier: 0, 0/44 Spent
Path History: None You are reading story After the End: Serenity at novel35.com
Condition: Crystal Hand, Healthy	Mana: 200	Stamina: 200
Might: 10	Agility: 15	Phys: 10
Understanding: 9	Will: 15	Mind: 10
Perception: 15	Luck: 11 - 111%	Ev: 5505
Resistances	Sleep: 1	Unknown
Affinities	Death: 100.01%	Life: 8%
	Mind: 30%	Arcane: 50%
	Plasma: 40%	Liquid: 5%
	Vapor: 10%	Solid: 15%
	Energy: 40%	Void: 60%
	Time: 15%	Space: 5%
Concepts	Death	Mind 15%
	Time: 5%	Unknown
Aspects: Unknown
Titles	Previous Supreme Existence	Altered Template
	Named	Ghost in the System

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