When she came back from seemingly nowhere, Septima didn't even try to explain the truth, just saying that Aki cast a ritual to rejuvenate her skin and hair.

No one would like to hear about how he'd basically used needles to hold her nervous system in place with a reinforcement spell, twisted her sense of pain to reduce it and turn part of the remaining into a sense of calm and release, shocked her body until he had full picture of her muscles and any possible knots through his magic, following with decomposition and recomposition of her musculature, flesh and skin with slight alterations.

Then he took out the needles and massaged her whole body while increasing her sensitivity. After six hours of that, she now had Orange grade strength, agility and perception, each point in those stats now did slightly more of everything it was supposed to do.

While she was happy because of her gains and all of that, the fact remained that the whole procedure was extremely invasive and embarrassing even to someone like her.

She was pretty sure that were Aki to have made his spell cause pleasure of another kind through the first part she'd have jumped him, but even she wasn't that much of a pervert that she'd go through the shame of looking like a slobbering and crying mess who could only twitch on the spot for several minutes before mustering the willpower to get out of the extremely comfortable massage table.

The sheer relief, calm and peace she’d felt during the whole process made it so the only thing keeping her awake was the pain, but even then she was barely conscious of her body’s situation as she drifted in a sleep-like state where she just enjoyed existing.

On another note, she was pretty sure she’d have shat and pissed herself were she to not have drunk only some satiation potions for the last day already, which would have made the situation even worse. That however, raised the question of WHAT had been removed from her body to cause the smelly gunk Aki had collected.

He’d refused to even give her his personal guess however, saying that he’d try a similar process on her marrow and organs before actually saying anything on risk of causing some weird system fuckery.

…….

The weird system fuckery had already happened. For some reason the aether he infused into the process of upgrading Septima’s physical stats made all the matter he tried to substitute slowly concentrate and turn into completely rotten black goo that seemed exactly like it came out of a cultivator’s breakthrough. The next day he made some more preparations and managed to scrape a similar level of overall improvement to her organs and marrow, opening a new path to him. One that had four question marks on the amount needed to complete it, much like the one he’d gotten for being the first in the new assimilated universe to form a Blue skill.

Having gained several skill levels because of the whole affair, Aki wasn’t so sure how some of his skills hadn’t been upgraded due to the stress and innovation, but he didn’t really mind as they were easier to level like this and it wasn’t like he actively needed better skills.

Maybe after he was able to form his images, but otherwise, it’d be a lost cause to do much to even his spells without noticeable stat changes. Then again, with what he had in mind it’d take a lot of grind to better his image since he’d linked it to basically all his skills.

He still needed to find some kind of giant snake or a green hermaphrodite with tons of vital energy to complete the envisioned cycle, and since he didn’t dare even try before all pieces were gathered, the whole thing would probably take more time than he’d like.

Back to the cultivation bullshit though, he now knew how to refine the body safely and with certainty, so he did not exitate to turn his whole self up for the procedure next.

Obviously he had not tried it first on one of his only friends, he’d experimented with several monsters on whatever attribute they had on the lowest rarity. As the success rate was surprisingly high he’d ended up murdering a lot of shit that was stronger than when he started, but the main problem turned out, surprisingly enough, to be images. As long as he put his own into others it would fuck things up and cause a subpar result that might cause pain and madness, but inversely, he could overpower their image to the point of almost non-existence and then do whatever he wanted, granting a lot of stats that had the same terminology.

He’d tried something similar with mental stats, but apparently the process was completely different and the ‘impurities’ were basically disintegrated during the process itself, so no cleaning was needed.

Those could only be guided though, as he actually had no clue how to shove his own image into the will to beat your own limits through one or the other type of pressure. That was not actually an issue as his own breakthrough would have the influence of his image, but it pointed to mental stats being indeed much more personal than the physical ones.

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In fantasy speech, you’d need some kind of special bloodline or body modification if you wanted to change the distribution of effects for each physical stat while simply progressing in an image and refining yourself would allow for changes in your spiritual root/mental stats.

Before going forward with his own body refinement however, Aki made sure to make it clear to the people of the camp that he would be allowing them to not train today, though they had to keep the restraints on at all times still, but that they could ask him or Lea to activate the formations and enchantments to train the physical bodies if they wished, which was wildly cheered on despite nobody looking like they would be using the training facilities for the day considering so many directly went back to sleep.

Calling them back, he then explained that next week they’d be having focused classes to study monster fauna and mystical flora, along with the new materials available due to the incrementation of mana in the equation of the Biosphere. The week after that they’d have magical studies, with personalised application practice to best suit each individual depending on their stat distribution and fighting style. The week after that they’d have a general course through the crafting professions and on how everything could be used, created and preserved before training with the creation of gadgets and carvings.

After that they’d repeat the cycle for the remainder of their stay. The whole idea was that everyone would get practice, with the healers and cooks always having a bit to do, extra information and conditioning to use all of that, so he hoped that three months or so of each class would allow for good development with enough rest that the frail people under him would not break.

They also had plenty of books, games, private areas, crafting facilities and food, so it wasn’t like people would necessarily get bored either.

Back to doing his own thing though, it was impossible not to reel in from the sheer fucking pain of having his skin, muscles, flesh, marrow and organs destroyed only to grow back with slight alterations allowing it to better conduct all energies of his and then destroyed again so it could happen yet again, the whole thing going on for hours.

Really, it was rather ironic that he spent a lot of time just trying to increase the time he spent in this situation actually, as the pain was such a distraction that he could not actually manipulate the changes in a way as to receive the best benefits in one or even a few goes. He was pretty sure there was some kind of bullshit going on though, as he had long since gotten used to self mutilation that should only be slightly less painful than this, yet it most certainly didn't feel like it.

He could have done everything by parts, but it turns out that changing everything at the same time made the distribution of energy and growth more synergistic. The only reason he had not bothered to do Septima's stats in one go was that she used her vitality and endurance a lot less, so it'd be a waste to give extra energy to something she could not use properly, so he just made the distribution for her be more focused on the synergy between her other stats.

It'd taken a bit of experimentation, but after he figured out how to verify what every stat actually did by checking on a slightly hidden list that had descriptions of the numeric potential of every body part it was easy enough to understand that even if they all had the same grade and overall value, every stat distribution was actually different.

A horse's leg strength would be different from that of a goat's because of how and for what they were used despite their composition seeming to be quite close outwardly. Comparing those to that of a rooster or frog then, would lead to even more discrepant results even in a world where you have a system to tell you how much of each stat you have.

The reason for that according to the status window was that one point in any stat would grant a few hundredths of a point in a shitton of things plus a few tenths of a point here and there on the more general areas.

Reaching the mental stats part of it had him basically searching the books he brought at every turn, humans apparently having a ton more organs then the physical ones, though those were indeed connected directly and indirectly to the brain and nervous system, having functions that were supplementary instead of essential for the body or even completely locked away when not exposed to a certain level of energy.

What all that meant for the helpless monsters he experimented on was that many found themselves being out down because they suddenly gained some power up or another specially turned to running away or breaking out of his restraints as some stats suddenly gave around half again to twice what it had before, a reshuffling of the points hidden away having specialised parts receive even more than the rest and even take from those the body deemed as a lesser priority.

In turn, that ment that Aki now had a lot of inspiration for any future nightmare or fear inducing spell, as this evolution through extreme necessity made each and every one of said creatures into cronenburgs, some ridiculous yokais, one strangely seductive butterfly with far too many features to have physically and even a demon who started to look exactly like him, because reasons.

Fucking up was not an option, and letting go of the best possible upgrade for each rank was out of question too as a +50% all around was definitely not something an all rounder could ignore.

Ironically enough, upgrading his mental stats was just as taxing at the start, but there was no actual pain involved despite the actual process seeming to be the same from it's counter part's. He was even refreshed after he finished. Somehow, his mental stats even jumped to Yellow grade and gained a new designation related to what would be his image.

The only real problem with all that was that he had reached Herectic VIL (44) because of the huge wastage of energy during everyone of his experiments, his and Set's breakthroughs plus providing a hundred people with aether as they quickly grew in skill level and spended their resources like crazy.

Perhaps someone else would worry, others would grow overconfident, but he simply believed in his plans. There was only so much one could do to prepare for something that scaled with their power.

Perhaps it'd not be the best of ideas to go and obtain even more skills unrelated to combat, but he had a lot of classes to teach, so he'd deal with the consequences as they came.