35 - Chapter 34 - Day 1825
Another day Passed. Adya was expecting Jarel back either today, if there had been no problems, or in another day or so, at the outside. She had continued on with her own experiments, in addition to her training, and ad hoc duties.
She had just finished her training for the day, she was slowly becoming more acclimated to the massive increase in stats. She knew she was several times stronger than she had been before she had formed her core, but still had no accurate understanding of the new strength.
The increase in her mind stats were more quantifiable. Mai and Sai had long ago benchmarked their processing capabilities using standard mathematical models. While the results could only provide results in the processing sphere, in terms of speed of processing, the speed of problem solving, number of instructions carried out per second etc, it was something that was easy to benchmark. There was also some data available to compare perception, but as Adya had not pushed her perception capabilities to the limit, the results were not as reliable.
As Mai and Sai enjoyed the same boosts from stats as Adya did, it was a good basis to start from. Of course, the processing capabilities for the three could not be compared. Sai and Mai were single minds, while Adya had absorbed the full capabilities of the other five. That did not mean that Adya could process data faster than Sai or Mai. All three were designed for different purposes, and so a direct comparison would always be impossible. Sai had been designed from the ground up for scientific analysis, with a focus on processing large amounts of data efficiently and at speed. Mai had been likewise designed for combat in a ultra high tech military. While not necessarily able to fully utilise Mai’s capabilities in this world, at least at present. Mai had been designed to track and report on war fronts that could encompass entire solar systems, keeping track of friends and foes numbering in the millions. Mai could also coordinate military operations at that scale, planning then executing complex engagements. This included the ability to control multiple desperate weapon systems in tandem, whilst monitoring the entire engagement, pass orders, and supporting her host in direct combat.
The rest of the minds that had been merged into Adya all had a biological basis, and thus had started from the same approximate template. Though that was not all they were. The scientific focused mind of Anya, the warrior mind of Adya, were merged with the two cultivator sisters’ minds. The separation of minds shortly after birth had been an interesting experience. While the system had facilitated the split, it had not defined what was split. That had been carried out intuitively by the newly integrated Adya. It had taken Adya a long time to realise what had actually been achieved.
The personalities were not separate entities in the strictest sense. The issue at merger had been that while the biological brains could be merged without any real complications, the structures of Mai and Sai were so different, that the combined entity simply could not function. This had been exacerbated by the inherent gestalt nature that Adya had achieved. So after the personality split, then the subsequent merger of Adya’s mind, body and soul had created an interesting situation. The memories, including all knowledge from all entities had been transferred to the soul, or rather merged with it. Adya, Sai and Mai were like personality programs running on the new hybrid gestalt hardware, with full access to the combined inherent knowledge, but, and this was the important part, still separated from it. This was the only way Adya could still function.
What all this meant for Adya was that, Mai and Sai had access to the same “gestalt hardware” as Adya had, and any improvements would be shared equally by all. This made it easier for her to benchmark using any of the personalities and be assured that the results were accurate. She would have to spend time benchmarking all her abilities going forward to have a full understanding of future improvements. Another task to add to her ever growing list.
Adya had Mai run the full range of benchmark tests, then compare the results. They spent a little time rationalising their findings. At an effective mind stat of 33M, the benchmark results showed an improvement of 21,965 fold improvement. Adya already had the formula she had worked out for how the increase in the number of parallel processing cores had increased based on her stats.
Figuring that was the basis for the calculations, Adya and Mai worked through their options for how that increase had been achieved based on the stats. The maths was complicated to say the least, but it seemed that each range doubled the effective gain from the previous range. Then multiplied it by the gain from that range and multiplied it by 4. That 4 kept coming up in the calculations, it must have some specific purpose. So as an example if her mind stat had been 9, then the calculation would have looked like this. Range 1-9 gave a 9 x 1 x 4 = 36 fold increase in speed from the base of 1. Applying the same to a stat of 99 gave 18 x 2 x 4 = 144 fold increase. At 33M stat the maths seemed to be 66 x 83.2 x 4 = 21,965 fold increase that was measured. It seemed that within each range, the improvements gained were a 10th for each level, so the multiple for 33m would be the same as for 30m or 39m, with the maximum for the range at 99m of 128.
In simplified terms, each range of stats had 10 minor realms, with a power boost at the step into the new range. The power jumps between the ranges were also reducing, staring at a 4x improvement at the start and slowly reducing down at each threshold. It should even out at around 2 for the foreseeable future thought Adya.
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If she applied the same logic to her body stat, that would mean she would be around 7,744 times stronger than she had been with a 1 in the body stat. Since 10 was the average stat for a starting adult, she would be around 215 times stronger than an average adult. A nice increase, but by no means earth shattering. It was also becoming clear why cultivators were so much stronger, as their effective stats would be significantly impacted by tiering up.
Adya still wanted to physically test her new capabilities to both validate the numbers, and to see the real world impact. It was one thing to say that someone was 200 times stronger, it was something else entirely to experience it. If she wanted to be able to effectively utilise her power, she would need to be intimately familiar with the limitations.
As she was working through her plans for testing, she was brought out of reverie by a knock on her door.
Sally opened the door after knocking. “Miss Adya, Cultivator Jarel has returned with another cultivator, and seeks an audience with you.”
“Give me a few minutes, then show them both in.” replied Adya.
She prepared herself for implementing the formation on this new cultivator. A few minutes later, Jarel entered with another man.
“Welcome Cultivator Jarel,” said Adya, keeping up pretences, “Will you not introduce us? How may I help the both of you today?”
“This is Cultivator Thomas,” replied Jarel, patting him on the back as he introduced him.”He was also trained with me.”
Whatever Jarel did, caused Thomas to collapse onto the floor in a heap. “Please hurry, I am not sure how long my talisman will last against him”
Adya wasted no time in rushing over and initiating her new skill Formation Scribe. She was prompted to select a formation from the library and she selected the loyalty enforcement formation. Then she was asked to select the number of cores to use, she selected 2 cores. Then she was asked to select the number of targets. She selected one. Lastly an illusion of the formation appeared to her, and she was prompted to place the formation in place.
She placed the formation on the bare forearm of Thomas. Since normally Sai had controlled the initiation of the skill, this was the first time Adya had seen the process. She assumed that Sai had simply provided the inputs directly and skipped the prompts.
The results of the skill were interesting. Adya’s hand started to move on their own, both hands picking up a quill. The hands worked independently to complete the formation in around a minute. It would seem that the skill was significantly more efficient in terms of time compared to Sai, though that came at a reduction in the ability to customise the design. She wondered if Sai could achieve the same speeds. As she finished the same prompt she had seen before appeared before her.
The person you are trying to soul mark (loyalty enforcement formation) is bound by an existing loyalty formation. The formation is ultimately controlled by a tier 10 entity.
You are unable to override or break the existing formation.
This was followed by another prompt. Adya was relieved when it appeared, she was not sure if the Scion protocol would activate a second time.
Scion protocol activated.
Highest rarity class identified as tier 9. Scion protocol temporary boost applied.
Scion protocol disabled tracking and reporting associated with formation.
Options
1, Override the existing formation, replacing it with your own.
2, Break the existing formation while allowing failsafes to take effect.
3, Break the existing formation and suppress all failsafes.
Knowing what she did now, she knew that options two and three would lead to Thomas’s death. Only option one would work. She selected it. The last prompt of the series appeared.
Override of existing formation attempted. Please select one of the following options.
1, Leave formation in place, making all its effects inert.
2, Leave formation in place, and replace the formation controller with Adya Gurg.
In both cases the soul mark will still be created. The soul mark will take precedence over the formation in all situations.
She again picked option 2. Massive amounts of mana and willpower drained out of her body just as it had last time. It took almost 15 minutes and a significant percentage of her resource pools before the process completed. She waited for the formation to be overwritten. It would take a while like last time. She stood and returned to her seat.
Jarel watched on as he saw the process for the first time. He had been knocked out when it had happened to him. The speed with which Adya created the formation, and sheer amount of mana she pushed into the formation to activate it astounded him. He had thought that she had used some sort of artifact to take over his formation. He could never have imagined that she was capable of doing so just with a quill and basic ink. It called into question his entire understanding of the field of formations.
There was no way that Adya had come up with this on her own, he thought. He sat there with a look of incredulity on his face. Adya saw his expression and smiled. The look on Jarel’s face was a copy of the expressions she had seen on all her retainer’s faces the first time they had seen her complete the soul mark.
“No, I am not going to give you or anyone else the details of how the process works, or how I came to be able to do it.” said Adya, answering the unasked questions reflected on Jarel’s face. Now why don’t you give me a full rundown of what you have learned while Thomas recovers.”