As soon as he regained his bearings after the incident, Jay immediately decided to head to the observation base at the southern outskirts of the city to seek help from the elders.

It was still dawn at the moment, and jeepneys were scarce. He had no choice but to hail a taxi despite the inevitable dent to his wallet.

In his troubled state, he only told the driver to follow the highway down south, thinking that he could just guide the latter along the way.

Unfortunately for him, when they were about to leave downtown, he realized that he had actually forgotten about the location.

The only information that remained in his head was that it was located on the southern outskirts, which was a vast area in itself.

It was worth mentioning that his cognitive abilities had grown far beyond its initial state at this point. It was impossible for him to forget something as crucial as that.

The only reasonable explanation was that the elders didn’t intend for him to overly rely on them, so the former had erased the memory regarding the exact location of the observation base, which was quite an astonishing act by itself.

As for the possibility that the elders had tampered with other memories, he dismissed it without second thought.

He could sense the sincerity and goodwill of the elders through their interactions so far, though he wasn’t quite sure if it was purely psychological or something else metaphysical in nature.

The possibility of the recent incident tampering with his memories had also crossed his mind, but he dismissed it after a thorough inspection of his existing memories.

He had accumulated quite a lot of ‘memories’ by now, courtesy of his frequent usage of Identification.

Through interconnection, even a minor discrepancy would become quite glaring when he actively traced them.

That was why the feat performed by the elders was truly astonishing.

They had seamlessly removed only the information regarding the exact location and somehow managed to avoid conflicts with the neighboring memories.

It had to be said that Jay could still vividly remember his time at the observation base, which contributed a lot to his astonishment.

After realizing his blunder, he could only ask the driver to turn around, saying that he had something important to do and he had just remembered.

He had wasted a few hundreds on the trip, which affected his already severely depressed heart to the point where he didn’t care about everything else at the moment.

Distraught and fatigued, Jay chose to sleep regardless of everything else.

He didn’t even eat breakfast, even though it was already morning by the time he returned to his room.

As for his academic responsibilities, surely, a decent student like him wouldn’t be severely affected by a day or two of absence.

He could also use a break in his metaphysical exercises, as he had always been doing it whenever he could.

The relentless ability usage was reinforced by the observation that the side-effects were mostly negligible, and even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t take long for his body and mind to recover and adjust to the higher levels of stress and fatigue.

However, rest was still beneficial no matter the situation, even if only for a change of pace.

Jay had slept for about a day and a half. The recent events might have been too stressful for him that even his body unconsciously gave him a long time to recover.

The long sleep actually did wonders for his mental clarity. It wasn’t to the point that he was back to his usual composed self, but he had regained enough reason and calmness to think about matters properly.

His reaction to recent matters had been vastly different from the usual.

He was indeed very cautious, sometimes even bordering on paranoia, but it wasn’t characteristic of him to have that level of emotional distress, no matter how dangerous the situation had become.

The standard Jay would understand that excessive reaction to bad situations would only lead to bad decisions.

The anger and frustration he felt towards himself and the psionic lifeform earlier was somehow understandable, but he shouldn’t let it take over his motivations.

Of course, growing in power was still his primary objective at the moment, considering his current vulnerability to metaphysical matters, but he would rather go about it in a rational manner as opposed to an emotion-driven one.

Perhaps it had something to do with his aggravated weakness, seeing that his ability had recently received an enhancement.

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It seemed like he would have to pay more attention to this matter in the future.

Now that he had taken a proper rest, Jay was now sober enough to see the bigger picture.

Despite the negative effects the incident had brought upon him, there were still good things to be celebrated.

His ability had somehow crossed another threshold during the incident.

He was quite certain that his supposed visit into the alternate reality was actually a manifestation of the new ‘experience’ aspect of his ability, albeit significantly more powerful than when he tested it on himself afterwards.

He recognized that the best course of action for now was to explore the extents of his enhanced Identification, as to better recognize the next steps he should take if he wanted to improve faster and more efficiently than his current rate of progression.

It took him a while to experiment with his abilities in the confines of his room, but his discoveries had significantly uplifted his mood despite the recent events.

As it had been his most desired function so far, Jay first tried to test for the ability’s remote usage.

He opened Facetome and searched for a picture of anything that existed in real-life.

He had to scroll past memes and quotes for a while until he arrived at a picture of an acquaintance relaxing on a park.

He tried to use his ability on a tree behind the person in the picture. To his delight, he actually managed to acquire the basic information of the target this time.

However, it didn’t become an ‘experience.’ It only remained as memory akin to textbook knowledge. Even the ‘history’ of the target wasn’t available.

Although it was a weakened version of his current ability, more particularly similar to the earliest version, it was still a very powerful feature that he intended to make good use of.

Despite everything, this was still a true game-changer. There were many things he could finally do because of this particular enhancement.

He would still have to plan things carefully though, lest he attract unwanted attention.

He wanted to figure out more, so he tried using it with his eyes closed, creating a vivid mental recreation of the tree by means of his enhanced cognitive functions.

It didn’t work, unfortunately.

It seemed like he couldn’t perform his ability without a medium of representation.

The mere concept of that specific tree in his mind wasn’t enough to represent the real thing.

It was regrettable, but he couldn’t be too greedy, especially since this enhancement was already extremely powerful enough for his current needs.

After verifying the remote usage a few more times with different pictures, he proceeded with the usual ‘contact’ usage of his ability.

Similar to the test he performed shortly after the incident, the information, along with the ‘history’ of the target, was absorbed into his mind in the form of ‘experiences.’

It was very powerful, especially in regards to investigation, as he could more easily deduce the methods, as well as the motives, of other people as long as the relevant clues were within reach.

Unfortunately, the applications of this significant enhancement were quite limited, considering that he wanted to use his ability on performing remote investigations.

At the moment, he could only use this aspect of his ability for personal improvement.

Perhaps in the future, when his development had reached a certain point, he could perform this level of Identification even on remote usage.

Afterwards, he tried using his ability through vision.

Like he expected, the ‘experience’ aspect was absent, but the ‘history’ aspect was there.

By now, Jay had noticed a pattern in his advancements.

The farther in proximity to himself, the weaker his ability, albeit in discrete steps rather than a gradual continuum of intensity.

In summary, there were three modes of usage at his current level of development: ‘touch’, ‘sight’, and ‘image’.

Different levels of information quality were acquired for each mode.

These three modes might not be limited to their mundane definitions. Sadly, he didn’t have strong enough metaphysical senses, if there were even any in the first place, to verify this matter.

Perhaps in the future, more means of usage will be included, along with the increase in his metaphysical development.

For now, his ability seemed to be overly reliant on ordinary sight.

It seemed like he would have to take care of his eyes more, including his glasses. It would be too unfortunate if he was incapacitated in a confrontation just because his glasses fell off.

Maybe he should consider having laser eye surgery in the future if he had the funds for it.

After summarizing the recent enhancement, Jay moved on to thinking about his next course of action.

In the back of his mind, he had always wanted to launch an anonymous online investigation service. He was only being held back by his capabilities.

It would allow him to use his ability to earn money without compromising his identity and harming others.

Of course, he would still try to check the identity of every customer in some way, lest he unwittingly serve vile people.

It would break his heart if he ever found out that his assistance had led to the ruin of innocent people, even if it was unintentional.

Although usage through touch would yield more benefits for his advancement, the remote application was indispensable to the development of his influence, even if it was only confined to the mundane world for the foreseeable future.

Jay understood that his advantages lay not in combat or anything confrontational, at least in his current level of development.

Perhaps he would develop some form of attacking aspect to his ability in the future, but it wasn’t in his consideration for now.

He wanted to collect a large variety of information from random commissions to enrich his knowledge of the world, and collect resources along the way.

He might even stumble into commissions that would help people who deserved his assistance.

In a way, it was also a form of help to society, albeit laced with other intentions.

The implementation wasn’t too complicated, if one only considered the mundane aspect.

There were plenty of ways to retain anonymity on the Internet, although he couldn’t ensure absolute safety, unless he invested huge effort in learning relevant matters and acquiring high-end equipment.

Of course, he wouldn’t need such things at the beginning, unless he wanted to forgo secrecy in favor of momentum and attract more attention than necessary.

As for customers, there was bound to be a few of them if he just searched. Although it would be quite difficult at the beginning due to lack of reputation.

Perhaps he could try to reach out to potential customers, such as reporters or private investigators, and offer his assistance. He would have to delve into this matter later on.

It was better if his potential customers assumed that he had ungodly talent at investigation, as opposed to having a supernatural ability that happened to be a perfect fit for the situation.

The asymmetry between perceived values would technically be his main source of income.

It wouldn’t be ideal if they knew that the precautions he had to make actually took longer than the actual work he had to do.

As for the metaphysical aspect, the possibility that he might be counter-investigated if he encountered a metaphysics-related target was quite low.

Mr. Arthas had made it clear in the past that it was mere coincidence that he discovered Jay.

The former had once stated that information-related abilities, like the ones they possessed, were quite rare even in the entire ascendant world.

Even if he was unfortunate enough to come across such a coincidence, the sheer distance and separation between the user and the target would make it significantly difficult for the other party to follow the traces.

This was why he was quite confident regarding his safety and confidentiality in the metaphysical aspect of this endeavor.

Of course, whether this confidence would hold up in the future still remained to be seen.