29 - Notable Change

After Phase Four started, things rapidly got into an almost boring routine.

In the morning we would train mana perception, control and storage after the Dedication ritual. In the afternoon Mila tutored us in writing and reading, she had yet to start with Math. After that it was free time, sometimes Zwei used it for extra mana circulation practice, other times she left and went to play around with other teams. After night Dedication was sleep time. That was it. Every day similar to the previous.

It took Zwei about 4 weeks of the new Dedication method to reduce the time to 15 minutes again. This affected her quite a lot, because her sisters had mastered it in a bit less than 3 weeks. For 9 days Zwei was the last one to finish the daily ritual. For 9 days everyone waited only for her to finish. Except for Zwei herself, no one was mad in waiting for the slower sister to finish up.

The stress of being the last and making everyone wait for her made Zwei even slower to master the new method. I'm pretty sure that if she did not sabotage herself she would have made it in 3 weeks, just a couple days after the others. There was nothing I could do.

In the 4 weeks of collecting mana and filling our twin mana cores, I could finally feel a decent amount of mana being stored. I'm saying 'decent amount', but that is in comparison to empty. Because in reality we had only about 10% of our storage full. At least in this aspect of the training, Mila guaranteed that Zwei was equal to the other two. All of us had about this much stored.

The speed in which my dear host was able to circulate mana within herself improved drastically tho. She was rigorously doing the extra training Mila taught her, and it was showing impressive effects. Not to the extent of what Mila herself had achieved on her body, which she had shown us a glimpse of, but an impressive development nonetheless.

This also impacted on her speed to collect mana, she was improving 'fast' on this aspect. As fast as one could expect. Einer and Vier were not behind her, but if Zwei was following their pace then she was doing amazingly good.

"You should start noticing that from now on you will progress a bit faster" Mila was right. The development of the girls was almost exponential. The better they got, the faster they got better.

2 more weeks, on the 6th week of Phase Four, we had about 30% of the twin cores' capacity full. On the 8th week we were about 80% full. If it kept going like this we would be full by next week. Of course, reality was not so forgiving.

"You should have the contracted space of your cores almost full by now right? Well, that's only a small percentage of your real limit, keep pushing mana and it will expand. Of course it is harder to push instead of only deposit mana in it, but force it until your limit."

As expected on the 9th week we had our small insignificant contracted core spaces full and started to vigorously push mana into it. And we were back into a slow progress rate. I could not feel any significant expansion or increase in mana storage.

10th week into the Fourth Phase, almost halfway to the end, the girls were literate. Only 10 weeks to go from uneducated to completely literate. Impressive at the very least. It's all thanks to Mother's memory and learning enhancement system.

At this point we could read all the books we were allowed to read. There were some pretty impressive works, stories of warriors defeating armies. Wars being won. Wars being lost. Stories about impressive individuals doing more impressive feats. There was even one specific story about a baby cat that was found and raised to become a successful war companion.

There was even a library-like place that we could go. It was the same building as the entrance to the Nest's core. All the different looking buildings that served as entrances were also a book storage house. We could go there and read, but not borrow it.

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"From now on we will study mathematics"

1 week into studying math, Vier was showing some small difficulties in learning and finally asked one EXTREMELY good question. "How did you teach us how to talk?""Why not teach us Math the same way?"

"We couldn't"

The Efalem are born with an 'empty' brain, no information, no experience, no nothing. In the few hours after they are born, a blood ritual can be performed and some information can be shared. But it's not a perfect exchange of information, there are risks involved.

"If we try to send too much information the brain explodes… kaboom!" She even made an explosion gesture to emphasize the story.

Everything and everyone has a limit. The children's brain has a limit of how much information it can take at once, Mother decided that teaching the language itself, to allow for immediate communication was the most important thing. It would allow the newborns to be taught whatever needed later and accelerate any other process, without causing harm to the children. In contrast, if the limit was used for Math teachings for example, how would they have communicated with the children to teach anything else?

The only reason they are this successful is because the children are born and immediately learn how to communicate. Otherwise it would be a bunch of big babies walking around, with no form of control because they would not be able to understand anything. The number of time and work it would take to teach them the language first would be greater than it is to teach Math. Or any other subject.

After the explanation another question came "Why not repeat the method and teach us Math now that we have bigger learning capacities?"

"Like I said, we can't. It is only possible because you were newborns, you had an empty vessel that could take the information. If we try it now that you are already self aware, your brain would with a 100% chance explode and you would die. No chances of even your soul being saved and reunited with Mother"

The "transfer of knowledge" ritual was more like a soul modification thing. According to Mila's brief explanation, all sentient beings had a soul, the soul was directly linked to their brains. Or more like the brain hosted a soul. The soul was where all your experiences and knowledge were recorded, and this soul would be merged with Mother if we were to be recycled.

The newborn had a fluid soul, not yet formed. This ritual consists basically of a piece of a soul being copied and transferred to another. If we tried to do this now that our souls were completely taken form, it would be like trying to insert an object into a closed hand. For it to fit you need to open your hand. The brain 'opens' for the outside of the skull and we die. Simple right?

Vier agreed that it was simple and after the cute explanation of exploded brains she was showing an increased dedication on her math study. No more questions about an easy way out of study came after that. Because there is no easy path, we had to study and that's that.

15th week and… breasts.

Let me explain. I keep calling them 'children', but they are about the same height as the adult woman. There are two main reasons I have yet to change how I refer to them, the first is a lack of a better terminology, they are still not even a year old.

The second is because even though they have grown in height, their bodies still resemble a child. An overgrown child but still a child. They have round faces, baby fat all over it. Even their ears are a bit rounder than the adults. They have a childish proportion of their limbs and a complete flat chest.

That was true until now. Their bodies started to slowly change ever since they began forcing the twin cores to expand. The faces thinned out and started losing the baby fat. Ears more pointy and long. The body itself is morphing to a more adult look. Especially the chest. They still walk around naked with only the belt-poked on them tho.

It's weird how new discoveries change the way you look at the world.

The Efalem as a race have no genitalia whatsoever, they look like plastic mannequins. Beautiful but still, plastic figures… The reason I was referring to them as women was because of the chest and feminine features of MY standard. Earth standard. Which now that I think about it, makes no sense really. Why would they have breasts if they have no babies to feed? That's kinda the point of the breasts right?

Their reproductive system is completely alien to me, with them being born of a tree and all that... Yet, they still talk about themselves using feminine terms so I'll keep it as well but...

Think with me. The cores are a physical structure, right? They are placed in their chest, ok? There are two of them, in the CHEST. They are expanding. Twin physical structures on the chest are growing. By mere coincidence boobs are forming in their bodies? No way. These are no mere useless breasts. These are batteries.

I never knew or imagined that the 'boobs without a nipple' that the adult woman had were actually a mana storage.