I was dropped off in my room by the guards just like always, and I was eager to begin the evolution of my Power [Mental Operator]. I had been training this power for more than 7 years now and it had finally reached level 100 earlier today during recreation.

Walking in my room towards the center where I usually sat down to meditate, I noticed how empty my room was and it made me think about the emptiness inside of me. It had been 2 years since I had any visits from anybody including Mystdell.

I actually didn’t have any more visits after the one with my parents. I was fine with that, I didn’t complain or anything, but if I was honest with myself it made me just a little bit lonely. Even Mystdell stopped coming to visit me, but that was because she was busy studying at university, so I didn’t hold it against her like I did my parents. My parents stopped visiting me because they probably gave up on me, although I couldn’t really say they stopped visiting me if they only visited me the one time could I?

In any case, one good thing that came out of all of this was that I had less distractions and was able to practice my skills with more focus. My focused training had paid off as evidenced by the fact that I was now ready to evolve my Power [Mental Operator]. However before looking at my options for evolution I did a quick divination to pull up my status to look at my skills/powers and see my progress.

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-

(Power: Mental Operator; Evolution: 0 Level: 100)

(Skill: Mana Maintenance; Level: 72)

(Skill: Detailed Divination; Level 41)-

[Inactive Skills/Powers 12]-

(Skill: Research; Level: 67)

(Skill: Acting; Level: 42)

(Skill: Conceal; Level 44)

(Skill: Tireless Mana; Level: 28)

(Skill: Sense Mana; Level: 68)

(Skill: Pain Tolerance; Level: 10)

(Skill: Physical Recovery; Level: 39)

(Skill: Physical Augmentation; Level: 9)

(Skill: Time Sense; Level: 86)

(Skill: Space Sense; Level: 59)

(Skill: Transformation Resistance; Level: 68)

(Skill: Basic Space Manipulation; Level 28)-

[Mental Operator] was level 100, which was the level at which Powers would be able to be evolved. My other skills were high level too, but it would be at least another year until something else would reach level 100 like [Mental Operator].

Given the fact that I was young (which slowed skill acquisition and growth), and the fact that I didn’t have a fully activated system (which also slowed skill acquisition and growth), my skill leveling progress was actually much faster than would be expected. The expected skill level growth for someone like me would be less than one level a month or about 7-8 levels a year, which would mean my skill levels would be at around half of what they currently are. So the fact that I was about to evolve my power after only 7 years of practice would definitely drop some jaws.

Unfortunately nobody but me would know about this because that would obviously be detrimental to my goal of being overlooked. I wouldn’t say that I was someone who craved attention, but I still had some desire to have my efforts be recognized. Sometimes when I have these thoughts I think about the surprise on others' faces if I told them everything, and this gives me some amount of solace and tempers my desire for attention.

Refocusing my thoughts on the present, I pulled up the actual system screen for evolving [Mental Operator]. This was one of the few times that the system could be used even when not fully activated. Both visually and mentally a screen showing the evolution options appeared in front of me and I excitedly looked at the options.

Mental Operator(+Acceleration): Can now artificially, and physically, accelerate mental operations and interactions. Maybe you’re a speedster and can’t think fast enough for your needs, or maybe you need to quickly assess situations and do quick calculations; whatever the reason, this will help accelerate your mental abilities.

Looking at the first one it was already looking great, but I have to look at all of my options before I choose.

Mental Operator(+Collective): Specialize in many minds, and other mental operations. This will help multiple minds better communicate, coordinate, and use less resources to operate. Maybe you want to operate an interconnected hive mind, or maybe you just want to have more of yourself to talk to; whatever the reason, this will help you handle multiple different minds working together.

This one’s interesting, but it seems like it would require more than I can -or would even want to- provide for it to reach its full potential. So I think this one is off the table for now. I probably have this option because of my Virtual Mind technique that I’m using.

Mental Operator(+Breadth): Increases the depth and quality of the controls of [Mental Operator], thus allowing different qualities of intelligence to be formed. Maybe you want to better understand the complex and multifaceted workings of magic, or maybe you just need help understanding basic math and logic; whatever the reason, this will help you do mental things you couldn’t do before.

This one sounds very powerful, and I would take it immediately if it weren’t for some of the wording. It says that it will give more ‘controls’ to [Mental Operator], which will then allow ‘different’ qualities of intelligence to be formed. It implied that I could possibly mess with the wrong controls and make myself as dumb as a slime. Although this one sounds like it has amazing potential, it also has a lot of risks involved, so unfortunately, for now, I can’t risk taking it.

Mental Operator(+Modification): Can now modify, and improve, physical ‘hardware’. Maybe you want your nerves to be faster and more accurate for sports, or maybe you want to create a computer in your brain; whatever the reason, this will allow you to overcome your natural physical limitations.

This one is less dangerous than [Mental Operator](+Breadth), but it’s still messing with things I don’t understand. I mean I’m only able to use [Mental Operator] so well right now because I have over a century’s worth of experience with it; if not for that this power would only be level 30 or so right now. So although this sounds like it would be absolutely amazing, it would definitely be difficult to handle.

Mental Operator(+Cloud): Mental operations can now be cheaply stored, duplicated, and non-destructively edited within the ‘cloud’. Additionally [Mental Operator] can now connect to and receive information from accepted and designated sources. Maybe you have a deep fear of mental modification but still want to do it anyways, or maybe you just want to sense when a specific ward is active and what it’s sensing; whatever the reason, this will give you the tools necessary to mentally operate from the safety of The Cloud.

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OK, I’m feeling a little called out by this one. But my fear of mental modification is completely understandable! Ahem. Anyways, this one sounds great, moving on to the last option.

Mental Operator(Advance To Evolution 1): General improvement to everything [Mental Operator] can do. Maybe you just want more of the same but better, or maybe you’re someone who has no sense of exploration; whatever the reason, this will be a direct upgrade to everything [Mental Operator] can do.

In the past this was the one I chose every time, just a direct improvement to [Mental Operator]. It wasn’t fancy like the other options, but in combination with my [Adaptive Mind] it was already a force to be reckoned with. Be that as it may, I wouldn’t be choosing this option this time around for a few reasons.

While Evo 1 powers were much stronger than their Evo 0 versions, that didn’t mean that it was always better to advance an Evo 0 power to Evo 1; for example given the choice of evolving an Evo 0 [Photon Shot] into Evo 0 [Light Manipulation] or advancing it to Evo 1 [Photon Cannon], most people would choose to evolve it into [Light Manipulation]. Because while Evo 1 [Photon Cannon] would definitely be more powerful than Evo 0 [Light Manipulation], [Light Manipulation] would be capable of so much more than [Photon Cannon].

Second of all, not all Powers are created equal, some powers are just better than others. For example Evo 0 [Knife Master] will be weaker than Evo 0 [Weapon Master]. So advancing [Weapon Master] to Evo 1 would be stronger than advancing Evo 0 [Knife Master] to Evo 1.

The final reason that I wasn’t going to advance [Mental Operator] was because it would be harder to level up an Evo 1 Power than an Evo 0 Power. I already had enough difficulty leveling up everything, I didn’t need more obstacles.

So after looking over all my options again, I narrowed down my choices to Acceleration and Cloud. Modification Breadth and Collective all sounded great in their own right, but I felt that Acceleration and Cloud just suited me better. Both of them sounded like great choices in their own ways.

Acceleration would no doubt make it possible to eventually think at supercomputer levels of speed and could even help me do magic faster.

Cloud on the other hand was a little less obvious in what it would really be capable of, but I mean it even directly said in its description Maybe you have a deep fear of mental modification but still want to do it anyways, and that was definitely me. It almost sounded like the System was recommending it to me.

Jokes aside, Cloud said that it will allow me to connect and receive information from designated sources. If I could directly connect to my artifacts and get information from them it would be great synergy with my ‘build’ and style of doing things.

Because Cloud was more in the direction I was headed towards, I decided to get it rather than Acceleration. It actually took me hours of contemplation and thought to eventually get to my final decision, but in the end I made up my mind and made my choice on the System screen.

Mental Operator(+Cloud) has been selected. Confirm this selection?

[Confirm].

Selection has been confirmed. Beginning Evolution process.

Your [Power: Mental Operator; Evolution: 0 Level: 100] has changed to [Power: Cloud Mental Operator; Evolution: 0 Level: 0]

Suddenly it felt like a mental fog came over me, in more ways than one.

Because my Power had gone from level 100 to level 0 I felt my mental capabilities slow down considerably. At the same time I felt my brain, body, magic core, metaphysical organs, and even my mana reactor connect to a newly forming mental Cloud.

Suddenly it no longer felt like I was receiving information from a bunch of bulky parts. Now it felt like everything was as connected to me as directly as my sight or touch was.

I couldn’t necessarily understand all of the information I was receiving, but I could understand where it was coming from. I could tell that I was getting information from each individual cell and microbe in my body. I could even feel everything about my Internal World like it was now my own limb, whereas before it felt like I was feeling everything through a limb with frayed nerves.

It would’ve been too much information to take in and deal with normally, but my Adaptive Mind had long since adapted to overloads of information, and it immediately filtered out everything that wasn’t currently relevant or that I wasn’t focusing on. This allowed me to maintain my conscious thought and figure out everything this new Cloud Mental Operator could do without being overwhelmed.

A little anxiously I quickly went over all of the things I knew [Mental Operator] could originally do. After a brief frantic search I realized that it could still do everything it could do previously, and I heaved a great sigh of relief.

Of course I knew logically from the things I had read, that it would still be able to do everything the old one could, because it hadn’t explicitly said that it would lose any of its capabilities in the System description, but I was still understandably concerned and anxious about changing something that had been my trusty companion for almost 2 centuries.

With my fears now soothed, I began to feel out all of the new things my Power could do.

The most obvious and glaring thing was the Cloud. Getting a feel of this Cloud I intuitively got a feeling of what it could do. In one area of the Cloud there was a sort of storage where a copy of every memory, habit and other ‘mental software’ was kept. This area was pretty easy to understand and I just decided to call it Storage from now on.

Moving on I came to a sort of editing area within the Cloud. This area seemed to be one of the main new features of this Power and it was filled with complex controls and other capabilities that I decided I would get to know better later when I could dedicate more time to it.

The final major function of the Cloud that I recognized was the connections it had to the outside. Looking over the connections individually, most of them were very small connections like the ones to all of the individual cells within my body. These connections didn’t really mean much to me when I looked at them individually, but these connections were also labeled to various groups and categories.

When I filtered these connections by categories like ‘skin’ or 'hands' for example I was able to better make use of the information that I was receiving. With all of this information I wondered if I could make my own categories and labels, and immediately I was given the option to do so. It seemed that this entire space or Cloud could be entirely customized by me however I wanted.

Getting an initial grasp of everything I wondered if I could control my limbs and body from here, but when I tried, it felt like the commands were sent through my brain and into my body just like normal. It seemed that the only two way connection I had in the Cloud was to my mind. But thinking about it, that made sense, it was called Cloud ‘Mental’ Operator not Cloud Operator after all. This experiment did let me know that I could still operate my body and everything from the Cloud just like normal though.

Returning my mind back to my body and out of the Cloud, I could still feel everything in the Cloud, and felt that I would be able to use it even if I wasn’t in it with my mind.

I was excited to be able to experiment and learn all that this new Power could do. Maybe this would finally allow me to have a mind inside of The Archives at the same time as I was controlling my body. However that was something that I would have to save for tomorrow, as it was time for me to get to sleep. As I laid down in my bed I let my mind wander and thought of all the new possibilities this new Power might be capable of as I slowly drifted off to sleep.