I woke up with a clear wave passing through my mind, no trace of drowsiness left. Although I could’ve slept longer, after such a prolonged period of wakefulness, the time for me to leave for level 4 was approaching and there were things I needed to take care of before my departure to level 4.

I stretched out my muscles as I felt a refreshing coolness spreading throughout my body. This refreshing feeling came from one of the few artifacts I had recovered from the Dragon’s hoard, a simple ring made out of misty ice-steel. Although it didn’t do much (currently), the artifact increased the physical recovery rate of the wearer, and it did this through partially relying on the misty ice-steel’s properties which had the side effect of cooling down my body, if it weren’t for me reducing the cooling effect, through the use of my [Body of Artifacts], I would be freezing right now despite the tropical temperature. However because I was reducing its effects it wasn’t operating at even 10% of its capabilities, but it was a welcome side effect nonetheless.

I summoned a small light to float around, illuminating the small enclosure I had awoken in. It was a small room that I had hollowed out before I had fallen asleep, there was only a small opening where air could come in from outside, but otherwise it was completely enclosed. After waking up I thought about my experiences before my arrival in this room.

After defeating the Vivid Vortex I had tried to think about where I could get some sleep with air to breathe. My first thought was to go back to the room I had first appeared in and fill it up with breathable air, but after thinking about all of those corpses in there I didn’t want to know what would happen to them if they were exposed to oxygen, they might be fine right now, but who knew what would happen if they were exposed to oxygen.

With that idea out of the way my foggy mind struggled for a while to find a solution, but eventually I remembered the open cavern where I could see the moon from. Although I wouldn’t be able to go outside of the opening in the ceiling, there was still air in the space above the water (breathable hopefully).

After traveling the long distance, to the still moonlit cavern, I emerged out of the water after such a long stay beneath its surface. By this point I was having trouble even staying awake, and if the air wasn’t breathable I wouldn’t know what to do. Luckily the air was fine to breathe, and, although humid, it was a tolerably warm temperature. Hollowing out a space in the cavern’s walls for me to sleep in had been a simple task with some earth magic, and I had collapsed from exhaustion as soon as I had finished.

Now, after a considerably long time asleep, it was almost time for me to head to level 4. There was just one thing that I needed to take care of before leaving, and that was [Mental Operator] and its evolution.

[Mental Operator] had reached level 100 once again, and that meant that it was ready to be evolved. I didn’t delay and opened the evolution options list.

(+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.

Looking at this option it made me think about an article I had once read. In the article, it talked about the different kinds of superintelligent entities that could exist, and the article stated that there were 5 kinds: Speed Superintelligence, Collective Superintelligence, Quality Superintelligence, Hardware Superintelligence, and Software Superintelligence.

Obviously this (+Collective) evolution would lead me down the collective type of superintelligence, but in the article the person who wrote it stated that Speed Superintelligence was just overall better than Collective Superintelligence, and I kind of agreed, for the most part. I mean let's say you had a collective of 10 minds vs one mind that could think 10 times as fast, and you gave both of them the same task of searching the Web for an answer to a question, the one mind working at 10x speed would obviously finish the problem before the 10 collective minds could.

Sure, this (+Collective) evolution would still be great, but would it be the best choice? I don’t really know. It’s still an option, but I don’t know if it’s the right option for me.

(+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.

I have to admit that I am deeply curious about this one. I was hesitant about taking it before, but it has kind of grown on me the more I’ve thought about it.

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

I don’t know about this one. I mean it definitely has its pros and cons, but I feel like this would take the power in a different direction than I want to follow. I mean, modifying something as complex as the body just seems too complex for the current me.

(+Invasion): Can now invade other minds and work to bend them to your will. Maybe you think that offense is the best defense, or maybe you think it would just be better if others were more like you; whatever the reason, this will allow you to enter the battlefield of minds.

This one’s new. Maybe it’s here because I’ve been using mental magic to mess with other minds lately. But that just means that I can already kind of do this one with magic. I’m sure this would make me a lot better at mental warfare in the short term, but I don’t really want to take [Mental Operator] in that direction. [Mental Operator] has always been like a friend that always has my back, I just wouldn’t want to send a friend into war, so this one is off the table.

(+Secure): The mind is a fortress and this will help you better secure that fortress. Maybe you really care about your personal privacy, or maybe you think it’s rude when others come into your mind uninvited; whatever the reason, this will shore up your mental defenses and fight back against mental intrusion.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

This one is new as well, and it does sound like my kind of magic. Maybe I’m still rattled by my experience with the Vivid Vortex, but this one sounds really good.

Mental Operator(Advance To Evolution 1): General improvement and consolidation of everything [Accelerated Cloud Mental Operator] can do. Maybe you just want more of the same but better, or maybe you feel that this is as good as it can get; whatever the reason, this will be a direct upgrade to everything [Mental Operator] can do.

This is not an option at the moment, I just don’t feel that [Mental Operator] has reached its evo. 0 limit yet, though it is probably getting close.

I went through all of my options again and again, and in the end it came down to two options (+Breadth) and (+Secure). It wasn’t easy narrowing down my choices, and choosing between these last two options was seemingly impossible. They both just sounded so good, but after a little more consideration I decided to go with (+Breadth).

Although (+Secure) would be fine, it wouldn’t be the best. I couldn’t allow my fears to dictate my actions, so I didn’t hesitate any further and chose to evolve [Mental Operator] with the (+Breadth) modifier.

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

[Confirm].

Selection has been confirmed. Beginning Evolution process.

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

I felt my Power evolve into something more, but this time it felt like it was straining its limits. I could feel that this would be the last time I could evolve this power at evolution 0 without losing something in the process.

Just like the previous times I had evolved this Power, it felt like a mental fog came over me, but this time it was different than before. Usually when a Power evolves and goes from level 100 to level 0 it loses all of the bonuses that came from accrued levels. However this time it was different. I couldn’t quite pin down why it was different this time, but it almost felt like everything just became easier. I couldn’t find a way to describe the feeling.

If, before this evolution, thinking had been like using legs to walk around, then now it felt like I was riding a bike. I was still reaching the same destination, but now it was just so much easier to do. However, level 100 legs were still better than a level 0 bike.

Focusing on [Mental Operator] I could feel so many more controls, sliders, switches, options, meters, and many more things to mess with. It was overwhelming and I had no idea what any of the new things even represented. It felt like I had gone back to my first time interacting with [Mental Operator], though it wasn’t a complete blackbox like it had been then.

Taking a cursory look over all of the new controls I could see that everything was in its own unique position; every slider was set to different levels, every dial was turned to different amounts, and every switch was in its own on or off state. None of the controls had any labels or indication of what they were, so I was wary of messing with anything before heading into level 4. I was intensely curious, but I didn’t want to risk going into a new level of the Dungeon of Tribulation with any more unknown variables than I had to. Luckily there was something else that I could use to sate my curiosity besides messing with the new shiny controls.

There were many different graphs, maps, charts, and other data that was presented to me, and some of this data was constantly changing in real time. Some of the data was almost like abstract art that I didn’t even have a vague clue as to what it represented, but other things were easy enough to determine what they represented; for example one line chart was obviously fluctuating up and down based on the intensity of my emotions, and another display clearly changed to something new every time my focus was drawn away by something, even sometimes displaying multiple things at once.

Looking at all of the displays for a while let me at least have a rough idea what some of them were, and it was easier than I thought. However, my desire to test out my new abilities was calling to me more and more, and I felt that there shouldn’t be much harm in trying it out, right?

Yeah I’m sure nothing bad could happen. I just need to make sure I have precautions in place that will revert me back to baseline. I mean I can’t just get a new power and not use it, now can I?

I decided to try moving one dial to the max to test out what I did. I should be able to see some sort of difference if I do that, so I located a dial that was about halfway fully turned and decided that I would try that one out. If it was already halfway turned then it should be something that is already influencing me in some way, if I turn it to full then something should increase by a noticeable amount.

Before I turned the dial I set up an automatic program through the Cloud that would set everything back to its current state after 2 minutes had passed. Nothing majorly bad should be able to happen within 2 minutes, but it should be enough time to get a feel for what changed.

With that all set up I laid down on the floor of my small carved out room and relaxed. I closed my eyes and started to slowly turn the dial up to max. At first it felt like nothing was happening, but after the dial had reached about the 70% mark things started happening. Many other dials and sliders started to slowly decrease the more I turned up my dial, then after reaching about the 85% mark some switches started to flip off, and by the time my dial had reached 100% many different things had decreased or shut off.

My body had completely left my mind at this point and a singular focus occupied my mind. Numbers, Math, Calculation. I started to do math and ran through numbers in my mind without stopping or thinking of anything else, the math I was doing and the numbers flowing in my head had no basis for them being there or reason why I was doing them, it was just the only thing I could think about.

Time seemed to flow strangely and my memory was having a hard time grasping the present and storing it away like it usually did. All I knew was that sometime after 1+1, and !8±x, I passed out.

-Break-

I woke up with a jolt. I was lightheaded and my bodily processes seemed to start back up all at once, my lungs started breathing, my senses came online, my sense of time started to flow, and my memory started to function. I took stock of my body and understood that I had stopped breathing during my experiment and had passed out due to a lack of oxygen.

OK then, I stand corrected. Something bad can happen within 2 minutes.

My memory of what happened during those two minutes was slippery and obtuse in a way that I just couldn’t make full sense of, but I did recall it having something to do with numbers? It wasn’t fully clear but that’s the best I could recall.

My power reserves of [Mental Operator] were down to 90% after my experiment, so it hadn’t been too demanding on my Power, but it was a different story for my body. I sat up, or at least I tried to, it felt like everything was still waking up and all I achieved were a few muscle twitches. It would probably take a little while for my body to get back to normal, but at least I learned something from my experiment. Don’t turn a dial up all the way, at least not for now.

While I was thinking this, the System notification sounded in my mind.

[Level 3 complete. All challenges have been met.]

[Would you like to enter level 4 of the Dungeon of Tribulation, or leave the dungeon?]

I didn’t immediately give it an answer and waited for my body to come fully back online and made sure everything was working properly. The System patiently waited and when I was ready I responded.

“OK, enter the next level please.” I’ll hold off on testing out my new Powers for now. My main priority is still to finish the Dungeon of Tribulation.

[Affirmative. Now entering level 4.]