I talked with Genesis for a while about the investment, telling her some of what I knew about investing and letting her know that she could come to me any time if she needed any advice on the subject. Although I didn’t really think that she would come and ask me even if she did need advice, but I told her anyway, she seemed to appreciate me saying it at least.

She was busy with something of her own, so I didn’t continue to bother her after I had said everything I needed to, and I returned to my room to continue where I had left off.

Getting up from my bed, which I usually laid down on whenever I entered The Archives, I walked back to the middle of the room and entered a meditative pose.

Returning to the Cloud I went back over to the editing area. Just like last time, I felt the same overload of information assault me, but this time it was much more manageable and less incoherent. I had had some time to rest my mind, after talking with Genesis, and now felt ready to continue my immersion training.

After about an hour of flooding my Adaptive Mind with information, I noticed that I was starting to get diminishing returns from trying to passively understand everything. I assessed my understanding, and decided that I understood everything well enough to start trying things out, and hopefully figure out how to split my Adaptive Mind from my main mind.

I tried to pull up the connections to the Cloud to start editing them, but I was immediately overwhelmed because I had pulled up every outside connection all at once. I quickly stopped and mentally smacked myself, I should’ve filtered them first, so stupid.

I adjusted my approach and pulled up all of the connections that were related to the mind instead. But I was once again overloaded with the number of connections, with there only being slightly fewer this time. I stopped and tried to refine my search again, and again, and again.

Eventually I figured out the right filters to use and managed to pull up my Adaptive Mind, my virtual mind, and my main mind that was anchored to my physical brain.

Finally, now I just need to somehow find out how to separate my Adaptive Mind. I was about to start editing things when I stopped. I should probably start out small. I don’t want to suddenly lose my ability to walk or anything like that.

Being careful I decided to start with my connection to my [Time Sense] Skill and try to make a simple clock with its information. It was safe because there was no possible way for me to mess with a System Skill at my level of power.

Getting the connection to my Skill was easy, but after I had it I had no idea where to begin with my controls. It was like I had gone back to the time when I first came into this world and tried to use [Mental Operator]. It was like I was given all of the controls, but as the Operator I had to learn what to do on my own with only a general direction and a very simple introduction to get me started.

Starting off I used a control I was fairly certain was used to make a copy of something and as soon as I used it I had a copy of the connection to my [Time Sense] Skill. After I did that, another control lit up like it had become available. Curious, I used the control trying to see what it did, and immediately the new copy of the Skill disappeared like it had never been there, and the control I just used became unusable while another one lit up instead. I used the new control and the copy of the Skill reappeared. Using the two controls repeatedly I learned that they were very simple undo and redo controls. With these two controls I was reassured that I would at least be able to undo any mistakes that I made without permanently damaging something.

Now emboldened with my fear of permanent damage being taken away, I began to mess around with things trying everything out to see what different controls did.

Messing around with the controls like this made the connection to my Skill look like it was distorted and warped in incomprehensible ways, with the information I got from the Skill now absolutely incomprehensible. But through my experiments I discovered that what I was doing was essentially applying ‘filters’ to the connections with the Cloud as a sort of control center. I wasn’t actually messing with the original source in any way, which was reassuring.

I deleted my abomination of a creation, and using what I had learned from it I began to try and turn the information I got from my [Time sense] Skill into a clock that would be placed in a corner of my vision, kind of like a HUD (Heads Up Display) in video games. It didn’t take too long to accomplish, with everything that I had learned, and after finishing I opened my eyes to see the results of my attempt.

I smiled as I noticed something new in the corner of my vision, but when I tried to look towards it, it moved along with my vision remaining in the periphery. My smile turned into a frown as I realized my mistake. I tied it to my peripheral vision instead of tying it to my mental view. Well Albert Einstein said that failure is success in progress. I’ll get there eventually.

Not feeling discouraged by my failure, I went back into the Cloud and started over from scratch. Going through the whole process again I noted where I went wrong and fixed my mistake. This time when I opened my eyes I was able to look into a corner of my vision and see a simple display that showed the current time of day.

I was happy with my progress and decided to continue with this HUD idea that I had, and I started to add some more features to it. I added a model 3D version of my body that showed the state of the different parts of my body; it would also show where damage was if I ever received any. I added a to-do list, and a few other small but nice features like the ability to listen to random songs from my memory like I was playing them from a device.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I was happy with my progress in learning how to use the editing functions of the Cloud, but in the process I found out that there was currently no way for me to separate my Adaptive Mind from my physical mind with the Cloud, which discouraged me slightly.

However, although I couldn’t separate my Adaptive Mind, I did find out how to automate what my Adaptive mind did with the Cloud. So although my original goal of separating my Adaptive Mind turned out to be currently impossible, I did learn how to free up much of the mental processes my Adaptive Mind was constantly bogged down with which limited my capabilities.

After I was done making my HUD, I immediately started to free my Adaptive Mind from its need to micromanage my virtual mind. Thus my virtual mind was now functioning completely on its own, whereas before my Adaptive Mind had to constantly carry out the task of making my virtual mind mirror my actual mind while also censoring everything in real-time. Now all of that censoring could be done by applying various filters to my virtual mind, and completely removing the need to use my Adaptive Mind for the task.

Through this I was now able to use my freed up Adaptive Mind and create even more virtual minds. Censoring all of my mental processes in real-time was an extremely demanding thing and took up most of my Adaptive Mind’s abilities, leaving little room for much else. But now that I had freed up space I would be able to create some more virtual minds. So although I was unable to achieve my original goal I had still sort of accomplished another of my goals of having more minds.

It was a huge relief to me to now be able to accomplish all of these things, because I was unable to get any mental Skills like [Dual Mind] or [Multitask] like others could.

This was because Skills were ‘lesser than’ Powers, and since I already had [Mental Operator] most mental Skills fell under its wide umbrella and were no longer available to me.

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in the long run, as it meant that [Mental Operator] would eventually be able to do what those Skills could, but it was definitely a short term obstacle.

This downside to Powers was a widely known and debated issue, and the reason why some people argued that people should only use Skills, whereas others argued that Powers were superior. Most of those that argued for Skills were the shorter lived races, while the longer lived races advocated for Powers.

Actually, when I first entered this world, I had thought that Powers were something that people could only be born with and that I was smart for having chosen to be born with [Mental Operator]. However I soon came to realize that Powers were things that anybody could get with enough time and effort, and it was absurd to think that somebody would be born with a Power, just the same as it was absurd for somebody to be born with a Skill.

Usually people would learn Skills and level them up to a certain level, at which point they would have a few options, one of which was to turn said Skill into a Power. When I had first learned of this basic concept I had despaired, thinking that I had wasted the POINTS I had spent to give myself [Mental Operator] when I was born, after all I could’ve eventually gotten it with just some time and effort.

Then later I came to realize that it wasn’t a complete waste of POINTS because I had essentially saved myself a hundred years worth of effort, because [Mental Operator] was actually a fairly strong Power that would’ve taken at least that long to craft from scratch. And after I knew that I would go back in time, I nearly wept with joy that I would have access to [Mental Operator] after my return, as it made my whole plan actually possible. Not only because I would be able to protect and hide my mind from the government, but also because the government had no idea that I even had [Mental Operator] which made them completely unable to counter its use. This was because the government didn’t even think to scan five year olds for Powers because there was no way a five year old could even have a Power in the first place.

They did scan me for Skills when I was five though, but their efforts showed that I didn’t even have one Skill, when normal five year olds would have at least a few by then. This was because the artificial spirit that was controlling my body for the first five years of my life was completely unable to learn any Skills. The lack of any Skills in my assessment basically labeled me as an idiot in the eyes of society.

Which now that I think about it might be part of the reason why my parents don’t have much of an interest in me. Maybe they think of me as some sort of savant that is only good at divination magic? Well it didn’t matter much currently, but it was something to keep in mind for the future.

Thinking about this, I recalled my first years in this world. I was extremely lonely and desperately wanted to get out of this prison that I had found myself in. I remember thinking about how easy it would be to just say that I was reincarnated, I thought that I could explain how everything was just a huge misunderstanding and I would be able to get out of prison and live with my new family instead of in prison.

One day when I was seriously considering telling everybody, a System screen popped up in front of me in response to my thoughts.

(Title: Dimensional Traveler): Congratulations! You have left your home dimension behind and safely traveled to another one. Dimensional travel isn’t too dangerous, but unfortunately for you your method of travel did not seem to include your physical body. This means that you’ll have to be reincarnated. Unfortunately some powerful individuals don’t look too kindly on reincarnators and have vowed to terminate them with extreme prejudice. So the system reminds you to keep quiet about your past life and reincarnation lest it end up reaching the wrong ears.

: You have a much greater affinity with Space and Time. Additionally it is now impossible for others to discover that you have traveled from a different dimension.(Unless you tell them, so the system reminds you not to do that)

Seeing this pop up in front of me and reading the description, I fell into a deep depression afterwards and my already fragile mental state lost the lifeline I had been holding onto. Needless to say, I didn’t end up telling anybody and eventually managed to place my hopes on time travel. Although this was only after I had basically given up all hope after failing to commit suicide and falling even deeper under mental control.

But that was all in the past now, and time and life experience had softened the edges of those memories considerably. Now they were just memories of my past that I occasionally thought about when my mind strayed from my training.

Speaking of, I caught my stray train of thought and I went back to experimenting with my Power. Creating more virtual minds would have to be a task for another day, as it was a time consuming process that took a lot of mana which I didn’t currently have because I had already spent it on other things.

Everything was coming together, all for my goal of escaping this prison and gaining the freedom I had always wanted. I might not be strong enough to achieve my goals today, but I will continue to train and do my best to eventually become strong enough to do so.