Enet City, Southern Border, Holding No. 213

24:43

Seventeen minutes remained before the beginning of a new day.

The data terminal inside Mir's room was active. But instead of its regular use at this time in gaming, the terminal was being used to browse the depths of a reliable biochemistry Journal.

Mir's eyes were red and damp, an inevitable result of staring at the flickering screen for seven hours without rest.

On his desk, four different textbooks lay open. One showed the picture of a dissected Rubber Roach, one was full of complex mathematical formulae, one was a diagram to understand biomolecular mutation, and the other book appeared to be a record of statistical data, depicting the life cycle of regular arthropods as against the life cycle of mutated arthropods.

"One more article! I need to memorize one more article!" Mir's voice was somewhat hoarse.

He had been mumbling memorized data for hours now, going through different sources for every topic he came across. His homework was long completed, now set aside so that he could revise older topics again and again.

In the last seven hours, Mir had bulldozed his way through four chapters from four different subjects. If someone gave him the same quiz papers Professor Corwin spoke of that morning, he was certain that he could score over 70 percent easily!

His breathing was beginning to grow ragged and painful. A ringing sensation occupied his head, making his body feel unnaturally light and hard to control.

Fingers ran across the screen as Mir tracked down the last article. Tap, tap, tap... The contents of the article began to rise upwards on the screen, responding to his ceaseless scrolling.

The words began to blur together in his vision. And then the pictures seemed to move. Subconsciously, Mir understood that he was beginning to lose his consciousness. But his body seemed like it was on autopilot. Almost every part of his thoughts screamed crazily at the little voice of protest in a corner of his mind.

Study!

Must study!

How did my grades fall so low? I have been negligent!

I feel so terrible for not studying all these months!

How could I get addicted to that trashy game?

These low scores humiliate me! They Humiliate my love and passion for knowledge!

Studyyyyy!!!

"Mir. Wake up!"

Mir was jolted awake by the banging on his locked door.

"Awake! I'm ah-cough-awake!"

"The food's gone cold and you're gonna be late!" Murin's exasperated shout came from outside. "Mum's about to throw a fit. You better hurry! Don't give her a reason to fire up."

Sounds of rapid footsteps disappeared down the hallway. Mir looked at the clock and cursed softly.

6:44

The red diary lay closed on his desk. Mir opened it gingerly and saw his handwriting occupying the first page, unchanged.

The maddening urge to study had disappeared. Now...all he felt was regret.

This sacred artifact actually did live up to the horrible reputation. On their first contact, it had nearly driven him insane. If someone had tried to stop him from studying last night, he might have ended up seriously hurting them. That's how intense his temporary obsession had become.

Recalling the chaotic frenzy his thoughts had fallen in last night, Mir cursed himself for being an idiot, and cursed Murray for thinking this thing was safe.

He pushed the diary inside a pile of old textbooks, in case his parents or Murin came here and found this cursed thing.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He'd return it to Murray after he returned from College.

While he was washing his face, he noticed that the red stripes on his hand and neck had disappeared fully. Usually, it took longer.

"Guess a good sleep does help the immune system."

As he put on his uniform and rushed into the dining room with his bag in hand, an odd nausea assaulted his senses.

He had skipped his dinner last night. But the breakfast seemed extremely unappealing for some reason. Maybe it was the smell, but he didn't feel any hunger at all.

Putting a hand over his empty stomach, Mir yelled that he wasn't hungry and ran out of the house before his mother could begin berating him.

The bus ride to his college took half an hour. The unshielded regions of the city had already become completely deserted. The journey through the sunlit areas was quicker than yesterday.

By the time he reached the college station, there was an extra red stripe on his palm.

Zoology Faculty, Lab Class

"Yesterday, all of you succeeded in dissecting the oral parts of the Rubber Roach. If you want me to be more realistic, you stumbled even before you could get to the real dissection. I hope that in today's session, some of you will manage to separate the digestive system properly. For your convenience, I'll display the method again!"

Mir, alongside his peers, watched with rapt attention as the rubbery carapace was cut open, slimy fluids were cleaned for clarity, scalpel descended unhesitantly where it was needed, and finally, the finger-thick digestive system got stretched outside the corpse. It was still perfectly attached to the throat and the excretion system at its two ends.

Back at their desk, he watched Nifiya follow the steps cautiously while handing her tools, washing away the slime inside, and offering instructions whenever he deemed it necessary.

"Stop saying so many unnecessary stuff! I don't need to know the mutated biomolecular link structure the sutures to separate the sclerites!" She growled at one point.

"I understand that you studied last night. There is no need to show it off."

"What are you gonna do when the Professor asks that question? Look at me for support like yesterday?" Mir retorted.

"It's your job to answer the theoretical questions. I can handle practical questions related to the dissection just fine."

"When did we agree on this significant division of labor? You chose to lead the dissection because you're only good at that."

Nifiya looked up from the tray with a sour expression. Before she could answer, they both noticed the professor making his way to their desk.

"Oh! You've managed to separate the thoracic sclerites. Not bad! But you've also damaged the tissue below the third and fourth plates. If the incision ran a few millimeters deeper, the head of the digestive system might have been cut."

Nifiya laughed awkwardly as she promised they'd be more careful. Much to her relief, the professor turned to look at Mir as he decided to ask theoretical questions.

"Can you recite the social structure of-"

"They are much different from regular roaches in terms of social behavior. The Rubber Roaches live in nests consisting of around a hundred individuals. Through their developed senses for viral infection, they can identify the roach with the highest mutation potential. The 'quorum' takes this roach as their king, or queen. Who gets to mate with the queen is decided by a similar voting method by the quorum. The king may mate with any female roach. However, the loyalty towards the royal lineage among roaches is not absolute.

"Those with lower levels of mutation generally are unable to adapt to the lifestyle and mating cycles of the highly mutated roaches. These roaches gradually get wiped out, leaving behind crossbreed descendants that tend to have higher levels of viral infection, thus becoming more prone to go through mutation during one of their instar phases.

"It has been calculated that if confined within a single ordinary cockroach nest where at the beginning, only two mutated Rubber Roaches are mating with the rest, the entire nest's population shall end up mutated or highly infected by twelve to fourteen generations."

The words came flooding out of his mouth. He didn't even need to pause and think. The information had been grounded deep in his memory.

Professor Corwin calmly wiped off a drop of spit that had landed on his lab coat.

"Very neatly summarized, albeit a bit lacking in some details. Could you answer why this roach has a Soulslot Consumption of One unit only?"

Mir nodded confidently.

"The viral infection of the Rubber Roach eventually manifests into a dual mutation, affecting it both physically and spiritually. However, it is a low-level creature to begin with, having an ancient, underdeveloped lineage. In the evolution standard chart, a highly mutated member of the Rubber Roach subspecies can reach the score of 14 percent at best. This limits the level of enhancement their spiritual consciousness receives from the mutation, thus making their Soul or Spiritual Consciousness far less powerful than humans, who usually have 80% - 110% score in the evolution standard.

"The Soulslot Consumption Scale is a comparative formula. As a human's spiritual consciousness is considered the major standard, an ordinary Rubber Roach which has a score of 10% can only occupy one-tenth of the capacity of a human with a 100% score.

"Generally, few mutated creatures have a lower score than the Rubber Roach. So the 10% mark is taken as 1 unit of Soulslot Consumption, and according to this formula, a superhuman at the Transcendent tier generally has 8-11 units of Soulslot reserve."

"Good answer. It looks like my counseling yesterday was of some effect! I must say, this is an unexpected surprise!" Professor Corwin beamed at him, cracking a rare smile.

Mir didn't manage to return a smile in time because he was too distracted by the professor's assumption that his counseling had motivated him to study.

If only this man knew! Mir found the situation rather funny.

"Thank you, professor," he said, letting the misunderstanding stand unchallenged.

As the bell rang to signal the end of the class, Mir headed to the Chemistry Lab for his next class behind the rest of his classmates. For reasons he couldn't fathom, his peers generally avoided him. He had few acquaintances, and fewer friends...technically.

Outside the Chemistry faculty, all of them found their teacher talking animatedly with a tall old man in priest's garb.

"Oh, fuck! He really had the balls to invite a priest from his Church into the classroom? Does the Principle know?" A student near Mir whispered in a mortified tone.

Preaching one's faith inside educational institutions was strictly prohibited. Even in these times where godly figures were spoken of as something real instead of a mere belief, this principle was widely established across most of the Nations under the Empire.

Their Chemistry teacher, Professor Zula was a recently converted member of the Church of the Sunbreaker. His enthusiasm was truly overwhelming, and now that enthusiasm was about to get him fired.

As the crowd reached the two men, they stopped the discussion and turned to survey the students, teeth revealed in wide smiles.

"The Principle has permitted the Church of the Lord to promote its valuable employment opportunities to the young talents of this nation," said the priest jovially.

"After our brief demonstration, I'm sure many of the talented students here shall see our church as a potential source to develop an illustrious career! To make things a bit more exciting, we have facilitated a short quizzing session for you, dear children. The winner will be rewarded with a one-time individual license to visit a Green-coded Sacred Ground!"

While a rush of excitement and nervousness surged through the crowd, Mir's eyes narrowed.

This couldn't be a coincidence, surely not...

"Well played, big bro. Very well played," he mumbled, following the crowd into the classroom.