When he completed his advancement quest, Aki was immediately rewarded with a long line of notifications talking about 'calculating achievements' and 'reevaluating parameters', more and more garbage clouding his vision with flashing and unreadable links he could tell (if he was fast enough) lead back to specific battles, crafting sessions or quest completions.
His instinctive reaction was, obviously, to buckle and fight against the sudden force intruding on his outer soul layer and mind, which caused a momentary pause in the 'assessment', but then that same force came back even more intrusively, being much less 'stealthy' about it's ministrations to his being as it went deeper.
Translation, the system itch was a bitch and he felt like clawing his skin off or maybe imploding his ego to get rid of this. That was how much agony the unrestrained probing caused.
The only damage he suffered was what he caused to himself however, his channels were only barely worse for the wear when the eternity of torment ended what was probably a few seconds later.
When he could properly focus on something outside his own mental fortress however, there was only one notification remaining.
[Congratulations! Advancement quest completed.
Completion rate: Extreme
Talent demonstrated: Extreme+++
Bonus reward awarded!
Bonus reward adjusted!
Bonus reward improved!
Congratulations, you have discovered a new trait, Advanced magical affinity. Your FN trait has granted you +9% INT.
Novice mage Lv 10 has advanced into Apprentice mage Lv 1.
+2 intelligence
+1 wisdom
+3 free points
+1 talent point
You have gained new abilities -
Intermediary arcane affinity Lv 1
Refine Lv 1
Focus Lv 1]
And no matter what he did, he could not thoroughly remember or call back all of that garbage that had clouded his vision before. He probably wouldn't be able to remember they had been there if his mind had not retreated deeper into his soul while keeping up a mantra of 'NO's to attempt to stymie the system's further invasion.
That had, mayhaps, reduced any possible rewards he may have been able to receive, but some things were simply not worth it.
Different from before however, he also did not hesitate to raise his level to ten immediately, the sudden increase in INT and WIS much more noticeable than the previous one to CHA.
Maybe someone else would have had further thoughts on completely giving up on the system's enhancements and avoided dealing with that shit while simply walking their Path.
Those people did not follow a Path of any quality, and he considered them idiots for it.
Stats were merely representations of his own characteristics on the universal weave, and traits were clumps of meaning and significance working as modifiers inside his soul. With time, not only could he or anyone else claim those things to themselves, but all of this was also inherently easy to deduce and even understand in some form so long as one's Path was selfish enough to not allow for unwanted influences in it's bastion.
So long as he maintained sovereignty over most of his soul, he would always be willing to deal with the inevitable fight for control.
Though to be fair he WAS a rather impatient idiot, sans choosing to cash in his powerup right after becoming stable enough from his own medical opinion, so it was always possible that his preparations would not be enough.
Not that there was medicine for regret or any way to know what he'd regret in advance. That was life, no matter how 'defiant' one was to its base principles.
"So you should take the time we have at rest to focus on yourself. If you want to know my plans, just ask. In case they require me not to be direct with you I will actually say that to your face." He snickered, carving a concentric array of fractals for his runes meaning 'Spacetime', 'Dragon', 'Bane' and 'Damage' onto the metal pillar the length of the room he was using, with a width greater than both his arms put together.
He'd have liked to carve inside the thing to create a properly tridimensional fractal, but he was already using a lot of magical metal to begin with, and a casing would not have gone well with something like this, especially with his lacking control for such fineries.
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Ironically enough, it was actually more effective to write the fractal in three point five dimensions instead, though not easier.
While he was incomparably better in everything due to magic, the undertaking of actually projecting these things had not been a simple affair, and he had in fact burned through several external sources of mana sustaining the additional mind constructs inside his soul and also increasing their capabilities so as to actually allow for newbie engineer ass to even envision such a complex object, especially while keeping it coherent enough that he could lock it inside an easier to maintain memory construct with minimal degradation.
The actual carving and enchanting of the damn thing was much, much simpler than the hemorage inducing trip that allowed his expanded mind to conjure this shit from his nether regions, though despite checking in on the design several times for quick fixes and improvements, he was already on his third attempt.
"Master, please focus on whatever you are doing instead." His cute daughter said while gulping and looking at the energy reaction of his crafting.
"Nonsense, you are far more important that the usage of this time span and materials. Also, don't misunderstand dear, I'm not a crafter, this is actually incredibly easier, just resource intensive since I'm pretty much just filling a mold." He half-lied, unable to properly concentrate after a few failures already and using a new stimulation to help entice and channel his mental acuity and emotional force into the deformed weapon that refused to fix itself, no matter how many different types of non-biotic healing he infused into it.
"Is that so?" Asked the girl who clearly did not believe his flattery. "I believe I understand, and shaw stop looking into this, allowing for a more natural flow of information." She bowed slightly, being stopped by a flick on the head that sent her reeling back a couple of steps to regain balance.
"Great, then this is the perfect time to hear about my plans of world domination." He said with a chuckle as Asa seemed so confused.
The girl tried to call him father, but any time she thought he might be angry or using double speak she was quick to revert to old habits. His pity at the reaction was quick to morph into resolve however. His control consolidating, he made sure to maintain his smile while diving deeper into the churning kinetic reactor that was his soul.
"So that is our goal…" Muttered the teen with the seriousness of a workaholic finally being given their next fix. Jokes aside, he saw a lot of his mother in her. And his grandmother too. She'd have fit right in with the family without changing much.
"Well no, that's the first step. Then after securing a certain level of stability for the encompassed cultures we help the empire become a Type 1 civilization, a force capable of sustainably using the entire planet's resources. To go further beyond, I am actually going to have to ask you to explain what you know and think of space and the stars however." He announced, the first part captivating his adopted daughter enough for her to take a bit to actually start to think on how to answer the second part.
"It is far, pretty and probably deadly." She concisely summarised after noticing he was actually paying attention to her, causing the p,Weapon, to fluctuate with energy as his mind was divided.
"Correct on all accounts. The thing is, around those stars are other planets, orbiting around them much like the moon's of this planet orbit it. Many are bare rocks and desolate wintry nightmares or even neverending tempests, with either none or very little life being sustainable in their environments." He explained, and although his daughter appeared unconvinced, she also seemed to consider what he said. "And what, dear daughter, do you think would happen if perhaps another planet had life of comparable size to ours?"
"There would be infestations of progressively more powerful beasts hoarding resources and reaching for their own domination of their planet." She eventually answered to his momentary confusion. Then he realised the problem.
"While that is not incorrect, such scenario, even if not propence to human evolution and development, would eventually generate the a
manasphere inside it's atmosphere, leading to the serial awakening of sapience in several beasts throughout the whole planet and increasing births of sapient specimens. By the time one such beast evolves past the point of the current ancestral dragons, something entirely possible, how long do you think it will take for there to be an oversaturation in population leading to those directly below the overlord or even said beast itself to seek new planets for one reason or another?" This time, his question was very quick to instill doubt, and fear came right behind.
The moment she noticed that she should multiply this for the size of space and that no matter how rare life was there should still be many such cases through the cosmos was rather obvious, as the non-descriptively beautiful girl's face morphed into dread as color drained from her face. He decided to wait for her to ask, but otherwise would not allow for her to leave on her own to ruminate wrong answers to her fears and spiral out of sanity. Luckily he didn't have to wait much.
"Master, why aren't we… why don't we see these things?" Asked the scared little thing in front of him.
He signaled her closer and she promptly passed over the half enchanted weapon on the ground, kneeling down and accepting his hug easily enough.
"Because space is very big child. Rather than some complex philosophy however, the simple truth to all of this is that mathematics are a tool created by mortals and underutilized due to our own inability to complete it. No matter how likely it is that something will happen through the infinitude of spacetime, it is simply not yet happening, and when it does, all you can do is though it out with any preparation you may have made." He explained with a smile, his chin messing her hair as the smaller figure clung to him. "Like giant ass dragon killing tools."
Turning the young child soldier towards the now stable weapon he raised his hand, the shrinking metal arrow with a bone head being compressed to the size of a projectile a normal human would use as it flew to his palm.
"It's just like every other problem you've dealt with, just tougher." He nodded, opening her hands and depositing the newly made Epic grade consumable in them. "But now you have an idiot who will be by your side even when fighting Divinities." He declared, for once seemingly getting through to the suspecting teen. "Speaking of, we should probably go through your education so you can better deal with any such idiots even when I'm not around."
Despite his continued smile however, his daughter actually shivered at the pronouncement. She was likely thinking some not so nice things, but to be fair what he had in mind was indeed quite scary.