Interlude - Ars Cthonica.

The next day, I carried the instruments from the music club to ground Beta and set them up in the center.

From the comms room, Midnight gave the OK as I took a seat behind the set, projecting eyes all around me.

Activating Laplace Junior and Red Reality at the same time, my eyes turned black with red veins popping in them like fractures in the earth.

I began calculating even the most minute movements for the track I was going to compose today, programming them into a failsafe using Remote Control.

It was one I created with a trance algorithm based on Jujutsu Kaisen's Black Flash skill and the manhwa Flow's Flow powers, to facilitate a smooth transition in an out of Nova.

Using trance, I shut off all my senses, before bringing all three categories into equilibrium with each other beginning slowly from 1% each until, I reached a comfortable 33% in each, initiating the first stage of Nova.

For a moment, I hesitated, knowing the pain I'd have to endure the moment I output even the slightest bit of it.

No. I have to do this.

I steeled myself and squeezed out a bit of power, as heretofore unknown pain hit me like a million pound freighter.

Trance anesthesia did nithing to dull it and despite my best efforts, my willpoer didn't break and the cold embrace of the unconcious never took me.

I was forced into a state of complete awareness burdened with immense and excruciating pain, like sears of hot, melting iron, tearing through every cell of my body.

I gripped my fist only to see it turn to mist, fumes emanating from all over.

Nova!

I activated the remote control program and the instruments played an ethereal, almost eldritch melody, like an otherworldly orchestra, sounds unheard in all of creation, mesmerizing and debauching at the same time.

It reached crescendos and requiems at the same time, in an almost impossible flow of song.

Slowly and steadily, I gained control of the music and subsequently the form of Nova, activating my ability,

Argus Panoptes : Ars Chtonica.

The world twisted around me, cracks appearing in space itself, as unseen colors dyed the world in an eldritch hue.

Mandibles erupted from my mouth, my teeth sharpening.

Four heads sprouted from my sides, gathering at my helm, arms upon arms emerging from my torso, almost seeming to muddle together.

Behind me, Peacock feathers flew out, forming a canopy of blue, indigo and green, eyes etched into them at each end, flickering open and shut.

From my hip, crystallines tentacles extended outwards, grasping upon reality itself anchoring me in 8th dimensional space, immune to nigh all harm.

I grew in proportion, reachibg titanic heights, at once touching the macroverse and the microverse boundaries.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended, and time began to flow again, that instant of eternity returning to a humic normalcy.

I fell upon the instruments crashing against them, blood leaking from every orifice.

I was out of psi, even the reserves stored in rebirth seed, even as my body regenerated on instinct.

Midnight rushed out, worried.

"Haru! Are you alright? What was that...thing?" She asked, just as my wounds healed shut.

"Yeah, just about. Thanks Midnight-sensei." I said, extending a hand to her, as she grabbed it by instinct.

Instantly, I grabbed my enchanted key, draining it of whatever leftover psi it had, wiping her memory of the incident.

Having put up a camouflage barrier and deactivated the recording devices beforehand, I wasn't worried about being found out from without.

Thus, having taken care of Midnight, I collapsed in a heap.

"I really need to get a bigger battery, a one for all sized one." I thought, as unconsciousness took me.