Mundane Life
Winston woke up early, feeling a strange sensation at the back of his mind. He looked out of the window where the sun was rising, casting the glorious morning rays over the horizon where the sun kissed the sea and a blend of yellow and black extended from the water into a shadow of the sun stretched across hundreds of meters.
After the previous shenanigans with the floating ship, his current potion had also been boosted in digestion.
It was due to the Magician potion, feeding off the hundreds of thousands of people that offered feedback to his 'performance,' and added in with how he had fooled the ranker with his avatar, the potion had reached 99% digestion, standing at the precipice of complete assimilation.
The strange sensation he felt was also due to this. A weight that had been on his shoulders for so long had waned, making his spirit feel a lot more relief.
He got up from the bed and stretched his body. Then went to the bathroom to freshen up.
The team had been thrilled when he came back from his trip. Winston had not told them of the purpose of his trip, only mentioning that he wanted to explore the area around the hotel a bit and maybe scout for new teammates.
Naturally, no one was to suspect him. It wasn't even a matter of his increased charisma and natural deception prowess. It was simply a matter of the respect he commanded in the group.
Anyhow, after he was back, Amon was back in full spirits again, returning to normal. And strangely enough, Anaak was a lot more tame compared to when he had left.
Previously, she always fought with Endorsi on the smallest things, only listening to Winston and sometimes Shibisu on things. But now, she became a lot more sociable.
Curious. Winston had thought at the time and chosen to not worry about it. He needed not to worry about the internal struggles of the team too much. After all, he had his own to worry about. Besides, he was never too great at offering moral or emotional support.
He was the type to deal with everything before it started. And if it reached a tipping point, he would get to work to improve the situation. He never bothered with other people. And now, when he actually had to think over such things, despite the Error pathway giving him better socializing skills, he honestly did not know how to. So he decided to not worry about it.
Doing something one was not adept at could cause more problems than good. He knew that much from experience.
Without anything much to do this morning, he headed out of his room to the breakfast hall, meeting up with Endorsi and Shibisu on the way.
"So, where did you explore on the floor?" Endorsi asked as they sat down on the table. In front of Winston was steel eel curry while Shibisu and Endorsi had a Sandwich with coffee and rice and omlet respectively.
"Nothing much, just explored around the different cities in the inner tower. There's not much to see on this floor." Winston said uninterestingly. His expressions displayed dissatisfaction with his travels and a wave of disappointment.
"Heh~ seems boring."
"Tell me about it. It was far more disappointing than I could ever had imagined." Winston shook his head with a bitter smile. It was not all lies. While travelling from the inner tower to the middle tower, he had seen many strange and bizarre things. But they were all within the realm of stuff he had already seen. He had heard of the journey between the inner and the middle tower to be strange and eerie, filled with all sorts of sceneries. Even more so for the paths and places where shinsu behaved differently. However, he had not seen anything too crazy.
Shibisu took a sip out of his coffee and smiled at him. "What do you say? When should we resume climbing?"
Winston looked at him.
"You tell me. Has the break been good enough for you yet?"
Shibisu smiled sheepishly.
"I've already relaxed to my heart's content. Same for the others. I don't think we should delay any longer. It could cause a dip in our points."
Endorsi also expressed her agreement. "That's right! Can you imagine a princess of Jahad having to take loans?! The rumors would be all over the tower and I would be ruined!" She exclaimed.
Winston and Shibisu nodded, throwing her comment to the back of their heads, not giving it the slightest piece of mind.
"Then I suppose we can resume the climb in 2 days. Tell everyone to get ready." Winston said.
"Are you sure? You just got back from the trip." Endorsi said.
"What do you think I gave the 2 days for?" The response came with a smile.
The rest of the breakfast passed in random small talk.
~~~
"Give that back, you witch?!"
"What did you call me!? You jerk!"
Anaak and Endorsi fought over the television remote while Zarhan and Amon watched them rumble.
"They do feel like sisters when you look at them." Zarhan whispered to Amon.
"That's true." Amon could not express any more agreement. The two princesses, although on the surface seemed to hate each other's guts were all too caring for each other.
To their left sat the little girl, Sunwoo Nare and to their right laid Laure in his ever present sleeping blanket.
Sunwoo laughed a bit, seeing the two sisters destroy the table in a quarrel.
"Don't say that to their face haha. They'll never admit it."
Zarhan and Amon nodded at her words.
At that moment, Shibisu came into the hall, wearing his signature tracksuit.
However, seeing the brawl between the two princesses, his smile quickly froze, as did his feet.
"What the hell?!" He exclaimed and tried to stop the two.
"Stop it you crazy ladies! Everything you break will have to paid for when we leave!" He yelled, trying to get into the fight. However, one backhand from Endorsi sent him flying out and towards the group.
Shibisu landed before them and got up with a comical tear in his eye.
"Why am I so pitiful." He sobbed.
"You shouldn't be trying to get between them Mr. Shibisu." Amon said with a chuckle.
"That's practically a death sentence for you y'know." Said Zarhan.
"If you persist, they might just open up your head with a brick." And of course, Sunwoo was not one to be left out in a conversation.
Practically everyone in their group was here as of now, save for Winston. The rest of the regulars that had ascended alongside them had been separated and chose to walk their own paths.
Shibisu sighed, getting up to sit alongside them.
"What was on the TV before?" Shibisu asked, looking at the screen where a show about forbidden love between the princess of a kingdom and a normal boy that wanted to climb the tower was running.
"It was the interview of Yuri Jahad."
"Interview?"
"Something about being the first princess in centuries to be able to get 2 of the 13 month series. Anaak seemed to be really into that." Amon shook his head as he replied.
At that moment, Zarhan spoke up.
"So, what's the plan?"
"The plan... Well, I've yet to have that discussing with anyone. A meeting needs to be called to decide."
"Shouldn't you two just decide between yourselves?" Sunwoo chimed from the side, placing a finger at her chin and tilting her head to the side as if contemplating.
"The decision needs to be between the entire team. It's better that way."
Zarhan chuckled at the side, "Any decision you two take will be followed. That's how we operate in the first place."
Shibisu shook his head with firm conviction. "That might be the case. But it is absolutely crucial to hear everyone out."
Zarhan shrugged his shoulders, not minding his way of operation.
After a while, the sisters calmed down and everyone was able to sit down and watch something else on the TV.
~~~
In Winston's room, a baleful blue glow was cast onto the walls as a giant ball of shinsu hovered in front of him. It was nearly 3 times the size of Winston, almost touching the ceiling with a radius of 2 and a half meters.
The shinsu sphere rippled and changed, sprouting tendrils and various forms of amalgamated extensions that merged back into it. The liquid mass of shinsu moved as if it were alive, observing the surrounding and moving as per the observation.
Before it, Winston sat onto a stool with one hand drawn towards the ball and the other scribbling away onto a notebook. The Tales from the Lake.
With his potion nearly digested, Winston truly felt he only needed a small push to achieve full assimilation. And although he had thought about doing something about that in the next test he would take, he decided to change that.
And so, at this point, he was trying to trigger the digestion of the Cryptologist potion through engineering about shinsu and it's various forms.
The form before him?
Making a brain is both theoretically and practically possible with some effort and intelligence. However, it doesn't act as I had intended. The flow mimics the brain signals in a biological organism.
At this point, the flow isn't just simple laminar or turbulent. It has turned into thousands and perhaps even millions of extensions of itself. The flow autonomously adopts laminar and turbulent properties to sense, compute and act as would a living organism.
"Interesting." Winston could not help but mutter.
He had created a brain. A system of shinsu where each particular 'droplet' of shinsu in the collective whole acted as a seperate neuron, living, computing and sharing information with each other.
Of course, it wasn't truly 'living.' Winston was not at that level yet. After all, the shinsu was still getting regulated by himself. It was but an imitation and an experiment to see how shinsu was able to autonomously able to arrange itself into a functioning unit based on a simple command.
Envisioning was the key with shinsu. And Winston, being a scientist could envision things far better than someone that had no knowledge of the intricacies of such matters.
A self sustaining computing unit that can operate by itself... that was Winston's vision. And although he had laid the framework well, like arranging the shinsu in a mesh like structure and starting the process of information exchange, the brain... evolved. It simultaneously arranged itself into a state where efficiency was the maximum that could be at the current stage.
As he wrote along the pages of the diary, his spirit vision scanning the shinsu sphere with frieghtening concentration, he could feel the weight on his spirit disappearing slowly.
Cryotologist wasn't a scientist. Merely finding out new theories and testing them couldn't perform digestion. One needed to decrypt obscure pieces of information.
And as it turns out, Shinsu was perfect for that. The sheer amount of ways shinsu could morph itself and transform to achieve various function was astounding. And since no one except for a selective few had done much research about it, it was the quintessence of something he needed to decrypt.
Ashul Edwardu and Po Bidau Gustang had their research, but it was widely limited to their own respective domains. Gustang established a system around shinsu and found various ways it could be used in both combat and mundane ways. He underlined the limitlessness of shinsu as described by the Tower's inhabitants.
Then Edwardu only focused on how shinsu in different concentrations could affect weapons and their usage.
The common knowledge was limited only to that.
As Winston continued to scribble away, he lost track of time. And by the time he finished writing the last word onto the notebook, he felt something breaking down and fusing with his essence, transforming his spirt and body and truly becoming one with him.
He closed his eyes, feeling the blissful stimulation that he was able to feel only upon the total digestion of a potion.
Sequence 7, pass. He smiled.
~~~
A/N:A lot of people were dissatisfied with Samuel 'returning,' and one even left a review saying that the fic was ruined because of him lol.
But seeing as how things are and realizing I might actually lose readers because of an "antagonist" that has "come back", I will give you a slight spoiler. Well... a major spoiler.
Spoiler warning!
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Samuel Helmons is dead. He isn't coming back. But that's not to say the same about who is behind him.
If you all remember, when the first chapter of volume 2 was released, he said something peculiar, which was not being used to his abilities. I was going to use that point to later reveal that he was an avatar of someone. And that avatar has died.
And now, since I have revealed that he is an avatar, the identity of the one he is an avatar of should also be out. I wouldn't outright say it, but there you go, to every that was dissatisfied.
Cheers~