Chapter 377 - Needs More Testing

The sun blazed in the desert skies…

The heat was, of course, intense, no more than usual, but to the untrained body, anything beyond room temperature was hot enough…

The sand burned more than the sun, and the thirst for water became a psychological need more than a physical one…

These were all things Zeel had experienced a thousand times over, but there was something distinctly different about this specific occurrence…

Everything felt fake, but also more real…

Contradicting feelings was one of Zeel's norms, but this sensation never extended to the physical world before now…

Something was wrong, and whatever it was – it was material…

Luckily, Zeel had a body to could withstand the greatest heat and the deepest ocean depths…

Or 'had' would be the more appropriate term…

"HAH HEW HAH HEW!"

Zeel desperately tried to take in mouthfuls of air, but when your face was planted in the sand, that would be a difficult task to complete…

Any other time, he would have been able to orient himself almost immediately, but there was something essential missing from his current self…

Something vital to all Homo-Superiors…

Zeel pushed himself up and out of the sand, clutching his head, not in pain, but confusion… his eyes wandered from horizon to horizon, only witnessing the desert sands of a seemingly desolate world…

He tried to run an internal scan to realize what was missing, but he couldn't run the scan…

That, in itself, notified him of what was missing – SRNT (Self Replicating Nanite Technology).

It came as a shock…

Not just a shock, a trauma so great that he would be dealing with the damage for a lifetime…

Like losing that girlfriend you were sure would never leave you, until she did, and even though you saw it coming, it didn't dull the surprise…

Homo-Superiors did not require their Nanites to manipulate technology on a fundamental level, but Zeel was different…

How many times had he burnt the cyber-lines inside his body to save his life?

How many cyber-lines had he channeled in Aurolana's body to keep her stable?

Needless to mention, when it came to Cyber-Lines, Zeel had little remaining inside his body…

The nanites enhanced his natural technological prowess, and though SRNT was self-replicating by definition, if you were out of it… well, you were out!

And Zeel could sense not even a single nanite remained in his bloodstream…

"How could this happen?" Zeel growled, angry at the world and himself for allowing such a thing to happen…

But then he realized, it was already a miracle he was alive…

A corrupted cyber-being could never be uploaded into the Information Dimension…

That's miracle one…

Should a corrupted upload be allowed into the Information Dimension, it would never survive…

That's miracle two…

And most of all, a corrupted upload could never be ejected into the Material Universe…

That's miracle three…

One miracle could be luck…

Two miracles may be a coincidence…

But three miracles at it became a pattern – someone wanted him alive, and intervened to save his life…

"Account for the Protopalpabilities…" Zeel whispered and jogged through his memories using 5th Dimensional Math "Wait…" he halted "What's 5th Dimensional Math?"

And therein lied the problem…

How could he know what's wrong without knowing the original state of his own mind?

Hence began a monologue to access recent memories…

"My name is Zeel Crawford and I am a Homo-Superior born of the union between Tom Crawford and… and… a very powerful woman who saved my life from something…"

"I have a sister who is very important to me and her name is Catherine Crawford, but I treated her bad? Wrong? I don't think I treated her well… later in my life, I discovered Cosmic Wormholes and used it to escape my Universe when it was wiped from existence by the Absolute…"

"I travel worlds running from something very dangerous – something wants me dead… NO! not something… everything and everyone wants me dead… Homo-Superiors were assholes…"

Zeel cringed when he called his entire race an asshole, but it felt like he was talking about someone else that wasn't him…

"I met Alice, my first wife, in Resident Evil Universe… Elizabeth, my second wife, in another Universe – I forgot the name… Alice is alive, she escaped, and Elizabeth is dead… I don't think I loved her very much, but I was starting to!"

"AARRGRHHH!" Zeel roared and punched the sand over and over again…

It was torturing, not knowing who he is…

But even worse was the fact that the little he knew, made him not want to remember who he was…

"The last memory I have is saving Aurolana and Elizabeth in a Universe called 'The 100', but this is not that Universe…" Zeel murmured, extending his hands to test the desert heat "This Universe is called…"

Zeel frowned in frustration, without the nanites, he would have to distinguish the coordinates of the Universe using manual means…

Such manual measurements would, ironically, require him to study the Solar System's deviation from the established norm, which, would still require the nanites…

Zeel held his head and knelt, a small pain appeared when he tried to access a location where his final memory of 'The 100' Universe should be…

Even without the God-like nanites, a Homo-Superior's mind and memory were nothing to scoff at…

"But there is something more…" Zeel noted, catching glimpse of his final moments in the previous Universe "Something appeared, but I still died… it just watched…"

It was a bit frustrating to not know if what he witnessed was a vivid dream or reality…

Yet, there were more pressing concerns to manage…

He noticed it the moment he closed his eyes, but just for the sake of being proven right, Zeel closed his eyes and concentrated once more…

Instead of sensing his own mind, he let down his guard and tried to draw the world into his personal space, but after a couple of minutes, nothing happened…

His senses had dulled…

He could still smell better, see better, hear better, and feel better than a normal human, but compared to what his senses were before, there was little to no comparison…

It was like being blind…

Usually, he would be able to taste the pollution in the air…

He would be able to smell the cluster of humans gathered in their primitive cities from miles away…

And most of all, his skin would tingle with the calming sensation that proved nothing in the nearby environment was stronger than himself…

But now, almost all of that was gone…

Zeel was still superior, but only compared to the homo-sapiens…

And honestly, it wasn't a bad sensation… even with all his senses intact, Zeel was forced to dampen his Homo-Superior senses nearly all the time…

The information gathered would be too extensive to process with his weak nanites, and now that he had no nanites, it would be almost impossible to process…

It may have been a blessing in disguise since he could often taste the abortion pills that humans allowed to leak into the Oceans…

With his Homo-Superior senses, there was a downside to every phenomenon on any Earth in the Multiverse…

But now, there was a bit more enjoyment in everything, even the searing desert heat washing over him in particulate waves…

"What comes next?" Zeel wondered, trying to find a purpose now that he had none "Survive… something is chasing me, but I think I have run far enough… so probably get Alice and Elizabeth back… maybe we can even retire someday…"

It was a naïve thought, something Zeel would never have entertained with his memories intact, but that was the beauty of it – fewer memories means ignorance to more problems…

But like an instinct that would never dull, Zeel found himself unconsciously preparing for the worse, and preparation took the familiar pattern of cold calculations…

All at once, Zeel reached into the deepest depths of his body and attempted to drag the familiar sensation of Divinity outside, but it no longer responded to his will…

Once…

Twice…

Fifty Times…

Nothing happened but Zeel could sense his Divine Energy getting closer and closer to the surface…

The strange mix of Death, Speed, and Dimensional Shift were a bit more than his current body could handle, but now, he could filter the potency through his Divine Veins…

It would take a bit more work to find an effective route without the nanites, but the experimentation process brought Zeel some comfort…

Usually, he would automatically have the answers, so it was refreshing finding those answers for himself…

Zeel took a deep breath and concentrated as the familiar Divine Energy flowed ever so slowly through his Divine Veins, moistening channels that were dry from a prolonged stay in the Information Dimension…

---BZZZZZTTT---

There was a buzzing in his ears, and stinging pain all over his body, but everything worth having required a little pain…

A small amount of Divine Energy pulsed across the surface of his skin, and Zeel opened his eyes in a dulled, slowed world that indicated his entrance into another Time Zone…

Sadly, the Time-Zone lasted a split second, and bright colors flooded Zeel's vision once more, but at the very least, he was able to confirm that he had not experienced a total ability loss…

"Needs more testing…" Zeel murmured…