Chapter 75: THOUGHT ACCELERATION
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Ivan Korei Age: 18
Male Level: ???
Job: Alchemist
Strength: 16,589
Vitality: 17,980
Defense: 17,452
Agility: 16,992
Magic: 18,897
Magic Defense: 15,570
Skills: Language Comprehension - Mixing - Plant Appraisal - Transmutation - Increased Mixing Speed - Increased Transmutation Speed - Forager - Cat's Eye - Encyclopedia - Auto Harvesting - Fast Learner - Fast Reader - Herbalist - Wakeful - Increased Mana Recovery - Mana Manipulation - Iron Stomach - Lightning Field - Air Dance - Gale Claw - Sense Presence - Detect Magic - Sense Heat - Hide Presence - Poison Resistance - Paralysis Resistance - Petrification Resistance - Fear Resistance - Foresight - Diamond Skin - Steel Arms - Intimidate - Telepathy - Tracking - Mana Conversion - Limit Break
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…..Ivan felt as though he might've gone a bit overboard with the whole monster meat thing. In the span of a week, he spent most of his time taking in the benefits gained from the monster meat and training the respective skills each one gave him to a decent level. If he had gone ahead and gained all those skills at the same time without leaving time to adjust, who knows what could've happened to his body and subsequently those around him.
He was sure there were likely many derivative skills that could be tapped in just from training some of the skills even further but for now, he'd leave that for later. All that mattered right now was adjusting to his strength. There was no point in this explosive strength if he couldn't even use it properly. So for that reason, he didn't dare take a step out of the atelier until he was ready.
Many visitors came and went during that time, mainly just those who were leaving him a meal or just checking in to make sure he didn't explode or anything. The initial restraining process had become unnecessary as the pain and contortions he felt from the process no longer occurred. All that took to it now was digesting the terrible tasting meat before looking back over at the status plate.
A change he welcomed as he was sure feeling that same pain over and over again with each bite would be nothing short of torture. Though there was one thing on his mind as he looked at the stats and skills, even the question marks where his levels should be, was he still to be considered a human at this point?
He had exceeded what was thought to be the human limit, so by that line of thought, it wouldn't be unreasonable to be called inhuman. A title change Ivan didn't think much about; contrary to the transformation his body underwent he felt as though he was the same person he always was. It was one that didn't seem to bother the others anyways, all that mattered to them was that he was the same Ivan they cared for.
Explosions, things breaking, flashes of bright lights, all of these things had been a common occurrence in Ivan's room as he practiced with the skills. His stash of monster meat had drastically dwindled, even the meat of rare monsters such as the scorpion or hydra fell under his teeth. Though to Ivan, they were quite the delicacy…..
Getting close to targets and making contact with his hand should be a breeze now, especially with his enhanced speed and relative skills that boosted his movements. He quite literally now possessed the touch of death.
Ivan adorned his new set of armor, this time one of black stainless steel. Azantium was littered about the dungeon randomly, sometimes Felis found it on the 123rd floor, or sometimes she'd even find it on the 101st floor. This got Ivan excited about upping the effectiveness of the mining operation. His Azantium collection had dropped to very low after this new set of armor.
This Azantium armor gave off a wicked feeling, as form-fitting as the metal was to the shape of his body there were also trails of the materials that went out the back as sharp blades that primarily poked from his back and behind his legs. If Ivan were ever in the situation where he needed to carry someone on his back a little bit of transmutation would be all it took for the blades of Azantium to disappear.
It was a full suit that covered him from head to toe, leaving no gaps left open. The black metal wrapped his body as even the helmet that resembled a dragon head left no room for openings. The blades on the head trailed off into what seemed like horns that went behind his head. It was a set painstakingly crafted and enchanted with numerous properties as was his other apparel.
Insulation, foresight, resistances of many kinds, conduction that amplified his 'Lightning Field.' It even had other features such as self-cleaning and self-repairing, a little transmutation, and his palms would poke out of the gauntlets, making it effective in using the creation, destruction, and water-based transmutations.
Though he had to admit the armor was a bit of a waste with how high his stats were. Well, to him it didn't matter too much as long as it looked cool. The mantle and smooth mask were mysterious for a little bit but Ivan couldn't help but feel it didn't leave too much of an impression.
If he was going to become the boogeyman to the Holy Church then he needed an appearance they'll remember even in their sleep. Those thoughts left his mind as he made way for the door, or wait—
'Now that I have this skill…..'
[FELISSSSS!]
"Iyah!!"
A yelp resounded from the other side of the door as Ivan passed through, looking at the scene of Felis rubbing her behind as she stared at him with tears in her eyes. Just as he thought, telepathy was a really fun skill.
"F-Father what the hell was that?! It was like I heard your voice in my head or somethin'..." Ivan did his best to withhold his laughter, not confident that the red in his cheeks wouldn't have been caught by her.
"Hehehe~ Sorry sorry, I was just testing a new skill and didn't know someone else was in the area." It was a shitty lie that was sure to be caught once she thought about it too long.
"Didn't know someone else was in the area huh… Then why did you call my name!?" The realization hit her eyes as she stood up with her claws extended. Meeting Ivan's arm as sparks flew from the two metals colliding.
"Ah, sorry but I can't play right now~ You see I just came out here to grab a snack or something before moving into the next step in my plans." Ivan's apologetic voice emanated from the helmet he adorned.
"Mya? The next step… Um, huh? What was it again… Oh yeah, the Goth Acceleration!" Felis' tail formed a comically large question mark as she pressed her right index finger to her chin, Ivan could already imagine the cartoony light bulb appearing above her head as she came to a conclusion.
"It's 'Thought Acceleration' you fool! What the hell is a 'Goth Acceleration' anyways?! On second thought, how do you even know what goth is?" Their conversation went on as they entered the elevator, idly chatting about pointless things before reaching the top.
"Hm, so Father, are you almost done with everything? I'm almost done completely clearin' floor 1-13 but honestly, things are getting kinda boring down there…" Felis' discontent was made clear to Ivan. Even with some days off and what she considered to be great pay, the fact was that sitting underground on a metal box for hours at a time was starting to drive her insane.
"Yup yup, in fact, give me two days and I'll be at the stage where I want to be. Then we can play as much as you want. Hmmm… In fact, we could visit Fuhren and take a trip to the aquarium if you want?" Ivan gave a nod to Claire and Yue as he entered the kitchen.
"The aquarium! Sounds exciting~ Hey hey, hey Father?"
"What is it, Felis? I'm right here."
"What's an aquarium?"
"...."
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After having finished his meal Ivan sat once more in the atelier. His eyes closed as he contemplated the next course of action. What he wanted was to speed up his thought process to a point where even if it were split into several parts all of them would function as normal.
He thought back to his first plan, inscribing runes into an alchemical circle that held the purpose of transforming his mind into a greater one. Though there were conditions to this process, just like the runes inscribed in his tattoos for his arms to do the process of creation and destruction he needed to have a firm understanding of the runes he would use to impose thought acceleration.
With scratch paper he drew design after design, sometimes his circle would be too big, or even too small to work, some circles had so many patterns and runes that they would only end up slowing down his mind. These runes needed to have an activation sequence that didn't require any of his will, working similar to that of a real mind. And just like a real mind, one doesn't have to invoke any will to think of something.
If he had to pause every now and then to activate his brain then that would be as good as allowing his foes to attack him while reloading a gun. Brains produce electricity, electricity could be converted to energy, and energy to mana using mana conversion. Effectively creating a perpetual loop that would keep thought acceleration powered forever.
Now that he had an activation sequence and an idea, all that was left was the circle formation. As aforementioned, it needed to be just the right size to not take longer than the energy sent by the brain, but packed with the right runes to create the process.
So once again he fiddled with runes he could only remember from his world. Their meanings were the only ones he knew. And that's when it all finally clicked together. Ivan looked at the transmutation the size of his palm before letting out a sigh of relief. Though this was only a diagram he tried multiple times to form it and the real world and found a majority of success. Never once having the formation collapse on itself.
To him, that was a good point to start with. Which meant that all that was left is now the application of the transmutation circle. Tattoos, magical elixirs, foods, Ivan had followed the path of improving oneself that was sought by alchemists, only being short of true immortality. And now he was about to begin making improvements within himself, improvements done to the mind.
He laid flat on a table alone this time, earlier he had assured the others regarding his success. Remarking that if they were to show up it may cause a distraction that would lead to the failure of the process. Ivan held a mirror atop his head, setting a clear visual to the scalp. The mirror stayed in the air supported by the arm attached to the table.
And with both palms out into the air, Ivan placed his hands onto his head—
"..."
Ivan let out voiceless yelps as his eyes rolled back in his head, the feeling of having his head cramped with matter became very apparent to him. His heart started thumping loudly as breathing became an intensive task. The transmutation circle had been inserted but now it needed to be connected to his brain.
The movements his arms made after only caused further sharp pain, but eager to finish the process he went through with it anyways. A sigh escaped his lips as the swelling started to calm down. Ivan carefully pulled his hands to his sides as he rested for a moment to catch his breath.
If he had to describe how he felt after going through that then he'd say he didn't feel much of a difference. Despite the operation being an apparent success, everything appeared to be the same as it was before. So what was he going to do now that he had this ability, well of course the first thing would be testing it.
But what to test it on…? He thought to himself before coming up with several math equations and giving himself the rule that he'd have to show work. That way even if he knew the answer it'd be difficult to cheat as he didn't remember the equation process. So with a pen in his left hand and a notepad in his right he got to work.
Looking up in surprise as his pen fluidly traveled across the pages without missing a single beat, even when he looked back down after being distracted with that thought he continued from where he left off without the slightest delay.
For a second he felt he got an understanding of the ability already. He threw aside the notepad and pen as he paced around the room. Now with this ability coming up with an idea for the separation of multiple thought processes became a breeze.
All he had to do was simply create rooms to divide up his current process. Using partitions constructed of alchemic runes shouldn't be too much trouble to implement. Though if there were any shortcomings regarding this plan then it would be that the ability was seeming to have a different outcome than what he thought.
Rather than these rooms each possessing a thought process capable of focusing on something different entirely it seemed with the way things were the partitioning of rooms would only allow separate thought processes that worked together to come to the same goal. For example, that math equation from earlier could've been solved in numerous ways, if he had four mental partitions and each partition had a maximum of 64 thought processes then he'd have 256 thought processes working to solve the equation.
In more practical terms it was an ability that could be used to discern an enemy's weakness, then formulate a plan based on those weaknesses, and finally calculate the outcome of going through with that plan, all at the same time. The outcome of such a realization made him laugh aloud for the prior him's foolishness, as having multiple thought processes working to different things would only result in chaos.
As of right now, Ivan's current maximum capacity for partition rooms was two. Now how did one thought process turn into sixty-four per room? It was all using an equation made up of his thought acceleration that copied and repeated pre-existing thought processes rather than creating new ones. But with his room limit being two and sixty-four being the limit for each room he currently had 128 working thought processes.
A satisfactory amount if he said so himself, or at least he would've said if he didn't know that there was room for improvements. In theory, it was possible to create more partitions, which meant copying more thought processes to fill these partitioned rooms. How much was the limit for partitioned rooms? He had zero ideas. But the idea of having, let's say 448 thought processes all working together to solve a problem sounded really cool to him.
Ivan had zero ideas how he was going to explain this to the others without sounding like a madman but he was going to try anyway. With his 128 thought processes, he thought about what he was going to have for dinner as he left the room again.
He was certain that he was now one of this world's deadliest beings. A bit of a presumptuous statement he knew considering he had no idea how much the gods' strength scaled to that of the world's. If he met gods capable of slicing concepts or breaking reality then maybe he wouldn't stand a chance…
That was a possibility after all, who knows how much strength they had. They certainly had armies and the manipulation to be fitting of the gods, at least from what he could tell about the Liberators meeting their ends before being able to even make it up to Asgard, the home of the gods.
The last thing he needed to obtain was the ancient magics and his arsenal would be completed. Two were currently under his belt, five more left to go. With Miledi the locations of the other labyrinths were known. It was probably time to create the other homunculi so they could work while the expedition was underway.
Ivan took the elevator back up to the manor. Tomorrow Felis would be back in the mines, when she returned he decided that'd be when he dropped the future plans on them. It seemed that Yue was itching for a battle anyways, all of this nothing has made her quite bored for the past few weeks.
He was sure she'd have some fun in the dungeons. Though regarding the seven most dangerous places on the planet as fun ways to spend time was probably something the people of this earth never thought of.
"Hey hey people, I'm about done for the day. Is dinner ready?" Ivan slid into the kitchen greeting everyone as he went by. Smiling at Felis who had tried to trip him with her tail. "I see that the master chefs are back at it again."
Ivan said while observing the two figures that ran back and forth in the kitchen. Ever since Claire became part of the team Yue has been working hard to improve the quality of her cooking. Something he verbally thanked her for much to the former's confusion.
In the end, their little rivalry didn't cause much harm to anyone, in fact, Ivan and the others were overjoyed at having more opportunities to eat great food. That day went by as normally, the family sitting together while enjoying a meal.
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Ugh, it's a real terrible idea to write in the middle of the day. My brain is so full of thoughts that it was just one distraction after another, nothing like how it is in the mornings. So with that I'm going to call it short, I still have work to do.
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