824 Rick Ashley
“Arghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” a piercing scream echoed throughout the room as a man thrashed violently, his face contorted in agony. Desperation filled his movents as he slamd his head against the nearest solid surface, desperate for even a fraction of relief from the searing pain coursing through his body.
His hands trembled, clutching his head as if trying to contain an unbearable force within. Blood sared across his forehead from the repeated impacts, yet he showed no signs of stopping.
The man’s agonized screams tore through the air, raw and guttural, a reflection of suffering beyond physical pain as he clutched his head, his body writhing uncontrollably. The pain felt like countless needles piercing directly into his brain, an unrelenting sensation that no amount of screaming or physical thrashing could alleviate. It was as though his brain had prioritized this excruciating tornt over all other functions, rendering him unable to focus on anything else.
Every attempt to dull the agony—be it striking his head against solid surfaces or clawing at his scalp—proved utterly futile. The pain reigned supre, consuming him entirely, leaving no room for even the faintest glimr of relief.
Then, after what felt like an eternity but lasted no more than a minute, the man’s screams abruptly ceased. His body slumped to the ground, utterly drained of strength. A gray liquid, tinged with blood, began to ooze from his nostrils, pooling beneath him.
His face, which had been contorted with unbearable pain just monts ago, now bore an expression of serene calm. It was as if, in his final monts, he had found so elusive peace that eluded him during his tornt. Seconds later, all motion stopped, and the room fell silent, save for the faint dripping of the strange liquid.
{Experint #NIDATUS | Test No: 38574. Results: Failure,} Nova announced as she brought the experint to an end while Aron observed everything that had happened.
“Even after reducing the amount of mana that accesses the brain for an unawakened individual, it is too hostile for them to handle,” Aron said as he went through the experint data, seeing the result being the sa despite having already reduced the intensity of mana by more than a thousand tis the normal ambient mana of current Earth.
{The blood-brain barrier appears to be more sensitive than anticipated. As long as the individual remains unawakened, it prevents the back-and-forth mana interaction required to sustain universal simulation access without external devices. If we were to include the necessary encryption to prevent interception by mana-sensitive individuals, the process becos even more complex. It seems we need to explore another direction. Perhaps we should consider using mana from the Derivative—Law Mana or Conceptual Mana—since elental mana appears too basic to achieve the level of efficiency and effectiveness we require,} Nova said, generating a massive hologram that displayed all the previous research failures, from their starting points to their similar endpoints, to support her statent.
As she turned to Aron, she noticed him staring into space. Recognizing this as a sign of inspiration striking him, Nova imdiately fell silent, knowing that Aron was likely fleshing out a new idea and evaluating its feasibility before deciding whether to share it.
The silence stretched on for several minutes, with neither of them moving a muscle. Nova took direct control of the simulation, carefully managing all automatic variables to ensure nothing interrupted Aron's train of thought.
"The Cult Leader’s ability fits most of our needs," Aron blurted out monts later, as if struck by a eureka mont.
{You want to use esoteric faith-aspected mana?} Nova asked imdiately, her superfast computational capabilities already connecting the dots of what he ant.
"It fits most of our needs. A central connecting point, a two-way communication thread linking two points, access to the thoughts of connected individuals—it can be created from just a positive thought toward it, so long as you're aware of its existence, even if you're not awakened. And it doesn't have any of the negative repercussions we experienced during our experints…" Aron began, listing the aspects of the Cult Leader's specific ability that aligned perfectly with what they needed to achieve in their research.
{Although that’s true if our collected information turns out to be accurate, we must rember that we disintegrated the cult leader without collecting his brain data, fearing he might initiate an attack the mont he sensed sothing was wrong. As a result, all of our knowledge about his abilities cos from second-hand brain data and speculation based on what we found. It will require you to purchase specific information from the system to ensure that our speculations are correct and to avoid any potential dangers associated with this ability. I’d like to remind you about the strange sound the cult leader emitted monts before his death—sothing we still don’t fully understand, other than our speculation that it might be tied to the consciousness of the faith-aspected mana,} Nova said, cautioning Aron to tread carefully in this unfamiliar territory.
"I’m fully aware of that, and that’s precisely why I’m not planning on using his ability directly—just drawing inspiration from it. I’ll rely on the system shop to obtain components that can replicate the desired effects safely. Until I have full knowledge of all aspects of mana, I won’t go near the faith aspect with a ten-foot pole.
We had one awakener of that aspect, and he almost imdiately caused a delay in the empire’s growth. I don’t even want to consider the dangers of using faith mana as a connection dium for an entire conclave's worth of people if that entity can get access to them.
Doing so would essentially provide it with faith, effectively creating our own Ultron—one that I wouldn’t be able to fully eradicate. Such an entity could use the faith connection threads to transfer between star systems, sothing I currently can’t match,” Aron responded, demonstrating that his earlier silence had been spent considering the potential risks and formulating a strategy to use the cult leader’s abilities as inspiration, rather than directly employing them, while leveraging the system to maintain full control.
{Good thinking, but first, let’s start by listing all the elents we need to take as inspiration from his abilities,} Nova said as she materialized a massive hologram. The hologram displayed information retrieved from Mnemosyne, the AI responsible for maintaining the Akashic Record, essentially making her the library of humanity and the empire.
"Looks like we’re finally heading in the right direction," Aron said as he began reviewing the summarized information Nova had prepared, carefully selecting which parts required a deeper dive.
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