“Ugh… what happened…?” With a slightly pained murmur, Arthur gradually woke up from the stupor he had been in. At first, he thought he was still in his bed from his past life, thinking that he had overslept or something. Though, as he slowly became more and more conscious, he soon recalled that he was not in bed, but instead somewhere else entirely.

“Ah!” Finally realizing what had happened to him, Arthur went ahead and used [Spirit Sense] on impulse, heaving a small sigh of relief as he found out that there was no change to his surroundings. Then again, as he looked for a bit longer through the skill, something eventually caught his attention.

Himself.

“Is this… me?” From what Arthur remembered the first time he looked at himself through [Spirit Sense], he was just as big as a molecule of dirt. Perhaps, if one was truly ignorant to perceive the dense qi in the surroundings, then one would’ve totally forgotten that Arthur was there. However, now that he had advanced to an Early Spirit Nucleus, things were now different.

From a certain perspective, Arthur looked like a cracked egg, with the whites expanding out into small tendrils. As for the yolk, that was the glistening bluish-white pearl at the center, which was currently the size of a tennis ball. Judging on what he could feel, the tendrils that extended out of the pearl were more or less vestigial in terms of purpose. On the other hand, the pearl at the center was different. After all, that was where everything he had done so far was located. Only doom would be spelled out for him if any being came across him and touched it.

Placing those pessimistic thoughts at the back of his head for now, Arthur went ahead and talked to Sisa, asking her, “How long was I out?”

“Oh, you’re finally awake,” Sisa said in response, as if she thought of the whole situation as normal. “Anyways, after you accepted the prompt to advance to an Early Spirit Nucleus, a couple of days have passed since then.”

“A couple of days?” Arthur was quite surprised that he was unconscious for that long. If he was unconscious for only a few hours, then Arthur wouldn’t mind and think of it as a normal part of the advancement process. But to be unconscious for a couple of days… at that moment, he could not help but wonder if it would only get worse as he continued to increase his size.

“Hmm?” While he was thinking about how there was a chance for him to be unconscious for longer if he increased his size, Arthur could not help but notice that there was something slightly off. For a while, he looked at the landscape of his mind, finding not much of a difference. After that, he looked out through [Spirit Sense] once more, seeing that everything was more or less the way they were before he was unconscious.

“Why… does everything feel different for some reason?” he asked himself, with thoughts soon surging in his mind like torrents. Thankfully, it was at that moment that he understood what was different. Just like how his appearance was different now that he had advanced to an Early Spirit Nucleus, his mind had also changed.

Well, to be more exact, Arthur could now think about more things in the same amount of time than before, allowing him to possibly make better decisions. With that in mind, he asked Sisa as he recalled something. “I thought only Qi Purity increased my intelligence? Does Qi Capacity also influence how smart I am?”

“Yeah,” Sisa replied, giving off the feeling she was nodding in response to his words. “Well, the part where you thought only Qi Purity increased your mental acuity is mostly due to the fact that it’s the only thing you’ve experienced so far. After all, this is the first time you’ve advanced to a greater size.”

“Anyways, both Qi Capacity and Qi Purity influence your mental acuity, with Qi Capacity being the more important one out of the two. Remember how I told you back then that if even you used up all of the qi in your storage, there would still be a small amount of qi remaining that would house your soul? Well, that and Qi Capacity are related,” she continued.

“As a Spirit Seed, you only had a base capacity of 10 points. Let’s say that the amount of qi that houses your soul is equivalent to 10% of that, so a point of qi is saved just to house your soul. Now, you might be wondering, why wasn’t my intelligence increasing while I was upgrading Qi Capacity? The answer to that question is that the amount of qi that houses your soul only changes once you advance to a higher size. Also, it’s based on the base capacity of qi for that size,” Sisa said, turning silent for a bit as she allowed Arthur to take all of her words in.

After seeing that Arthur was ready to hear more, she continued, “Now that you’ve become an Early Spirit Nucleus, you now have access to 100 points of qi. Recalling my earlier example where the amount of qi that houses your soul is equivalent to 10% of your capacity, you now have 10 points’ worth of qi housing your soul. In short, your intelligence just increased by 10 times… relatively speaking.”

“But in actuality, you’ve just returned to your usual intelligence from your past life,” she said, as if it wasn’t anything surprising. “With the amount the system could work with while you were a Spirit Seed, it’s quite surprising that it was able to emulate your thought process to that extent. In any case, advancing to the next size onward would only mean you truly becoming smarter.”

Naturally, Arthur’s attention was focused on the last few sentences Sisa talked about, talking about how his intelligence was basically hampered by the system just because there wasn’t enough space for his soul. “And you didn’t bother telling me about this beforehand?”

“Here’s the thing, Arthur,” Sisa replied in a solemn tone. “If I did tell you back then that you’re dumber than you should be because the system doesn’t have the capability to emulate your entire thought process, what do you think would have happened? Would you still be doing all of the things you’re doing right now… or would you have committed suicide there and then?”

“If I were you, I would’ve definitely succumbed to despair at that point,” she said, prompting the entire place to turn silent for a bit.

Letting out a long sigh, Arthur decided that it was better for them to not talk about the topic any further. After all, he knew at the back of his mind that Sisa was right. If he did find out at the start that he was mentally crippled due to the ineptitude of the system, even if he could fix that problem in the future, he would have totally tried to find a way to end his new life before it could even start.

Deciding to ignore all of the depressing stuff the two of them talked about, Arthur decided to sum up everything that Sisa told her, saying, “So, if I’m getting this right, Qi Capacity could be considered the size of my brain, while Qi Purity could be considered the quality of the neurons in my brain.”

“That’s more or less correct,” Sisa said in response to his words.

Thinking that the conversation they had regarding his intelligence was more than enough for now, he then went ahead and checked through the notifications he had received, recalling that he had received a few notification sounds while talking with Sisa. Opening up the notification screen, his attention was soon piqued by a certain notification he had obtained.

Ding!

You have advanced to an Early Spirit Nucleus.

To commemorate the advancement to a greater size, a new module has been made available to the user.

You have not met the necessary requirements to unlock the new module. Please upgrade the Spirit Receptor Module to the peak of Tier 5.

“A new module, huh… the peak of Tier 5…” Arthur muttered, opening up the Spirit Receptor Module to check on his progress. Well, so far, he had only upgraded the Spirit Receptor Module to the peak of Tier 3, which was called Receptor Fortification. The next tier after, which was [Tier 4 — Receptor Optimization], cost 125 points per level, needing 20 levels to be fully maxed out.

Calculating how he would need 2500 System Points just to max out a tier, Arthur thought that it would take quite some time for him to unlock the new module he had gained access to. After all, not only would he have to max out the current tier, he would also have to max out the tier after that, which would definitely cost a lot more points than the current one.

“I would have to use [Qi Conversion] a total of 250 times just to max out Tier 4. With each conversion taking an hour, that’s about one and a half weeks right there,” he muttered to himself with a light sigh. “Also, taking into consideration how the cost to max out a tier scales up after that, it wouldn’t be too surprising if I would have to activate [Qi Conversion] for over two months straight just to unlock this new module.”

“I wonder if I could speed the process up…” he said, checking his current stats after that. Though, once he looked at it, he could not help but think of himself from before the advancement as truly stupid. “Is this seriously my doing? Surely, I would have still remembered how to optimize the process.”

Seeing as every memory he could remember from before he advanced to an Early Spirit Nucleus reflected how stupid he was back then, Arthur could not help but let out a sigh, saying, “From this point onward, I’m going to try and make all of the right choices when it comes to upgrading.”

“Hmm… thinking about how I used to speedrun through idle games from my previous life… the first thing I should focus on is…”

“Qi Purity.”