The group got to the lab where a group of Rank 3 guards were guarding the door. One of them took his phone and called Teni who came a few seconds after. Teni saw Deji was with company and said “Mira! It’s been a while” and waved. Mira waved back and she continued “Don’t let him deceive you, he can’t understand how the weapon works yet he insists that he is close to a breakthrough”

Mira said “Actually I wanted someone else to look at the weapon” as she pointed to Bella, she continued “She has superior intelligence”. Teni thought for a while and said “Ok” and she opened the door of the lab.

They entered and Deji quickly ran and picked up Flash Thunder from its case. Bella snatched the weapon from his hand and inspected the psychic energy in it for a few minutes while Deji was impatiently shaking beside her.

She dropped the weapon and said “It’s an actual mind. Someone made this? That’s incredible. The weapon has a mind that can turn pure energy into psychic energy. The mind only knows a few things and can’t learn new things. The mind can sense the psychic energy of the person who is powering it by creating a psychic link with the person, similar to how undead mind communicated with their subordinates. The weapon waits for a key thought before it does anything”

She turned to Deji and said “Judging by your current technology and advancement, you would probably be able to recreate it after 20 years of intense research, but I don’t know the future, if you improve or evolve into a more intelligent species and you might be able to do it quicker, but now? You certainly can’t you should give up”

Although Bella wanted to get back at him for using her as an excuse, she honestly meant what she had said. The person who created the psychic system created a mind not just a computer, a mind capable of illogical thought.

Deji was on the verge of tears as he said “No, say that there is something I haven’t checked well, maybe I’m not using the right instruments?” Bella sadly shook her head as she felt his despair and said “I wish I could give better news”. She had given up on her petty revenge.

The group went back to Deji’s office, Deji was gloomy for a while but he cheered up and told himself that Bella didn’t understand what she was saying. He said “What do you want?” with his usual straight face.

Mira said “We want you research into our skills and help us develop a way to teach people those skills” Deji said “What do I get in return?” Mira answered “We’ve already paid you”

Deji looked into her eyes and then he remembered what he had said before they went to his lab. He said “I-I was just kidding, I wasn’t serious. And this isn’t just a favor, it’s a service. I know I said I’ll do you favors but I just can’t help with that, I need Jola’s permission to do such things. You can ask for other things though”

Funmi sighed and said “Ok, we’re going to teach everyone in the sanctuary, as much as we can teach, for a reasonable price, is that enough for you?” Deji smiled and said “That’s fine”.

Deji took them to a lab with a large open room space in it and when they got there, he said “The Magic manuals are going to be sold tomorrow” He went to a drawer, took out some books and gave each of them. He said “These are on me, for pardoning my slip up”

They accepted the books and he brought some body suits for them to wear and sat behind a computer. After they were done changing he told them to explain their skills as best as they could and how they got it.

Mira went first and said “My skill allows me to focus to such an extreme extent that I become able to gain control of all my body and brain functions and also my senses become way sharper and my thinking becomes very level headed. It allows me to analyze combat information very well and even gives me the ability to accurately predict my opponent’s moves. For prediction it works best if I have experience fighting members of the same species as the opponent.

I got the skill while I was trapped in the undead territory… If I remember correctly, it started out when I was in a very life threatening situation and I escaped by calming myself down and timing my attacks with the attacks of my opponents to my advantage. After 3 months of constantly using it I was able to perfectly predict the behavior of the undead and escape”

Deji asked a bunch of questions which Mira answered, questions like how often she ate during that period, how often she slept, if the skill drained her energy, if the skill improved with when her energy was applied to her body, and various other things.

He then had her to show the skill while sparring with everyone there one on one. When she had done that he moved on to the next person, Gbenga.

Gbenga said “Using aura is like being able to materialize your will as energy. It works the same way as the aura weapons you make. We became able to use aura after fighting and living among the undead and monsters for months. We could have tried to escape the island but we chose to stay because we knew we could get stronger there than anywhere else. As we fought sometimes our energy would turn into aura, we tried to get a hang of it and after a while we did and it just felt natural, like we were turning our desire for strength into actual strength”

Deji smiled and thought ‘Stupid Lekan’. Deji had offered to help Lekan with his teaching style and him understanding aura if Lekan could teach 3 people of his choice his aura skills but Lekan had refused, now he was going to get it and rub it in his face.

Deji repeated the same procedure he did with Mira with Deji; asking questions and then conducting spars to see the skill in action.

The last person was Bella, she told him about her emotional state before and after her evolution, how she had pinnacle intelligence even though she wasn’t very smart. She told him about the nature of psychic energy she had observed and told him how she could obstruct the undead’s communication with it.

Deji was hearing a lot of these for the first time. He didn’t even know that humans and High Humans had psychic energy in their brains. He had no idea of such an energy existing, none of his devices could sense it, he currently had no way of studying it.

He sat Mira down on a chair, put a weird helmet on her and told her to use her ability while sitting on the chair afterward he did the same for the others. He read analyzed the reports for an hour and then he gave his report…

{Excerpt from the Article ‘Intelligence stat’ by Jade The ******* published by Avatari The ******}

{Oh the intelligence stat, it’s that one stat that you wonder what the use is but find it oh so hard to improve. I will know tell you the forms in which the intelligence stat manifests itself.

The intelligence stat has 4 main forms; they are Ingenuity, Instinct, Soul and Psyche.

When we were humans (For those who were humans before the apocalypse) we specialized in the Ingenuity application of the intelligence stat. Instinct was still know to us but it wasn’t most people’s main focus since human’s generally had very bad instincts compared to other species, this makes sense because of our origins.

Ingenuity is still one of the best forms of intelligences for human species (High, Primordial, etc) but with our evolutions there are other options.

Ingenuity has to do with the ability to ponder, to question reality. It gives rise to technological advancement as with the human race.

I know most previous humans understand ingenuity well without me explaining much but if you still need a clearer explanation see my article ‘Ingenuity’ for a detailed explanation.

Instinct is all about using what your body and environment provides you in the most natural and… instinctual way. On first assessment instinct might look insufficient when compared to Ingenuity but that is just a biased view.

For those who were humans our instincts would have been very terrible so it had little uses but for those who weren’t their instinct would have allowed them to predict dangers that would have required highly advanced super computers to predict. And it isn’t only limited to danger; opportunities, techniques, abilities, etc can both be noticed and utilized with instinct.

What has made instinct so mainstream now are the so called High Martial Arts that people have been discovering. These martial arts require high instinct to be utilized, Ingenuity can copy it but it will only just be a cheap copy, the original will always be better. Instinct can be trained like all forms of intelligence through constant usage or by ingesting alchemical concoctions that unlock certain hidden instincts.(Don’t just go around eating any alchemical concoction just to get some special instinct, you could die if you’re not compactable)

See Chao Feng’s article ‘Instinct’ for more knowledge on instinct.

Soul is the form of intelligence that involves understanding existence, soul. It cannot be reached with ingenuity. Ingenuity can only get close to the understanding without actually truly understanding it.

I gained my understanding of soul when my existence was threatened. Understand that souls do not cease to exist when people die so a life threatening event will not allow you understand soul.

An existential threat or situation is what gives one an understanding of soul, for instance there were those who understood soul by staying alone without any interactions for years, this kind of experience gives one an understanding of soul since the person wonders who remembers him/her/it, who know him/her/it, if him/her/it exists and what her/him/it is.

For normal creatures such an experience will make the person go insane as the psyche of the person will be warped by such an experience. But for higher evolutions and with higher intelligence stat this experience will not be able to warp the psyche since the psyche will be sufficiently strong enough to go through such without warping to a critical extent.

There are other advanced parts of soul, if you want to understand more, see my article ‘Soul’ for a better understanding.

Psyche is the form of intelligence that involves being capable to understand the state of a mind, the state of thought. Those who are good at utilizing Psyche have a higher than average amount of psychic energy.

Psychic energy is a very unusual name so you might want to address it as Spirit. Yes that is the true nature of Psyche. A feeling, a thought, a premonition, an inspiration, etc various things that our mind is capable of are because of spirit. The Hive Minds specialize in utilizing this form of intelligence and use it to control their underlings. It is similar to how people are moved by trends, a song or an inspirational speech except the undead have a more advance form (I know right. One will not have expected that the gloomy Hive undead were such spirited fellow).

The main use of Psyche is communication. I know some might be wondering how communication would be useful in a fight but I tell you… It’s fucking effective, I wish I had discovered its uses early but it is what it is.

What you communicate through Psychic energy or spirit is capable of tearing a creature’s mind apart or, at higher levels, tearing the creature’s body apart. It will ignore the creature’s physical resistance and forcefully or cunningly use the creature’s power against its own body. It can also make the creature attack its allies. And those are just the basic uses.

It can create psychological cues that disrupt the creature’s instinct or ingenuity. It can make a creature feel stimuli that are not real (illusions) and, at higher levels, it can make a creature believe a lie and live by it forever. Apart from the other uses of communication Psychic energy is very powerful but it is not necessarily easy to use as it easily affects the user. It takes experience and practice to make spirit a useable weapon but when it is learnt, it is a powerful one. Sadly, it requires a lot of talent.

See Avatari’s article ‘Psyche’ for more advance information}