A portal appeared on the holy campsite within the Magical Beast Mountains. Cain walked through it; looking around his surroundings for any hidden dangers. After confirming there were none with his eyes and mana zone, Dresil unmerged from his clothes and created a mat for Cain and a chair for herself. She sat on the chair as a holographic screen appeared; streaming anime. Cain sat down on the mat and began thinking about the various things that needed to be done before dinner.

I'll have to enlarge my mana zone's radius to about… 40 meters or so. That should be enough for future endeavors, it can be changed at any time anyways. …I should probably make sure the mana zone and everything else is self reliant so there's no additional mental burdens. Next is the limit on my strength. I'll have to change how I interact with the magic circles to a more definitive method first though…

After that will be getting a physical storage, similar to computers, installed. With this I can keep the tags stored locally and edit or view them whenever I want without pinging each tag every time as it has been in the past. Then I can change each tag to skim through the being's memories to see if it has a name, and change the name of the tag to with the species in parenthesis. …The latter part might be redundant though since they're already sorted in folders based on species. If there's enough time, I should be able to do one or two experiments at the end.

After the rough plan was finalized and his thoughts sorted, Cain instantly expanded the magic circle controlling the mana zone to a radius of 40 meters. The mana within the zone radiated outwards from the original radius, slowly converting the natural mana within until it reached 10 million. The mana then flowed from the denser spots to the less dense until it was all smoothed out, upon which it began to mimic the flow of natural mana.

That should be enough mana… I should double check the density to make sure though. If I make it undetectable, even for me, then unless the being has very very good instincts or a higher sensitivity to mana, it shouldn't notice anything. Cain takes another moment to analyze the mana within the zone to make sure it is still mimicking the flow of natural mana. He lays his back on the mat, taking a momentary break even though hardly anything was done.

—Dms: Bob and Cain— (17ms)

Cain: Do you by chance know what the density of natural mana and the combined density within my mana zone is?

Bob: I do. The natural mana density of the area around the capital is 50 mana per cm³. The combined density is roughly 87 mana per cm³.

Cain: …just how is a unit of mana defined?

Bob: Short answer is it's not.

Bob: Because mana is a force of the soul, it can be energy, mass, or even light. There is a base rule that the gods have setup to keep some order though.

Cain: …at least there's that. :sigh:

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I'll have to set up storage cells of 1, 10, 100, etc. up to 1 trillion mana to get a somewhat accurate scaling base that can be used to proptionize a given amount of mana accurately. Cain reluctantly sits up and creates a magic circle on his palm. It was the base form of all magic circles within the system since it had yet to be assigned a task. Cain probed it, rotating it slightly while excogitating methods to interact with it using a computer programming terminal.

Programming it using one of the languages I'm familiar with would probably be the best method to define the magic circle's duties with great accuracy and precision. I vaguely know what to do… but there's still something missing. The problem is forming the connection between the terminal and the magic circle… Usually that's done with assembly language and then the programming language is a higher tiered language to make it easier for humans to program… A portal connecting to the Mana Storage stealthily appeared behind Cain.

[Master, if you complete that task within 5 minutes I'll give you 12 meat skewers and some steaks.]

Dresil's voice resounded throughout Cain's head; millions of mana surged out the Mana Storage milliseconds after. 7 different programming terminals, each for a different language, appeared in front of Cain; every one of them was connected to the magic circle on his palm. Cain's reluctant face was illuminated by the multitudes of screens hovering in front of him. ...Man, I wanted to be lazy for once.

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (3ms)

Cain: …I'm still getting the food right?

Dresil: Yep.

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—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (26ms)

Rex: …No.

Rex: Nope, nope, nope, that doesn't make any sense. How could you just complete it when you were just struggling with the task?!

Cain: Was I struggling or was I being lazy?

Bob: Most likely, Cain's will to complete the task surged the moment food was involved. Thus instantly completing it, albeit, at the cost of more mana than it would normally take.

Cain: That's the main theory right now.

Cain: Rip my lazy life.

Rex: …

Rex: …just no.

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Cain studied the connection between the terminals and the magic circle while the portal to the Mana Storage closed. Another portal appeared on Cain's right, depositing the promised food on top of a service plate made of leaves. He started leisurely snacking on the skewers while assuring that if the magic circle and terminals dissipated, he'd still be able to recreate them.

The terminals and base magic circle dissipated once half of the snack pile was consumed. Another terminal appeared before him; this one was linked to magic circles on the 6th layer of his skin. The terminal was made so that the program would be copied and pasted to every magic circle on that layer.

Hmm… I can use the data from disguising the Mana Zone and when I tried to deactivate the reinforcement during the duel to form the "partially activated mode." Putting a portion of the fused mana into a dormant state should be the best direction; just need to translate this idea into C#...

Cain started programming each of the locks while using his mana to feed himself since his hands were busy. Once the soft lock was finished, he copied and pasted it to the hard lock terminal; changing a few lines of code here and there. After devouring the last skewer, he closes the terminal and opens another in its place listing the functions of the new program; this one is more of a notepad though.

Let's see here… The soft lock limits my strength to a certain level, but if the force experienced exceeds the cap, the limit will increase until the force can be withstood then go back to the programmed limit. The hard lock does the same, but under no circumstances does the limit increase. Yep, everything seems good, now it's time for the test. Cain creates a titanium needle and sets a soft lock of 10% on every magic circle.

He takes the needle and pricks his palm, slowly increasing the force on it. The needle attempts to break his skin, but every time it gets close, the limit of mana allowed to be active increases. After confirming that the only limit that increased was the reinforcement on his hand, Cain swapped the soft lock with the hard lock and tried the same experiment. Blood oozed out of his palm once he inserted roughly 8.4 kiloNewtons. Dresil eyes him suspiciously throughout the entire experiment.

...Now I'll need an easy way to edit the percentages and monitor the locks. I could edit the grouping of magic circles on my right wrist. The magic circle will have to be capable of managing the locks of each major grouping at once and individually… Looks like it'll be the last addition to that grouping. Although the drone transmitter isn't being used rn, it's best to leave it there for when I get bored. Once Cain was done assorting his thoughts for the task, 3 magic circles appeared over his right wrist. Their runes and symbols constantly shifted, until they abruptly stopped and descended into his wrist.

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (33ms)

Rex: What's the point of the hard lock when you already have the soft lock?

Cain: My current theory is that the physical reinforcement is multiplicative on the force you would normally exert. If that's true, the stronger my base strength is, the stronger my overall strength.

Cain: The soft lock would prevent me from working out since "working out" is just tearing your muscles and letting them heal. The soft lock is specifically programmed to increase the limit whenever an injury is detected.

Bob: Doesn't that mean you can be killed relatively easily with the hard lock on?

Cain: Yep.

Dresil: How much are you planning to limit the refinement?

Cain: I'll keep to what I said earlier, 10%. I'll increase it accordingly once I get completely used to this level.

Cain: It's a little more mana than what a 9th circle mage has, specifically used for physical refinement so it should suit all my needs for a while.

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Cain isolated the blood with his mana then converted it into mana along with the needle. The hard lock was then switched to the soft lock shortly after. I'll have to define the locks even more when I get the time since it adjusts each major area instead of the specific affected area. Although it's probably best if it does the former, it might create unexpected accidents when I'm defending and attacking with one body part and accidentally put too much force.

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (34ms)

Cain: How have you guys been reading my memories?

Dresil: I isolated your hippocampus with my mana and we just interact with that to view them.

Dresil: I made sure that there are no short term side effects.

Cain: But the long term might end up with me losing the ability to store memories since it's isolated from the rest of my brain.

Cain: After I create the digital storage I'll export all my memories into it and you guys can just use that instead.

Cain: Dresil, once the storage is completed, can you create a mana model of Myles' and Victor's brain then store it in there?

Dresil: Yes, Master.

Rex: Wait, wait, before you go. Can you make the drones and live streaming function today?

Cain: After my original plan is done.

Cain: You guys will have to be responsible for controlling them and making sure they aren't discovered though.

Bob: Understood.

Rex: Fine…

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How much storage do I need… 2 petabytes? No… maybe 3. The brain can theoretically store 2.5 petabytes, so making a storage with 3 gives a decent margin size. 0.5 petabytes is 500 terabytes so the extra space should be plenty for a while. The problem is whether or not my body will be able to support the mana used to create the storage….

There's already 10 million mana from the reinforcement, an extra 230k (ish) mana for the only area on my left arm not occupied by spirits, 300k for the mana heart, and… 45k? Nah, let's call it 50k to be safe, for all of the magic circles and skin stuff. All in all, there's roughly, very roughly, 10.58 million mana in my body right now. ..that doesn't leave much room for the storage and everything else. Looks like I'll have to find a way to compact it somehow.

One reason why the brain is capable of storing so much is because some information is overlapped onto a single neuron. This makes for greater storage but plenty more data loss or mixup. If I used this method, combined with the standard file format used to encode data on computers, I should have the stability and reliability of computer storage, but density and storage of the brain…

Cain plops his back down on the mat, staring at the evening sky. It's about 2:30 right now. Ha… I need more food.' He rolls over to his side, calculating the time it would take to finish his tasks, trying to see if he can get away with being lazy. After a brief moment, he comes to a conclusion: laziness is not possible this time. Cain rolls over back to his back (not in black though) and wallows in his unfortunate future. 'Damn it…

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (11ms)

Cain: Dresil… prepare some food for me, I'm going in for the plunge.

Cain: Prioritize taste instead of quantity this time, see if you can grab any sweets too.

Dresil: Understood, Master.

Dresil: Shall I give it to you now?

Cain: No… :sniff:

Cain: I'll be too occupied working. :cry pain:

Dresil: When should I schedule the funeral?

Cain: Nah, not this time.

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