Cain sits up slowly, releasing an interminable sigh. His line of sight rests on the horizon, seemingly focused on what is not there. Focused on the unfocused; zoned out, yet in the zone. He breathes in deeply, releasing a hefty exhale; at the end of which his eyes seem to be full of energy, threatening to spill out due to the sheer quantity. The blue and green rings within his eyes resonate with his mood, glowing ever so slightly more. A red hue pulsates from his shimmering pupil.

A multitude of magic circles were created within the 3rd layer a second later. 4 terminals opened shortly afterwards, each connected to the newly created magic circles, yet each one was for a different class. Cain closes his eyes and starts interpreting what was written within the terminals using the feedback from his mana, greatly reducing the time needed to process the information.

A few lines of code were written on each terminal. At first it was just one at a time, then two, then three, then all of them at once. He reads, edits, and deletes part of the new lines using the feedback from his mana. Cain tests this new form of processing information extensively, using it to interact with the terminals for a few minutes.

Once this new method was accustomed to, every single line of code that was previously written was instantly deleted. With the fresh terminals in front of him, Cain began to program the digital storage on the 3rd layer of the partitioned mana layers within his skin. Roughly 100 words per minute were being written on each terminal. Occasionally the others would slow down so that one terminal would progress at speeds that required constantly scrolling just to keep track of the new lines.

Programming typing speed is different from normal typing speed. Just like writing speed is different from normal typing speed. When one writes or programs, one isn't just typing. They're thinking about the task while typing it out, thus reducing the typing speed for that task. Of course, it'd increase if one had an outline or knew the ins and outs of their task.

If Cain had no access to mana, he'd be able to do 3 terminals at once at roughly 50 wpm each; assuming he had the physical capabilities to do so. This is also assuming he knew exactly what to do and just had to do it. He would be able to keep this state up for one or two hours before a feast or hibernation would be desperately needed.

With the introduction of mana, Cain is using it to avoid using any physical part of his body, whether it's his hands or eyes, thus greatly increasing his speed. There are also moments where he brute forces a mental blockade with mana since these are the moments where he knows what to do, but not how to do it. He continued to program the storage using this method for roughly 3 hours, upon which it was completed.

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (45ms)

Rex: Yep.. He isn't human.

Bob: How long would this have taken you if it were performed using the normal methods?

Cain: Roughly 3 days if I didn't brute force anything, and one day if I did.

Cain: It was just one petabyte though; should be enough for a while.

Rex: …then why don't you just always do this?

Cain: Because I always end up with too much energy left over, physically at least.

Rex: :confuzzled:

Cain: I'm physically hyper, yet mentally tired. It's not balanced anymore and feels off.

Cain: Speaking of which, Dresil do you know of any places where I can go on a run? I need to drain this somehow.

Cain: I'll also be putting a hardlock of 0% so the energy is actually drained in time for dinner; I'll need you to keep watch of my surroundings while I run.

Dresil: …fine. But the moment you're in danger, you're putting that soft lock back on and getting out of there.

Cain: Deal.

Dresil: I'll inform Bob about the places so he can teleport you there. You'll get the food afterwards.

Cain: Sweet, thanks.

Rex: What about the drones?

Cain: I'll probably just do it while I'm on my run or afterwards. It'll only take a few minutes.

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While Bob and Dresil are coordinating safe places for Cain to run a few miles, Cain opens a notepad terminal with the statistics of the recently completed petabyte of storage. Roughly 10 million for the actual storage and 500k to manage it all… heck. Well it's better than what I originally thought it would be, considering one petabyte is 1 quadrillion bytes. Oh.. the portal is up.

While Cain was staring at the terminal, a portal appeared on his left; the sun hanging low over the grassy plains greeted Cain's eyes as he peered through it. Isn't this the area in front of the capital? Meh…. look's big enough. He closes the terminal and slowly gets up while stretching his arms over his head; his eyes dimming somewhat.

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (9ms)

Cain: Can you do something about the sweat so I don't have to take a shower immediately after?

Dresil: I can… you'll still be taking a shower though right?

Cain: Of course. I'll probably miss dinner with the party if I took one before though.

Cain: …they're going to let me know when they're having dinner, right?

Dresil: Probably.

Cain: Sweet.

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Cain steps through the portal after some short yawns, scanning the area for any immediate threats or beings in the shadows. Once the feedback came through that there was nothing lurking in range, he started to do high knees in one spot to warm up.

[0% - h]

I'll leave the rest to you, Dresil. And with that thought, Cain took off in a full sprint towards the forest. The wind brushed through his face and combed throughout his somewhat long hair. A small smile appeared on his face, the rings of his eyes resonating with his mood as he picked up the pace. With each step Cain took seemed to be full of energy instead of slowly fatigued.

—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (58ms)

Rex: tf…

Rex: Isn't this mfer supposed to be out of shape? Not to mention not even stretching first and he's still yeeting pretty fast… wait, how fast is he going?

Bob: Roughly 8.9 m/s.

Rex: So we know he's not human… the question is, what is he?

Cain: …you know this is the group chat, right?

Rex: …oh.

Bob: Now he does. :smirk:

Dresil: Great.. Now Bob is starting to be affected by Rex.

Rex: …this still doesn't make any sense.

Cain: I was able to run roughly 7.6m/s when my body was hecked up, so this speed makes sense.

Cain: and I never needed to stretch before since I never got sore. As long as I ate something after working out, my muscles would heal roughly an hour later.

Cain: because of these dumb heaps of energy, as long as I have food and water, I can keep working out, and in most cases, increase the load.

Rex: :doubt:

Bob: Nope, his memories confirm it. He squatted once out of curiosity and lifted 450 lbs 8 times. Repeated that twice then increased the load by 10-15lbs and 2 more sets of 8.

Bob: He continued this up to 500lbs then did 3 sets there. He only had to stop because he got hungry.

Rex: …so what's an animal with a lot of muscle and infinite stamina?

Rex: Anyways… How long are you going to do this for?

Cain: I'll probably need an hour or two in full sprint before it calms down back to normal.

Cain: Oh, Dresil. You dissolved the mana around my hippocampus right?

Dresil: Nope, not yet. Still working on exporting your memories to the digital storage.

Dresil: The brain models of Myles and Victor are already in there though.

Cain: Oh yeah… forgot about that. Thanks.

Cain: Bob, can you open up the mana storage and pin it to my chest or something? I'll just make the drones in there.

Bob: Understood.

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Oh, right… I still need to store all the tags into the digital storage and make everything self sufficient. The digital storage is already good to go, along with the physical enhancement and the limiters. That leaves ironing out the kinks in Insect Eraser, Mana Zone, and the tag stuff.

Cain picked up his speed to 9.5m/s, quickly arriving within a few hundred meters of the border to the forest. To prevent himself from accidentally running inside while being preoccupied, he smoothly turned right here without dropping in speed. The tendons in his feet stretched and compacted, allowing his feet, and thus grip on the ground, to stay firmly planted throughout the turn. Cain's tendons flared up, quickly becoming slightly inflamed due to the stress of performing such movements, only to heal minutes later.

He opened a terminal in front of him, locked to his coordinates to prevent accidentally leaving it in the dust. He wrote a few lines of code to test if he could keep up this pace while "working." His slight smile almost widened into a full grin once the feedback came through. He operated the terminal to ping all of the existing tags to store them in the digital storage and set up a few algorithms to automatically sort future tags. He closed the terminal then opened the HUD for the tags, linking it to the correct folders within the storage and making sure everything was working.

Cain utilized this opportunity to see if he could manipulate the beings through the tags no matter the distance. Theoretically, this was possible since Bob already linked every tag with a microscopic portal, allowing Cain's mana to pass through no matter the distance or dimension. The tag itself was at most a few hundred units of mana so it'd only take fractions of that to edit or enact new functions. Any extra mana needed for the task can be absorbed from the surrounding through the tag.

Cain opened up another terminal and programmed it to absorb enough mana from the surroundings to perform the task; exploding the being. It was less of an explosion and more of a smoke signal though. A second terminal appears to the right of the first in which he hastily selects insects 10, 40, 100, and 300 meters away from him then immediately exports and triggers the program.

Four smoke signals flared up from various directions in the next instance. Looks like distance, or even if I'm moving or not, doesn't matter. I'll have to double check the programming in the tags though to make sure there's no additional mental burden when I execute those tasks. Cain closed the two terminals and opened up another one linked to the tag creation, disguise, and naming.

He smooths out each of the three classes while proofreading each one to ensure they're self sufficient. He reads through everything three more times then closes every class except for the one linked to the naming of the tags.

"Naming" here refers to the identification of the species based on stored dna, which was also moved to the digital storage when he created the folders for the tags. Cain changes some lines of code so that a model or picture of any being that cannot be identified through their dna is sent to Dresil for her to identify. If she cannot identify the species, then it's moved to a folder named "Unknown" for later study. Cain adds another clause under this function to scan the memories of the being for an actual name, then rename their tag to it.

With all of the tag related programs configured to be self sufficient, Cain moves on to the Mana Zone and Insect Eraser; opening two terminals in front of him after closing the ones related to the tags. He reads through the Insect Eraser program several times, inserting some lines of code and changing others. He rereads the finished program twice then closes it, allowing the Mana Zone terminal that was behind it to come within Cain's line of sight.

It looks like the class related to mimicking the natural flow of mana will be tough to deal with. I'll just have to store different methods of the flow and have it select which ones to enact until I can make an AI to change it based on the situation. I could leave it as is… but then instead of the AI it'd be me that's doing the work… Yeah, let's not do that. Within the next few minutes, Cain enacts this train of thought while maintaining his sprint of 9.5 meters per second.

That's all of what was planned today, if I remember correctly… Just need to make the drones and perform some experiments. Just when he thought that was all that was left, Dresil's sudden message reminded him of something else.

—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (26ms)

Dresil: There's still that note.

Cain: …what note?

Dresil: :facepalm:

Dresil: The one that was left in front of your inn room after the duel. I said I would give it to you when you got to the mountain, but you were actually getting work done for once so I didn't interrupt you.

Cain: Oh… that note. What's the summary of it?

Dresil: Just some mysterious person respectfully saying that they needed to follow a member of the party and asked for your understanding.

Dresil: They left a coupon thing for a free meal at a high quality restaurant as a gift.

Cain: What kind of following?

Dresil: The context seemed to be guarding or silent watching.

Cain: I see… and they have coupons here?

Dresil: It's more of an IOU written and signed by the owner of the restaurant with his seal. I've already confirmed it's real.

Cain: Sweet, we'll just leave them be then.

Dresil: …will you actually do anything for food?

Cain: Almost.

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