As usual, the red energy had no issues doing its ‘dirty’ work as and when it pleased. I can be on the verge of releasing the biggest dump of my life, or in the midst of the most dangerous battle I have ever encountered, it wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t even deign to tell me anything. It would just simply work its magic on me whenever and however its requirements were met.

Who cares what the host felt, right? Even though the host is your god damned ticket to living well you stupid, brainless spherical thing.

Ah. I really have a love-hate relationship with this mecha core. Mostly love, of course. It is the only reason why I am here right now, telling this story to you instead of watching some other lucky person do it. But the hate I also have for its insanely irritatingly annoyingly uncontrollable timing for advancement is… Well and truly as deep as the oceans. It always, I say again, ALWAYS advanced my strength at the most inopportune times.

The example I mentioned about it doing its dirty work on me when I was on the verge of releasing the biggest dump of my life? Not a joke.

Yes, you laugh. I know it is funny.

But when you’re the one looking forward to finally taking a dump after WEEKS of not being able to, and then it pulls that kind of crap on you, you would destroy the entire toilet in a fit of anger like I did.

Yes, that was why I partially destroyed that villa.

Anyway, I digress once more.

As you can already guess, what followed next was a horrifying, horrifying few minutes of pure, blinding pain. I actually was rather surprised after the few minutes ended that my head was still intact. I had thought that if my head hadn’t burst open completely, I would at least suffer several large cracks on my skull, considering the inhumane level of pain I had to endure.

Compared to the pain I felt in my head, the pain in my body were leagues below. In fact, even at the risk of sounding like a masochist, I would probably consider them mild.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake upp!!!” Emma screamed as she nudged me as hard as she could from the side. As if I wasn’t already suffering from enough pain. *rolls eyes*

But I understood her panic. I had suddenly screamed and then remained absolutely silent and motionless for a few minutes. Any reasonable person would have feared that I had died. Emma probably did too.

Plus, we were in the middle of a battle. True, nobody in their right minds would voluntarily join in a white mecha battle without another white mecha of their own. But we had remained silent for a few long minutes by that time, and the foolhardy and curious members of both factions were definitely already either on the move to investigate the situation, or were sorely tempted to do so.

Either way, there would be people coming to join us really soon if I didn’t make a fearsome move or gesture of some sort.

And boy did I make a fearsome move or gesture of some sort after that.

“Gahhh!!” I opened my eyes and released all the excess energy that I had within my body in the form of a combined sonic/energy explosion.

BOOM!!

A ripple of pure energy erupted from my body and cascaded outwards all around in a powerful shockwave.

Whole trees were flattened outwards and rocks crumbled beneath the pressure of the shockwave that I emitted.

With my enhanced mind and body, I was able to increase the speed at which I absorbed the white mecha core, and so I did.

“AHHH!!!” I could hear Amelia Dragonos screaming in pure frustration and anger. At that point, the white mecha was totally power-less. Not even its auxiliary power remained. I had made sure I took care of that as well.

Amelia Dragonos was totally stuck.

I grinned widely and glanced at Emma.

She had remained strangely silent after her outburst.

“Hey, you alright there?” I asked.

She just sat there, gazing at me with her pretty eyes and remained silent.

I sighed and decided to ignore her and focus on my task. She’ll talk when she’s ready. If not, then I was okay with silence too.

I gazed at the white mecha core that was reforming slowly within my body, and sensed that I had barely absorbed one percent of its power. It was incredible.

Just one percent, and it was already enough to trigger another upgrade to my body, and specifically, my brain?

I could instinctively sense that I had grown much more intelligent. It was like looking at the world, seeing the exact same things, but realizing their significance and relations to countless other things instantly.

Let me give you an example of how my brain changed after that little painful episode.

See this pen? What is the first thing on your mind when you see this pen? The very first thing, mind you. Don’t overthink it.

It’s black, right? Or maybe, it’s rather fancy for a pen. Or even, hey I have one exactly like it at home!

That would be what normal people with normal intelligence would think.

It was different for me, all those years ago.

If I looked at this pen then, instantly, I would think the following things. Black gel pen. The gel probably made up of Copper Pthalocyanine and Iron Oxides suspended on water and Xanthan Gum. Plastic case, twenty centimeters, three centimeters longer than the average pen. Approximate price, one Euro. Approximate age based on wear and tear, eight months. Good for another two months based on your current usage rate.

And all that occurred within the first second.

(Author’s Note: Had to google all that information for quite a few minutes lol. Damn if only I had such intelligence.)

I had no idea where I read or maybe glimpsed the information on gels, but it is there in my head.

And the enhanced intelligence I had simply allowed me to access all those hidden and inactive parts of my brain’s memory bank.

In addition to vastly enhanced processing speed, of course.

All in all, I became a much smarter person. And of course, that instantly led me to a series of very crucial questions.

If the red mecha core was this powerful, why didn’t Dr. Andrew Kennedy, the engineer who died with the red mecha core in his satchel, use it himself and destroy his enemies? Who killed him? And most importantly, were there any side effects?