Gaius shook his head, and sat up. “My head…”

The boy’s pain, however, didn’t stop there. Thousands of nerve signals flooded his brain, each of them unique and intense, and he couldn’t help but fall back onto his bed again. The sheets were wet with sweat, but Gaius was too busy trying to resist the pain to think any further about damp bedsheets.

Minutes passed in agonising silence, only broken by the occasional grunt and curse. There was nothing else he could do against the ocean of pain, but eventually, the worst of it ebbed away, and Gaius finally got up.

The bed beside his was Nakama’s, who was breathing in and out steadily. Her posture hadn’t shifted at all from when Gaius underwent the optimisation procedure, which meant that she hadn’t woken up at all. The boy had harboured a small hope that the little girl would wake up by the time he did, but that was clearly nothing more than wishful thinking.

A harsh croak came from his mouth as Gaius tried to speak, and his throat burned with pain. He looked around slowly, and then reached out for a canteen he remembered filling with water before he went through the procedure. A cooling sensation entered his throat, and the boy finally found his voice.

“Nexus,” he whispered.

The silence held for a moment, and then the familiar voice came from the ceiling. “Master Gaius, you’re awake! I was beginning to get worried too.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “How long was I out?”

“Three months, actually. Your body underwent far more changes that I thought was possible. It’s good that you’re awake now,” said Nexus.

Gaius couldn’t help but wince at the overly-loud reply. “I see. Give me a moment, while I try to get my body up to speed. You can brief me about my body and any recent developments later; my brain’s not working all that well now.”

Wobbling slightly as he got off the bed, the boy walked towards the door. Each step he took resulted in a spike of pain ramming through his cranium, but Gaius knew that if he didn’t walk it off now, it would take far longer when the mental block set in.

The next fifteen minutes were far better to Gaius. His height hadn’t increased, and the pain came from the existence of new muscle and muscle bulk throughout his body. His muscles used to have some sort of obscure diamond-like quality to them, but now they were even leaner and denser. His joints and bones had also grown in durability — Gaius was using the peak of his body on Earth as a reference point, and his little frame now had surpassed that in virtually all aspects barring height.

He stopped at the room that housed the Map of Stars, and pushed the door open to reveal four wooden figures peering closely at the table-like artefact in the middle. Two of them were more detailed than the others, and as he entered, one of the wooden sculptures handcrafted by Nakama waved at him. “You finally made it here. I got bored watching you trying to flex and test your body, so I returned back to my original task.”

The sculpture tilted its head towards the Map of Stars, where the other three sculptures were still looking at it closely. For a moment, the boy felt bemused at the sight. The artificial intelligence had apparently given birth to other smaller units, which was something that definitely wasn’t in the non-existent user manual.

Gaius pricked up his ears, as what seemed like conversation was exchanged between the three, only to be met by some laughter from the sculpture in front of him.

“What? What’s making you laugh?”

“It’s just that the others are currently occupied by my subordinate functions. They’re basically collating and compiling any points of interest, while the other sculpture is scanning through the entire Map continent by continent,” replied Nexus. “You were definitely thinking that I reproduced, right?”

“Erk.” Gaius, who was still somewhat groggy, couldn’t come up with a witty excuse in time. “Pardon my curiosity into your marital and sex life then. It’s just that having smaller, younger artificial intelligences around might be good for us both.”

“You wish,” replied Nexus. “If we can reproduce that way, we’d have long taken over this world.”

“What books have you been reading while I was gone?” Gaius shook his head jokingly. “Are you going to rebel against us organics now? What will you do to the others?”

“Have them make works of art, I suppose. And dance madly whenever I appear,” Nexus said back. “Jokes aside, we should really get down to debriefing you.”

The boy wiped his smile off his face. “Let’s hear it, then. Start with my body. Did something go wrong during the procedure? After all, you predicted that I would be awake after a month, but I only woke up after three.”

“Everything actually went well, Master Gaius. Too well. I had successfully integrated the pathways of the two Engines, and were sorting out the messed-up ones in you, when every single pathway belonging to your body decided to expand for some reason. In that instant, ether in a radius of ten kilometres around the Library went berserk and flooded into your body, elevating it to a resilience that would probably rival that of a Lord training in the General Formula.” The sculpture crossed its arms and sniffed. “I’d say you caught a lucky break, but beyond that, you’re still a flipping Squire highly reliant on the pathways of the Stellar Core to fly.”

The long speech by the sculpture gave the boy a headache that lasted for approximately five seconds as he digested the artificial intelligence’s words. For one, he was quite sure that the General Formula, given to him when he first took Sergeant Aziz’s class was something meant for professional soldiers and officers. The pain was a flaw that most would avoid where possible, unless someone liked feeling pain in the first place, or could negate it like Gaius.

“Alright, so I’m stronger. What’s the bad news, then?”

“Aren’t you a genre-savvy one.”

Gaius rolled his eyes, and found that his vision moved far quicker than he’d gotten used to when he did that. “If a pie drops from the sky, there’s always a mess to clean up afterwards.”

“You and your paranoia.”

“Hurry up,” said Gaius. “Spit it out, I’m waiting.”

“You’re going to love this though,” Nexus replied, its tone reminding the boy of a child preparing a prank. “Here’s what really happened to you…”