“I really wonder where this feather comes from…” Even tiredness couldn’t put a stop to Aven’s inevitable curiosity at the object that had given him a talent that now allowed him to “see” the energy world in its near entirety.

The consequences of his world having turned white and him having become somewhat blind were not on his mind at all, it would at worst take him a few hours of time to get used to it, nothing more.

What this new perception meant, however, was a subject that put his exhausted mind into overload.

Aven could literally combine this new talent with dozens of spontaneous applications he had thought of before but had forgotten about, from locating supers based on their natural energy emission to truly understanding how the energy engineering field worked.

“Ah~ That’s a subject to think about when I’m more clear headed~” Stopping himself, he refocused and opened his status despite being blinded.

Aven Amias

Faction: Nation of Eland Military

Energy Grade: 3

Energy Cultivation: 1 118/10 000

Energy Identity: Tech

1st Energy Specialization: Undivided Infusion

Physical Talents: Fairy Body (Violet Grade), Basic Energy Furnace Cells, Basic Condensed Body, Basic Regenerating Body, Basic Inexhaustible Body, Basic Energy Immune Constitution, Basic Energy Life Constitution

Energy Talents: Fairy Energy Origin (Violet Grade), Pure Fairy Energy (Violet Grade), Fairy Affinity Resonance (Violet Grade), Intermediate Tech Energy Affinity, Intermediate Energy Sense, Basic Natural Energy Growth, Basic Self Revolving Energy, Basic Seamless Energy, Basic Excitable Energy, Basic Equalizing Energy, Basic Energy Photosynthesis, Basic Compatible Energy, Sensitive Energy

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit, Advanced Knowledge Integration, Basic Tireless Spirit, Basic Armored Spirit, Basic Enhanced Awareness

Universal Talents: Awakened Fairy Bloodline (Violet Grade), Creative Instinct, Essence Stabilizer

“Of course a single river pebble wouldn’t be enough… And it’s… Not basic?” Surprised in a good way at finally acquiring an energy talent that wasn’t graded, he opened the detailed description window of his 2 newly appeared talents and his upgraded affinity.

Intermediate Tech Energy Affinity: Your energy naturally responds to the tech energy system. Moderately increases all properties of your energy when used through the tech energy system.

Basic Compatible Energy: Your energy knows how to naturally adapt itself to fit its infusion targets. Minimally increases your energy sustainability when in an infused state.

Sensitive Energy: Your energy is sensitive to external and internal stimuli and is capable of complexly apprehending them.

“All properties?! Not just intensity anymore?!” He exclaimed, making an obvious parallel between his intermediate affinity, its previous basic equivalent, and his fairy energy origin talent, “Damn! That’s like a freaking 3rd energy specialization already! What will it be like when it reaches the advanced level?!”

Feeling dizzy due to his excitement colliding with his mental fatigue, he closed his eyes for a moment to calm down and stretched all over his king-sized bed.

This single moment of relaxation was nearly enough to push him over to the realm of sleep, causing him to reevaluate whether he really needed to remain awake.

“Yeah, no,” he accepted that he had no more reasons to not sleep, and it wasn’t like the blinding white world he was perceiving was really blinding light, it was just a sensory overload.

Hence, he just let his body and mind relax without trying to stop them.

And eventually, the white world vanished, leaving behind… Nothing.

…

Getting up completely refreshed, the first thing Aven remarked was that his sensory overload state incurred by the acquisition of his sensitive energy talent was over and that he had a whole truckload of new “sights” everywhere around him only waiting to be observed.

“I’m not dreaming, right?” Using his hand to try and interfere with a “white smoke trail” his naturally emitted energy allowed him to see, it was only slightly disturbed before returning to its initial state.

Actively expelling his energy through the pure system, he created a fake grade 4 energy aura around him and became able to see hundreds of such white smoke trails, all seemingly disregarding gravity, drawing an invisible web of energy he was only now able to see.

“Well, here goes my idea of being able to freely find every super lifeform from now on… Or maybe I can create something with pure manipulation? Another path to explore~” Switching from neutral reflection to naive enthusiasm in an instant, he got dressed before exiting his bedroom.

Eating some delicious highly-nutritious snacks made specifically for fairies that were energy lives, he then departed in the direction of a certain industrial section without dilly-dallying.

On the way he decided to spend all his remaining FCP in grade 3 tech energy cultivation, so he first claimed what he had earned from the ASHAS production hall overnight.

Dynamic Faction Contribution Quests: Nation of Eland Military

…

Dynamic Contribution: 2 588 000 FCP

“Yeah, not impressive,” claiming something he didn’t believe in at all, he headed for a logistic section that was on his path and after explaining his circumstances, filled an empty hall with more than a hundred, 156 to be precise, swirling light manifestations.

“Sigh… 5 560 000 really seemed like a lot, but that’s only 52 trinity sets…” Lamenting how mathematics worked when it came to the multiplication of high numbers, he drank one set now and took 3 more with him, “24 hours is a bit short too now that I think about it…”

Leaving behind maybe flabbergasted, maybe not flabbergasted logistic officers that had a new maybe big maybe not big problem to deal with, he used his phone to send a message to ERA for them to make official his transfer from the military to Eland itself.

By the time he reached the ASHAS production hall intending to push his tech-enhanced gears a step further with his newly upgraded tech energy affinity talent acting as nearly a new energy specialization.

One that didn’t restrict him as much as the one he had truly taken, one not forcing him to only have one active infusion at a time.

He received a confirmation from ERA that the transfer had been done.

“That fast?” Doubting whether he could change his faction that fast, he brought up his status.

Aven Amias

Faction: None

Energy Grade: 3

Energy Cultivation: 1 119/10 000

Energy Identity: Tech

1st Energy Specialization: Undivided Infusion

Physical Talents: Fairy Body (Violet Grade), Basic Energy Furnace Cells, Basic Condensed Body, Basic Regenerating Body, Basic Inexhaustible Body, Basic Energy Immune Constitution, Basic Energy Life Constitution

Energy Talents: Fairy Energy Origin (Violet Grade), Pure Fairy Energy (Violet Grade), Fairy Affinity Resonance (Violet Grade), Intermediate Tech Energy Affinity, Intermediate Energy Sense, Basic Natural Energy Growth, Basic Self Revolving Energy, Basic Seamless Energy, Basic Excitable Energy, Basic Equalizing Energy, Basic Energy Photosynthesis, Basic Compatible Energy, Sensitive Energy

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit, Advanced Knowledge Integration, Basic Tireless Spirit, Basic Armored Spirit, Basic Enhanced Awareness

Universal Talents: Awakened Fairy Bloodline (Violet Grade), Creative Instinct, Essence Stabilizer

“Oh~!” Making an inhuman sound, Aven did a few loopings mid-air in a burst of astonishment mixed with excitement, “My next faction is… Hehehe~”

Bursting through the door leading to the ASHAS production hall he had integrated, he made strange gestures all along in a vain attempt to externalize his explosive needs to show how hyped he was.

His hyper-active act only ended when he began infusing energy into the integrated 30 lines as he had to dedicate himself fully to the task.

Yet, even this task only successfully contained him for half an hour before he left and headed for Eland’s main command center in a reinforced section.

“Good morning everyone! Hope you had a good surge!” Bursting through the door as if on euphoric drugs, Aven displayed to everyone here his burning enthusiasm, “I hope you didn’t make any stupid mistake~”

Some officers who hadn’t had the occasion to see his shameless hyper-social butterfly true-self widened their eyes at how different this fairy appeared to be compared to merely a few days ago.

Approaching the empty desk of a 5-star general, he browsed through the few dozens of dense reports about unusual happening in the surge, the various casualties, the uncommon results, and other notable events before focusing entirely on the map of the Forbidden Continent that had changed since the last time he had seen it.

The light red color didn’t exist anymore, the entirety of the continental mass except for the coast had been painted in red with deeper shades of red running through it like a well-developed road infrastructure.

Purple dots had spread themselves everywhere, telling of enough abominations in the high energy grades to cleanly sweep through Green if it wasn’t for the most efficient defensive strategy being used against them.

“So Emma really is the weakest link. Interesting~” Combining his understanding of the situation with what he was seeing, a whole fifth of the Forbidden Wall being occupied with much more blue dots than usual, Aven gave his judgment without minding.

“Why is Emma Lenia joining the front such an exceptional news though? I don’t see anything telling me that the horrifying blood tempest I’ve just read about has led waste to the abomination population. I only see an Emma Empire who needs help to reach stability where every other power doesn’t…” He whispered while squinting as he looked at the part of the wall manned by the Emma Empire.

He wasn’t really asking the other people present in this supremely important command center, he was simply exposing his thought process by habits.

“Is it because… Ho~” He realized something after combining his knowledge in politics and leadership, “Did she just introduce the succession war into the abomination surge war? What a freaked-up move from her. Though not that shocking once you know that she’s such a genuine monster in terms of potential, just a few hundred times behind me.”

His exposed thoughts led to some subdued laughter from the officers who were receptive to this sort of narcissistic realist comedy skit, somewhat alleviating the heavy mood weighing down on everyone.

Connecting the dots on this move, Aven first saw the benefits that having the throne successors fight for contribution, then he saw the negatives, and then he added that variable to his mind as he moved on to what Eland's strategy was.

“Yeah, it looks pretty fine. Manpower has been reattributed to where abomination flows have chances to erupt, and all A and B abominations are locked down…” Going through every primary and secondary arrow group and their final combination into a true plan that was being acted upon in reality as he was speaking, he quickly reached the extremely obscure and unclear part.

“Well, looks like the initial rush is over so you’ve all already become sloppy~” He said as he remarked for the first time an extremely stark contrast between his knowledge and what was being displayed.

Sending funny looks at everyone present here before meaningfully glaring at an assistant, he put on a confident smile, “You’re lucky that I have a few hours to kill for my production hall to finish consuming all the energy I infused it with.”

Cleaning the empty 5-star general desk, he fluttered his wings once and locked himself above the huge interactive map, “Split arrow group 45 into 2 distinct ones, lock onto the current tail end of abomination flow 6 and make it progress north, interaction zone with A27, conflict with arrow group 24 development to be confirmed…”

With no need to be rushed for the reason he had already explained, he earnestly got going in correcting Eland’s biggest and grandest predictions with as much precision and exactitude as he could.

Tactics and strategies were not subjective, they were cold hard truths, same as mathematics and physics, so he completely erased his absence of practical experience in leading and strategizing and just outputted…

Everything.

…

“Yup, literally can’t run out of shells even if I wanted to,” looking at what 5 hours of production from the ASHAS production hall looked like, Aven stated a fact.

12 lines were dedicated to producing armor cracking shells, 14 were dedicated to producing expansive empty shells, and he knew that with his grade-4-equivalent active enhancement, each individual line had been pushed to the maximum productivity level he had authorized and had yielded one full shell every 15 seconds.

As a result, after 5 hours of helping in the command center, he was now welcomed by a small warehouse filled with a dozen new heavy artillery snipers, 5 760 armor cracking shells, 6 720 expansive empty ones, and a report of how tech-enhanced these all were.

“And I’ll probably be able to gain a few more meters of deadly impact cone with that, right?” He looked at a live feed from the quality control area on his phone that displayed a constant 874% and said, with his knowledge, it really hadn’t been difficult to program it when he had taken over the hall control room.

“Anyway, they don’t need me, but the most important thing is to participate, let’s go!” Throwing his fairy-sized phone behind him only for it to be caught by his energy telekinesis, he started arranging for his bunker room to be refitted with 5 newly-produced ASHAS, a gain of 30% in tech-enhancement was nothing to laugh about.

Concerning the shells, he decided to bring a single truck of them with him to be used in case of emergency, he didn’t have enough yet to sporadically shoot them.

He also had in mind to keep them for when he “officially” joined Eland a week from now to start his FCP grind for it in the most perfect manner.

When he finally loaded 2 ASHAS and a few dozen of each shell on a truck and organized for the rest to be transported by the logistics, he departed and reached the front line in only a few minutes.

There, he wielded tinkering gears with all his might to savagely disassemble 2 artillery snipers and replace them with their new version.

“Sigh… Stupid production tech path, I love you!” Both cursing and appreciating the path of being a production tech super with an undivided infusion specialization at the same time, he finished “expertly” replacing 2 of his 5 ASHAS with newer better versions and replaced one of their ammunition belts with special shells which he would have to manually reload.

“Looks like I’m done~” Opening the shutters of his bunker room and seeing the ocean of abominations, it didn’t take him more than one second before finding a huge loveable target, “It’s time to get some cleaning done then.”

Adjusting his fresh new artillery sniper scope, he let his energy flow inside the whole thing, cut his link with the faraway ASHAS production hall, and felt the feedback from his scope instantly become clearer as well as his ability to move the barrel being enhanced by an untold amount of times.

“That’s the good stuff~” Aiming, he found dozens of targets he wanted to take down in only one sweep, but he knew his priority, so he found the biggest and baddest-looking one.

And pressed the trigger.

It turned out that exactly as he had expected, a 30% increase in overall performance on the weapon side wasn’t anything to joke about as Aven visibly saw the impact cone expand and empty an area full of abominations.

Keeping his comment to himself, his smile vanished as he assumed a cold emotionless face.

He had a lot of computation to do and targets to take down, there was no need to take care of his facial muscles anymore.

…

Since the time he had bitten and eaten a Tireless Apple, his “days” never stopped expanding a quarter of an hour each time he reached his limit and recovered from it by sleeping a few hours.

When the time of each “day” had been extended to be 40 hours, then 50 hours, then 60 hours, Aven had learned to accept that the tireless spirit talent that allowed him to do that wouldn’t stop growing, he just had to give it… Time.

Inevitably, however, his perception of time had become a bit warped due to that, and while the fact that the White rising or setting had no more pull on his sleep cycle had been a much more enjoyable addition than he could have ever thought, the loss of his precise biological clock had affected him in invisible ways.

Hence, when his phone alarm rang out a “week” after he had initiated his transfer from the military to Eland, for him, it had only been a 62 and a quarter hours cycle, 5 hours of sleep, a 62 and a half hours cycle, another 5 hours of sleep, and a bit more than 30 hours into his 62 and 3 quarter hours cycle.

“A week…” Looking at his phone that was clearly telling him it had been a week, he looked back and forth between the ocean of abominations he had been cleaning up and his phone, “I didn’t sleep 7 times… I’ve only needed to sleep 2 times… Was such a wake-up call necessary?”

Denying reality a bit without forcing, he was just a bit confused by how long each of his cycles had become without him giving attention to this part of his life.

To be sure he hadn’t just mistimed his alarm, he opened his status.

Aven Amias

Faction: Nation of Eland

Energy Grade: 3

Energy Cultivation: 1 126/10 000

Energy Identity: Tech

1st Energy Specialization: Undivided Infusion

Physical Talents: Fairy Body (Violet Grade), Basic Energy Furnace Cells, Basic Condensed Body, Basic Regenerating Body, Basic Inexhaustible Body, Basic Energy Immune Constitution, Basic Energy Life Constitution

Energy Talents: Fairy Energy Origin (Violet Grade), Pure Fairy Energy (Violet Grade), Fairy Affinity Resonance (Violet Grade), Intermediate Tech Energy Affinity, Intermediate Energy Sense, Basic Natural Energy Growth, Basic Self Revolving Energy, Basic Seamless Energy, Basic Excitable Energy, Basic Equalizing Energy, Basic Energy Photosynthesis, Basic Compatible Energy, Sensitive Energy

Spiritual Talents: Inquisitive Spirit, Advanced Knowledge Integration, Basic Tireless Spirit, Basic Armored Spirit, Basic Enhanced Awareness

Universal Talents: Awakened Fairy Bloodline (Violet Grade), Creative Instinct, Essence Stabilizer

“Hehe~ There’s no way I can deny that…” Being shown so directly that he had lost sense of time wasn’t that much of a comfortable feeling, but looking out the “window” helped him refocus on what he needed to do now that he had joined a new faction, “Let’s proceed step by step. First of all… Making sure there are no wall breakers.”

Retaking his position behind the scope of the battery’s central artillery sniper, he quickly did a sweep and pressed the trigger repeatedly to give himself a justified break.

After doing that, he started with the most fundamental appraising of his faction.

Nation of Eland

Power Index: 65 043

Influence Index: 68 612

Economy Index: 64 121

Technology Index: 64 046

Description: A balanced, ambitious, and quickly developing faction taking on the form of an organized society. Its highest powers, the fairies, stand at the very top of attainable power, it provides the greatest revolutionary talents in every field, and has factually proven itself to be the strongest faction of Green.

“The values changed a bit here and there… Not that shocking though considering the current situation,” he justified by looking at the abomination ocean, “I can think of ways to increase or decrease each of these indexes off the top of my head.”

With nothing worth delving deeply into on this faction appraisal screen, he closed it and opened the faction contribution quests window.

Dynamic Faction Contribution Quests: Nation of Eland

Volunteering: Contribute to the stability of your faction without asking for anything in return. The more time spent and the harder the tasks, the greater the contribution.

Securing: Investigate and resolve problems occurring inside your faction. The more problems resolved and the more difficult their resolutions, the greater the contribution.

Innovating: Give your faction new ways to achieve its goals. The more impacting and practical the innovations, the greater the contribution.

Prospering: Allow your faction to prosper and develop in the most optimal manner. The more influential and impacting the changes you brought, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Abomination Surge: Help your faction fight against the imminent abomination surge disaster in any way. The greater the provided help in that objective, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Invisible Enemy: Your faction is being progressively invaded by a hidden faction, its traces are hard to find to the point that only a few extraordinary survivors have been able to report its existence after they escaped its clutches. The more information found and the more action taken to resist that invisible enemy, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Fairy Mystery: Find out what happened to the hundreds of thousands of fairies that once populated Eland to fill a great failing in your faction’s history. The more clues found about this case, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Rogue Canopy: Unearth every branch and agent of the Canopy sowing chaos inside the area protected by your faction and neutralize them. The greater the provided help in that goal, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Abyssal Threat: Reduce the threat level of the abyssal lifeforms by either making sure nothing disturbs them in their deep waters or by decreasing their population. The more actions taken and the greater their impact, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Emma Succession War: Minimize the impact of the Emma Empire’s succession war on your faction. The less impacted your faction is by the global consequence of that event, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Eland History: Help retrace the history of how Eland has been founded centuries ago to fulfill your faction’s needs for solid ancestry. The more concrete and proven each glorious historical fact is, the greater the contribution.

Dynamic Contribution: Claim?

“That…” Lost for words, Aven stunningly looked at this greatly expanded quests window, but it wasn’t the expansion he was focusing on primarily, “That…?”

“It’s…” Reading over and over the dynamic invisible enemy quest, of all things he had expected could shock him following this faction change, he had never even considered or expected that it would be… A quest.

A simple quest.

A dynamic quest.

A very consequential quest.

“An… Enemy…” Mulling over this term without even daring to pronounce it in its entirety, he pictured everything from the culprit behind the disappearance of the fairies, to an otherworldly demon, to a secret society, “Well… That, after receiving ERA’s investigation reports… The world really wants me to stop being innocent, doesn’t it?”

Turning his back towards the abomination ocean, the most dangerous event in existence that was completely outside of his control, Aven’s eyes seemed to pierce through the dense and thick tech-produced reinforced concrete walls making up the Forbidden Wall, gazing at the command center of Eland.

“I think… It’s working,” he admitted to himself in all honesty, he had never been one to bottle up his feelings after all.

The background explosions, screams, shrieks, and waves of heated air were the things that made him turn once again.

“Now that I know… I can’t go back anymore, right?” A slightly distressed but confident and resigned smile appeared on his face as he shrugged.