Ah, he was too easily bribed.

That said, it was probably a good thing that Avi had been able to coax him out of bed. He really did need to get his unusual situation rectified. Or, at least, figured out.

Joram was amazed at how sophisticated the designs for the omni-tool were. That really shouldn’t have surprised him in the least, but going over the plans made him realize just how much nanotech went into something like this, not to mention the quantum tech.

Altaea had managed to combine the imaginary technology from the Mass Effect series with the imaginary tech from Doctor Who.

Well, up until Altaea had proved that those worlds weren’t actually imaginary at all. The multiverse was quite the diverse collection of anything one could imagine, and more.

Now, the plans suggested linking the omni-tool to a Time Lord power source, effectively running it on “wireless” energy. Unfortunately, he was nowhere near being able to snag a star at the instant it went supernova and trap it on an infinite time loop.

Nope. Not happening.

Yet…

Anyway, he was then stuck with the issue of an appropriate power cell. Fortunately, the Time Lord power source was only one of many suggestions for it.

After much consideration and deliberation, they decided to go with a remote power source. This would allow for several benefits, namely the reduction in size. This made the whole module able to be implanted in his hand and forearm, which excited him to no end.

That said, the module would also be connected to a set-up similar to the drawers in his workshop. There would be a small reservoir of materials that he could draw upon to make various items installed in the unit itself. That reservoir would then be able to instantly draw from his storage space to replenish what was used.

Back to the power source. They decided to build a power generator and battery according to the schematics obtained from the Star Wars tech Altaea had left them. It was light, compact, and could power his home city on Earth for a month before needing to be refueled with more helium 3. Which was, unsurprisingly, difficult to synthesise.

But after a few days of ability burn, he managed to make a decent supply of the stuff to have on hand. Then came the hard part.

Even though Altaea had provided exhaustive information about Eezo, it had been particularly difficult to synthesis. His supposition was that Element Zero created a sort of field that interfered somewhat with psionics, even though Altaea had said nothing about it. Well, that was probably because of her divine status; ignoring silly things like null-psionic fields and such.

A mere mortal like him, though, still had to take annoying things like that into consideration when trying to synthesise exotic materials.

Well, he managed to do it in the end. It had taken even longer for him to recover the ability burn after that, but he now had a small pallet worth of the stuff sitting in storage, kilograms of it. The best part? The prototype omni-tool only took a few grams of Eezo to get up and running, so he had plenty to experiment with before needing to make more of the stuff.

At the end of the day, well, the end of the following month, they’d finally managed to create their first working prototype.

“You don’t think it’ll blow up on me, do you?” He asked Avi as she happily strapped it on his arm.

“Nah, you’ll be fine,” she said. “Especially since you’ve kept up with your [Astral Seed].”

That did not inspire one iota of confidence.

“Have you figured out what caused it to act so strangely?”

“Not yet~~” she said, finishing up on his arm. “You’ll do fine.”

He would have been much more confident in her assurance if she hadn’t immediately dashed away after she’d finished speaking.

“Welp, no one lives forever,” he muttered as he opened his hand to activate the holographic interface. He was reassured that he wasn’t going to immediately die when the interface worked as it should, no explosions.

He looked over to the pile of samples that Avi had collected with her small army of worker droids. He went over to the first one, what looked like an apple. It was a good fruit, crisp like an apple, sweet like an apple, but was sky blue.

With a shrug, he lifted his hand, passing it over the “apple” so that the scanner could get a good read on it. After a moment, readings began popping up, telling him its chemical composition, what standard vitamins were in it, along with sugar and fibre levels. He grimaced as he learned just how much sugar it contained, but shrugged that thought away. It wasn’t like he was avoiding the stuff. Case in point: Avi’s bribe.

He sighed, then continued taking readings of the apple. When nothing new showed up he made his way over to the next item, one of the hides he’d stripped off a murder goat. More readings followed, then he was on to the next pile.

By his fifth sample, he noticed that the omni-tool had grown uncomfortably warm, and when he was only half-way through his scans, the prototype had become burning hot.

Mind 2 then triggered his prepared [Teleport Object] and sent it to an empty field a kilometre away.

“Well, at least it didn’t-‘’ Avi started, but was interrupted by a massive explosion that rained turf down on them half a minute later.

“You were saying?”

His tone could have created a polar region right there.

“Minor setback,” she said with a grin.

- - - - -

1342.12.16

“I’m sure this’ll be the one!” Avi declared confidently as she held out the latest prototype for Joram to put on.

He no longer had the energy to give her a disbelieving look. Instead, he took the omni-tool, now attached to a long glove for ease of use and slipped it on.

There had been several more iterations in design, all coming with their own drawbacks. At least the worst result had only been the loss of his arm from just below the elbow.

Hah, “at least”. That hurt like no one’s business! At least we’re getting close to a final product, he thought as he stepped over to the new scanning area. Same spread, same order, just different area. This area was closer to the hot springs. For convenience, you see.

Joram [Delve]d the omni-tool one last time, searching for any flaws in the construction of its parts and assembly. After a minute of examining it, he gave up. He’d examined every other one after the first, yet all had shown that they were “fine”. Checking the software would take much longer, nevermind that they’d already done that and found it to be bug-free…

He wondered if he needed to increase the resolution of his [Delve] and that was why he was missing something whenever he examined one of the prototypes.

He silently added that to the list of “to-dos” then activated the omni-tool.

Joram proceeded through the list, scanning each item, then each pile, letting the results scroll by. By the time he reached the end of the table, the omni-tool was doing surprisingly well. No overheating, no short-circuits, and best of all: no random explosions.

With a sigh of relief, he stepped over to the training dummy, smirking at the little sign hung from its neck.

Days without injury while at work: 83

That was how long it had taken to get back to being able to test the crafting functions of the omni-tool. They’d had early success in the scanning department, but had somehow regressed until now. Well, he hoped that the omni-tool wouldn’t explode this time.

They’d figured out that the mass effect field responsible for containing the plasma required to flash-make the silicon carbide blade had destabilized. Thus, the explosion. He was particularly glad that it had failed on the first attempt, as that one had just been a dagger sized blade. If it had destabilized when he’d been trying to make a shield, well, he’d have found out whether or not he’d take another thousand years to revive.

Taking a deep breath, he activated the first form of the omni-blade and watched as the super-heated silicon and carbon were formed into a blade on the back of his hand. After another few seconds of observation, the blade cooled to the point where the mass effect field was able to drop without fear of burning his arm to charcoal.

Another few seconds passed before the blade began to break down, first a bit, then a cascading failure that made it look like the blade had instantaneously been converted to sand, falling to the ground where it further disintegrated upon impact.

It was rather pretty, all told. And bonus points for not blowing his arm off.

He idly wondered if he could change the colour of the armaments produced by the omni-tool from its standard luminescent orange to something like indigo, or a deep purple. That’d be cool. Well, at least he could change the colour of the holographic display with little effort. That was at least something.

“Good job!” Avi yelled over. “Next form!”

He sighed, then activated the standard sized blade while Mind 2 kept an emergency [Teleport Object] ready. He’d briefly considered using [Energy Adaptation], but ultimately let it drop because it really wouldn’t have worked here very well. At the temperatures the omni-tool used to create its “blades”, the power would be useless.

Mental note: work on a power to resist plasma.

By the last form tested, the somewhat anticipated/dreaded shield form, the omni-tool remained stable. He gave it another [Delve] to see if here were any unseen changes that might have appeared during testing. Sure enough, there was some degradation in the energy conduits leading to and from the Eezo, but nothing too extreme. That gave him heart, as they could then concentrate on improving the materials used in the circuits and conduits instead of needing to guess what had gone wrong and only make semi-educated guesses and fixes.

“She’s good!” He called back to Avi, somewhat enjoying the yelling. He’d spent so long speaking at normal volume, or over the Network, that it felt nice to let go.

“Aces!” She exclaimed as she hurried over.

Where had she picked that one up? He wondered as he handed the sleeve+omni-tool back to Avi.

“Anyways, I think I’ll actually take some time now to start figuring out how to deal with my cultivation,” he said, raising a hand to wave at her as he walked off.

“Soooooo,” Avi drew out the word as she hurried to catch up to him. “I’ve been doing my own research on the side, and I think that I might have found a solution to the multiple-psicrystals issue.”

Joram nearly tripped, windmilling his arms for a moment before he caught his balance, then turned to Stare at her.

“OK,” she said, raising her hands in a placating manner. “It’s a very recent thing. Anyway, it starts with having one of your additional minds…”

She went on to explain that because he more or less had a permanent second and third mind running at all times, that one of them would be able to handle the extra load and create its own psicrystal/become its own psicrystal. There were many other technical and specialized terms, techniques, and concepts in there, but that is what it all boiled down to.

He grinned.

He’d been wondering about the outside world for a long time. What was this continent like? Were people just as terrible as those on the Zhizun Zhanshi continent? Or were they more… mellow? Would someone just murder him outright to get what he had? Or would they be prone to dialogue?

One of the biggest issues he had was that he was low on resources. Yes, he could ask Grammy, but keeping some things secret- like needing adamantium for his body tempering- seemed more than prudent, it was great wisdom.

“OK, so, can you teach me how to make a [Holographic Image] like yours?”

Avi looked at him a moment as she thought, then smiled. “Ah, you want to send them out into the world on errands or something,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“You got that right! And because they’re a part of me, I won’t have to worry about sending them off loaded with loot and risk them getting robbed; they can just grab what they need from storage, when they need it.”

He was ridiculously proud of himself for thinking up that solution to his exploration quandaries. No need to risk sending himself out, nor was there a need to risk shifting to one of his other true selves to hide the fact that he was a child here. That said, those bodies/other selves were comparably weaker than his four-year-old self which, upon reflection, depressed him more than he thought it would.

He’d worked himself nearly to death on many occasions to get to where he had been. He had even tested just how strong he was and found that he’d gotten to Superhero levels of strength, agility, and toughness.

Well, back on Earth at least…

“Great! We can go out as a team! It would be like a date!” She said enthusiastically, fist pump and all.

“Wait, what?” He deadpanned, brain refusing to parse what she’d just said.

“Oh, don’t get all shy on me now,” she teased as she leaned over to stare him in the eye, incidentally exposing a generous amount of cleavage.

She got really good with [Holographic Image] to be able to mimic physics so well, he thought, trying very hard to concentrate on the practical side of what he was seeing.

“It’s not like we can do anything,” she said as she wiggled her eyebrows at him.

“OK, where is all this coming from?!” He demanded, foot tapping.

“Pooh, you’re no fun,” she pouted. “After having been able to go out and about for the past few years, I’ve picked up a few things,” she explained. “I realized early on that those tv shows and movies weren’t indicative of real-life social interactions, so I hadn’t bothered to emulate any of them after you woke up. But being able to go out into the world and witness what people are like, I’ve been able to ‘liven’ myself up.”

His head dropped, chin hitting his chest. His left hand rose to pinch the bridge of his nose, eyes shut tight.

“Have you been hanging around brothels?”

Avi didn’t immediately reply, so he looked up to see what was going on, not quite trusting [Touchsight]’s feedback. Sure enough, Avi stood there, pretending to whistle, looking anywhere but him.

“Avi.”

“Yes, Joram…”

“Please don’t emulate their behaviour,” he asked plaintively.

To which Avi finally looked at him, a shit-eating grin on her face. “Nah, it’s more fun like this.”

- - - - -

1342.13.13

The “learning” of Avi’s customized [Holographic Image] consisted of her subsuming her psicrystal body into his head and just transferring the “data pack” directly to his mind, much like how she’d transferred the knowledge of the Network and its intricacies to him.

It wound up being a very, very, specific augmentation to the power, to the point where it could almost become its own power. Either way, he was happy to have learnt it.

With the knowledge transferred, he was able to get Mind 2 out into the world with Avi. Their mission: to visit as many Merchant Consortiums and Auction Houses they could find. He was in dire need of some medicinal herbs which the clan lacked.

He’d managed to find a recipe for a pill, the Nine Revolving Pathways Pill, that would allow the imbiber to more easily rework the pathways in their body. It was designed to help those who, like him, had managed to cultivate themselves into a corner, or a dead end. Most who took it, however, were people who wanted to begin practicing a new cultivation technique, as each cultivation technique moulded the body in very specific ways, thus making it very difficult to begin practicing a new cultivation method.

Well, Joram didn’t want to change his cultivation method, he just wanted to rework how his pathways were spread out in his body. Basically, reworking the mana plumbing so that the “source” was up in his head rather than below his navel.

That said, he would also need the Meridian Reforming Pill to adjust his meridians as well. Aaaaand both happened to be Tier 5 pills. Overall, a pain in the glutes…

Major reconstruction ahead, please be cautious.

To that end, Avi and Mind 2 had gone out to procure what he needed.

In the meantime, he and Mind 3 were working on mapping out and rerouting his pathways using the simulator they’d finished. It was a complicated mess at the moment, though they’d eventually get it streamlined. For now, it required him to stand on a disc while a ring made to fit perfectly with the outer edge of the disc would levitate from the ground to above his head, then slowly make its way down again. Said ring was the principal scanner of the system, providing the necessary data for the rest of the device to work, having been based on the scanning tech from the omni-tool.

There was a second disc off to his left that would then display a perfect replica of his body, in and out. Both discs were connected by similarly flat arms that led to what looked like a kiosk, computer console and all. From above, it basically looked like a V with round bits added to the tops and the bottom.

Currently, they were having fun with the [Holographic Image] of his body. They’d done silly things like attempting various algorithms for aging, giving him a 50s villain mustache, making him bald, and giving him Arny-level muscles as a child.

That last one had been more than a little disturbing, to the point that his mind went back to thinking about how everyone was doing in the clan. Which reminded him to check his “messages”.

*11 Messages saved*

Hmm, should get on that, he thought as he began to go through them.

“Joram, how’re you doing,” he heard Tillia’s hesitant voice. “I don’t know what this is, but I just wanted to make sure you’re doing well in your cultivation… and not getting lonely. I know it can be hard for kids- er, people to be away from others for a long time, so don’t push yourself, OK?”

Joram blinked as he took a deep breath to help ease the unexpected tightness in his throat and chest. That’s just like her, caring so much for others, he thought with a smile.

“So, it’s been over two months now, just checking in. Wanted to know if you needed anything, like snacks or a hug, or something.”

Joram smiled at that one.

The next eight were also from Tillia, varying in how worried she sounded. It went from a casual inquiry to a near panic and back. Hmm, maybe he shouldn’t stay away for too long at a time…

The last one was from Grammy.

“I was wondering if you’ll be exiting seclusion for your birthday. Also, your parents have expressed worry over your situation. Though they won’t be back for a while yet, they have expressed a desire to return briefly to see you. Unfortunately, they cannot come back before spring, but I have nonetheless approved a short leave of absence for them to visit and re-connect with you.”

Joram grinned at that last part. It seemed that his parents were very worried about his well being and also missed being able to speak with him whenever they needed/wanted to.

He sat back on the high stool at the kiosk and sighed. He hadn’t been very… expressive in his past life, leading to not having the standard familial relationships that most people had. Most people he’d known had called their parents or siblings at least once per week to chat and catch up. He’d been closer to the 4-6 weeks kind of person, if not less frequently.

Not that they’d had a poor relationship, nor were there any other complications resulting in either party not wanting to speak with the other. No, he was just an introvert. He used to joke that he was almost a hermit, happy to just read, write, play the occasional video game, or watch the occasional movie or tv show. The only thing that had caused a deviation in that pattern had been his daughters.

They’d been his raison d'être, then they were gone.

Then he’d slid right past where he’d been and gone into the realm of “just need to get a certificate to show that he was a hermit”.

Anyway. He was more than happy to start everything over again. Well, he still had his reservations, let alone the fear of truly letting people in because he feared to lose them one day.

That said, his current family was awesome. Maybe he was having a better time this time ‘round because he’d kept his memories, giving him a greater appreciation of what he now had. In the end it didn’t really matter. He was there. He had an awesome family. And he was letting people in.

With a thought, Joram un-muted his line and sent a message to Grammy.

‘I’ll be out later this evening.’

He was surprised to get an immediate response.

‘Perfect, I’ll make the arrangements,’ she sent briskly. ‘Did you find any success in your efforts?’

‘Not yet,’ he sent ruefully, mostly because of how distracted they’d become. ‘But I think that I’ve managed to get a good foundation laid for future work.’

‘Marvelous! I’ll see you later this evening then,’ she sent, then cut off the connection.

Well, that was abrupt, he thought with a frown. Well, no sense in overthinking it.

Mind 2: Ah, my first Auction! I can’t wait to see if they’re anything like what the stories made them out to be!

‘Joram? We’ve arrived at our first auction house where the next major auction will be the day after tomorrow,’ Avi sent, a bit of excitement coming through.

Welp, I guess I’m not the only one who got excited, he though with a grin. If Avi was indeed as much of an otaku as he was, then she’d be pumped. He was a bit disappointed to not be there “in person”, but he couldn’t do much about it as he was fairly sure that kids weren’t allowed to participate.

‘Nice! Hope you guys have some fun!’

‘Oh, we surely will!’

Mind 2: Yeah, just read over the rules; no kids allowed. Well, it’ll only be a decade or so more. Time’ll fly!

Mind 3: Yeah, yeah, live it up. We’re all the same person after all.

Mind 2: Spoil-sport.

What’s wrong with me? He thought as he rubbed his temples then sighed. He’d always been the most competitive with himself, so this shouldn’t have surprised him in the least.

Well, at least he wouldn’t get bored…

Dismissing that line of thought for later, Joram looked over to Mind 3, who was “wearing” an image of his Planar self to make it easier to perform the various tasks he needed to accomplish. On that note, Mind 2 was walking around with Avi in the image of his High Elan self. Both minds occupied a psicrystal-cognizance crystal hybrid. Well, that wasn’t all, but close enough. The end effect allowed each Mind to produce a “body” that appeared real to any observers out there. And with the addition of [Barred Mind], it appeared to any would be investigators that they were wearing an aura shroud item, so no need to try and explain a lack of cultivation.

It was a bit taxing on his psionic reserves to keep up the disguises, but he hoped that it would pay out.

He glanced at an analogue clock on the wall, saw that he had several more hours before he needed to leave, so he decided to have a look at his Knowledge Star.

Once there, he was once again struck by the view. His Knowledge Star had grown well over the past months, not only increasing its diameter, but also adding two extra rings resulting in the orbiting cores taking a wider orbit. The lightshow was no longer as densely packed as it used to be but was still quite a sight.

If his Knowledge Star continued to grow at this pace, he’d need to expand their orbits further. Not that that would be a problem, just time consuming.

Well, his Knowledge Star’s growth wasn’t the only factor in the need to expand the orbits of the cores. Even with the minimal down-time he had to cultivate, the cores had managed to grow at a half-decent rate. Well, for him anyway. Any other cultivator would have likely been disgusted at their growth rate. He took solace in the fact that his cultivation was still progressing, even at a snail’s pace.

From what he’d observed, he was fairly certain that if he wasn’t able to correct his energy pathways, he wouldn’t be able to break through to the 4th Tier. Yes, he could still accumulate mana and condense it to build his cores, but the hallmark of the 4th Tier was to be able to sense “Earth Qi/Mana”. He had no idea why it was different, or what made it “Earth Qi/Mana”, but without being able to sense it and condense it into one’s core, you wouldn’t be able to make your way to the 4th Tier.

Part of the process was circulating that mana through your body, slowly preparing it to be able to house that qualitatively more potent mana without hurting yourself. If you went all-in, trying to incorporate it into your core before your body was prepared, well, that’s when people died. In unpleasant ways.

And until he was able to properly circulate said mana, he’d be stuck in the 3rd Tier.

Yes, he could change his physical body pretty much at will, but the changes to the body from cultivation were… different. Maybe after he’d taken the Nine Revolving Pathways Pill a few times while [Delve]’ing himself would he be able to see what changed in his body when he reworked pathways, as well as the how. Yes, his body scanning device was helpful, but only so far as it was programmed to be so. If it didn’t know what to look for, and have the appropriate sensors for it, then the whole contraption would be useless in this endeavour.

Then he had a thought. Tier 5 medicinal ingredients were ridiculously expensive, especially for someone of his level. He’d need to make lots more money, probably even more than what Avi was able to find and bring back in the form of raw resources.

He’d been playing around with the idea for a while now but had been a bit hesitant to go forward with it.

It revolved around his ability to make psionic items. Well, most people just called them “magic” items as they were effectively the same thing. However, the item he wanted to make was probably unique: a one-shot healing item.

No, it wasn’t like a pill, it was an item that would store a single use of [Mend Body], which would provide instant healing. To make it more appealing, he would set it so that it would activate for the person carrying it when they started dying, effectively making it a life-saving item. Of course, it could also be activated manually if that person wanted to use it on someone else.

Who wouldn’t want that, he thought with a grin as he checked his stock of Dust Crystals.