Waking up completely paralized was something that would scare anyone, especially Aki as that was one of his greatest fears. That led to the situation where he almost killed the eight doctors adding implants to his contaminated body in a panic attack only to have Lea sooth him through their connection, quickly coming inside the room and helping keep his back open with some precise control as his elites healed the men and women he’d repelled with waves of force and mind magic.

‘Why can’t i feel anything?!? Please ignore the panic, that’s getting kind of hard to control. KILL ME! I agree that i will greatly benefit from these implants, the exosuit as, VOID THIS BODY AND LET ME DISPER… Just make sure there are no bombs in my head and I will deal with the rest.'

While Aki lost control of the voices in his head, he did manage to pass the message through to Lea, who was kneeling and whipping the tears and snot from his face as he caught his breath through the anesthesia.

Soon he calmed down enough to not go crazy as the people in the room cut him open again, an effort of will keeping his body from knitting itself through spellcasting or system regeneration, the latter a direct manipulation of the base system as simple as pressing a button.

Containing his panic was literally much, much harder than the actual gamble with his life done by attacking that shoggoth with his body, but through the hours that the process took, he made sure to verify the situation of his soul to try and distract himself.

It was quite surprising to him that he could not actually find any kind of mark or the sort hidden away, but instead a connection to something gigantic and other. And he wasn't talking about the system either, that bridge was laced with explosives ready to detach him were him to turn into some kind of monstrosity controlled by whatever was on the other side.

Luckily it hadn't been that long since… he'd actually forgotten to ask how long he'd been unconscious, but it appeared to not have been a short time as the pieces of the monster he'd killed were pretty much meshed with his soul.

Well, now he had more immediate concerns than his panic, that helped, right?

Well, first define how resistant the connection to the greater eldritch being is. It causes soul cracking pain to even touch it, great. The fragments? They barely moved and even his level of animancy still caused him pain when interacting with such open wounds on his soul.

For now he could at least stop them from progressing further through the use of some aether structures. Luckily he hadn't lost any skill to the corruption yet. Still, those could be used to further his research in time and space magic when he became more proficient in manipulating things inside his soul proper. Something about arcane as well probably as this seemed to be coated in it’s own version of what mana should be like.

While the situation might seem unsalvageable, he could deal with his own voices even before he had hundreds of points invested in mental stats, so what was the temporal whisper of another crazy entity added? He was pretty sure it was not actively sending these his way as much as not stopping them, but still, it was more than easy enough to just let them flow through him like the sheer wrongness of the being. Like he was wearing a too small shoe to look fancy.

‘Waking up’, he was greeted by his semi naked body being plated with what seemed to be metal knee-socks and gloves, a bearded elf and his charming assistant using rather magical tools to finish the procedure.

“You know, people generally scream when they are having their flesh welded with metal. Especially without anesthesia. Any perchance you’re looking to hire a grafter?” Smiled the elf with ruffled hair and crazed eyes.

“If the word means anything similar to what I think it does, then yeah. You accumulate a rest day once per month, eight to ten hours of work per day minimum, no moral quadrantries. If I tell you to work together with some weird insectoid that knows how to change innate biology or can help you connect with your patients, you do it. The pay would be in Aether and information mainly, but I can open an account in my city bank and deposit a salary as well. You interested?” Aki mouthed, spitting out a gag that’d been in his mouth and then healing his throat until he spoke normally. The whole time the mad guy had an increasingly bigger shine in his eyes.

“HELLS YEAH!” He said, swinging the blowtorch up in the air, which the assistant easily dodged as she was passing behind him. “Wait, do you have a bunch of criminals around here? Not likes to visit a grafter, much less when experimentation is involved.” The elf asked as the assistance pointed the torch away from his pants as he looked with a strange face at the young man laying on the table.

“Don’t really have prisoners yet, nothing more than a few petty crimes yet, but my word is the law, so the moment we get some you can have them. Those in this camp will likely accept receiving new slots for equipment however, and they are all very much used to pain as well, though not as much as me.” Aki explained, sitting up despite the motion sickness of even that, the still silent assistant seemingly ready to support him. The elf just nodded and got back to finish some adjustments on his legs. “By the way, could you point me to the bomb or control switch implanted on my body and what I shouldn't remove?” He asked the female behind him.

She just pointed to her own throat and shook her head. Shrugging, the mage opened his own chest cavity and asked her to point it out again. With barely a raised brown, she did.

As he got up, he finally looked at his status, which actually had him do a double take as he had a fat +50 next to his Madness score. Immediately he stopped walking away from the surgery table and mentally poked the [] besides his status scores, opening the description of over a dozen of implants that directly increased his processing capabilities.

Worse? Several of those weren’t even being effective thanks to the quality of his mental stats, they were simply not powerful enough for even system fuckery to do much about their capabilities of affecting him, instead giving only physical stats. He was still getting more out of it than someone that had Red grade stuff, but still…

“Is, is this amount of modification normal for you guys? I’m counting almost fifty, and from what I understand there should be some limb and base replacement before my body would be even able to hold all of this.” He questioned while looking between the two elves. His bones, muscles, skin and everything but his some organs and his nervous system were completely untouched, so he didn’t know how he was still functioning normally.

There was no such thing as simply shoving more weak items onto someone for the stats or effects and receiving unlimited benefits, and while these modifications could partially bypass that problem due to their nature, he shouldn’t be getting 150 stats overall, especially not that +50 unless he got something for people at level ninety or higher.

“Oh, not at all my friend! You’re a complete freak of nature!” Exclaimed crazy elf with joy, getting a few nods from the mute one. “Despite what you might think, the system does not actually encourage exchanging your natural body parts for mechanical ones, nor do the improved physical status raise your tolerance to a margin where adding more modifications is the better option instead of using a few good ones.” He explained like a great sage. “Yet you can simply ignore all of that and accept more and more crome! I tell you, if we had more material we could reinforce every part of your abnormal nervous system, why, maybe even implant a few biological processors to increase your direct brain power and lay those over the whole thing until you could have twice your system advised brain power and ....” Despite his obvious enthusiasm, the man suddenly stopped and started falling. If the bags under his eyes were any indication, he had done every modification one after the other and then installed the armor plates without even resting in between.

While his assistant caught his falling form, already lightly snoring, Aki couldn’t help but attribute this capacity to his improved stats and his rather ‘domineering’ image, which was the root between their improvements to begin with, but he also felt like he should ask something rather important.

“How many days have I been on that table?” He asked, the woman in question looking like she was holding a yawn. She raised three fingers. “Holy shit. Well, i got to go, we can discuss you learning mind and force magic later while this guy can learn to dominate plasma and metal. I’ll leave you guys the primers on it, but get some rest, will you?” He ordered like it was a question, simply giving her a pat on the back and an injection of vitality through a quick spell before leaving through the door.

It took several people pointing at him for him to notice that he was only wearing very tight boxers, boots and gloves while not having any of his rings or other spatial storages.

It was kind of embarrassing, but he quickly covered his body in shadows, though it still seemed a bit like a skin tight suit. It was passable. People were still pointing at him, but that was because he had been unconscious for at least three days and apparently they had removed several tons of corrupt flesh from his body, which kind of made him look like a lost cause.

Luckily the whispers couldn't influence his form too much while he was conscious. Perhaps not even as he slept now that the augmentations had been integrated into his body and provided their benefits plus the stat points.

He would need to change how his armour worked so he wouldn't be losing too many stats by trying to apply them to his mental ones, but that was a great problem to have.

Dealing with the worried eternal phoenix and assassin that cared for him could also be thought about as a good problem to have, but dealing with it involved quite a bit more suffering from his part than just infusing metal with a new idea and properties.