BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM - Chapter 904: The hospital (2)
Erik reached for the items on the bedside table with a grimace.
Even that slight movement sent spasms of pain through his body.
June had placed the brain crystals and vials of blood there, cleaned and prepared to be absorbed.
Erik took a deep, steady breath through his teeth. With shaking hands, he picked up the first brain crystal-the Skraylash’s.
Without pausing to think further, Erik tossed it into his mouth and swallowed hard.
[SKRAYLASH’S BRAIN CRYSTAL ACQUIRED. STARTING THE ANALYSIS.]
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE.]
[100 DNA POINTS ARE REQUIRED TO EXTRACT THE POWER. 500 TO GET IT WITHOUT INCURRING PAIN AND LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.]
[6659 DNA POINTS DETECTED. EXTRACTION IS NOT ADVISED; THE HOST HAS
INCOMPATIBLE DNA.]
[EXTRACTION ABORTED]
The taste was beyond awful. His throat convulsed, trying to reject the vile thing, but he forced it down.
Grabbing the Hevadrin’s brain crystal, he gagged it down as well.
The residual aches throughout his body suddenly spiked as his injuries reacted to the simple motion of swallowing.
[HEVADRIN’S BRAIN CRYSTAL ACQUIRED. STARTING THE ANALYSIS.]
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE.]
[500 DNA POINTS ARE REQUIRED TO EXTRACT THE POWER. 1000 TO GET IT WITHOUT INCURRING PAIN AND LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.]
[6659 DNA POINTS DETECTED. EXTRACTION IS NOT ADVISED; THE HOST HAS
INCOMPATIBLE DNA.]
[EXTRACTION ABORTED]
Hands slick with sweat, Erik fumbled for the vials. The blood sloshed within.
One went down, then the next, coating his throat in a nauseating sludge.
Erik’s stomach stirred in protest, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the wave of dizziness and pain that washed over him.
From the notifications he got by absorbing the blood and brain crystals, Erik could infer that, while useful, the Skraylash’s brain crystal power was low-ranked, but it was the opposite for the Hevadrin’s one.
“System, absorb them instantly.”
<All right. > The process ended as fast as it started, and Erik found himself with two more brain crystal powers, one he had to give to his clones, and one…
He was not so sure about that, but learning that Thaids as powerful as him were appearing on the Mannard continent prompted him to have such a means of defense.
The power of self-healing-not the one that humans already had, but one so powerful to make a zombie out of him.
Then he channeled mana into the Hevadrin’s brain crystal power; he didn’t even check what it exactly did or its rank.
Erik lay still, concentrating solely on channeling mana.
His wounds started closing. Gradually, but not slowly, the agony subsided to a dull throb until it was no more.
His thoughts grew clearer, but despite feeling better, he also felt slightly weak.
When Erik opened his eyes once more, June was watching him with concern.
“How do you feel?” the clone asked.
Erik took stock. His wounds disappeared. A grim smile touched his lips.
“Much better.”
“You scared me there, master. No more solo hunting.”
“Right…”
Erik couldn’t say that June wasn’t right. The monsters around these parts shouldn’t have been
this strong.
“Master, what happened? How could a Hevadrin reduce you to such a state?”
At that question, Erik’s face turned serious.
Erik relayed to June the events of the battle.
“It’s really simple… That beast was strong-much stronger than I assumed. I grew too complacent, thinking that very few things could reach the same level of strength I have. I was mistaken.”
“Ok. I understand the creature must have had a nasty brain crystal power, but you should have been stronger on paper.”
“That’s the problem, June. That thing had… It had 57 neural links. Fifty-seven, June. ”
June stared at him with wide eyes. “That can’t be possible,” he said.
“The most neural links recorded for any creature is fifty-four. And that’s only in legends.”
Erik nodded. “I analyzed it with the biological supercomputer. Fifty-seven came up clear as day.”
He shook his head, still unable to believe it himself.
“It was nearly my match in combat stats. If I hadn’t drained it of blood slowly over the battle, and if I didn’t have that slight advantage over it in terms of stats, I’d be dead now.”
A heavy silence fell over the room. It was already hard for humans to top out at 21 neural links, with most thaids hanging around the same level.
Neither of them had ever heard of anything with more than fifty-four, and that was stretching what was deemed plausible by all current knowledge.
A Hevadrin with fifty-seven neural links was astonishing on its own, but the clone made an insightful observation.
“Well, this means that the description the biological supercomputer gave about your Chimaeric demons has a new meaning. It said that their number of neural links per brain crystal power could exceed fifty-four as well, but then this means that the supposed limit has
no real meaning.”
“This also means something else,” Erik said. “We know Hevadrins are weaker than wyverns. And by a lot at that. This means that even wyverns have more than 54 neural links.”
All their knowledge about neural links’ limits seemed wrong.
It all made sense. The clones could get infinite neural links; a Hevadrin with more than 54 appeared; and wyverns were stronger than Hevadrins.
If that was true, it meant that Erik and June played with fire, quite literally, when they found the wyvern and the cerulean bird fighting.
If they had fought them, they would have died. They would have also died if the creatures had spotted them. So harrowing was their power.
Erik focused so much on increasing his stats that he’d almost stopped trying to get more
neural links.
Whether limitless progression was possible, having multiple brain crystal powers meant infinite strength, but it also meant multiplying manyfold the effort put into making more neural links, and that was not easy to begin with.
“We need to study this further. I should leave hunting and brain crystal retrieval to the clones at this point. I must focus on making neural links because…”
“Because?”
Erik’s face turned somber. “Because if that is possible and the cerulean bird is stronger than that black wyvern, it means that even stronger monsters could be present on Mur. Flying Thaids are at the top at the food chain, but they are not the kings. What if there is a wyvern in Mur that’s even more harrowing than the Cerulean bird?”
“But there is also another problem, Master.”
“What?”
“Our people’s strength is already insufficient as it is now. If there are really these powerful
monsters, it means that you must share your technique with everyone. If the Blackguards are stirring the hornet’s nest on the Mur continent, Amber, Mira, and your father. No, everyone
will end up dead.”
