[Capability to lead people to expressing unknown ability is Noted. Additional Paths are opened]

Serenity woke up at the same time the next morning. He felt a bit short on sleep, but much better than the night before. He took a few minutes to check over where he stood, and realized that despite the exhaustion and the low rewards per run, the sheer number of Trials had made it fairly lucrative.

It looked like the exertion had even pushed his stats forward a bit (at the cost of Ev, of course). He was quite pleased about that, since it was exactly the sort of changes he needed to counterbalance the mental improvements he’d made before the demonstration and reduce the amount of physical change he had.

He’d managed to refill his energy storage with a lot of small snacks between Trials the day before, so he didn’t need to stop at the staff break room for an early breakfast. That meant he had an hour or so before Lancaster and Echo would be at breakfast.

He reached into his pack and pulled out one of the monster cores from the boss slimes. It was irregularly shaped but smooth, almost like a river rock, and about an inch long at the widest part. He popped it in his mouth, swallowed, and felt a rush of energy stronger than the ones from the smaller slimes.

[Poor Grade Core material available. Commence Core initialization?]

Serenity wanted to say Yes, but something stopped him. It took him a moment, but he realized it was the word “Poor”.

Why did he want to say Yes so badly? That didn’t make sense.

Serenity didn’t know what it meant, but … he did know that all of the monsters he’d ever fought had a Core. As far as he could tell, he didn’t - but he did have that node in his brain, and he did seem to be half monster …

He’d accepted it, even though he still worried about it, but this seemed to be his last chance to not be a monster. If he had a core …

It was power. But as with anything, power didn’t come free.

Perhaps he needed to decide what really made a monster. Was it the core or was it the actions?

He’d wait on it and think about it.The question would probably be there when he decided - and even if it wasn’t, he had a bunch of cores from the Slime bosses. He could just use another.

He could already guess which way he was going to decide, but something made him hesitate. Maybe he was just afraid to commit. Other than increasing his stats, after all, he hadn’t really made the decision to change himself into a monster. Had he?

No, he needed to put that to the side.

There was one other thing he could do. One other way he could maybe convince himself that Heaven’s Order was pushing him instead of just providing tools.

He was pretty sure the node and its network were the result of his Altered Template. That was definitely a push, but at its root it was just a tool. A tool no one else had.

He’d started with a tougher body than he should have had. That was obvious when he was shot - the injury wasn’t as bad as it should have been, even before he started healing. He suspected he was also too strong; he had broken Macho’s skull with one blow, and Thomas hadn’t been all that strong. Perhaps he was wrong; he’d hit a weak point, after all.

That didn’t matter. Better physical stats - maybe even mental ones - were provided by the Voice, and he was pretty sure they were to carry his Aspect. He was feeling the strain of an awakened Concept already; he suspected that his Aspect was simply too heavy, and the Voice hadn’t had a choice.

He guessed the healing organ had started when he was shot. The question was - had he created it, or had the Voice? It didn’t seem like something the Voice would do. There was no reason for Heaven’s Order to care about having him heal faster. All it had done was save him some pain. So … had he already started using the node that early - and for something as complex as creating a new organ?

The increasing stats during the fight he knew had to be his instinctual use of the node. It must have come with that much knowledge, and the situation .. it just made sense. That was nothing he felt like worrying about; he’d accepted the use of Ev for stats. And it being instinctual would explain why it drained him so far - he didn’t consciously tell it to stop, and there was no reason to have a safeguard.

If he’d created the healing organ without realizing it … that would explain everything there too. The emergency … he’d probably unconsciously known the condition he was in and pulled help from the only place he had.

He could excuse those, though. What concerned him was his mouth and throat. He really enjoyed those changes, and they worked well with his other abilities. Yet there was no life-threatening reason to have them. Had he created them?

This was a question he could answer, and he still had most of the hour left. He pulled on his Time and Mind affinities. He needed to look back in Time and see what had happened. His Mind affinity would let him see what all levels of himself were doing. As an afterthought, he pulled a thread of his Life affinity, so that he could know exactly where he stood.

[Mind Concept unlocked]

[Time affinity increased]

When he returned to himself, he knew the answer to his questions. Every one of the changes had been chosen and triggered by himself - subconsciously, perhaps, but his Mind affinity was high enough to know that his subconscious was himself. There was a reason he enjoyed the abilities; that was why he’d picked them to be in the form they were.

He couldn’t blame the Voice for anything but giving him the ability to change himself in the first place.

Perhaps he could blame it for feeding him Ev instead of XP, as well.

No, any blame fell on him for using it. Which meant he would just have to get used to it.

Serenity looked at the piles where he’d dumped his monster core collection and produce bags and pulled out a spike-pear. He grinned widely, then swallowed it whole.

He might have to hide things for now, but eventually he wouldn’t have to. It was worth it.

He left the prompt about initiating a Core open and waiting. He was more sure than ever of his decision, but it was one that couldn’t be reversed. Waiting wouldn’t hurt anything.

Name: Serenity

Species: Human (Altered Template)

Path: Paths Available

Level: 44 (389/450)

Tier: 0, 0/44 Spent

Path History: None

Condition: Crystal Hand, Healthy

Mana: 200

Stamina: 200

Might: 10

Agility: 15

Phys: 10

Understanding: 9

Will: 15

Mind: 10

Perception: 15

Luck: 11 - 111%

Ev: 5505

Resistances

Sleep: 1

Unknown

Affinities

Death: 100.01%

Life: 8%

Mind: 30%

Arcane: 50%

Plasma: 40%

Liquid: 5%

Vapor: 10%

Solid: 15%

Energy: 40%

Void: 60%

Time: 15%

Space: 5%

Concepts

Death

Mind 15%

Time: 5%

Unknown

Aspects: Unknown

Titles

Previous Supreme Existence

Altered Template

Named

Ghost in the System

When he walked into the students’ dining hall, Serenity was met with whispers and stares. He hadn’t expected that, and he froze for a moment, then looked for his friends. Echo was sitting on a table, surrounded by other women. Most were older than her. Serenity wasn’t sure if he should head over to her or not until she noticed him and gestured for him to come to her.

The women cleared a path for him as he walked to Echo’s table, until one of them stepped in front of him. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

“I’m who?”

“Serenity. That’s your name, right?”

“Yes?” Serenity was completely confused. He looked over at Echo, and she had both hands over her face. “Um, could you move? I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

The woman seemed reluctant, but she did move out of the way. Serenity made it to Echo and leaned over to ask her “Just what is going on?”

“You have no idea. Argh. Look, stand there and look pretty for a minute, okay? Try not to react.” Echo stood on the table and yelled, “HEY EVERYBODY!”

The room went quiet as everyone looked at Echo. Almost everyone had been more or less looking in that direction already. “YES THIS IS SERENITY. NO HE’S NOT LOOKING FOR A GIRLFRIEND. NO HE’S NOT GAY. HIS GIRL BROKE UP WITH HIM TWO DAYS AGO AND I’M NOT TELLING YOU WHO SHE IS. YES HE’LL HELP WITH FUTURE TRIALS BUT PLEASE LET HIM EAT FIRST. FOOD IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO HIM.”

The last line caught Serenity’s attention. Why did she think food was so important to him? After a moment he realized that she’d only known him for a few days, and he’d spent a lot of those days trying to get enough food. She was right; he’d been kind of weird about food lately.

Echo leaned down to whisper to him “Anything else everyone needs to know?”

“Yeah, I can’t run trials with people while I’m teaching, but other than that I’ll make time. I want to spread out the Trials so it’s not all one day .. that was crazy.”

“Hmf. You need to learn to summarize. You’re lucky we talked about your plans earlier.”

She stood back up and yelled again, “YOU CAN FIND HIM AT THE CEMETERY TEACHING MAGIC OR AT THE TRIAL ARENA. OTHER PLACES PLEASE LEAVE HIM ALONE.”

Serenity realized that she wasn’t really yelling. She’d managed to use her Sound affinity to be heard without having to strain her voice. It was a fairly advanced use for something she’d only had for a few days - especially since she’d also learned to use it as sonar and apparently talked to everyone on the way by somehow.

Echo hopped off the table, grabbed his hand, and pulled him towards the food line. Everyone seemed to move out of her way.

“How do you do that?”

Echo glanced back at Serenity, but didn’t reply until they were in line. “I’m the cute mascot. Did you know there are only five of us below 20 here? And I’m the youngest at 16? Plus, I talk to everyone. So everyone knows who I am.”

“You’re this grumpy guy who keeps to himself and has probably spoken to four people since you arrived. And then you went and helped a third of the camp through the Trial. Did you know that twelve people died in the Trials you weren’t in yesterday? Four of them don’t really count, they were dying anyway, they were the people the healers couldn’t help - but the other eight either did something stupid or, well, we don’t know, one group didn’t have anyone make it out. No one died in your Trials. A bunch of people are talking about doing the next one early, too, at least if you’ll help.”