Devoured Eccentric

Time: ~ 9 PM

Location: Outside the Women's Communal Bath, Village Pinnacle

+--

The time system here was quite different compared to Earth.

This was because quartz wasn't the material used as the denomination for the single metric unit, the 'second' like it was on Earth. Rather, It was another material even more common and precise, Rykan, being re-named after the inventor of a contraption similar to the 'clock' on Earth.

Rykan was a material that vibrated exactly once every half a 'second'. This meant the clocks built with Rykan were larger than the ones on Earth, to have a higher accuracy when reading it. Rykan also proposed the idea of making the denomination every two vibrations, but the idea was immediately shot down by those from the 'higher place' as, for them, it was a much more accurate measurement. They didn't give much reason or choice to Rykan when globally declaring the new and far more accurate system for recording time.

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Rykan, the inventor, was also the creator of the other larger time denominations. With his results from measuring how long it took, estimated, for the planet to revolve around the sun, which he knew the planet did according to the ancient scripts left by the only human who escaped the confines of the world safely, was almost exactly 60 million cells (the metric unit for time, length: half a second).

(1 cel = 0.5 seconds, 100 cells = 50 seconds)

With that information, he made the denomination minute: 100 cells (ten seconds less than the minute for earth's metric system)

An hour: 100 minutes (1.3 hours for earth's metric system)

A day: 20 hours (23 hours for earth's metric system)

A week: 6 days (5 days, 18 hours for Earth's metric system)

A month: 5 weeks (34.3 days according to Earth's metric system)

A year: 10 months (17 days less than Earths metric system for the year)

This system of time has been in place throughout the globe for a few hundred years, with not a single change made since then as its accuracy was simply unmatchable by any other system. A day for Nero's old world was only 7200 cels (1 hour) longer than the new world's, thereby, making the estimations by Nova, the AI, quite accurate.

--+

After finishing up with his dream-like bath, Nero was left without a top to wear. The girl who had ripped his shirt had met up with him in the changing room and asked him if he was okay staying over at her house where she lived with her parents and younger sister. Nero had simply been delighted. This ticked off most of his worries for the near future and, as an additional bonus, he had more opportunities to feel a woman's breasts, which was on his to-do list.

As a substitute to his shirt, Nero had been given a dry cotton towel to keep his chest covered from the late-night breeze. For exiting the spired building, He just had to put pressure on a circular tab that was placed on both sides of every door.

After walking out of the building, Nero almost immediately felt the cool breeze that was mentioned previously by the green-haired girl, whom Nero now knew as Cyl.

Oddly, however, he did not feel as chilly as it should be to condense the surrounding air into the fog that was currently beneath his feet.

'Is it some bloody stone again?' Nero was honestly quite mad and jealous of these stones. In his world, he would've loved to use them, but he simply didn't know their makeup. He could only speculate its relation to the unknown particle, as he had found no other difference, yet, in the quantum makeup of this new universe. He'd already tried to revisualize the 4th dimension but the stored executable had no effect on his mind anymore, so he was pretty sure he was outside his previous universe.

Frankly, he was right! About both the fog seemingly coming out of a stone and about not being inside his birth universe.

Now that he had a small gap of view from the shuffling of girls in front of him, who had come to a sudden stop, he could see a large old man and a small skinny dude sitting side by side on a bench across the rock embedded road, on the pavement. under the giant's feet were a pair of glowing white lights, or what they seemed like through the fog covering them, that was constantly bobbing up and down. The fog spread out and always stayed close to the ground as if it were restricted or maybe too dense to rise.

From his view, Nero could see the large man wearing furry clothing slowly rise, the lights in the fog had stopped bobbing and started diminishing. His golden cane always stayed vertical from the ground, even while he was sitting. He also noticed all the girls in front of him adopted a slight bowing posture as if they were meeting someone esteemed or respected.

The girls were smart enough to guess why the leader was here as they too had heard rumors of the little boy using mana. To them, this was an unachievable feat.

+-=

The only way to control and use mana, according to the deciphered scripts, was with extreme awareness and some other little things that made the process easier. This was normally only achievable with high-level meditation, one that was focussed only and only towards 'feeling' his surroundings, one would know their progress the more they sense resistance from the world itself. This level was decided by how far and accurate one's brainwaves were over their surroundings.

After sensing as much resistance as one could, they would have to overcome that level of resistance. This was the point where the scriptures stopped, leaving the way for one to 'overcome' unfinished. Many people had gotten to this point, where they could feel something akin to a wall stopping their awareness.

Nero, however, was a special case.

In his possession were 300 years of experience perfectly stored without a single detail lost, not to mention, Nova. Simply having an AI such as her that could perform any possible command in a literal instant made him 'special'.

there were many reasons as to why Nero had achieved control over mana so easily and smoothly. The only reason he had 'felt' resistance on his brain so quickly, compared to even the prodigies who took at least a few weeks to get to that point, was because of Nova. As she could, and had, record all of Aldin's brain and body activities, she knew of even the slightest of information or feedback that got supplied into his brain and got usually ignored, like the effort needed to breathe, etc.

In Aldin's birth village, Aldin had witnessed a few warriors who could control mana, though with little to no precision, meditating. Trying to imitate them, he positioned himself into a similar meditation position. After a long time of staying in that position, like those warriors used to, he still didn't feel any of the resistance the warriors talked about, so he simply asked them how they had felt it.

Their answer was quite surprising to Aldin, they told him to focus his emotions on his surroundings. He didn't understand as he couldn't feel his surroundings so he couldn't affect something he couldn't feel. It was quite a contradiction, to feel the resistance one had to feel his surroundings, but only when one could feel the resistance could they feel their surroundings.

Nonetheless, Aldin tried. He thought that instead of directing mixed emotions into the surroundings, he would push all his focus on one emotion. On that day, Aldin tried filling up his surroundings with boredom, happiness, excitement, tiredness, frustration, and finally, dominance. He did this all in order, and after getting frustrated as to why nothing would happen, he tried it once more, telling himself it was his last try, and meditated with the intent to feel resistance, commanding the concept of resistance itself to come to his senses.

Unfortunately, to him, he felt nothing, but in actuality, he did get feedback from his surroundings, only it was so minute that he couldn't pick it up. Nova, who had the complete awareness of any feedback through the senses, didn't miss this little minute change in the temperature and the slight mental fatigue, that came only from Aldin's last attempt. Because of this, she knew that dominance was the way to go. Just the fact that Nero started off meditating with the intent to control and command was incredibly helpful because, if he started like Aldin did, with mixed emotions, then he too would have not so easily gained control over mana, as his subconscious would have a hint of inquisition as to whether he was actually doing it correctly.

Just the start itself was a great boon for Nero, not to mention his 300 years of remorseless living. His emotions were, at the moment, like any other person's, in that they were subjectable to irrationality, entropy, and other oddities humans display. These emotions were, Nero could say, the best thing that he ever got, which coincidentally made sense as he had started receiving them on his birthday!

He had done many morally unjust acts and saying that would be an understatement. He had killed, tortured, dissected, burned, and subjected humans to mind-destroying and unfathomable agony, not even staying limited to their physical body, but EVEN to their mentality.

All of it, he did mercilessly, without a second thought, or even mere hesitation.

He was more suitable for the throne for hell than even the devil himself. Fortunately for him, he was yet to meet his end and face the karma of his sinful actions.

The current him, the one with emotions and empathy, had accepted all of that. Nero had accepted all of it, all of those memories that could make one go insane just by watching, he didn't have regret for any of it. Why? Because he had no reason to feel so, to feel remorse about his past. None.

The remorseless past was his second great boon. The path of dominance had become so easy because of it, now that he could play through his 'previous' life with emotion, he could use them, all that experience, all that intent he felt from those situations, he could apply them. And he had done so. He applied that intent onto his surroundings. The level of intent he could apply was mind-boggling, even compared to the level of intent that comes from someone whose sole life purpose is revenge for a loved one. No known human on Nero's planet could compare to him in this aspect, but this didn't necessarily mean it would be the same in this law-shattering world. Just by absorbing that 'life' once, Nero's brain functionality had improved, by more than a noticeable percentage.

Nero just couldn't wrap his head around the numerous possibilities of this new particle, or even possibly particles, it was a possibility, that's for sure.

=-+

"Chief!" a group of girly voices unanimously resounded.

This response was then followed by the girls scattering to either side, leaving Nero completely in view for the Chief to assess.

As if on rollers, The giant moved towards Nero, ever so gently and smoothly. The misty ethereal fog never ceased to flow out from each stride-like step he took.

Nero looked up to the looming figure, displaying a slight shiver and an innocent face indicating he felt slightly induced with fear, however, the reality was that he was completely calm, the facial expressions were just a display command by Nova, who already had a library of commands ready to execute. These commands were specially created for Nero's current body. They were simply facial gestures and body postures that Nero could access with a single thought, and, what's more, is that the command count, specifically for body postures and facial gestures, was in the thousands.

The processing speed of Nova was simply outrageously amazing!

The figure in front of Nero was easily a few times his height and many more times wide, and currently, it was standing a meter away from Nero. From Nero's field of view, ghostly white light shone from under, slowly dimming away at a noticeable pace, and... a pair of knees.

Yup, his height was pretty much negligible, compared to this man.

On some sort of impulse, he poked the right lump in front of it, for absolutely no reason. He realized that the furry clothing was very thick, making him second guess the man's actual width.

Suddenly, the figure shook slightly, and a burst of hearty laughter from above came.

"Hahaha, boy... Ye sure is an odd one eh? Ahahaha..." said the amused Chief, speaking similarly to the guard. Nero guessed language had also started evolving, as he had never heard even a hint of similarity in speech between the young girls and these oldies.

"Tell us then, yer name that is" the deep, bassy sound resounded with an inquisitive tone in both of Nero's eardrums simultaneously.

"Hello, My name is Nero," said the little red-head, bowing slightly simultaneously, showing respect.

"Well then, little grace, I hear ye can control mana... can ye give a show then?"

"M-mana?" Nero instantly guessed it was the name referring to the unknown particle. Finally, he knew how to address these particles, it was quite tiresome to keep saying unknown particle.

"Eh? Ye doth know of mana?" The village chief had no idea of this boy's background, where knowledge and information were more scarce than juicy meat.

"You mean this?" With a deeper than usual breath, Nero placed a little focus onto his body, commanding once again, to form around his hand. He felt almost zero pressure or fatigue mentally, which wouldn't have been the case if Nero hadn't broken past the 1st stage of resistance while he was absorbing the plant 'form' of mana, as he now knew the particle as.

Within a second, a sharp light red hue formed around Nero's left hand. It looked transparent, yet one focused properly onto the hue could see the look was just a dim reflection.

One could also see, they were looking carefully, a flow, moving like a current around Nero's hand in a spiral, condensing into a sharp point, similar to a lance.

Nero had complete control over the mana around his hand, he could will it to shape or form into anything, opening his palm upwards, he wrapped his hands around a ball of light red hue, looking like he was holding a ball of flames.

Clutching his open palm into a fist, the ball of flames seeped through his fingers and reformed around his fist into 3 claws that looked like they were protruding through the gaps in the knuckles.

After making a few thrusting motions into the air, his fist loosened, the red hue transforming once again into a majestic pen with a sleek feather extending out from the back, his hand lightly holding the majestic pen. Some of the mana had separated, forming a thin sheet floating in the air, on which the pen started gliding.

At the point when both the pen and paper were forming, a few gasps came out from the girls who were attentively watching the show on the sides. Both the chief and the informant, Macheta, who had been in a formal position previously, were silently watching, their eyes agape, jaws dropped, astonishment endlessly filling them as they peered at the smooth and sleek movement of mana being performed by a little boy. The chief had never in his life seen such precise and smooth control over mana.

It was like watching a show, except it wasn't one.

After a minute of refined movement on the bright red sheet, Nero's hand gently swiped his hand across and off. Without a word or even a gesture, odd writing elevated from the sheet, as if it were sliced out of that mana sheet. This writing was in the English language, all the characters were in smooth cursive and pleasing to look at.

At this moment, in the air was a sheet of mana that had reformed into a fluid-like state and changed into a smiley face, but still floated mid-air. The writing also floated in the air, gently waving like a flag with the wind. Nero then proceeded to spin the pen on his index finger and gently blow on the bright red pen.

With the blow, the pen seemingly turned into the wind itself, flowing towards the letters and the smile, and re-merging with them into a sphere. This sphere was pulsing slowly and collapsing in on itself. The continual collapse made the sphere smaller and smaller until it became the size of a tennis ball.

At this point, Nero really directed all his focus and awareness on the condensed sphere and gave it one last command, to shoot up into the sky.

And, it did. It really shot up into the sky like a bullet, probably much slower, but because the orb of mana split into tiny flakes (air resistance) as it zoomed vertically, it looked like a firework.

...

The sky was filled with bright red tinges of light that spread and slowly dissipated.

It was truly a sight to behold.

For a while, Nero just stared up into the sky, silent as a statue.

He was gazing beyond, beyond the sky, beyond the stars...

Beyond the universe.