Chapter 370 - 25: Doing More With Less 2

Chapter 370: Chapter 25: Doing More With Less 2

When he finally stopped and opened the Status Panel, the number made him freeze.

Mental energy: 68%

He had started the session at 62%.

Ash stared at the panel for a long moment, then slowly sat back.

"Wait... that can’t be right."

He ran the numbers again in his head. According to his earlier measurements, the optimized technique should have consumed roughly eight percent over four hours. That part matched. The consumption itself had stayed low and steady.

But something else had been happening at the same time.

Because the cost per cycle was now so small, his mental recovery—now rated Moderate—had finally been able to keep up. While the nine loops refined his body, his mind had been quietly regenerating energy almost as fast as it was being spent. In the later hours of the session, the recovery had actually overtaken the drain.

The eight percent the technique used had been completely nullified. On top of that, he had gained a net increase of six percent.

For the first time since he created the 9-Cosmic Star Body Refinement Technique, his mental recovery could not only meet the technique’s demands—it could slightly exceed them.

Ash let out a long breath and smiled.

"This is how it’s supposed to feel," he said quietly.

He was too excited to sit still. He paced the room, ate dinner standing up at the counter, and took a long shower. Then he lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and did not fall asleep. His mind kept moving. He had spare mental energy now—a lot of it—and he wanted to use it. He lay there for almost two hours, going over ideas and planning what to try in the morning.

Eventually he fell asleep with his hands behind his head.

In the Cosmic Energy Distribution Office, the junior technician rubbed his eyes and stared at the main console.

The office was built for fifty people. Fifty to watch the reservoir, fifty to balance the lines, fifty to answer alerts from every building on campus. Right now there was one. It was him.

He had been on shift for three days straight. He was not sleepy. He was a Martial Master, and a Martial Master could go months without sleep and barely notice. He was not mentally worn out either. Watching a chart and moving energy between lines was not hard work. A first-year could do it.

He was just tired of it. It was the same job over and over. Check the reservoir. Balance the lines. Answer an alert. Check the reservoir again. By the third day he had said "reservoir stable" out loud to the empty room about two hundred times.

"I’m a Martial Master," he muttered. "I am a high-level being that can survive outer space. And I’m sitting here moving numbers around."

He thought about the science department. They had been working on an AI to take over this job for two years. Every time someone asked when it would be ready, the answer was "soon." He wondered if "soon" would ever actually come. He would have paid a lot of money for it to arrive this week.

Then there was the other thing—the one he kept coming back to.

The night before last, an order had come down from the top. Every Martial Master and above that the academy could spare was to report to a secret location. That included Supervisor Marsh, Elder Corwin, and most of his own department. Nobody said where, and nobody said why. The order for the ones left behind had been short: keep the lights on.

He did not know what the emergency was. He could not think of anything that would need that many Martial Masters and Grandmasters at once, and that worried him a little. He tried not to think about it. He thought about it all the time.

He looked at the chart instead.

The line for Training Room Seven was easy to read. On the afternoon of Day Two the draw had dipped for about an hour, then climbed again. Overnight it had stayed high and steady. And this morning it had jumped. It was sixty percent higher than the day before, and it was holding there without a single dip.

He could not see inside the room. Nobody could. The private rooms were sealed, and energy was the only thing the office could measure. But the draw said enough.

"He’s pulling harder," the technician said to nobody, "and he’s doing it for much longer."

He worked out a rough estimate in his head. If the rate held, the student in that room would finish in a few days what normally took a full year. He double-checked the math, and it came out the same.

"Whoever you are," he said, "you’re making my job harder."

He watched the line for a while longer. It was the only interesting thing on the screen, and he decided to keep watching it.

Day three started early.

Ash woke up before he needed to, ate quickly, and was in the array before the morning hours properly began. He opened the panel.

Foundation Rebuild: 41%

Mental energy: 71%

"Forty-one," he said. "Up from thirty. Not bad."

But he knew he could do better. He had spare mental energy now, and spare energy meant he could put more force into the refining itself. The old way, he had spent everything just keeping the technique running. Now he could spend it on speed and depth.

He started the technique, waited for all nine loops to stabilize, and pushed.

The black holes spun faster. The silver lines of the array glowed brighter than before. The air in the room grew noticeably denser and warmer as more energy poured in than he had ever taken at once. Ash guided it with the extra force he had saved. Every Star Cycle went deeper than before. Each pass rebuilt his cells another layer down. His bones added another layer of crystal structure every cycle. His muscle fibers grew tighter. His flesh cells held their hexagonal patterns more firmly. His blood cells became stronger and more flexible. And his DNA was being rewritten faster than ever, because more new cells were forming every minute.

He went for six continuous hours without stopping. Then he got up and went to the equipment, because he wanted to see what all that work had actually done.

"Alright," he said, standing in front of the strength tester. "Let’s see."

He tapped it lightly with his right fist—the same way he would knock on a door. The needle jumped straight to the top of the scale.

"...Huh."

He checked his pulse next. His resting heartbeat was thirty-eight beats a minute. A week ago it had been sixty-two.

"Thirty-eight?" He frowned and checked it again with his spiritual sense. His heart was perfectly fine. It was simply so efficient now that it did not need to work as hard. "Okay. That’s... uh. That’s fine."

He went back to the array and did another six hours.

When he finally stopped that evening, the room was quiet. He sat with his hands on his knees and called up the panel.

Foundation Rebuild: 88%

Strength: 240

Speed: 215

Endurance: 260

Mental Strength: 118

Mental energy: 64%

Recovery rate: Moderate

He read the numbers slowly, then read them again.

"Eighty-eight," he said. "I went from forty-one to eighty-eight in one day."

Two days ago his strength had been 91, and he had been amazed that it was so close to a Martial Apprentice’s. Now it was more than double. The Mental Strength number had climbed from 94 to 118, and the recovery rate had finally moved off Slow. The amber warning was gone. Everything on the panel was a clean, steady blue.

Because the technique now cost so little, even the heavier sessions on Day Three had barely outpaced his recovery. He had finished the day with more mental energy than he had started many of his earlier sessions with.

Ash sat there for a long time with a slightly stupid smile on his face. He had solved a real problem, one careful step at a time, with a few mistakes and one very painful afternoon, and every part of it was his own work. He was proud of himself, and he let himself feel it fully.

Then he noticed something strange.

He tried to remember the last time he had thought about Rylan, or Uncle Bao, or the cafeteria. It had been at breakfast the morning before. That was a day and a half ago. Since then, he had not thought about anyone at all.

"Rylan’s probably wondering if I’m dead," he said out loud.

He glanced at the terminal on the table. For a moment his hand almost reached for it. Then he deliberately put the thought aside.

Thirty days. I can hold out.

He did not feel guilty exactly. He had been busy. But he noticed the absence, and he kept it in the back of his mind.

Then he lay back on the platform, looked at the high ceiling, and finally let himself rest.