Chapter 1268 - 10% Efficiency.

The wise man didn’t actually say that he should blame his tools. The wise man had said, "If your work is bad, blame the wind."

So both saying were ridiculous and meant that he should shift blame, preferably to something that couldn’t speak up for itself. Loki was just appropriating the adage and making it more suitable for his current situation. In this case, he was blaming lifespan for being a poor form of energy.

To be fair, blaming lifespan wasn’t baseless either. According to the schematics, he should need a higher grade of energy. So lifespan wasn’t entirely blameless in this matter.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know what that higher grade of energy was. The Gemini younglings also didn’t know what’s higher than lifespan. To them, lifespan is the highest available energy. Apparently, this was because the quality of lifespan improved with the strength of the lifeforms using it.

So lifespan as a form of energy and fuel scaled well with existence, while other forms of energy like life energy and spiritual energy fell off after a certain point.

As impressive as this was, it wasn’t good enough for the 4-D prototype. Either that, or he was too weak to bring out greater power with the 4-D prototype.

Between thinking about the 4-D prototype and trying to understand the incomprehensible material, he was getting a headache. Of course, it wasn’t a literal headache.

His Divine Spirit had only been pushed to its limit and was consuming lifespan and divine crystals to keep up with the mental demands of what he was thinking about.

So the headache definitely didn’t cause physical pain. But it would break his heart if he kept burning through his lifespan and divine crystals like this.

Since he couldn’t figure it out, he decided to ask the only person he knew who could. So he called out, saying, "Astra! How do I build the 4-D prototype?"

As usual, the two-eyed cyclops ignored him. No matter how he asked, he only received silence.

"What is a hyperspace coordinate? How do I build it? What kind of energy do I need?"

Just as he was about to give up, he heard Astra say, "Truly a waste."

Then the two-headed cyclops went silent.

"Hey! If you’re not going to say something helpful, keep quiet," Loki called out in anger.

Then he snorted and said, "I might be a waste, but you’re the one who lost to a waste."

Astra didn’t respond. Only silence filled the darkness between them.

So he could only shake his head and say, "What a nuisance."

He’d hoped his abrasive statement would make Astra keep talking. Unfortunately, Astra was content with calling him a waste.

As for Loki, he wasn’t content with his current understanding of the incomprehensible material, so he kept studying it like one would study a CPU microarchitecture diagram.

’If only I had some sort of recipe with a list of the materials I need, their general description to identify them, where to find them, how to process them, and step-by-step instructions for building the 4-D Metac, this would be so much easier,’ he thought, grumbling.

Occasionally, he grumbled like that, but most of the time he was silent. The mental burden of the incomprehensible material pushed his mind so far that he barely had enough processing power to keep operating the Devouring Supreme Metac for conversion efficiency and for upgrading Supreme Metacs.

He put those things on the back burner to focus on the incomprehensible material and try to understand it. It was like going down an endless rabbit hole without being able to tell up from down. And whenever he tried to give up, he felt reluctant to do so because understanding seemed just around the corner.

It felt like he would be enlightened any moment now. But that moment, and many more, would pass without enlightenment.

Clearly, he was stuck in a room with endless corners. He knew this superficially, but deeper down, he was sure he was about to reach the end.

Just then, he felt a tremor from the portion of his mind within Fenrir. It told him the Devouring Supreme Metac had reached 10% conversion efficiency.

’Finally!’ he thought, excited. ’I am about to become a two-star celestial.’

As soon as he felt the tremor, the bulk of his processing power left the 4-D prototype. Instead, he focused on the Devouring Supreme Metac.

With a focused mind, he carried some celestial gold with his Divine Spirit and deposited it into the star. There were exactly 100 pieces of dull golden stones.

He put the golden stones together, and they clumped like magnets, forming a bigger magnet. This way, he could put them all into the Supreme Metac at once without delay.

Usually, the godhead rejected matter, but this time, it accepted this kind of matter. As the celestial gold fell into the godhead, it grew heavier.

The Devouring Supreme Metac vibrated a bit, trying to withstand the intrusion of matter. It was forced to expand and was on the verge of explosion, forcing him to activate the Main Divine Ability to keep the Supreme Metac in check.

Unfortunately, the Devouring Supreme Metac still expanded and split apart. But because the Main Divine Ability was activated, the direction of the split was determined. And because it had reached 10% overall conversion efficiency, the Devouring Supreme Metac could withstand the splitting without collapsing.

After the split, the Devouring Supreme became two. The two Devouring Supreme Metacs contained 50 celestial gold each and were both connected by the attractive force between the celestial gold.

So now he had two Supreme Metacs within the star, each producing 27 units of divinity and providing 9^3 of volume for him to use. This was great, but it was only half of the breakthrough.

Even without looking, he could sense that the closest godhead to the one with the Devouring Supreme Metac was now activated. When he looked, he saw what it meant for a godhead to be active.