Personal Growth

          She approached the pod I lay in and snapped her fingers, removing the robe from my body. "Ah!" I was startled by the sudden feeling of cold gel-foam on my back as my only piece of clothing disappeared. I pouted as hard as I could at Noelle, eliciting a giggle that said she could do no wrong. I had to agree, honestly. "It's necessary for the procedure, I'm afraid. But this-," she lay a large, soft hand directly on my stomach, "is purely for our pleasure." I shuddered at her light touch, slightly caught off guard by her sudden forwardness. Taking in a deep breath, I looked up into her tender gaze. I couldn't help but smile at the questioning look in her eye, and gave a small nod as my own hands reached to her impressive erection - only to be stopped by her other hand. She leaned down, not breaking eye contact, and used my hand to pull the cloth on her chest away. Drawn in by the sight of that soft pink tip, I was barely aware of my mouth closing upon it as she cradled my head. Nor of her hand slowly slipping down past my belly button.¹is this a smut?

~~~~~~~~

Successfully put to bed, the procedure began. Not that I know what's happening, but I'm assuming it's going on right now while I'm stuck in my mindscape. This little beaut of technique let me do a lot of things. Mainly, it allowed me to store encoded knowledge n' stuff. There was a limit of course, but I have nanotechnology and a default set of structures loaded up on it's system. I could house millions of texts and videos to consume while my body is resting.

At this point, I hadn't given much thought to how I'll be living from now on. I'll have to ask Noelle where I'll end up. I hope it's just some musty old wizard's tower and not, like, a palace or something. It'd suck to just popup in the middle of a royal court or something.

Well, there's a lot I'll have to ask her and I'll need to see if I can still use that subspace spell I'd made. Oh! This is a good time to check my system!

SYSTEM: #ZB042H0G 
APPELLATION: XERIN QUELL'THAR
ERROR: MATRIX CONNECTION NOT FOUND
ERROR: COMPUTATIONAL POWER LIMITED
ERROR: FOREIGN INFLUENCE DETECTED
ERROR: INSUFFICIENT INTELLIGENCE TO PRESERVE INTERNAL MATRIX
—USER CONSENT DETECTED—
NOTICE: ADMINISTRATION RIGHTS GRANTED
APPELATION: NOELLE. ARBITER, THE. 
NEW PARAMETER(S) DEFINED: INNATE STRENGTH
INTERNAL MATRIX CONFIGURATION SET: PERSONAL GROWTH <3
NOTICE: NEW GENETIC PARAMETERS DEFINED
NOTICE: FOREIGN BIO-CHIP DETECTED
NOTICE: FOREIGN MATRIX FOUND
—USER CONSENT DETECTED—
CONNECTING %
CONNECTING %
NOTICE: CONNECTION COMPLETE
NOTICE: ADAPTING INTERFACE DISPLAY

Welcome, EX Entity 02, to the World of Zelldostra!

Go Forth! Adventure! Grow! And Leave Your Mark On the World!

<©—£—ðsžšåÞя©: ©—£—>

Name: Xerin Quell'Thar
Order: EX  / ~Lord~ [+]
Class: N/A [+]
Job: N/A [+]
Innate Strength: Lord - 9001 {1% Effective}
Level: 1 / 99 [+]
Growth: [+]

<©—£—ðsžšåÞя©: 舐½ ▀>

Hmmm, pretty simple actually. At least, compared to the sheer amount of math that my artillery caster system needed to work with. It was fun, but the amount of trigonometry I had to do just to throw a couple tons of boulder at someone a kilometer out was pretty annoying. Not to mention the constant meta min-maxing going on with percentage attribute boosts, resistances, resistance negations, etc.

Anyway, there's a few neat things that I can go ahead and assume from the information provided here. I'm assuming 'order' to be levels of permission or power within the local matrix. I can't be sure with only two data points, but me being 'EX Entity 02' - Noelle being EX Entity 01 presumably - and my status displaying 'Lord' alongside it gives a good hint. Though, I do wonder why I have both EX and Lord. Maybe that's normal? Like a growth cap, or something? This whole system does seem much more 'organic' than my old one. Hmm, and a level system is there as well. I honestly wasn't expecting that when Noelle told me about the method of magic. Maybe a hold-out from my old nanite system? Can I expect the same returns on that without it's dedicated matrix providing data? I suppose it is an autonomous intelligence, so it should be able to extrapolate the levels I've already experienced as Leona and use those as a jumping off point for later.

If I can even get there with the level cap. No idea why that's capped so low, the previous one didn't cap until you hit the actual limit of your physiology - or so the devs claimed. Last I heard, the highest someone hit was level 65,535. They claimed it was the hard cap for anyone though, something about MercyHouse being lazy with integers or something, no real surprise if that's true.

Anyway, the level cap is off-putting, maybe something to do with the '1% Effective' thing? Eh, I'll have to ask her about that too. Otherwise, it seems fairly straightforward. Mentally pressing each [+] symbol gives me empty lists save for 3.

Under Order, I have 2: Appraise. It seems to be what Noelle said earlier about seeing the strength of others. I guess I'll see their 'Innate Strength' then? I'm gonna assume mine's pretty good for a level 1, but I guess I'll know for sure later. Hmmm, wait a sec, is that the Lord thing? If I grow my innate strength will my Order increase? Hmmm. More questions. I also have Interference. My best guess is that it, well, interferes with people trying to read my system. I can delve further into the skills, but it's all just programming with no description or comments... It might as well be magic circles for all that I can understand it, honestly.

And moving on~ I've got 3 skills listed under my Level.  First is the almighty Translation. Pretty basic stuff I think, though I do wonder how it caught Noelle's language so quick. I also have Compass, another fairly basic one. Alongside the Subspace Radar skill, I don't think I'll be getting lost any time soon. Dope. Hmmm, maybe I can combine multiple skills? If they really are just programs then shouldn't I be able to have my system run them together? Or something? Ugh, more questions and testing I guess.

And last, but certainly not least, I have the mysterious Growth tab! Woah, quite a few options under this one... Mhm. Mhm. Looks like this one is pretty self-explanatory as well. It's the options I have for attaining the form I'd like. There's a small explanation to go with the options as well. It seems I'll have to consume the necessary building blocks for any change I'd like obviously, but the nanites'll do the job pretty quick. It will, however, knock me out. So no on the fly changes sadly. There are some small options and sliders for the little stuff - mostly cosmetic things. I can change pretty much any color I like on my body, the length of my hair, decide where hair even grows, length and shape of various organs, etc.

This does give me a pretty significant advantage over the general population too. I mean, who else can eat 10 lbs. of meat then turn all that straight to muscle? This is pretty sweet~ Oh! I can see the progress on it while I'm knocked out like this too! Let's see here~ yep, Genetic Repair is proceeding at a steady rate! In the, like, 5 minutes I've been thinking over all this, it's hit 1%! With Organism Repair queued up behind it, this'll get done in no time!

...

...

...

Yeah, I'll just watch a movie... or 3.

***

"Awe man they just kissed, bro." My eyes flickered open to the sight of a sterile white ceiling, seen through the clear glass of the pod slowly opening. There were not a bunch of needles retracting into the sides and bottom. None. At. All. 

I lift my head and look down to find Noelle hunched over and rapidly tapping away at the tablet. Apparently, she didn't hear me cursing her abundance of comedic timing. "Uh... hey, everything alright?" She perked up, and looked at me wide-eyed. "You're awake! Thank Geklos! You were under way longer than you were supposed to be! I was worried I screwed up with your genome somewhere and put you in a coma! I couldn't even see how far along everything was without a deep tissue scan, but giving you cancer again sounded a little counter-productive. Are you okay? Anything feel strange, off, or incomplete?"

Wow she looks really worried. Oh geez now I feel like a total tool. "Uuh yeah, no. I'm fine." I slowly stand up, getting a feel for my healthier body. She rushes over, prepared to catch me, but I just grab her outstretched hand and pull her head down for pats. "That was probably my - or well, my system's - fault. It's incredibly basic, as far as these things go, so me being in my mindscape probably blocked most external access." The patting stopped as she straightened and grabbed my shoulders, "Mindscape?" Oof, yeah, she's pissed. I could only chuckle nervously and scratch my cheek as I explained.

"Yeeeah, the nanites plus some really old meditation technique lets you, like, create static information in your subconscious, if that makes sense? Basically, I still dream n' stuff but instead of weird hallucinatory experiences, I'm in a nice cozy little library I set up and can access any information I bothered to copy down. Don't even have to be asleep to get to it either." I answered with a shrug, I didn't even think about the whole 'can't be conscious' thing when she said it. I just assumed she meant it would hurt a lot and the bio-system put me to sleep as a courtesy. The brainpower to make it all possible is probably pretty important, now that I think about it.

"Haaah, you buffoon." She sighed and flicked me pretty hard on the forehead. "You'll need to be completely unconscious when you make any big changes, if you want them to be done in a timely manner. You'll have to do your meditation thingy if you want to get into your mindscape in the future."

"Dang, I never realized how much getting called buffoon hurts. I'm taking that one off the list..." I muttered and Noelle just shook her head helplessly.

"Well, I'm glad you're alright, I guess. I assume you have questions?"