After the adrenaline wore off and I got my mind back under control, I felt awful. Although not really emotionally. 

Sure I had done… something to the other MG and was once again feeling like I should hide in my room, but whatever had happened messed me up as well. Even a few minutes later, I was still going through waves of fever-like symptoms while I let my body try to fix itself. All things considered, I was recovering much faster than even a normal MG would since my dæmon-ness let the normally inaccessible functions of my body be supervised and directed.

Well, theoretically. At that moment, I was only comfortable with using some ULE to very slightly help direct the flow and absorption of whatever the cells needed to repair themselves.

A little healing magic from one of the other students got me to the point where I could fake being fine. Seeing me become aware again, one of my other peers reiterated, “what the hell did you do?”

I’d like to think I was justified in my grouchiness, and avoided answering the implied question by instead discussing another interpretation of what was asked. “Well, from what I saw during you guy’s go at the challenge, Navy was holding back a ton and fell for the same trap all of you did: thinking this was soccer with super powers.” Some protests were started, but I ignored them, “it was never stated that we were following any rules besides the ones MAMC explicitly said. However, as I said, Navy was trying to play soccer, and when I reminded them about going out of bounds, they assumed it was over when that happened- because that would be fair. From there I could just grab the ball for the win.”

Blurriness in both my vision and magical perception made me stop for a second while I realized my prosthesis had been damaged in the confrontation. “Reb- I mean Necroferrum, is too nice to get worked up over a game like this, so when I glued myself to the ball, I knew she would give up trying to cut it off me well before I was in any real danger. Finally, MAMC is just an arrogant idiot and never considered I would have meaningful counterplay, nor that I had been planning for him from the start.

“Other important notes: I cheated at the coin flip to make you guys go first so I could gather information, I intentionally put the idea that the instructors should follow the same order for me as they did for you, and I was willing to resort to normally lethal attacks if it meant winning since I knew the instructors could take it.”

As I stood up, feeling marginally better, I finished off my small lecture, “we have magic for a reason. Hit as hard and as fast as you can, and only take confrontations on your own terms whenever possible.”

Thoroughly done dealing with people for the day despite it being only noonish, I hobbled off without saying anything else or letting anyone check me over. I doubted what was wrong with me could be fixed with conventional healing- both mentally and physically. Combing through some processed diagnostic outputs from my body had revealed I needed to consume actual computer components- probably in the same way I took  the cameras from my phone. Coincidentally, I had the perfect place to get some of those.

Last time I had gone exploring what was becoming my favorite research building, I identified the approximate location of the central security hub for the building. Since I was hungry and wanted unfettered access to the building at some point, I decided now was a good time to take over. With a combination of [Act] and [Unremarkable], I was essentially free to tour the building how I wished since the effects would persist through the recording and playback of my actions to an extent. 

Unlike my last visit, I simply teetered through the security checkpoint out front, into the main doors and along the halls until I found the room labeled ‘security.’ If I had to guess, it was originally designed to be a normal small office space that had been adapted to its current purpose. There was a small waiting room with all the fire safety pamphlets and such, an empty reception desk, and a few doors branching off from it. One was much more secure and held a small armory, one led to a small filing room, and the final contained my target: a handful of monitors and a set of servers. 

The monitoring room was locked, but if you knew what you were doing, most locks only need a few minutes of finagling to open- key or no.

The guard sitting on their phone inside looked up in surprise when I entered, but a small wave and nod from me convinced them I was supposed to be there and they turned back around. Acting natural, I picked a port at random and plugged my tail in. To my surprise, what I accessed didn’t host the security system but instead was running a simulation for the ballistic properties of quite a few projectile shapes.

After going around to the other side of the rack, I arrived at what I assumed was the main interface since it was the only spot on the rack that had a monitor and keyboard. After interfacing here and nosing around a little, I was given access to the status of each portion of the system and what it was doing. Cautiously, I started the process of bringing it under my control.

The minor damage to my prosthesis and personal disinterest in feeling like a plague victim yet again meant that it took nearly twenty minutes of standing there, looking busy before the system resolved as a new floating island in my mind space. Unlike each other time this happened, the scale of the island was fairly comparable to the original that represented my integrated computer. Additionally, there was already a lot of infrastructure on its surface- appearing to me like a small city.

A quick ‘look’ let me identify some ‘buildings’ that hadn’t been used in a few weeks, as well as the actual portion controlling the security.

With nothing else to be done there, I walked out the way I came in, flexing my newfound control by writing over any instance I was on the camera with its view from a few seconds before I came into frame. That was only the tip of what I was capable of, and already the power was a little addicting.

By the time I was back walking through campus, I was literally salivating at the thought of eating the unused portions of the server. Holding myself back from devouring all of it, I carefully watched the camera in the security room as I started mentally deconstructing the unused building to repair the cracks on my prosthetic’s island. To my relief, all that happened as a few of the flashing lights turned off and a notice of lost connection was posted to the master display- which I quickly dismissed.

The relief was almost instantaneous as my projection of the world sharped back up to where it should be, and somewhat surprisingly, my craving for normal human food also slightly waned.

Since I had domain over the system, everything on it was readily available if I wanted to know- but unless I wanted to put a much heavier load on myself and the new hardware, I had to slowly work through it. Even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it, I would randomly make a connection between something I did or saw and a random piece of data on the server- briefly confusing myself until I figured out where the new information had come from. In the end, for my sanity, I fully isolated the server and made a note to comb through it next time my body was sleeping.

With nothing better to do and just now starting to feel a little guilty about how the morning went, I sent a message to Rebecca asking if she was doing alright and what happened with MAMC. In her typical fashion, in under a minute she had replied; “I’m alright. You’re the one who got attacked. He’s still being kept unconscious.”

Still feeling bad, I reiterated, “I could tell the ‘lesson’ was something neither you nor Navy wanted- if you tell the rest that, the one’s worth caring about will understand. Also, unconscious?”

“Alright, I’ll do that.

Kyle- MAMC real name- looks like he crazy overexerted his magic: internal ULE’s a mess, hurts to think / move. He’ll recover. I know you’ve got close to this in the past- try not to, it’s not fun and dangerous in a Breach.”

“That’s why you were concerned when I said I just ignored the pain from my continuous casting last Breach… I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yep- sorry for not explaining at the time. See you tomorrow for our next class!”