Gregor waves Jason over to the slab, “Anyway, let’s take a look at that pinky of yours. I’m interested in what you’ve managed to do. The whole System lines thing isn’t new. You find them in every creature, especially monsters. The stronger the monster, the more lines and the thicker the lines. At this point everyone basically agrees they must have something to do with controlling things, like with how you are prevented from telling me certain things. Fun stuff that, and even if you got around it all that would likely happen is my own lines would prevent me from hearing what you said.”

Jason laughs, “Wouldn’t that also prevent you from seeing anything interesting?”

Gregor shrugs, “You would think so, but if that was the case, why would we be able to see the lines at all? My personal guess is it comes from a limitation built into the System itself. Not the most popular opinion though, as it implies the System isn’t all powerful. Of course you travellers were never ones to go with that explanation in the first place, so I feel like I am at least stable if not solid ground. Now put the correct pinky under this first device here and we can start.”

Jason walks up to the sphere held up by a metallic claw and holds out his pinky. Gregor taps the sphere and a ray of teal light sweeps across his finger. As it reaches the end of its run, the ray swings upward and projects an enlarged image of Jason’s finger. This image takes a moment to build up, but once it is finished, the layers are peeled back.

Or at least that is what Gregor expects to happen. Instead, once past the outer layer of skin, there appears to be just a void underneath. He scratches his head, “Well, this is the first time I’ve had my x-ray device fail. Not that it would have shown the lines, mind you, need more sensitive equipment for that.”

Jason shakes his head, “That is, well sorta, hmm. It isn’t exactly wrong.”

Gregor narrows his eyes, “Does this have anything to do with what you did?”

Jason shakes his head again, “Unrelated except that both involve my cultivation.”

Gregor rolls his eyes at this, “Well then we need to skip right to the fancier equipment.”

Gregor taps the slab a few times. Across it, many of the instruments zip away to various unused hooks on the left of the room. Four devices are left on the table. The plain magnifying glass, a ruby orb floating with no visible support, a hoop of metal gears on top of three metal support beams, and some runes with no visible material to support them.

Gregor gestures at the four and sighs, “These are what we are left with. Since you are a traveller, I assume you’ve already realized the plain magnifying glass is the most powerful item here. That will of course be left till last. We will instead start with the runelight analyzer. Stick your finger into the mess.”

Jason laughs, “Yeah, I expected that. Now lets see what this thing has to say about my pinky.” And he shoves his finger into the floating runes.

The runes spin around his finger, even floating through it. It takes about five minutes to complete a careful dance that, going by what Jason could sense, used more mana than his party had ever used ten times over. As the runes slow down and stop, row after row of symbols and numbers are displayed with lines going to various points on his finger.

Gregor off to the side already has a photosphere out and snaps a picture of the whole mess. And a good thing too as the displayed values fade away within a few seconds of the runes having completed their task. Gregor taps the photosphere and has it projects out the 3d capture it had taken of the scene.

He spins this around a few times and sighs, “Well, it detected your lines and power flows, so that is a thing. Of course, it can only display the types of power you have unlocked, so there are a ton of mysteries in there. The biggest thing I got from this though is that we can actually see the lines. Which, as you pointed out, isn’t a certain thing. Now hold your finger next to the orb.”

Jason shrugs and does so. The ruby orb glows red, and from the center a blue spark appears. Nothing visibly targets his finger, but unlike the previous devices, he can definitely feel it. A deep sense of something looking at the deepest part of his pinky. This goes on for almost half an hour before the orb returns to its passive state.

No visible display pops up, apparently unneeded as Gregor starts asking Jason some questions related to what the orb had detected. Nothing really unique, just confirming some basics of his stats. In particular, the orb had managed to detect his control stat’s exact value. Though Gregor did not know why this would be the case.

With a shake of his head, Gregor sighs, “Lets try the geared piercer. Place a drop of blood on the biggest gear and hold your finger under it.”

Jason nips his finger with his teeth and smears the blood that oozed out onto the indicated gear and holds his finger under the ring. At first nothing seems to happen, but then the gears start to turn. As they speed up, layers of Jason’s pinky are stripped away.

At first it is just skin, but muscles and blood vessels soon show up. Among these more physical aspects, though, they can spot the white lines. Then the muscles and bones all blink out of existences leaving behind only the various lines and energies within a shell of skin.

Gregor frowns at this and smacks the gear ring. Two smaller gears pick up speed, but nothing else changes. Further smacks do even less as all the gears appear to be up to speed.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters are free on my Patreon ( 262 and 263 ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).