CHAPTER 134: ZEPHYR’S NANITES

A few days after their escape from Freehold, Zephyr was the only one still conscious in the pocket space. Komi hadn’t woken up yet, but her condition was getting better. There was nothing Zephyr could do besides giving her very basic care to the best of his capabilities.

He didn’t know any healing spell, and neither could he activate any healing spell model even if there were any. Because of this, her recovery had looked very slow at first. In fact, her pallor had begun to look pale and unhealthy. He knew he needed to do something, but he couldn’t force food down her throat, she would very likely choke to death that way.

He’d done the normal thing and kept her hydrated by using water spells and letting the liquid seep through her skin and into her system.

But when it came to nutrients, when it came to giving her energy for her body to repair itself, there was no means.

He couldn’t just do it the same way as he had earlier with water. He couldn’t just ground to powder whatever food he found in the kitchen and mix it like a soup to let it seep through her skin. That was even going to likely kill her faster than lack of nutrients would.

There was a reason the body had the stomach to break down food into its base form of energy.

He couldn’t do that at all.

But what he could do, with an idea from Aegis, was to use his nanites.

Yes. The one thing he’d feared to do for Smiling Devil back then when he’d begged for it.

Aegis had assured Zephyr that there wasn’t going to be a repercussion of any kind as long as he didn’t allow it.

They were his nanites. His and his alone. They obeyed his every command. The only reason they had devoured that creature that attacked him when he and Smiling Devil first crashed into this world was because he was in danger. His body needed energy to keep repairing itself.

So when a willing lifeform full of energy came by and tried turning Zephyr to a meal for itself, they had gone into action.

Zephyr had gone ahead with Aegis’ suggestion, willing his nanites to seep into Komi’s body along with nutrients taken from his body.

And with only a general idea of ’healing’ and ’nutrition,’ they did the rest and went directly for her circulatory system, her bloodstream, her muscles and tissues, everywhere that needed the nutrients and energy, bypassing the need for digestion totally.

Aegis had been right, there were no adverse effects. Komi’s pallor began to improve gradually, her breathing steadied, and faint signs of recovery began to show.

Zephyr monitored her closely, ensuring the nanites followed his commands, repairing and nourishing without doing anything else. It was working, but he remained vigilant, ready to pull them back at the slightest sign that they were trying to do any modifications or integrate themselves fully into her body.

He didn’t want to have to deal with the repercussions and the questions that might arise from such a scenario. Aegis had made known to him the insane replicating capability of his nanites.

He had never even known all these previously. He’d only thought what was done was done, that they were fully in his body at a set amount.

But with the way Aegis explained it. These nanites were very invasive and could use other materials to build even more of themselves if they were allowed the chance.

So every time Zephyr had come to feed Komi the nutrients her body needed, he made sure to be very focused and conscious of what was happening the whole time he did it. Retracting every single nanite very carefully after he was done too.

But in reality, he didn’t even need to go this far, the nanites would follow his instructions to the letter even if he didn’t guide them so intently.

The main thing though was that it was working. Komi had begun to improve exponentially faster after that.

In fact, he was sure she’d wake up any time now. Then he could safely try comprehending his next word. Memory states, and in particular– Registers.

Aside from eating extra food to account for Komi’s bodily need now, Zephyr had been spending his time deepening his knowledge about memory states.

He’d learned about SRAM in general, learned about latches, about write enable inputs, about why all these and a few others in a configuration could hold the state of a charge, essentially creating memory.

The more he learned, the more he began to develop ideas as to what exactly Aegis itself was. And how it was created. He was beginning to draw similarities, but held his ideas to himself. All would reveal itself very clearly in the future.

In general though, he was very eager to get started on comprehending his registers. The improvement this time was really going to be drastic. He could tell that already. Having the state of a spell saved in memory would enable him to cast that spell basically without any sort of lag whatsoever.

All that was needed now was for Komi to wake up...

And like clockwork, the very next day, she did.

She cracked her eyes open during one of Zephyr’s ’feeding’ sessions, just as he was extracting his nanites out of her body and back into his through a cut on her skin.

Immediately her eyes opened, Zephyr sensed it and stiffened slightly, but continued what he was doing like he didn’t notice.

Komi, still groggy and confused, blinked sluggishly, taking in her surroundings as Zephyr urged his nanites faster.

Immediately it was done, he withdrew his hand naturally, "Hey, you’re finally awake..." he smiled genuinely, making Komi who had just tried to pry her hand out of Zephyr’s before he withdrew, stop.

"I thought you’d sleep through the whole day agai—"

"What were you doing?" Komi cut in softly with her cracked voice.

"Huh?"

"My hand... I felt something... what were you doing?"

She stared at Zephyr weakly as he tilted his brow in confusion.

"Oh, you have a cut there," he lifted up her arm from the bed for her to see. "It was the opening through which I tried sending liquid into your body."

She stared at it numbly while still blinking sluggishly before she turned her head back to Zephyr, relaxing further into the pillows, "What day is it today? How long was I out?"

"It’s been five days since you passed out."

She turned her head slowly, staring at him with absent eyes as she processed his words and the implications, before replying after a minute,"... Your calculations were really correct then," she stated.

Zephyr nodded, "And guess where we are right now?" Zephyr asked somewhat eagerly.

"... Somewhere crazy, based on your expression." Komi cracked a light smile.

"The moon. We are hidden in a space right next to the moon," Zephyr whispered like he still couldn’t believe it.

He’d been in three different worlds so far, so one would expect that he shouldn’t be as astonished as he was.

But no one in any of the three worlds he had been to had ever attempted going to their moon. Or if they had, he had no knowledge of it. So this was still very novel to him, even though all he could see outside of the pocket space through the veil that hid them was just a blurry and foggy silhouette of the moon itself.

Komi was just as astonished as he was, going silent for a while trying to wrap her head around the whole idea.

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