Back In The Pocket Space…

Zephyr had used the last few days for testing out his register memory to the fullest. Saving and clearing spells from memory. Over and over.

He'd even ended up trying out the dark thought he had the other day.

He made a dummy from a container filled with liquid and a bunch of other materials, trying to simulate the inside of a person's head.

All through the time he was making it, he was plagued by a sense of discomfort.

There had been enough time for him to change his mind all through the purposeful and deliberate process, but he didn't.

From denial, to looking for a justification for why he was doing it, to finally accepting and not even caring anymore… He went through all the different stages. And then he tested it out at the end.

…

It worked.

Not exactly the way he had expected it to though… but it worked.

Basically, when the dummy head was within his 10ft (3m) effective range, and he visualized a normal flame spell he had saved in his register memory, to appear within the space the dummy head occupied, it usually ended up being a bust.

A normal basic flame spell lacked the power to overcome the high-water-content interior of a head.

The saved fire spell would actually execute, but would get extinguished just as fast, barely causing any damage because the water content was too high.

He reckoned that in a real enemy's head, it would actually cause some light damage regardless, but the person would very likely still live.

Though not without consequence. They'd very likely not remain the same again. There would be some level of brain damage that would render some aspects of their mental capabilities useless down the line.

But that was in the long run…

If he was going to attempt something as devious as that in the first place, he'd rather just instant kill his enemy right there and then, rather than making them live the rest of their life as a retard, or deficient in some aspect.

So, using something more powerful, like his saved fire arrow spell, usually did the trick.

It had enough power to cause enough damage before it would be extinguished at all, basically flash boiling the contents of a person's head in seconds before they could do anything, so long as they were in his range.

And this was not limited to the brain or head in general. He could also visually aim for the space where a person's heart was within his range…

But Zephyr preferred the head instead.

Aegis had chipped in a random fact that the brain had no pain receptors, so the enemy wouldn't even feel it until the damage was done.

With other parts of the body, like the heart, the enemy would feel it and react immediately… if they were somehow that fast.

But with the brain, by the time they felt anything, they'd be past the point of saving already— No. They might not even ever realize anything. Their brains would already lack the capability to process it by the time the damage was done.

It was too broken.

And there didn't seem to be any limits… at least none that Zephyr could immediately see right now. He hoped it would be just as easy in the real world, as it was with his test dummy.

It wasn't going to be his go-to method for fighting — he'd never see any progress otherwise — but he'd have a very potent instant kill trump card in hand for extremely dire situations.

Zephyr, who was still practicing a few spell combinations in conjunction with his saved spells, stopped in thought, thinking back to how far he'd come.

At first he had been so weak and his future in magic looked so bleak. Even Aegis had not been a great help, simply collecting information from the world around and blasting Zephyr with the "User Privilege Insufficient" message whenever he asked it any real question at all.

Now though… ever since he'd gotten to Level 2 User Privilege, Aegis had been very pliable and more willing to divulge information.

He guessed it also had something to do with that message from his father. There were parts of that message that he knew he presently shouldn't know. Even the whole message itself wasn't meant for the 'current' him.

But the situation at the time was dire. What had been done was done.

And since then, Zephyr had improved leaps and bounds… within a short amount of time too.

He wasn't even following conventional standards any longer. And because he was without anyone to compare to, he didn't know what was normal and what wasn't.

How fast did normal mages — 'Exalted' — from his world execute spells?

When they comprehended words, what was the limit to it?

How in-depth was their comprehension?

He wasn't even concerned with the family calling themselves Exalted here in this world, instead he was solely thinking about the noble families of his home world.

The royals of the great races…

Elves, Humans, Demons, Dragonkins, Orcs…

Even with the way he'd been very uncaring and ignorant about the magical world before his awakening, he at least knew of these races…

And with the kind of power displayed by Grand Commander Regina during the military boot camp — someone from a noble family, and not even a royal one — he guessed the families with real power had to have inheritances that pointed very closely to true processors.

Something more like what he was designing… Though he still felt no other could match his.

The reason he was thinking about all this was that he was learning about the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (The ALU) in full detail from Aegis at the moment.

He'd been doing so along with his spell testing for the last few days, making sure he digested the knowledge fully before attempting designing.

And the more he learned, the more he questioned how any one else could ever do something like his, leading him to conclude that only be Royals from his world could… even though he didn't know the extent of capabilities.

The ALU… was a different ball game. It was the first very evident step into making his mana node 'think' and 'calculate'... all on its own by simply using 1s and 0s, states of On and Off, Yes and No, to form more complex sets of numbers that it could understand as instructions.

With what he had learned so far, he was utterly amazed.

The ingenuity of making complex logic from something so basic, expanding till it was something greater…

It made him even more curious about Aegis', and in particular, his father's origins…

He was now certain they were not of his world at all. For every step Zephyr took, Aegis was there to chart the next, consistently, and with surety, without fail.

Like it had a full picture it was leading him towards.

A full picture Zephyr now knew was something like Aegis itself… at least in some ways…

He wasn't against it…

But he couldn't help but think about it at times…

What would he turn out to be at the end of it all…?