Immediately after his training for the day, he hit the shower in his room, taking a bath before giving Komi a heads up at dinner, informing her he was going into seclusion again to comprehend another word.

She simply nodded at him with a blank stare, having gotten used to his peculiarity. At this point, anything he did wasn't a surprise anymore.

"How many days do you estimate you'll use this time?" she asked.

"Ten… eleven maybe?" Zephyr shrugged as he ate. "I can't really know for sure. But this one will be longer."

"Hmm… and what word are you comprehending?"

…

Zephyr kept silent as he ate, before answering slowly.

"An arithmetic unit."

"Huh?" Komi frowned in confusion.

"Something to help with spell flexibility on the fly…"

"With arithmetics…?" Komi was still confused.

"Yeah."

Komi paused in deep thought, drawing correlations to her own spell model magic system as a native of this world.

"Are you sure? We have something similar in spell models, and there is nothing flexible about them. You mean to make preset spell calculations, no?" She asked.

"Ehh… Not the calculations themselves, but rather, the calculator," Zephyr said casually.

He continued eating, still going over a few points of note in his head, until he finally noticed it was too silent. Only the sound of his cutlery echoed in the dining room.

He looked up and found Komi's face going through a range of conflicted emotions, like she was having a fierce internal debate.

"C—Can you explain it to me…?" She whispered.

At first she'd wanted to refute Zephyr's words as ignorant.

Their spell model magic system depended mainly on spell calculations embedded into every model they weaved into the air. This along with the system of symbols they used told mana exactly what to do at each step to achieve a particular effect.

It was fixed.

A one instance spell effect.

Even if one wanted to do something with multiple effects, it would be accounted for in the calculations.

Regardless of how complex the effect may seem, even scaling up to Grand spell models that had so many parameters it could make one's head spin… they were all still fixed.

But what Zephyr so casually said… shocked her thoroughly.

It was his phrasing.

'The calculator, rather than the calculations itself.'

Their magic system had always been dealing with the calculations alone… like Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs).

There had been attempts and ideas to create a different system, one where a single spell model could be used as a base… as the brain behind which every other spell was made… But it had been met with constant failure…

What Zephyr was suggesting he wanted to do, was exactly this.

She knew he couldn't be bluffing. His previous exploits and the way he'd casually dropped the statement made her sure he knew exactly what he was talking about.

It was his mana core at stake here.

If he ended up comprehending something exactly like their calculations, no matter how complex, he would forever set that hard cap on his mana core. Everything would be limited to the range of that particular calculation for the rest of his life…

Zephyr stared at Komi's hopeful eyes, pondering whether or not to divulge more information.

He had simply said that earlier because he didn't want to think up a lie to tell Komi. She already knew how different he was, and he trusted her to some extent, so he'd thought there was no harm to tell her a few things… if only at the surface level.

But now, she was asking for more…

"Allow me some time to gather my thoughts together. I had an agreement with your father to create a pathway in exchange for my safety…"

Zephyr stared directly into Komi's eyes, trying to reassure her.

"Well, your father's held up his end of the deal so far. Even though things have escalated to this extent, I'm still safe. I'll hold up my end of the deal. I'll create the pathway. And everything... including this calculator will be in it."

Zephyr pushed the matter till later with his response, but Komi, though still very curious, was somewhat pacified.

She had thought he would outright decline, so this was a good result.

At the same time, for Zephyr, he'd now have enough time to gather his thoughts and decide what to reveal in this pathway he'd create, and even the extent to which he'd reveal.

When next he saw Sage Maximus… if he ever saw him again… he'd also push for who'd get access to such a pathway inheritance too.

No matter how watered down, it would still be more structured than most...

.

.

The rest of their meal was straightforward and uneventful. Afterwards, Zephyr prepared a lot of food ahead of his ALU designing attempt scheduled to start promptly the next morning.

This time, he wasn't going to use hunger pills. Instead, he would surround himself with food, and give his nanites the instruction to consume and replenish his body whenever he grew weak.

Since his attempt on healing Komi with them, he'd opened up a bit more to their use.

This would be his second attempt to consciously use them for a specific purpose…

Or maybe unconsciously, because his consciousness wouldn't be in his body to direct them strictly this time.

He felt some hesitation at the thought, but Aegis had reassured him repeatedly that they'd follow his instructions to the letter, without any deviation… so he decided to follow through with it.

.

.

The next morning, he walked into his seclusion room, which had been stacked with a lot of food, and a little bit of hunger pills by the side, just in case the food wasn't enough.

It was much, but still within reason. He had to account for their slowly diminishing food stock. The food available in the estate's pantry was enough to last both of them more than a year, even with Zephyr's extra appetite. So while the food he had taken was much, it was still within reason.

Zephyr sat down in a lotus position, closing his eyes. He set an intention to every fibre of his body, to every nanite embedded into his cells — A simple order to make sure his body's functions stay above dangerous levels by a safe margin. The nanites were to measuredly consume from the food available, factoring an estimated comatose state of 15 days… just to be safe.

And immediately he sent the order, he delved into the depths of his mind, willing his consciousness into his mana core space.

It was time to build his ALU!