Chapter 117 Mass Evolution (12)

According to my sensors, it had been approximately three months since I had started to teach Rhea. Of course the meals that I had to make for her were good indicators of time but I preferred the hard data that my sensors gave me.

I had started a timer immediately after we had reoriented ourselves meaning there was maybe an hour or two margin of error but not enough that I would mess up how much time had passed.

Moving on from that though, Rhea had made remarkable progress in the time that I had been teaching her. She had gone from a barely educated apprentice to one I would be proud of.

So much so that from what my innate aether sensing abilities showed me, no matter their disuse, she had advanced to tier 7. Not from the knowledge, no, Rhea had advanced because of the enhancements that we had worked on together.

Though it wasn't fair to say that they were done by both of us, her enhancements were done mostly by herself with her asking questions when she needed help. Other than that Rhea had not asked anything outside of her lessons.

I couldn't teach her all day so I gave Rhea time to work on her own projects, that was why she was able to upgrade herself. Even if she was only able to use a limited amount of resources, the matter generator not being able to generate more than a cubic foot of material a day, she still used them efficiently. Though that one cubic foot was split unevenly, while I would like to focus all of my attention on letting Rhea explore and innovate her own upgrades we still had needs. At least Rhea did, I had no need for food nor did I need any water but I did need electricity, or energy of any kind. Either way most of the resources were used to keep me functional. Weirdly enough though when I had evolved the previous time there was no need for me to keep up with my monthly needs but now, in this realm of ours, I needed to.

Focusing my attention back on Rhea I looked at her work which she was so proudly showing me. It was her arm or at least what was previously her arm. The upgrades were obvious. Where before the arm could be told apart from sight, now I had to use different senses to tell that it wasn't actually flesh. But what was most impressive were the functions that she had integrated into them, before she had added all of her enhancements, the prosthetic that Rhea was so proud of and rightfully so only had a rudimentary calculation and battle prediction system, a stabilizing mechanism, and enhanced strength. But by using the principles that I had taught her in the lessons that I was giving, it had gained many more functions.

The one that she was showing me at the moment was a function to try and convert any mass to any material based on what she had learned. Of course I had already known, it was obvious what she was building when I listened to the innumerable questions she had about the matter generator that we were relying on.

Though the only fault with it was that it could only convert things into water, one of the simplest things that it could make. Still it was a great show of her progress and I would not chide her for not creating something in three months, that I had taken whole years to do.

"Good job" With that I placed a sticker onto the prosthetic.

'Huh, what's this'

I should have noticed it earlier but I had been caught up in my own research and with only Rhea's questions to go by I could not have predicted this. Maybe if I had paid more attention then it would have been clear to me.

What I had seen was the slight wince in her nerves as I touched the prosthetic, no, it could not be called a prosthetic anymore. It should be called a proper limb. Rhea was able to copy my own arm and make it so that her nerves were connecting to the arm, giving her feeling in the arm. Something that she previously did not have.

The arm before could have processed the damage that had been done and had some level of touch but not something so sensitive that it could have sensed my touch.

Another sticker came out of my stock and onto her head.

pat pat

I pat her head, showing her how proud I was of her.

…

pat pat

'Huh' I thought in my head as my head was patted by the usually stoic Delta.

For some reason she was showing, was that pride. In me?

I couldn't help the grin that spread across my face at the thought that Delta was proud of me.

More than just the fact that I had made this prosthetic an arm I was so happy because my mentor praised me.

Touching my head I could feel the sticker that she had placed there.

And looking down I saw one placed on my arm too. I had never been given this many stickers. I knew it was weird to desire the stickers given by Delta but she rarely gave them out, the only times that I had ever gotten one was when I finished my first brain surgery perfectly.

She had given it to me right in the finger that had performed the last cut and it was euphoric.

"Come" Delta commanded me, breaking me out of my reminiscing as I followed her to wherever she wanted to bring me.

…

The land that we had been given was not large, maybe a few miles across, but it was a sphere making it impossible for me to see what Delta was up to while I was taking my free time. Delta had never let me see what she was doing, saying that I would see when I was ready and apparently now was the time.