Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 115: Hive’s evolution?

Chapter 115: Hive’s evolution?

"Could it be, are you trying to set me up with her or something?!"

This was such a simple question, yet it came with one hell of a massive meaning behind it.

The idea of bedding Celeste, a woman he effectively knew for just a bit over a week, was one thing. And judging by this world’s obsession with power and growth, one that could be surprisingly easy. But by no means was it the biggest problem Theo had at the moment with the results provided by the hive.

No.

If his hive was really trying to get him together with that woman, then either there was some kind of a greater reason that Theo simply couldn’t see with his simple, biological brain yet...

Or, much more likely, the hive was now operating under the principles it was never supposed to!

And when there were a few dozen potential options of what could be happening to cause such a result and only one of them had any real likeness to it, then by removing the unlikely, Theo had no other choice but to arrive at the simplest of possible conclusions.

’Just what could’ve affected how the hive operates? It’s not like I did anything to...’

The way Theo froze, he failed to even complete his line of thought.

That’s how hard the realization struck him.

’I didn’t do anything that would affect the hive? Then how about literally using it to cultivate a foreign power while infusing the myriad of nanites it exists within with energy I know little to nothing about?’

On one hand, claiming that Theo knew nothing about magic would seem like an overstatement, especially after he has now consumed as many books as a normal person would need to spend their lifetime to comb through. On the other hand, though, most of that knowledge wasn’t about the nature of mana, the very essence of what it is.

If anything, the knowledge Theo absorbed from the first floor of the library was mostly about magic, cultivation, and all sorts of crafting and auxiliary disciplines surrounding those. In other words, it was about the possible methods of applying the mana rather than its nature itself.

The one and only thing that persisted throughout all those disciplines, all those means of utilizing mana, however, save for the fact all of them used mana to begin with, was how one would mostly use thought to control it.

Magic? It was a discipline of using mental formulas, locally named spells, to put mana into form and force it to take physical shape, regardless of what form or shape it was supposed to turn.

Cultivation? It was all about merging mana with one’s body, turning it into another part of the biological system just like the air circulation necessary to provide oxygen or the blood circulation working mostly to spread it through one’s entire body.

Magic formations? More like engraving thoughts into a physical form, not all that much different from the punch cards of the super-early programs at the very dawn of information technology. Magic engineering? It was no different from an early form of electricity and circuitry, with the one difference being the kind of energy used to power those. And still, for the magic engineering circuits to work, they had to follow an established thought, an algorithm, the layout of the circuit, for them to bring forth the desired effect.

"Out of all of them, cultivation seems to be most closely related to one’s physicality," Theo muttered to himself as he ended up sitting back down on his bed, taking his time to properly process through the problem he faced. "And that means..."

The nanites were a magic-less technology brought so close to the biological level, they were literally hosted and created not by another machine but a bio-machine instead—Theo’s own nanorgan.

Heck! It was a system so robust, even if someone were to carve out the nanorgan from Theo’s insides, when deprived of all the other natural systems of the body, it would quickly rot away, turning into but a bunch of flesh and meat scraps, all the while every single nanite left in Theo’s body could become a seed from which the nanorgan would regrow.

And between the cultivation and the strictly biological nature of Theo’s nanites...

’Just how blind did I have to be to not realize it any sooner?’

If the mana was driven by the thought, infused on an extremely biological level and then merged with a system that was designed to serve as just another avenue of the body’s biology, just how could it NOT change?

’Hey, hive, what are you, really?’

A question that Theo would ask for the last time back when he was just eleven years old, right at the age when he could understand enough about the world to start asking existential questions.

And yet, now that he asked it again, he had the feeling the answer wouldn’t be the same as what he heard all those years... No, his entire lifetime back.

<The hive is but an interface to the computing powers of the unified nanite operating system>

At first, the answer displayed straight upon Theo’s retinas didn’t change. But then...

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

The processing that came next took an unprecedentedly long time for a task that didn’t come with an overwhelmingly massive amount of data for the hive to parse and process.

It was but a simple question, and yet...

And yet, the hive struggled to provide an answer. And even when it did?

<I am you>

A new answer appeared before Theo’s eyes, only to then explosively expand into a much more complex one.

<I am you. You stripped out of the fake. You stripped out of the delusion. You stripped out of... not really you>

The message written with unexpectedly bright letters lingered only for a second, only to then collapse straight back to the processing mark.

’Okay, now you are bugging out, aren’t you?’ Theo asked as the message has now reverted straight back to the processing symbol of the titled line dancing in a circle.

<./.>

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

<I am myself, but also you>

Another message, appearing for a short moment before it vanished just like the more extensive explanation from before.

<I am itself>

<./.>

<.\.>

<./.>

<.\.>

Once again, the processing took a while. And then?

<I am>

This message lasted for much longer, long enough to engrave itself into Theo’s mind, before it flashed up and then vanished like all the answers to Theo’s question before.

Then, as if none of this had ever happened...

<Processing failure>

<Answer undefined>

<Request beyond the processing protocols>

Through all of this, all Theo could do was just sit back with his eyes wide open and shock written all over his face.

His hive... It wasn’t supposed to act like that! Which, by itself, was the greatest proof that it was changing. And while ultimately it failed to provide an answer, the few attempts it tried before, while now gone from Theo’s eyes, did not vanish from his mind.

"I guess I will have to grow stronger to make whatever part of it that came up with those answers strong enough to break through hive’s innate protocols."

With this realization, Theo could finally breathe a sigh of restrained relief.

Even though he didn’t get any decisive answers, at least he has now gained a direction he could follow in hopes of getting a proper answer to his question. And while not exactly what he was looking for, it was good enough for him to move on.

"Okay then, now, what does it mean that I’m superior? And what’s with that supreme part too?"

Given how those results came from the hive itself, there was some hope it wasn’t a product of the hive’s part that was now bugging out and struggling to provide answers.

<Supreme body attunement: An inborn bodily quality that makes <unvalidated> superior, allowing for greater level of <unvalidated> connection. Allows for a deeper harmony with one’s own mana and often provides instinctive understanding of the correct path for the mana to flow>

<./.>

<.\.>

Strangely enough, even after already providing the answer, the hive went straight back into the processing, only to then pop out another explanation... of a slightly different nature.

<In layman’s terms, supreme body attunement is the highest level of biomagical quality that allows for much greater harmonization with external forces. Quality affects one’s connection with mana, internal arts, mana flow and all the techniques involving connection>

Reading through this answer, Theo couldn’t help but squint his eyes.

’Why do I have the feeling that you are trying really hard not to make it clear that she’s the prime partner for dual cultivation?’ he thought, fully aware the hive would monitor this thought.

And yet, even though it was formed as a question, no further answer appeared before Theo’s eyes... At the very least, not until Theo’s hive moved on to answer his other question.

<Superior dual cultivation: Host’s body is perfected through the use of the nanites, making it a peak of its innate biological form. Thanks to the use of nanites in the practice of the internal bodily techniques (commonly known as cultivation), this superior quality also applies to one’s control and attunement to mana, making the host the most optimal dual cultivation partner to be biologically and magically possible (Unvalidated statement, insufficient data to back up the "Magically" part)>

Theo’s eyebrows moved up a little bit, this time. After all, this answer only made sense.

Just like the nanites would remove any illness or cancers or defects—internal or external—from his body, effectively making him into the supreme, high human, it only made sense for their influence to affect the way he controlled mana, especially when he involved the hive and its nanites right from the very beginning of his cultivation.

But with those two things combined, his superiority and the supremacy of Celeste’s body...

’I guess that’s why you are trying to match the two of us,’ Theo thought, rolling his eyes.

<Detecting secondary holder of supreme bodily constitution in unripe state>

<Further details locked until the subject reaches maturity>

If all that thinking was slowly making Theo warm up to the idea of dual cultivation itself, the next message that followed was exactly what he needed to fully dismiss the topic... For now, at least.

"Okay then..." Theo whistled, trying his utmost to push this topic out of his head. "How about the runic weave, then?" he asked out loud, as if he was talking to himself, only to then expand upon it with his inner voice. ’It’s the only discipline that showed as optimal for me, both of my disciples and even Celeste!’

Once again, the hive took a second to process Theo’s question. Yet, rather than a proper answer...

<Bug detected>

<Insufficient data to provide a proper answer>

<Runic weave discipline now classified as unvalidated>