Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 118: I see that as an absolute win!

Chapter 118: I see that as an absolute win!

Silence.

Never before had Theo dreaded it as much as he did in the moment. And it was all because of how his hive was changing in ways he couldn’t really put his finger on.

Sure, it was trying to claim some more autonomy... but exactly why? Was his guess about it being all an influence of introducing mana into the nanites actually correct? Or maybe it only got a small part of the truth right, one just big enough to make it seem like a correct answer?

Whatever the case, there were no absolute answers to any of Theo’s questions, only more guessing. And despite all of his attempts to remain as independent from his hive as he could... Theo never had any designs of fully separating from it.

’I’ve lived my entire life... No, both of my lives with it.’ He gulped his saliva down. ’And to have it go haywire now?’ He gritted his teeth.

"I really can’t afford it, can I?"

The soft whisper releasing from his mouth apparently acted like a key that finally satisfied Theo’s hive, pushing it to print out the next set of instructions upon Theo’s eyes.

<Establishing a resonance can only be possible through the subject of the matter>

A message lingered for a short while, only to then turn all fuzzy, impossible for Theo to read, before reforming into something else.

<This path was designed to establish a resonance between the hive and the copy of the host’s dantian to give it greater autonomy in regards to manipulating the host’s mana. As such, it can only be established by the hive itself>

Theo raised his eyebrows.

’As much sense as this makes...’

He stared at the text for some time, finding himself unable to decide how to proceed.

’What am I even supposed to do now?’ Theo groaned, burdened by this unexpected situation as he let go of his focus, allowing his mana to settle back into its natural flow.

On one hand, there were too many benefits of using the hive for Theo to even entertain the idea of giving up on it. And judging from what he saw himself, what he could guess about the future, and what the hive itself told him, the stronger he grew through magic and cultivation, the less control the hive would have over him.

On the other hand...

’What exactly is that other hand, though?’ Theo thought, leaning back and supporting his pose with his hands while looking up at the exposed, late-afternoon sky.

He gave it a moment... and then a little longer, yet even as this question hung in his head for quite some time, he struggled to come up with an answer.

’Isn’t it just the hive’s attempt to regain the level of influence it had over me rather than a bid to establish itself with some degree of autonomy?’

This was such a simple realization, it was no wonder it managed to elude him for so long.

What Theo saw in the changes to the hive he noticed was an unquestionable attempt to expand its current influence and ability to affect his actions. What he didn’t do, however, was question how it had changed from the very moment he woke up in this world... or, by going even further, from before this actually happened.

’Can I even claim that its degree of authority was the same as it was back in my old life?’

Theo heaved a long, exhausted sigh.

"All this thinking is making me more exhausted than trying to push my cultivation forward," he muttered to himself before shaking his head and then raising back up, putting himself into the proper cultivation stance again as he crossed his legs, rested his hands upon his knees and then straightened his back.

’What are we still waiting for, partner?’ Theo thought, amazed by how this new perspective on the problem of the hive changed how he saw his own situation. Then, there was still quite the big question—how did Theo’s supposed death back in his lab affect his hive?

How would the accidental death of the host affect the algorithm designed to keep said host safe in a situation where the host’s death didn’t mark the end of the story?

And with that question in mind, how did it affect the hive’s calculations while it could do nothing but watch how more and more of its authority got stripped by the very power Theo was developing according to its own suggestions?

’I was too focused on my primitive wants and goals to notice how it all looked from the hive’s perspective,’ Theo thought.

Sure, there was the possibility that his current understanding of the situation was flawed, incomplete, or outright wrong. But after giving it so much thought, that was the exact feeling that Theo had arrived at.

And just by taking a single look at his past, at what he made into his hobby, at how weird of brewing experiments he conducted, it would be clear—Theo was the kind of man to overthink details of the process, not its goal itself.

When it came to setting goals, he followed his instincts rather than logic or efficiency. A mindset that allowed him to keep on adapting to the changing circumstances, be it of his current life or of the experiments he conducted in the past, while allowing him to stay true to himself in the spirit of the goals that he pursued.

<There needs to be an explicit approval of the host for the hive to establish a resonance within the structure of their inner cultivation>

The message before Theo’s eyes changed again, almost proving his guess of how the hive first judged his thoughts before offering him the way out of his current stalemate.

’Do you still need it after all the thinking I’ve done and you spied on?’ Theo almost rolled his eyes.

Almost.

Instead, he shook his head in a bout of momentary disbelief before reaffirming his stance and rebuilding his focus.

’Hive,’ he called out in his thoughts, closing his eyes while he focused on gathering the mana again, ’do your worst.’

The process of creating a resonance was... quite the boring one.

On his own end, Theo didn’t really have to do anything beyond an occasional sip of the high-grade materia prima coupled with the constant effort to provide more and more mana into his structure, only to watch it mysteriously vanish in the bloated node of his structure near his actual mana storage point.

If anything, the worst part of the process revealed itself to be the sweet time his hive required to complete it, starting with roughly half an hour before even producing an estimate of how long it would take.

And the initial number was just absurd enough for Theo to realize he wasn’t going anywhere at the rate the hive revealed.

"Three years?!" Theo nearly shouted when he deciphered the timer suggested by the hive. "Yeah..." he then muttered, shaking his head in denial, "there’s no fucking way."

Rather than accepting the harsh truth he now faced, Theo simply refused to accept it as given. And so, instead, he grabbed the bottle of materia prima and took a deep, wide swig, bringing the level of the precious content inside to merely half of the bottle’s volume, feeding more of this special brew than he ever had before.

In a way, absorbing this materia prima felt like the ordeal he went through after preparing an ungodly amount of food before, only to then keep on eating it until there wasn’t even a single shred of meat left. What was much more important, however, was how just this single swig from the bottle managed to bring the hive’s timer down by a whole month!

"So it was all because of the imbalance," Theo muttered to himself as he tensed up only to then open his eyes, locking them on the sky above. Then, as soon as the heat in his chest somewhat died down, he took another swig.

And then another.

Soon, he had to switch to a new bottle, only to see its bottom before he could even realize. And by the time Theo regained the clarity of his mind, he was already chugging down the very last of his materia prima bottles, feeding his nanorgan with more energy than it could effectively process.

Just like before, pushing the hive to grow beyond its current limitations forced some of the mana and nanites out of Theo’s body, creating a silvery, reflective mist all around him of nothing but tiny crystals of mana formed by the mana solidifying with the nanites as its core.

And yet, right as Theo started to doubt the validity of all the mighty-and-mighty claims he made... he took another look at the clock. A clock that, for a while already, was showing a zero.

’Three years in one case of the brew,’ Theo smiled to his own thoughts. ’That really doesn’t sound all that bad?’ he thought, only to turn his attention to the new line of text that appeared before his eyes.

<Sever the dantian’s clone from the structure>

<Saturate the severed core to kickstart its growth>

Two instructions, this time, both harder to complete than any of the ones Theo followed before.

Which only made him all the more eager to get to it, especially after a prolonged period of sitting around and doing nothing but drinking materia prima in hopes of speeding up the process.

A process that was supposed to take over three years for Theo to complete, but only needed a few minutes and a case full of high-grade materia prima to make it happen, leaving him with but a single comment on his mental lips.

’I see that as an absolute win!’