Funny thing, while using Thousand Sparks of Awareness, I never felt any smarter, but once the technique ended, I definitely felt dumber.

Artem, once he pulled himself away from his own 'breakthrough', explained that this was normal. He even showed me some readouts on his tablet, none of which I understood in the slightest.

To be honest, I didn't entirely trust him anymore, not since the medics found significant damage to my cerebral cortex.

Especially considering he was still riding the high of his own success. It wasn't a classified topic, so he told me quite eagerly that he'd made a breakthrough in the field of mobile AIs for armour.

No, it didn't mean the armour could now walk around by itself or develop an awful personality.

His Scout 3.042 could speak, but had no personality. Essentially, it was an encyclopaedia merged with a set of analysis tools for field researchers. It could quickly identify threats, both phenomena and creatures, and suggest neutralisation methods based on a cultivator's abilities.

A handy thing to have during a raid on another moon.

After I'd run Thousand Sparks several dozen times without triggering a migraine, I was given permission to move on to Mind Parallelisation.

The latter had been built on the foundation of the former, with about two-thirds of their channels overlapping.

Zola had been right to say that these two techniques were among the most difficult to master, but that was only if you learned them separately. When used to complement one another, things got significantly easier.

This time, I took a more responsible approach to laying the missing channels and arranged an unscheduled check-up with Doc Robinson.

He scanned my head, we had some tea, and talked about the good old days.

He didn't turn me down on anything, but the conversation felt dry. We didn't really need each other much anymore. Or rather, he didn't need me.

Doc Robinson had advanced to the fourth stage, made a fortune on elixirs, secured new contracts and the patronage of Novak.

He could now sit comfortably in a lab and focus on research, while I kept glancing over my shoulder for the next knife in the back. Life was pulling us in different directions, though we were still within sight of each other — we shared the same patron, but reported to different bosses. I answered directly to Novak, and he — to Bulsara.

My brain wasn't in perfect condition, but it was good enough. Doc said I wasn't in any danger. And truth be told, very few people still suffered from mental techniques these days, even though in the past, they had driven cultivators mad and were often the cause of deviant behaviour: obsessive desire, sexual perversions, cannibalism…

So-called Demonic Cults in the historical records were often just sects that had practised defective mental techniques.

In a way, it was probably a good thing no one had shared that particular piece of information with me earlier. Otherwise, learning Thousand Sparks might've taken me even longer.

Now all I could do was wonder — had the technique changed me or not?

It was mildly irritating that I didn't feel any smarter after using the technique, but when Doc ran a test on his tablet, made entirely of non-repeating logic puzzles, it showed a 73% increase in problem-solving speed and a 10% boost in complexity handling.

I really hadn't become all that much smarter, but I was definitely thinking faster.

Why hadn't Artem done the same test?

Hell knows.

But Artem wasn't a medic, he was a tech-head. Though judging by his bugs, he was working right at the crossroads of biology and technology.

In any case, his teaching skills lagged far behind Rene, Kate, and Adam. He'd only shown me these techniques because he happened to know them himself.

I learned Parallelisation in just three days.

The channels were still rough and wide, but I caught myself noticing that performing techniques no longer required my full focus.

One part of my mind handled it without issue, while the other part was busy calculating how much time I'd need to repay my debt to the Wind Garden.

Current debt: 86.253 kilograms. Time left — under three months.

I absolutely had to push my daily yield up to one kilogram to make the deadline. One and a half kilos if I wanted to be on the safe side.

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Not exactly productive thoughts, and not exactly necessary ones either. I'd already gone over this situation many times before. This latest round of mental looping only kicked in because my brain had nothing else to do.

It had to think whether about dust, or dinner. Or I could've just grumbled about Novak again.

I didn't bother saying anything to Artem, he had access to my monitoring logs, so he noticed my progress himself and told me to buy a chessboard.

I told him I wasn't much of a player, but he brushed it off, saying it would still be a match between equals once I learned the basics. I was meant to play against myself.

Turns out, splitting your mind with a technique is only half the job. You have to train each part to focus on its own task. That was a lot harder than I'd expected. My brain just refused to work that way.

Thinking about dinner in the background? No problem. But the moment a chessboard appeared, both streams of thought would focus on white's next move, then both would switch over to black.

I'd hit another bottleneck. But this time, Artem was actually helpful.

He rewrote the helmet's program to project two boards in front of me at once. One for chess, the other for draughts. On both, I played the same colour, but with different hands.

The hologram refused to respond unless I touched the draughts pieces with my left hand and the chess pieces with my right.

It worked.

Each half of my awareness began handling its own game.

Of course, since I was no longer playing against myself, wins became rare, and only ever on the draughts board.

At chess, I sucked.

The important thing was, the training worked. And soon after, Kate passed me a box containing my first bug.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on that piece of spy tech, but I held back until I was alone in my room.

Where Artem's box had been long and narrow, like a case for a necklace, mine was square, like a ring box. Inside was a single bug. Black, matte, with a scarab-like carapace.

It didn't move. Looked completely dead.

First, I had to turn it on. Which meant installing a special programme into my interface. Then came the connection, just like linking up to a Wi-Fi device, and synchronisation.

As soon as everything was ready, my vision blurred. I was seeing two images at once, layered on top of each other. One was normal, the other looked like it came straight from hell. Wide, curved, a greyish-brown mess with flecks of red and yellow.

I activated Thousand Sparks, then followed it with Mind Parallelisation. The images separated and stopped interfering with each other.

Through my normal vision, I looked at the bug.

It looked back.

From its perspective, I was a clumsy, oversized monster. Thanks to its compound eyes, the bug could see almost everything around itself, not just directly ahead, but to the sides and even partially behind.

It couldn't focus on fine detail, and the image was warped, like looking at the world through a crystal sphere.

Unsettling. Uncomfortable. But humans can get used to anything.

What about hearing?

The bug's hearing was far from insect-like. I could literally hear my own breathing. Not its-mine breathing — mine-mine, heard through its ears. Artem had clearly done some serious work turning this thing into the perfect spy.

The instructions he'd given me said I first had to learn to control each body separately, before moving on to active use. And I had to start with the human body.

I closed the box. The bug's vision dimmed but didn't go completely dark, it could see almost perfectly in near-total darkness.

Without breaking the connection, I tried to slip the box into my pocket, and my sense of spatial awareness rebelled.

The images and sensations from the two consciousness streams overlapped for a moment, clashing.

I grabbed the bedframe with one hand and, instead of pocketing the box, I ended up shaking it. Surprisingly, the bug's awkward-looking legs held on tight to the cushion, so it didn't go banging around inside.

The images in my head tried to merge again, but not as aggressively this time.

I tossed the box lightly.

And the world spun around me three times. The images crashed into one another again, my knee buckled, and I collapsed against the bed. The box slipped past my hand and hit the floor.

I nearly threw up.

I tried to stand.

To crawl out of the box—

Wait!

Crawl out of the box?

What the hell?!

I cut the connection, and relief washed over me immediately. Yeah, this was definitely not going to be easy.

I picked up the box.

The bug had detached from the cushion either from the impact with the floor or because I'd accidentally given it some kind of command.

I placed the box on the table and set the bug back on the cushion, but it no longer seemed interested in holding on.

I'd need a fresh connection, but just the thought of it made my stomach turn. Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of time. I still had that bloody debt to work of, and I really needed to finally choose my damned ultimate!

I forced myself to lie down and go still. Closed my eyes, refreshed the mental techniques, stilled my body, and reconnected with the bug.

The sensation returned: two realities brushing against each other — my own, familiar and whole but dark, and the bug's, warped, desaturated, alien.

Step one — stabilise. Mentally, I gave the instruction: latch on. The bug's legs twitched, and the tiny hooks dug into the soft surface.

Its body went still again in a more stable position this time.

Good.

Minimum objective achieved. But since I was already linked… why not go further?

Detach, I commanded.

It wasn't a verbal order, and I didn't need to move each leg, or every chitin hook individually. I wasn't managing the step-by-step motions or fine-tuning balance, that was handled by the AI inside the bug. My role was to decide what to do, not how.

Turn right, I instructed, and the bug shifted slightly. Left legs peeled away, right ones advanced. Precise. Mechanical. Almost like a combat drone, but without the hum of servos.

I tried something more complex: climb down and walk a circle around the cushion.

The bug moved.

Slowly, a little awkwardly, but it moved exactly as ordered.

It was… surprisingly smooth. And there was one more thing I really wanted to try. Possibly a bad idea, but I imagined the command: take off.

The bug immediately deployed its wings. The shell split open like a pair of valves, and a short, low buzz filled the air. I could partially see my own wings.

The bug lifted vertically, and I guided it in an arc above the table, then hovered it beneath the ceiling, surveying the room.

I cut the wings, dropped into a dive, pulled up, looped once to the right, then the left, then a graceful arc across the air.

The bug responded perfectly. I'd expected it to feel a bit like Monkey, but no. The sensation was completely different.

To avoid overloading and losing myself in the experience, I brought the bug back to the cushion and severed the connection.

No nausea.

No dizziness.

Now I just had to learn to do all this on the move.

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