[Alec Lanterns]

[Magic Pioneer I - Reacher - Stopwatcher]

[Stats:

[Strength -Wood]

[Dexterity - Mud]

[Agility - Wood]

[Durability - Wood]

[Resistance - Wood] (Down.)

[Intelligence - Stone]

[Energy - Wood]

[Skill Energy - Stone]

[Skills:

[Reader]

[Sovereign of Time's Blessing]

[Divided Consciousness]

[Seed of ???

[Registered Keywords:

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[???????????]

[?????????????]

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[???????]

[????? ?????? ????:

[Wrath]

[?????]

[????]

[????]

[?????]

[?????]

[Gluttony]

…

[Divided Consciousness.

[Your mind has split off into separate parts.]

Alec stared at his new skill in a slight daze. It had succeeded. He had succeeded. He couldn't quite believe it, even if he was experiencing the effects, which were even greater than he had imagined.

It came at the cost of lowering his Resistance stat by one rank, but it was worth it. It was a good thing he hadn't done it earlier.

If he had thought of and attempted it at a lower rank, he could have zeroed out his Resistance stat, which, if he had to guess, would lead to a fate akin to death.

Alec was writing down his thoughts on the experiment and his insights. At the same time, he was using his foot to draw Rita's face. He could do two things at once with perfect focus.

He could look at the world with the sharpness of two minds. He could read to stop time with one part of his mind and focus on modifying spell formations with the other part without needing to worry about accidentally releasing the timestop.

He could use one mind to catch up on the things he had read but not yet consolidated into active information in his brain, while the other part went about life as usual.

He benefited from both parts' activities.

[Divided Consciousness] was even better than Alec thought it would be. Although it was only mental, it was as if he had a clone that could do chores in his place. Of course, it was still him doing it. But he could mentally be in two places at the same time.

'This is way too overpowered…!' Alec couldn't stop grinning like a madman as he played around with both parts of his mind, testing out the different things he could do now.

Since it had been a while since he had eaten before he passed out, and even longer, counting the time he was out cold, Alec was hungry. The slight hunger had helped him sharpen his senses during the division, but now it was getting overbearing.

However, as he focused on the two parts of his mind, he realized that he could offload the feeling of hunger to one part and have it focus on ignoring it.

It wasn't a solution to [Gluttony]'s hunger since it reduced his multitasking ability, and he still ended up egregiously hungry after a while. But it was a band-aid. He could go longer periods without needing to gorge on monsters. He still needed to feed on them.

It was a huge plus.

After resting and recovering, which the Poem helped with, Alec naturally proceeded with the next step of his plan. It was what had made him split his mind in the first place.

Condensing his second circle and reinforcing his Heartguard weren't that difficult. He had already overcome the largest hurdle, so the rest went off without a hitch.

When he was done with that, he started preparing for an examination of the monster wearing Rita's face, but he wanted to test his limits first, so he knew how much he could modify his spells to bring out their full potential.

He went back to the lab with the other three monsters and started experimenting with various spells. To be precise, one part of his mind did that. The other part, since he didn't have anything else for it to do, focused on reinforcing his magic circles and Heartguard.

There was no harm in becoming even stronger, after all.

Time passed slowly while Alec prepared and experimented with whatever came to mind. Moira visited with an increasing span between each time.

Eventually, he was ready to use Scan 2 on Rita.

The final doubt he had was whether his spell would work through the glass coffin encasing her. Since it seemed like it was full of magic keeping her asleep and intact, there was a risk of waking her up if he did something to it.

It was a risk he had to take.

Alec's instincts were telling him that if he could find out what happened to Rita when she became a monster, he would be one or two steps closer to figuring out monsterification.

Since he was still hesitating and slightly tired from all his thinking over the past couple of days, he decided to rest a little before he made a decision.

Alec lay his head on the workbench and promptly fell asleep.

A while later, he woke up to the sounds of hissing, spitting, and growling. Rubbing his sandy eyes tiredly, he raised his head and looked around until he saw an angry cat charging at him.

No, it was trying to charge at him and failing. That was why it was making more sound than usual.

Someone had stepped on its tail, keeping it in place.

Alec knew whose foot that was.

"Milo…?"

He followed the leg upward until he looked the monster wearing Milo's face in the eye.

Monster Milo had stepped on the cat's tail, stopping it from attacking him while he slept.

That was the only conclusion Alec could draw from looking at the scene.

He did not get an answer.

Alec was dumbstruck by the implication of what he was looking at.

After Shim's death, monster Milo had remained completely void and passive, even when his arms were severed. The only time it reacted was when given food or when the other two monsters tried to squeeze into its cell. Since its bloodlust flashed constantly, Alec hadn't tried getting close to it.

It was still a monster, after all, even if it was different from the rabid animal ones next to it.

However, what it was doing right now went against everything Alec knew about monsters.

It wasn't hunger.

If monster Milo wanted to eat the cat, it would have done so long ago by pinching it with its toes and munching away. Alec knew it had the skills to do that.

No, the monster hadn't caught the cat. It had stopped it.

Most importantly, it was looking back at Alec with light in its eyes.

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