“It should be any time, now,” Nova said. She was in the secure pod vault with Aron, watching over Rina as the final stage of her awakening was progressing and documenting the changes in her.

lightsΝοvel “I’m actually a bit excited... and curious, and nervous. I didn’t get to see anything happening during my upgrades at all,” Aron distractedly replied.

Just as he was about to continue, Rina’s pod beeped, a notification that movement had been detected. She was waking up.

Rina stopped absorbing the liquid mana in the pod, so Nova stopped the mana feed and allowed it to drain out of the pod and into the room, where it evaporated and joined the rest of the mana in the atmosphere. The mana density in the pod vault was so high it would awaken any five people, but to Aron, it was akin to a warm breeze on a hot day, practically unnoticeable.

After a few minutes of outward inactivity, Rina blinked open her eyes and released a low groan. Due to concerns about interfering with the awakening process, Nova had only supplied mana and observed the process, nothing more, so Rina was rather stiff and groggy after having laid still for so long.

Still, Nova had collected a wealth of data for the imperial archive’s confidential records. There were akashic librarians collecting data on everyone else in pods undergoing the process of awakening, but those could only act as controls to compare Rina’s awakening to. After all, Rina had a couple of advantages. Not only was she in the most recent generation of medical VR pod, but she had also undergone a round of genetic enhancement beforehand. Not only that, she’d had her awakening triggered in a location with a much higher mana density—the pod vault during Aron’s own upgrade—and Nova had also “fed her” with as much mana as her body could handle during the awakening itself.

She found herself almost eager for the process to complete in others so she could compare the results. Her initial hypothesis was... exciting, to say the least.

Aron immediately cast a refreshment rune on her to remove her grogginess, causing Rina to jump in surprise. “The fuck is that!?” she exclaimed and rubbed her eyes. ‘I must still be dreaming,’ she thought, having seen lines of brilliantly glowing gold runes flowing from her boyfriend’s raised hand to her body. But after rubbing her eyes, they were gone as if they had never been.

“Why’m I so... tired...” she mumbled, her heavy eyelids wanting to close. “I don’t remember... sleep.” No matter how hard she tried to remember what happened, she failed to do so. To her, she was sitting next to Aron’s pod and watching him undergo what she thought was a special genetic enhancement, and the next moment she was in a pod of her own.

....

“Shit,” Aron cursed, realizing he had used runes in front of someone who was now awakened to mana. It was too late for him to call them back, though, as they had already begun taking effect on her, calming and revitalizing her after she’d been laying flat on her back for an extended period of time.

Aron caressed her face with his still-glowing hand as she finished waking up, feeling refreshed thanks to his nearly instinctive cast of the refresh rune.

“Did you see those weird glowy things that appeared out of nowhere?” she asked. She had never been told of mana’s existence, let alone seen it for herself before. But after her awakening, she was seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes and from a much higher viewpoint.lights

But due to her ignorance of mana’s existence, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing and thought it must be just the last bit of a lingering dream that she couldn’t remember having.

“Yes, I saw them. More than that, though, I’m the one who drew them,” Aron answered, twitching his finger in the air as though he was using a conductor’s baton and causing the runes to lift from her body and back into her field of view.historical

“What are they?” she asked.

“They’re runes,” Aron answered. “These ones in particular form a spell I call ‘refresh’, that calms and energizes the people I cast them on.”

Rina felt like that sounded familiar, so she thought for a moment, then blushed. She remembered all the times he had intimate moments with her into complete exhaustion due to his seemingly limitless stamina. Then, after pounding her half to death, she would always feel refreshed and ready for more after a short period of cuddling. Thus, he must have been doing the same thing to her every time he plowed her into a puddle of goo, as she was relatively familiar with the sensation she was feeling now.

“Care to explain what’s going on?” She narrowed her eyes and glared at Aron. It must have been his fault. Did he bang her into a medical pod this time? Were his thrusts so fierce they caused brain damage and memory loss? Did he slam her into a concussed state? She had to know!

“Why did I wake up in a pod?” she asked as she grabbed the side of the pod she was in and tried lifting herself to a seated position. As she pulled, though, instead of rising to a more comfortable sitting position, she heard a loud cracking noise and the handle she was grabbing to lever herself upright broke off in her hand.

“Let me help you up. You’re a lot stronger than you used to be and your mind hasn’t quite adjusted to your new body yet,” Aron said, then picked her up in a princess carry and brought her over to a chair.

He handed her a set of clothes, as the ones she was wearing had been disintegrated by the pod, but she tore them to rags trying to get dressed.

Without a word, he handed her a second set, which suffered the same fate, then a third, and so on. It wasn’t until her eighth failed attempt at dressing herself that he finally stepped in and put the clothes on for her.

She puffed out her cheeks and pouted at him. “I really liked those clothes, you know,” she said coquettishly.

“Here,” he put a pair of glasses on her face, “log in and I’ll explain everything in the simulation.”