He was seven years old now.
He rolled back and let his ears sink beneath the waterline, then descended in a lazy spiral toward the bottom of the pond which had been his world for three years.
He didn't know where to put his annoyance right now, so he just let it flow throughout his body as he sunk further…
He had just been thinking of creating iterations where, each day, he would release controlled portions of information from his vast memory, but now…
'I'll have to stop that kind of training. Thankfully, I already have enough of it integrated for now,' he concluded.
Then, a strong feeling arising in his chest and for some reason, a little smile crept up on his face. He knew why;
His past desire to be in touch in nature had finally been fulfilled.
He looked down, eyes still droopy. 'Rather than just being 'in-touch' with nature, I'm literally in it right now.' He let a small chuckle slide out of his mouth, sending bubbles spiraling upwards.
'Continue.'
That unconscious voice that had always been nudging him forward did it again. It was just four years wasted, just make sure it doesn't repeat itself, besides… aren't you immortal? It whispered.
'Yeah.' he replied automatically…
The annoyance thinned and washed out of him with that acknowledgment. In the end, time was a variable he could afford to burn, and his principle would remain the same; continue.
'I really need to get a grip on my micro-emotions' he thought.
His emotions didn't derail him, but they nudged at him; Annoyance, amusement, faint satisfaction… all of that, they were noise.
'And it's louder now that my spirit is suddenly at 100.' He added.
He then let himself settle cross-legged on the basin floor again, with his spine straight, hands resting lightly on his knees as water pressed evenly against his skin.
As he heard the usual roar of the waterfall, something else surfaced in his mind.
When he'd been examining his body and the basin earlier, he had sensed faint traces of blood in certain areas of the water. He noticed them as old, thinned-out residues, clinging to stone in places they shouldn't be.
This phenomenon, was not strange to him, it was just that it only happened when he had reached that part of his training which required him to bleed.
Still though, he could guess the cause of this one easily enough
He recalled; during his time integrating those memories, he had kept his Immortality constantly active. It had been automatic rather than deliberate as he didn't feel it consciously but the trait refilled everything before real and permanent damage could set in.
As a result, he had also, unintentionally, stayed underwater for four years straight without once coming up for air.
'On the bright side, my lungs and heart quietly adapted through the endless [HEAL] cycles.' He thought while his hair, akin to tentacles, floated wildly about.
'Redeemably, just as there are cons, so also are there pros…'
As he had slowly absorbed the memories, whenever his brain reached a threshold it couldn't endure, things had escalated.
At first, it was just his blood vessels popping here and there, with bright flashes of pain at the back of his eyes and deep in his skull.
Then it became worse.
His eyes had started bleeding, followed by his ears, then his nose and mouth, then all seven of his orifices at once. The pressure inside his skull felt worse than if something were trying to claw its way out.
And when even that wasn't enough, his eyes themselves had been destroyed. They burst entirely in their sockets before Immortality stitched them back together, molecule by molecule.
'The eyes are the windows to the soul,' he recited. It was a phrase from some refreshed corner of his newly integrated memory.
Integrating those memories from the version of himself who had been 350 years old in a galaxy marching toward existential apocalypse had proven useful indeed.
He'd remembered entire constellations of things; past goals and aborted projects, ambitions, conjectures, conspiracy theories, engine designs, weapon concepts, stellar models, pieces of science and technology, madness and philosophy, all of that, now sat within his reach like neatly labeled tools on a mental workbench.
'Don't get distracted, just continue.' The voice, which he had now given the nickname 'continue', nudged him forward once again.
'As it would turn out, the repercussion of integrating my memories is that I would have to experience every second of subjective time inside them… paid in real time by this body.'
'But still…'
He thought about it again, trying to pinpoint where exactly in those memories a noticeable time skip might have occurred.
*SHING*
He flexed a portion of his Spirit, sharpening his recall as more detail aligned and snapped into his focus.
'Ah. I see it now…'
Back then, on the toilet, holding that old data-slab, he had been reading [Paragon Ascends: A Tale of Tribulations] and he remembered a particular line of text with perfect clarity:
"He had gotten to Gulgoroth in less than the time it would have taken a mortal to blink. He sat cross-legged and changed his countenance to one of absolute graveness.
He remained like that for what may have seemed years to insignificant mortals. It seemed he was preparing himself for the moment of truth."
"Years," Haki said out loud underwater as bubbles formed silently around the word.
'That's where it lies.'
He hadn't just watched Sevven sit and experienced a time skip altogether, but rather, he had 'been' inside that stillness, bound to the passage of time as described in the book.
'So, I also felt the subjective time of someone else… a fictional character at that. That doesn't add up…'
It meant at least one of three things;
Either that story had not been entirely fictional.
Or his Spirit, when let off its leash, didn't care which layer of reality it linked to, real or fake.
Or the act of deeply reading and integrating the story made the experience feel too real, rendering the word 'fiction' insufficient.
He turned the thought over a few more times, probing it from different angles, but nothing fully satisfying came out of it.
'Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter anymore since I don't plan to do it again.'
Still, four years wasted, just like that. He'd known there would be a price, integrating those memories.'
'Anyways, let's see…' he called out the panel.
[Haki]
[Trait: Immortality]
Strength: 5.9
Speed: 3.1
Agility: 9.8
Defense: 19.3
Spirit: 100.0
'My defense went up as expected.' He thought.
'It still doesn't change anything,' he affirmed, as his thoughts became as calm as the depths once again.
Whatever he had been before, it didn't matter. He was him, his past was his past and this body, this pond, and this new life… this was his present.
At the very least, one thing remained constant in both lives;
'I'll just continue.'
Continuity.