Chương 334: Some Time To Think

"Aren't you a cute little thing, huh?" Using my exceptional skills that were honed to near-perfection by taking care of my little sisters and daughter, I quickly got the little chick to trust me, and she was currently sitting in my lap, using this sub-form's enhanced front-facing female attributes like a pillow. I wouldn't know how comfortable that is. Both Mari and Leou are similarly lacking in this department, not quite as much as my regular human self, though.

I myself am of the opinion that the best part to use as a pillow was the tummy for Leou, and the thighs for Mari. For Leou, despite being a very beast-like snow leopardfolk, her body was quite lacking in muscles, and she was all soft. Combine that with her fluff, and you had a recipe for a most excellent resting place for the head. As for Mari… Due to her doing her best to become a mechanist, she had built up some nice muscles.

She would never reach the same level of muscular might as my normal human self, but it didn't matter as it wasn't the point of it anyway. In particular, it seemed like her body only wanted to store fat in her thighs in particular, so it ended up being a part of her that was much softer than the rest–Not that her muscles weren't enjoyable, far from it… What are you thinking about, Mara? Nothing important, Nara.

When you say it like that, I feel like I missed out on something crucial It really wasn't anything crucial. … I bet it was something about Leou and Mari Who knows? Nara does have some sharp senses when it comes to this stuff, but I still don't think it is appropriate to tell her all about these sorts of things. Even if she is a system who definitely wouldn't be fazed by it, she was still my little sister, the first of the little sisters, as a matter of fact.

Once I managed to get her a physical form and she would finally be able to directly interact with the others, she would have to be a good example, and being overly interested in your big sister's love life wasn't really a great example to show the rest–How would I be supposed to deal with eight of them at the same time? Though to be fair, Xlown did play a bit of a hand in all of this as well, but she was way more sly about it, and she hasn't inquired about anything since I got together with Leou and Mari.

She's clearly very happy about having them as her mothers, though. I would have thought that it would be harder to include them in the family, but I guess I was just overthinking. My daughter was literally created by stagnant negative emotions, negative energy, and an old suit. It isn't like she had any other parents apart from me to move on from. Also, perhaps I was viewing everything with the wrong tints to begin with.

This family hadn't been built anywhere near like a normal one, so me getting into a relationship wasn't actually that big of a deal. I thoughtlessly brushed the fuzz on the little chick's head. She had quickly fallen asleep, once again demonstrating that taking a nap inside of a nightmare of mine was absolutely possible, and judging by the blind boy–Whose hand I was still gripping aggressively–It did have a similar effect to sleeping in the real world. I am still not clear on how exactly my nightmare trials work.

The real body of the person definitely remains in the real world in a state of slumber, but the body they have here seems more and more as if it is truly physical as well. It is a perfect imitation of their real body, down to any stain they might have on their clothes. It was almost as if the Dreamscape where the nightmare trials were actually located was some sort of realm and alternate dimensions, allowing them to physically exist in several places at the same time. …

This was quite crazy to think about, as it would bring this ability of mine to a completely different level. It was one thing to drag people into a nightmare. There were a fair number of monsters with abilities of that kind, but if my idea was correct, then the way mine worked went far beyond merely messing with a person's slumber… Even if the end result wasn't world-breaking, the possibility that I was messing with things like dimensions was nonetheless strange.

Anyone who would know about this would rightfully evaluate me as even more dangerous than I currently am believed to be. I mean, it is normal to see someone manifest a fireball, but if you learned that instead of magic, they opened a portal to a realm of nothing but fire to manifest their flames, then you would naturally be more worried about them, even if–At the end of the day–They just do the same things as a regular pyromancer. Mmh…

Having accelerated thinking is certainly incredible, but it often just makes me think about things for what feels like dozens of minutes, when I really was just standing perfectly still, focused on thinking so damned hard that only a single minute had passed in reality. This often made days seem way longer than they really were, but it was also nice since I could have lengthy discussions with Nara in parallel to a discussion with someone else without any problem.

Nara, do you think I could recreate what happened to bring Glown into this world using 'The Pod'? Are you thinking about getting more daughters? Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Xlown goes along well with my little sisters and Coco, but I was thinking that she might like having a sibling of her own, you know?

Even if I treat my little sisters and her the same way, they are still different, so I feel like it would be right for her to have someone like her that she can exchange with. … And I feel that it would be best to have someone similar to her in many ways. What do you think? I'm afraid that recreating the events that led to Xlown's birth will not be possible. It was mostly an interaction that was possible because you hadn't unlocked your powers at the time.

They were still undefined at the time, and this allowed for Xlown to be born Now that your abilities have been set in stone, it shouldn't be possible for it to happen again–Xlown is one of a kind, but I don't think a sibling of hers needs to be exactly like her. In my opinion, your little sisters aren't little sisters because they are all spirits.

They are as such simply because you decided so Thus, as long as you decide to make a daughter, she will be a daughter regardless of how different she may be from Xlown Right. You're absolutely right. Those were some nice words of wisdom. It really made me realise that there is something I need to make clear once this nightmare is over. And what could that be…? Let's keep it a surprise for now, but don't worry. You'll find out soon enough. Is the system hijack progressing?

Yes, but I think it will take a while longer… Then, let's keep discussing–How do you think I should make our next sister? I plan on using 'The Pod' for this once I am done with the current project concerning Lunovis. I am thinking that she should definitely be a beastfolk. An adorable little ball of fur, or perhaps of feathers? Can you imagine how incredible it would be to boop her little snout or beak? I just can't settle on what kind of beastfolk it should be, though!

Also, I worry a bit about how she'll integrate, considering that she would be the first to become part of the family in such a manner. The first who wouldn't have been a person before being a spirit. You don't intend to use a person's soul as the foundation? No, I will be doing everything from the ground up. The same thing I am doing for the offspring I promised Lunovis. Well, yes. But with Lunovis, you'll be giving him a baby.

So it is only natural that it is somewhat of a 'blank slate', but the little sister will already be somewhat grown up, won't she? Won't her lack of a pre-defined personality and memories be a problem? I know that it will probably be difficult, but I feel it in my guts that it is best to do it like this… Besides, I don't have any soul in my possession that I would consider to be little sister material. Nara slightly snickered before speaking. What about Conduit? I smiled slightly at this remark.

Conduit certainly has a great ability that would be great to have a disposal, but it just wouldn't work out. My current goal is to find a way to properly process him, or rather, this him, as he survived being killed and having his entire being ripped away, but anyway… I wanted to find a way to reliably process him so as to empower Anathema, and potentially give her a bit of his innate curse ability. Anyway, he is still around and obviously has a huge crush on Anathema.

Poor guy, he had never seen a female of his kind before. How could he possibly resist her innate charms? Besides, Anathema does find him quite attractive as well, so… Who knows, perhaps I'll get access to his powers on the simple account that he'll be my brother-in-law! Oh! I think I just got it You made it sound like it would take longer to hijack his system.

I thought I would take at least one more hour, but I guess it's like trying to pick a difficult lock and accidentally finding the right solution whilst simply probing around… Anyway, I'm in. Let me corrupt all of this business so that I have full control–I hope my mom doesn't get mad that I am messing with this! I am sure the Universal System would have already done something if it… She? Didn't want you messing around like this.

As far as I am aware, the Universal System encourages using and abusing loopholes anyway. Nara spent a few minutes 'corrupting' the blind boy's basic system, which he probably had zero view on anyway. By using the system as a bridge, Nara was able to pretty much get access to everything else. Many people rightfully overlooked the system in its usage as a way of power. For the vast majority of people, it only existed because of the feeling of absorbing experience, and that was it.

Few could actually view a system panel, and even then, the way the panel manifested was often enigmatic instead of straightforward. The so-called 'special system skills' were incredibly rare and seemed more like an exclusivity to people with a special system. As for the 'stats', they only increased as a result of absorbing experience, and they increased on their own without input, so there was zero need to care about the system, as the only thing it could do for most people was fully automatic.

Only the unhinged System Fundamentalists cared about it. However, the system was indeed everywhere. It was genuinely omnipresent. And the Universal System was an entity in charge of much more than just the system itself. I am uncertain how true that was, but I remember being told that the Universal System was actually a daughter of the greatest entity in existence, said entity being literally responsible for the existence of everything.

But apparently, that entity spent most of its time asleep, allowing whatever it created to do its own thing, waking up every so often to look at how things had progressed without its direct influence. Whilst it was sleeping, its various daughters would be the ones actually in charge of watching everything, including the Universal System, which was basically the highest authority whilst the great entity was asleep. …

I truly have no idea if any of this is even remotely true, but what is certainly correct is that the Universal System is connected to way more stuff than meets the eye, which makes the system itself connected to all of it as well. Nara was a sapient system herself, so she knew the details. Hence why she was so certain that hijacking a person's system would allow her to do way more stuff than one might initially assume. Twenty minutes passed in silence. I got it