Chương 72: The Fountain of Youth Problem

S-Power: 571/571 [Control Level: Supreme] I checked my balance the moment I came out of hyperfocus. In a single session, ridiculously long as it had been, I had left Selina's records in the dust. From an efficiency standpoint, it was an absolute triumph. The only thing keeping me from celebrating was a far more basic concern: my stomach was twisting itself into knots with hunger. My body wanted fuel immediately, with no delays for audits or analysis.

I clicked the mouse to pause the timer running on my monitor and pushed myself away from the desk. My legs felt strangely heavy, like I had just finished a brutal forced march. The kitchen was quiet. The note I had left for Mom on the dining table was gone. I opened the refrigerator and let out a satisfied grunt. The stockpile of food had been noticeably depleted. Perfect. That meant her metabolism was running at full throttle and she was steadily consuming calories while the hidden reconstruction continued.

I did not bother with moderation. I loaded a deep bowl with a generous mound of braised meat and vegetables and shoved it into the microwave. To hell with calorie counts, diets, and macronutrient ratios. With my metabolism, I could eat whatever I wanted. The only thing that mattered was whether it tasted good. I carried the steaming bowl back to my room, dropped into my chair, and started tearing through dinner while reviewing the training statistics. The numbers did not lie. My metrics had nearly doubled.

The result was phenomenal, but so was the cost: seventy-two straight hours of strain. Three full days without stopping. My body had survived that marathon only because my endurance had been pushed to the absolute limit and because the immersion itself had taken place in a controlled sleep state. Without that safety net, my brain probably would have cooked itself somewhere around hour thirty. After chewing through another bite of meat, I pulled up the webcam recording.

It had captured the first ninety minutes of my trip. This time, the sight did not shock me. People adapt to a new normal surprisingly fast. On the screen, I stood in the middle of the room with my eyes closed, looking like a classic movie sleepwalker. The details, however, were mesmerizing. Invisible steps made of compressed energy formed beneath my feet. They were massive, crude, and absurdly dense. From a tactical standpoint, they were completely impractical, taking up far too much space.

As a way to burn through excess S-Power, though, they were the perfect furnace, devouring a ridiculous amount of resources every second. My subconscious had worked like a top-tier optimization engineer. If the goal was to improve control through resistance, then the logical solution was to create the maximum possible load. Similar invisible supports appeared beneath my palms, while miniature ultra-dense spheres spun at insane speed on my fingertips, like kinetic rounds.

After work that precise and that destructive at the same time, it was hardly surprising that my control level had skyrocketed to Supreme. Then there was the final touch: a protective film rippling around my body, this time thick enough to resemble viscous armor. In a real fight, operating in that mode would have drained my reserves in moments. Here, however, fueled by continuous regeneration during sleep, the entire process ran without interruption. The conclusion was simple and cynical: the method worked.

If I could maintain this pace for a year, I would eventually reach the kind of reserve capacity flaunted by local heavyweights like Mary. After finishing the first serving, I grabbed the empty dishes and headed back to the kitchen. My body was demanding a second round with growing insistence. That was where I found Mom. She was sitting at the table, and the changes in her appearance were immediately obvious. No miracles had happened. She had not transformed into a twenty-year-old supermodel.

But the gray hair, the unhealthy yellow tint in her skin, and the permanent bags under her eyes were gone. She looked as if someone had lifted ten years off her shoulders along with the burden of chronic illness.

"So I wasn't imagining it," she said with a gentle smile, turning toward the sound of my footsteps.

"I heard the microwave timer beep through my sleep."

"I've wrapped up everything I needed to do, so now I'm all yours," I replied, scooping a second helping of meat straight from the pot.

"How're you feeling?"

"Honestly? I don't even know how to answer that." She yawned softly and reached for the blender on the table, where several large capsules of medical concentrate had already been measured out.

"Ever since you started this procedure, all I've done is go back and forth between the bed and the fridge. I eat, then I fall asleep again. I don't have the energy for anything else. It's like somebody pulled the batteries out."

"It'd be strange if you did have energy for anything else," I said as I sat down across from her.

"Your body's going through a complete overhaul right now. Entire systems are being rebuilt at the cellular level. That takes a huge amount of energy." The blender roared to life, turning the mixture into a smooth slurry, followed by the dull click of the microwave door. We settled in across from each other. My meal looked considerably more appealing: juicy, steaming meat. Mom, meanwhile, had to make do with a tall glass of thick gray sludge that smelled overwhelmingly of artificial strawberry flavoring.

It was hard not to feel a little sorry for her, but business was business.

"I think I was eating ten times a day," she complained, taking a cautious sip from the glass.

"I even woke up in the middle of the night starving, came in here, and mixed these shakes. I still don't get how you managed to sleep through all that noise without hearing a thing."

"Back then, an artillery strike probably couldn't have woken me up," I said with a faint grin.

"Why're you drinking it so slowly? Your body needs every bit of building material in that formula right now. Don't drag it out. It's not exactly something worth savoring."

"That's the problem. I can barely get it down." She grimaced at the thick liquid.

"I can tell my body's running on empty, but that insane appetite I had yesterday is gone. I'm basically forcing myself to drink it." I mentally compared her symptoms to the readings from the ongoing internal processes. Everything matched. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"That means some of the background work has been completed. For starters, your blood vessels have been cleared of plaque, your circulation has normalized, and your receptors are finally processing glucose properly without spikes or dysfunction. The initial crisis has passed, and the overall strain has dropped. Since your body's stabilized, we're ready to move forward according to schedule. It's time for the next phase of the operation." Mom froze with the glass halfway to her lips.

A spark of genuine, almost childlike curiosity appeared in her eyes. It was the look people gave someone who had promised to fix an old, long-broken machine and had actually shown up carrying tools.

"So what's next?" she asked.

"We're going to strengthen your skeleton," I replied, biting into another piece of meat.

"Your medical records show osteoporosis. We've already completed the first phase. The cells that were steadily breaking down your bone tissue from the inside have been completely eliminated. Now we need to accelerate the repair process and undo the damage." [Special Command: Maggie, activate the builder cells at maximum capacity and prioritize aggressive calcium absorption, increasing bone density and structural strength.] The reaction was immediate.

Mom, who had been forcing herself to sip the sludge only moments earlier, suddenly downed the rest of the shake in a single gulp and immediately reached for the blender to make another batch.

"Well, looks like the bottomless appetite's back," she muttered as she poured herself another serving of the gray mixture.

"Your skeletal system suddenly needs an enormous amount of raw material, especially calcium. I'll place an order today. We need to stock the pantry with the right foods and some high-potency vitamins." I made a mental note to myself.

"But that's only part of the plan. The tests showed that your body can reliably sustain up to three processes at once. So we're going to start another phase in parallel."

"Hang on." She raised both hands, cutting me off.

"If we need supplies, why don't we just go to the grocery store together?"

"We're not exactly hurting for money," I reminded her calmly, referring to my new salary.

"There's no reason to lug heavy bags around. A delivery service can have everything at our door in half an hour."

"It's not about the money, Tom." She shook her head, and ordinary human weariness crept into her voice.

"I've been stuck inside these four walls for almost a week. I need to get outside, walk around, breathe some fresh air. If you put a third command on me right now, I'll go right back to being a hibernating groundhog whose entire life revolves around sleeping and eating. Give me a couple of hours to feel like a person again." I considered her argument. A patient's mental state was every bit as important to recovery as biochemistry.

"If it matters that much to you, then fine. No problem." I shrugged.

"We'll postpone the next phase until tonight. I'll start it in a few hours."

"Good." For the first time since lunch, a genuine smile spread across her face. She drained the glass in one go.

"Just give me half an hour to get ready." While she was getting cleaned up in the bathroom, I returned to the blender. After calculating the metabolic risks, I prepared another heavy-duty nutritional shake and poured it into a plastic bottle for the trip. There was a good chance her reserves would run dry halfway through our outing and her body would demand an emergency refill.

"I'm ready," her voice called from the entryway. Mom stood by the door fastening the tactical vest I'd given her recently. Every pocket, originally designed to carry magazines and detonators, had somehow been stuffed full of discount coupons clipped from local newspapers. The result was eclectic, but perfectly in character for her. Our luck ran out in the apartment parking lot when we crossed paths with the neighborhood's unofficial public-relations department: Mrs. Henderson from the next building over.

The elderly woman was out walking her terrier.

"You look wonderful, Maggie," she said, stopping beside our car with obvious surprise.

"Is that from that new moisturizer you mentioned the other day? You'll have to tell me what brand it is."

"Of course, sweetheart. I'd be happy to." Mom practically glowed as she straightened her shoulders. Any woman, regardless of age, enjoys discovering that the biological clock has suddenly started running backward. The scene, however, immediately put me on alert. Attention was a liability. I waited until we had pulled out of the complex and merged into the slow-moving traffic headed toward the shopping district.

"Mom, have you ever thought about moving?" I asked, steering with one hand.

"Moving where?" She turned toward me, surprised.

"Anywhere nobody knows us. That's the important part. Somewhere far away from this neighborhood."

"Tom, I'm not sure where this is coming from." A hint of tension entered her voice.

"Think about it," I said calmly, keeping my eyes on the road.

"We've barely started. You've only gotten maybe ten years younger, and the neighbors are already asking questions. The changes are going to become a lot more obvious from here. Excuses about miracle Korean skincare aren't going to work forever. The last thing I need is rumors spreading around the neighborhood that we've got a secret lab in our apartment or an actual fountain of youth hidden somewhere. That's not safe." She sat quietly for a moment, watching the neatly trimmed lawns glide past outside the window.

"I get what you're saying," she said thoughtfully.

"I've lived in that apartment for five years, and I've gotten attached to it, but if I'm being honest, my roots don't run that deep. If your calculations say we need to move for safety reasons, then we'll move. We'll find somewhere else."

"Thanks for understanding." I gave a brief nod, feeling a knot of tension in my chest loosen slightly. One less problem to worry about.

"Wait a minute." She suddenly slapped her knee.

"What about your apartment in Los Angeles? You still haven't paid off the mortgage."

"I'll handle it," I said flatly.

"I might lose some money to interest charges or early payoff penalties, but that's collateral damage. I'll live with it. If I'd known these abilities were going to awaken even six months earlier, I would've structured my finances very differently. But it is what it is. We adapt and keep moving." At the supermarket, we worked methodically. I loaded the cart according to a strict list: quality protein, fresh vegetables, and several packages of specialized supplements. Once we got home, we quickly put everything away.

"Ready for the next round?" I asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"Oh, give it a rest with your commands already." She had somehow managed to tie a house apron over her jeans.

"At least let me help you prep the meat and make dinner."

"There's no need for that." My tone was gentle but left no room for debate.

"I'll handle the cooking myself. I need to stay nearby and keep an eye on your condition anyway, so I might as well make myself useful. I'll cut the steaks."

"So my evening plan is still nothing but eating and sleeping?" She folded her arms across her chest with a scowl.

"Think of it as a medical protocol. Right now your body's going through a massive reconstruction project. Your main responsibility is not getting in the way while it allocates resources. Less unnecessary activity means better efficiency."

"Fine." She waved a hand in surrender, conceding defeat to my logic.

"What's the assignment this time?"

"We're going to work on the hydraulics. We're replacing the lubrication in your joints. The cartilage in your knees and spine has been worn down by years of spending long days on your feet. We're going to make the whole system run smoothly again, without grinding, friction, or pain." [Special Command: Maggie, begin accelerated production of youthful hyaluronic acid and collagen throughout all cartilage tissue.] The accumulated fatigue hit instantly.

Her eyelids grew heavy, her shoulders relaxed, and she obediently shuffled toward the bedroom. My calculations suggested that by the time this cycle was complete, she would look at least another ten years younger. Left alone in the kitchen, I began stocking the refrigerator shelves with the fresh groceries. Slipping a wireless earbud into one ear, I started an audio lecture on family law and the legal complexities of shared custody.