"Hahahaha." CRACK! "Hahahahahaha!" CRAAAACK! "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" CRACK CRACK CRACK! Ves had beaten the game! He opened his arms and welcomed the bolt of lightning raining down from the skies. The bolt struck his cyborg cat first and immediately lost much of its strength. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮 Then it passed through Blinky's intangible body. Despite his immaterial nature, the cat managed to swallow and digest much of the weakened lightning bolt. Whatever was left after passing through these two cat-shaped filters struck Ves' body with the force of a heavy wind. Though his body could definitely feel the shocks coursing through his mind, body and Spirituality, the destructive energy trying to inflict ruination on him failed in their purpose. His strongest parts of himself bore the brunt of the assault with nary an injury. This forced the destruction energy to put its focus on his weak points. More and more of it pooled towards his brain, his internal organs and all of the other delicate and fragile bits of himself. The attacks were incessantly cunning and impossible to evade. An extremely powerful source provided automatic guidance to the lightning bolt attacks so that they always tried to seek out the path of least resistance. As Ves endured repeated lightning strikes, he figured out more and more of its rules and properties. The strength of the attacks that filtered through his defensive lines no longer fried his brain cells to an unacceptable degree. He was able to retain his full faculties under the current load. In fact, the constant injection of creation energy and the integration of the galactic energies from the Milky Way and the Red Ocean upgraded his cognitive functions with each passing minute! He could maintain more parallel trains of thought. He could memorize a lot more data points than before. He could accelerate his thinking speed with effort. He could make more observations whenever he looked at something. His ability to think and process information was constantly moving further and further away from the human baseline. It was rather scary how comprehensively he was improving. Not just his brain, but even his modified Archimedes Rubal bioimplant was undergoing a qualitative transformation after getting injected with creation energy! Ves became increasingly more fascinated with the existence and the wondrous properties of creation energy. He had a feeling that calling it 'creation energy' was a disservice to its true nature. Ves simply did not have the theory and the observation ability to analyze it on a deeper level. He could only behold its surface appearance and deduce its workings by looking at all of the changes it had brought in its wake. "It's so familiar, though." It was definitely related to the spiritual energy attributes he was familiar with. It displayed a lot of familiar characteristics that Ves was accustomed to when he manipulated his own life-attributed spiritual energy. At the same time, it also showcased characteristics that Ves associated with universal life energy. This became most evident when he looked at how the creation energy handled his self-inflicted injuries. As his open wound on his chest started to course with unnatural lightning and other energies, the power of creation not only mended what was broken, but conjured matter without repurposing it from the other parts of his body! Ves could see how it only took a relatively small quantity of creation energy to produce brand-new organic cells. His injured and diminished Jutland organ slowly became whole as organic tissue slowly grew out of the injured side. Not only did this regeneration restore what was missing, but also strengthen a vulnerability that allowed the injury to happen in the first place! Evolution was taking place in real-time as guidance from either an unconscious part of himself or the entity responsible for the lightning storm caused his Jutland organ to develop numerous new mutations. One of those biological changes entailed the formation of a thin but hard bone covering that enveloped the entire Jutland organ! No longer would a powerful stab from a sharp weapon be able to nick the Jutland organ without impunity! Ves became both horrified and fascinated by these changes. Though he accepted these modifications because they were helpful to his own survival, he was put off by how little control he had over the entire process. The creation energy did not ask for his explicit approval. The creation energy did not listen to his input. The creation energy did not give him a chance to supply his own designs or specifications. Instead, it acted like a rogue human augmentation surgeon. Just like Dr. Jutland, the creation energy or its guiding intelligence implemented far-reaching operations that radically changed his body as well as the more intangible parts of himself! The only reason he didn't freak out and try to resist the intrusive changes with all of his might was because he recognized that this was ultimately a benign process. "An upgrade is an upgrade. Whether it comes from me or another developer is not too important at the moment." Ideally, he would like to exert precise control over every augmentation of himself. He was tired of letting others change him against his will. The current circumstances left him with no other choice, though. If the creation energy did not do its job, then his body, mind and Spirituality wouldn't be able to grow strong enough to keep pace with the gradually improving strength of the ongoing lightning punishment. "How come you are still ramping up after all of this time?! Aren't you tired of raining down so many lightning bolts? How much energy are you willing to waste on poor little me?!" Ves asked the dark and stormy clouds. CRAAAACK! "Can you communicate in a way that is different from striking me with your energy?!" CRAAAAAAAACK! "Urgh!" The more lightning bolts rained down on him, the more he could understand the possibilities and limitations of creation energy. Ves found it odd that it did not appear from the beginning, but only came into existence after the incoming destruction energy had done its job and inexplicably transformed into its polar opposite. This phenomenon reminded him of the theory of yin and yang that his eldest sister Helena had once talked about. According to her, opposite elements shared an intricate relationship. They were two sides of the same coin, and were therefore able to cooperate with each other in ways that sounded counterintuitive. "I don't have the theoretical background to explain why all of this is happening." This frustrated him as he was a curious mech designer by nature. Fortunately, this wasn't the first time he was stumped by a phenomenon that far exceeded his level of understanding. Since he couldn't decipher what was taking place, he shifted his priorities. "How can I take advantage of this situation?" He thought about the duality of the lightning storm sent by an influence that was greater and more powerful than anything he could imagine. Destruction and creation. Death and life. Decay and rebirth. On and on the repetitive cycle continued. The lightning storm became less of a punishment mechanism and more like a reward mechanism now that Ves had found a way to cope with the more harmful elements of the incoming lightning strikes. Ves found that to be an odd idea, but the stronger he became, the more he embraced this strange idea. "It's… as if the justice enforced by the lightning storm only applies to the weak." He uttered. He gained a frightening glimpse of the ideology of the source of his lightning baptism. Those who succumbed to the power of destruction were undeserving of any mercy or sympathy. They were the dregs who toyed with powers beyond their comprehension and suffered the consequences of overreaching. If they died over the course of their punishment, they were guilty. "As for those like me…" According to the increasingly more detailed impressions he was able to glean from the storm clouds, people like him didn't suddenly turn innocent if they happened to survive the lightning strikes. A mass murderer was still a mass murderer. However, there was a sense of… respect towards those who could endure the lightning baptism. As long as Ves was able to pull himself through this inescapable judgment, the authority behind the lightning storm would absolve him from any guilt! The underlying message was fairly clear. "The rules no longer apply to the strong." It was a profoundly flawed and primitive stance to his modern sensibilities, but a part of him resonated with this idea. Besides, the fact that the lightning storm adhered to this ideology was an advantage to him at the moment! Ves just had to make sure that he remained strong and competent enough to take whatever this lightning storm could throw at him in order to earn his absolvement! While he was a lot more confident than before in his ability to survive this ordeal, he was not satisfied with sitting back and letting the lightning strikes shock his body as if he was submitting himself to a particularly unorthodox electric massage technique. "I can do more with this." He frowned. When Ves replaced the mindset of an unjust victim with the mentality of a mech designer, he began to view the current processes from a different perspective. "The lightning storm is acting like an engine of evolution." Ves affirmed. "The destruction component of the lightning bolt is like a force that weakens my entire being, with a special emphasis on my weak points. The creation component of the lightning bolt is a force that repairs and improves upon all of the damage that I have suffered earlier, allowing me to resist the next attacks with greater ease!" That wasn't all. Increasing his resilience was only one of the effects of the lightning strikes. The creation energy was capable of inducing more complex changes such as improving his cognitive functions and dramatically expanding the technical specifications of his cranial implant. The best part about all of this was that Ves did not even need to know any complicated theories and design any of the improvements in advance! A higher authority already took care of all of the difficult work! This suggested to him that as long as he could direct creation energy in a more purposeful manner, he could make use of it as an exceptionally powerful resource to realize powerful augmentations that were normally impossible for him to make. He looked at his transforming cyborg cat that had seamlessly grown a copy of his Jutland organ! Ves could have never imagined that his living divine artifact could possess its own Jutland organ. He had thought about doing this before, but he did not possess the technical expertise, resources and advanced medical equipment to produce this result. "However… the lightning storm doesn't care about any of these limitations. It is so powerful and so mutable that it can produce anything it needs on the spot. To the weak, it is the most terrible engine of destruction. To the strong, it is the most wonderful engine of creation!" Ves became fixated on the latter as he made a powerful realization, one that shocked him more than all of the lightning strikes he endured! "This is the closest manifestation of the legendary mech touch that I have ever experienced!" Each lightning bolt that struck him from above was like a celestial tap from a giant and unnaturally long finger. Each moment of contact was like a brief workshop session. Each shocking experience made him stronger and more capable. A grin appeared on his face. "If this is the case… what if I can hijack the workshop where I am being worked upon? What if… I exert more control over my ongoing evolution process?" He had already confirmed that it was possible for him to do so. Since he was able to upgrade his cyborg cat by granting it a miniature Jutland organ, what else could he do if he let his imagination go wild? He looked at his incarnations and his own body. When he analyzed himself through Gloriana's perspective, he spotted countless different shortcomings and suboptimal implementations. The lightning storm didn't seem to be interested in addressing all of these issues. It was capable of doing so much, but its lack of greater intent meant that it was squandering far too much of its potential. "No more! If you won't put your power to good use, then I will!" His passion and his imagination became stoked by all of the possible changes he could make! "I'm going to need more tools."