Chapter 65. Understanding Power
After training for a few more times, I was able to squeeze my battery until around 29%. I didn’t want to take it any further than that. It was around lunch, so I decided to eat while waiting for my battery to recharge. After I left the range I went to the first person I saw. “Excuse me, but can you tell me where the mess hall is?” The office worker looked at me with a strange expression before forcing a smile, and being overtly polite. “Of course my young hero! You just take a left at the end of that hall, then proceed straight, and you’ll find yourself there. Good luck on the rest of your training.”
And with that the office worker ran off in the opposite direction. I shrugged at the odd behavior. ‘I’m too hungry to wonder what that guy’s deal is.’ Making my way there I found the mess hall, and saw that it had a moderate amount of people eating together. Not packed, nor empty. I went up to the last part of the line to get some food. The side-kick in front of me noticed my presence, and gave me his spot. Then the next did, and the next as well. It kept happening until I was all the way down the line.
‘That is a nice perk of being on the hero internship, I must admit.’ I had no idea that while I was eating at a table by myself the others I had passed in line were talking. “Man, after watching that kid battle I can’t look into his eyes anymore.” “I know I feel like that red eye of his is from a Raiju!” “It feels like he is looking into my soul with it.” The rumors spread while I was blissfully unaware.
After finishing lunch I had about 60-70% battery. ‘I can run the test a few more times now. After that I think I should focus on different training. Maybe trying to increase the amount my battery can handle? No, that training is slow going. Increase the amount of temperature my body can handle? That is a good idea, but I don’t know the best way to train that, plus this isn’t really a good place to train that to begin with.’ I kept bouncing idea’s off of myself while returning to the range again.
I did the shootout session twice before taking a break. ‘I have about 40% left in the tank. I can try this testing out one more time, or think of something else to train.’ Then it hit me. What about increasing the amount of electricity I can generate myself? ‘How would I even do that? I know one way to do it is to increase the maximum my battery can hold. Doing that my battery will generate more to keep up it’s 1% per minute generating speed. My abilities work off of a percentage of total and not a set amount. This means they will use more power the more I have total. This also means they become more powerful later while I can still use it for the same amount of time.’
‘If I can up the amount per minute permanently by just 1% per minute I can effectively double my time in each ability. Aside from overheating of course. So the big question is how would I do it? Well I have to answer some questions before I tackle that one. Where is my battery? How does electricity gather there? Where does my electricity come from?’
I sat up from where I was lying down in the range. I quickly went into my room and got my charger. I plugged it in and put it into my mouth. I then got onto my bed, and began to meditate like I did to follow the electric flow in my brain. Except this time I was feeling the flow of electricity going into my battery.
After some time I was able to come to a conclusion. ‘My entire nervous system. That explains so much. Like the ability to use it to control myself even when ‘Brainwashed’ by Shinso, and shouldn’t have any control over anything below my brainstem and not having an actual battery in my head. The high pain resistance. Pain is made by electrical impulses from the nerves to the brain. My nerves almost always have extra charge making it harder for a charge to get to my brain to tell me I’m in pain. I assume the lower my charge is the more I can feel pain then, so watch out for that.’
‘Anyway if my battery consists of all of my neurons/nervous system then the way that I was normally increasing it was probably by just forcing my neurons to handle more power than normal; kinda like building muscles. Either that or I was making more neurons… Is that even possible? To make more neurons than normal? No that is a question for another time, right now I need to focus on making my body make more electricity than it already is. So that means I need to figure out what makes neurons produce electricity.’
As I was looking up more on how neurons worked. I already had a basic understanding from researching the brain, but I wanted to understand neurons themselves now. I had a thought. ‘When in ‘Bullet Time’ am I powering the battery directly? No wait, probably not. It is probably taking extra electricity from other parts to increase the amount of power going to a different portion. That is why I still lose a good amount of charge per minute.’ Getting back to researching it took awhile, but I eventually found something.
“Well this is a terrifying idea, but I could try and keep Amping my frontal lobe with more power to encourage the cells to be able to produce, and transport more. Just try and do the same thing I did with my eye. I think I got lucky on that experiment though. I’m left with the idea of getting stronger, but the idea is basically I get stronger, permanently injure myself, or die.” I shook my head at the only plan I could come up with. “Well even if I eventually decide to try it, I need to be in top shape for tomorrow, so I’m gonna have to wait.”
‘So the do nothing category is chosen. It has been an hour or two since I started. I think I’m gonna go back to the range, train until I run out of battery, then come back here and charge myself while thinking of my next move from there.’ After coming to a decision I left my room and went straight into the range again. After I ran down to about 30% I left the range, went and ate at the mess hall for dinner, again with the people letting me go first. After I was done eating I left for my room, changed, and then charged.