Era of Disaster Chapter 178

Chapter 178: System

Author's Note: This chapter is about some theoretical knowledge, please don't find it dry. You guys can comment again after looking 'seriously' at it.

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The five of them had all entered LV2!

This was clearly a good thing, but not only could the others not believe it, even the new LV2s themselves had trouble believing in it. Perhaps they had been unfortunate for too long, and it was finally time for them to get lucky? However, after silently feeling through their own bodies again, each of them indeed confirmed that all five of them had truly entered LV2.

"Everyone, gather together and think about this: why has there been such a result!?" Bai Yi said.

This was extremely important. If they could find the reason behind it, then that would prove that the probability of getting through Metamorphosis wasn't the 2.31% that Yeye mentioned, and that there was actually a safe and stable way to do so.

They started up a power generator that they had transported here long ago. This generator wasn't normally used due to the lack of fuel, but they had to use it for the sake of getting Yeye to appear at this time. The main computer was Yeye herself, but for her to appear, just the main computer alone wasn't sufficient. At the very least they needed a speaker, a camera, and a display screen.

"It's been another year since you called me! And the conditions have gotten even more primitive!" Yeye started grumbling the moment she appeared. However, it was completely true. Yeye was the artificial intelligence of a research facility. She had gone from controlling half of a major research facility, to a small-sized research facility, to a few computers, to this old and run-down computer now. Things really were getting more and more primitive.

"The conditions are simple, sorry!" Bai Yi said.

"But there are some really important matters now that we need your advice on." Bai Yi didn't beat around the bush and went straight to the topic at hand. In actuality, they didn't have a lot of fuel with them either, so even if they had a generator, the length of time that Yeye could appear for wasn't too long. The amount of electricity consumed in starting up Yeye's main computer wasn't insignificant.

"En, speak then." Yeye saw Bai Yi's serious expression and kept her thoughts of grumbling and fooling around to herself.

"Actually, things are like this...!" Bai Yi detailed the happenings in New Christchurch rather simply, and talked about their changes. He, Momo, Woolf, Sharpei, and Pupu had all entered the LV2 Metamorphose Stage. After that, all of them started to discuss all the information they now had about activated cells in detail.

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LV0 Nascent Stage: Normal people, animals, or plants that were successfully infected by activated cells, as well as the offspring of evolved lifeforms.

◆Awakening

No matter whether it was normal lifeforms which had been infected with activated cells at the beginning, or the future generations of evolved lifeforms, all of them contained activated cells in their bodies.

Activated cells were normally in a dormant state, and they needed to be awakened to be activated. Awakening in the early stages was quite simple: it only required that the host body be healthy and for there to be sufficient nutrients available. However, awakening would become harder and harder in the later stages, and the food required would be more and more precious.

LV1-1 Binging Stage: After awakening, the activated cells would consume large amounts of nutrients in the host body and ferociously convert them into special energy, causing extreme hunger. In the early stages, Binging Stage lifeforms would fuse with genes from other lifeforms, causing large changes in their physical shapes.

LV1-2 Brutal Stage: The physical form of every lifeform would enter a stable state determined through long periods of natural selection and evolution. When the physical body abruptly changed, the body would become incompatible with the soul, and cause the lifeform to feel irritated and savage for no reason. Lifeforms could also lose their minds very easily.

LV1-3 Hypersomnia Stage: When the body and soul changed continuously and grew to a certain extent, the lifeform would instinctively sense the existence of the soul, and at the same time know what it was that it had to do... harmonize its body and soul again.

For the sake of achieving this goal, the evolved lifeform would naturally desire to sleep!

◆ Metamorphosis

The stage where the body and soul had readjusted to a certain level and reached a new state of balance.

An evolved lifeform would feel the existence of the soul for the first time after entering the Hypersomnia Stage. When the Hypersomnia Phase had persisted for a period of time, the lifeform would pa.s.sively begin to undergo metamorphosis. The general process was feeling the existence of the soul, continuously readjusting the body and soul, and finally reaching a new, stable state of balance. The moment that the body and soul harmonized completely, the lifeform as a whole would evolve in that instant, and manifest its absolute life field.

Absolute life field: The range of this field was limited to within the physical body. Through the absolute life field, the evolved lifeform could actively manipulate the special energy in their body, rather than using it pa.s.sively like before. The other usage of the absolute life field was to protect the components of the physical body from the control of others.

Pa.s.sive usage: Just like a normal person using their strength, this was a natural ability of the body. As for how the strength was distributed, it wasn't something human beings could control.

Protection against outside control: The physical body was usually made out of certain components. To cla.s.sify them based on their composition, these components were: water, blood, bones, proteins, fats, and muscles. To really divide these even more finely, the elements that made up these things were: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, pota.s.sium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium... and these elemental components were continuously increasing due to changes in genes.

Some evolved humans and lifeforms in the later stages could directly manipulate water, blood, or even an atomic element itself. The presence of an absolute life field guaranteed that the components and elements of one's own body couldn't be easily controlled by another. The 'absolute' in the term signified the inability to be violated. Of course, this was just talking about normal situations; special situations were another story.

Normal lifeforms didn't have an absolute life field. This proved that after metamorphosis, the body and soul didn't follow the kind of balance that normal lifeforms had, but achieved another, wholly new state of balance.

Awareness: awareness wasn't consciousness itself, but a form of measurement of consciousness that people in the later stages came up with. This was also known as divine sense, spirit, mental energy... and so on.

Consciousness was very important; practically all the actions taken by a lifeform were connected to its own self-consciousness. The stronger one's awareness, the stronger one's ability to control the energy inside one's own body, and the greater the amount of energy that could be controlled at any one time as well. Awareness couldn't be consumed like energy, but it could become fatigued instead. When a lifeform's awareness was fatigued, its control would become insufficient even if its awareness was very strong.

The best way to recover awareness was to rest. Ideally, a lifeform would enter deep level sleep, womb sleep, or meditation in order to experience a good quality of rest.

1. Strength of awareness: The amount of energy and matter that a lifeform could control at the same time. This was also related to the strength of the absolute life field.

2. Precision of awareness: The level of fine control over energy.

3. Toughness of awareness: The amount of time that a lifeform could continuously control energy and matter for.

The three of these weren't independent, but rather, intimately connected with and affected by each other.

The changes of evolved lifeforms in the early stages were completely pa.s.sive; they could not actively make any decisions, and didn't know what to do at all. That was why the death rate was very high. However, lifeforms in the later stages found out that the greater the degree of harmonization between the body and soul during the Hypersomnia Stage, the smaller the difficulty of metamorphosis would be. It was basically like how where water flows, a ca.n.a.l would be formed1.

LV2 Metamorphose Stage: The physical form after metamorphosis wasn't fixed, but continued to change. Special energy, physical body, soul... practically all the aspects of life would change continuously, resulting in this stage being called the Metamorphose Stage.

After metamorphosis, through the influence of the absolute life field, the physical body, energy, and soul would change continuously, approaching a deeper level of pa.s.sive metamorphosis, and the connections between each aspect would grow closer and more intimate.

1. Energy Transformation:

All the special energy within an evolved lifeform's body came from the conversion performed by activated cells, and this kind of conversion was based within the physical body. Given special energy was the energy that an evolved lifeform would be used to using now, this special energy would gradually evolve special characteristics due to individual differences after entering the Metamorphose Stage. These characteristics were similar to fantasy tropes that people had in modern times, such as cla.s.sifying them into attributes like heat, cold, nature, healing, poison, et cetera.

The transformation of special energy was a gradual process, and wouldn't suddenly occur completely overnight. For example, heat-type energy would slowly increase in temperature, from 50 to 60 to 70 degrees Celsius, and not directly jump to 1000 degrees Celsius immediately. If that were to be the case, the lifeform itself wouldn't be able to withstand the sudden change in temperature to begin with.

2. Body Transformation:

Along with the changes to the characteristics of special energy, the physical body would slowly change as well, increasing the compatibility of the body and the attributed special energy inside. These two things happened at the same time, and were part of the process of transformation for a lifeform. These processes had no before or after to them, but instead happened simultaneously.

For example: in those whose special energy transformed to possess the attribute of high heat, the elemental composition and structure of the cells in their bodies would gradually change to become more heat resistant, and they would even achieve fire immunity in the end. Otherwise, if the body couldn't withstand the transformed energy within itself, then it would really be a joke.

Although the change in the physical body couldn't be seen from the outside, the basic elemental compositions and ratios in the body, as well as the cell structure, would be changing. Due to these kinds of changes in the physical body, the more powerful the lifeform was, the more difficult it would be to reproduce.

3. Soul Transformation: ...

4. Consciousness Transformation: ...

5. Absolute Life Field Transformation: ...

Of course, it wasn't possible for Bai Yi's team to know so much after just one discussion; they only managed to figure out a small part of it all based on all the information they had so far.

After they consolidated all the information that they had and compared the data on the experimental subjects with their own situations, Bai Yi said, "Perhaps metamorphosis isn't as difficult as we imagined. The evolution of a lifeform is, after all, a natural process; so, the better the readjustment of the body and the soul in becoming more harmonized, the smaller the difficulty of metamorphosis. It's basically: where water flows a ca.n.a.l is formed."

"Probably!" Yeye didn't object to Bai Yi's conclusion.

"However, just the cases of the few of you aren't enough to draw the conclusion that it's really like this. We need more examples to prove the accuracy of this theory," Yeye added.

"En. Anyway, while you guys haven't entered the Hypersomnia Stage yet, come find me everyday from today onward to receive hypnosis. This will help you to enter deep level sleep and automatically undergo rebalancing inside," Bai Yi said to Betsy, Bellamy, Romain Cristot, and Ulisses.

The four of them nodded. They definitely did not have any objections to Bai Yi's decision. Over this period of time, although they had not gone berserk, they still didn't feel too good within their bodies. If not for Bai Yi being in the Hypersomnia Stage, they would have asked him for help long ago.

After discussing and tidying up everything, Yeye felt that this place was too primitive and boring, and she decided to switch off her main computer herself, going to sleep. As for Bai Yi and the new LV2s, they were continuously trying to feel out the changes in their bodies.

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Author's Note: The basic system regarding the LV2 has already appeared. Although it isn't complete yet, I still welcome everyone to look for anything that is illogical.

Translator's Note:

A ca.n.a.l forming where the river flows is a Chinese idiom that means when the conditions are right, success will follow naturally.

whew lots of new information here!