He sat in the med bay, fully stabilized by Nixon, the Association's stationed EMT-mage. Nixon hovered over Nathaniel's chart, eyebrows raised, noting the impossible: by morning, after only minor exposure to the base's standard healing systems, Nathaniel had completely recovered. The speed of it was unprecedented.
Nathaniel's eyes still faintly glowed white as he focused on the new window flashing across the interface.
MAX REGEN function active.
It had happened in seconds. Last night, he had been drained — today, he was rejuvenated. It made sense, he reasoned. Being submerged in a bacta tank for so long had effects even if he couldn't consciously recall them. His photographic memory filled in the blanks, vividly recalling the feeling of healing energy each time it touched him: the subtle surges from Merel, Nixon, and — most of all — the overwhelming presence of Professor Wolfsbane when he visited the hospital.
It was like watching a fire burn, but instead of pain, it left warmth.The recovery didn't just soothe — it saturated him. The heat of old burns didn't just fade; it cooled from the inside out, leaving a high, a calming rush like painkillers flooding his system. But unlike narcotics, he remained fully lucid, thinking, breathing — alive.
Nathaniel leaned back slightly, still feeling the aftershocks of the ura he had absorbed.
The MAX REGEN pulse still lingered in the air like an afterimage, but Nathaniel wasn't celebrating. He leaned forward on the bed, hands braced against his knees, mind moving faster than his body.
Uratsu.The fundamental life current that Neo-humans wielded, the blood of evolution itself. It was supposed to be rigid — slow to adapt, slow to shift without years of training, conditioning, and genetic fine-tuning.
And yet…
Nathaniel flexed his fingers experimentally. Tiny arcs of soft light flickered across his knuckles, invisible to anyone without trained eyes.
He hadn't just healed.He had adapted.
The sensation was unmistakable. His Uratsu didn't just receive healing energy — it recorded it. It replicated it.The threads of restorative power were woven into him now, layered over his normal biological processes like a second skin.
Ura, by comparison, was something deeper.If Uratsu was the blood, then Ura was the soul — the primal core that fed energy into existence itself. Unlike Uratsu, Ura wasn't taught or engineered; it was felt, lived.Nathaniel understood that now in ways that defied scientific measurement.
The surge from last night wasn't Uratsu bending under strain. It was Ura awakening, pulling from memories he didn't even know he possessed — memories of healing, battle, transcendence.
Nathaniel exhaled slowly, aware that his body had begun reshaping itself on an instinctual level. His baseline stats had shifted. His natural limits had blurred.
This wasn't regeneration.This was integration.
The interface blinked again at the corner of his vision:
Notice: Uratsu system calibration — complete. Ura synchronization — pending.
Nathaniel smiled slightly — not with arrogance, but with understanding.
"I'm not recovering," he thought, "I'm evolving."
The rules he had been taught — the slow climb of training, the measured pathways of enhancement, the delicate balance of Uratsu management — they didn't apply to him anymore.
The world thought in terms of ceilings and barriers. Nathaniel had begun to realize he had neither.
The feeling was both exhilarating and dangerous.
He closed his eyes, steadying his breath, feeling the new pulse of energy weaving through muscle, bone, and mind.
He had no words for it yet.Only instinct.
But one truth was already becoming clear:
Ura wasn't something he had to control. it was something he had to understand and understand completely he would
Nathaniel sat up in the hospital bed he layed upon looking to the left side of his bedside table as he saw a standard issue tablet thin and sleek in its make. He pocked it up as he turned it on on it he saw his results.
there was a noticeable increase he had jump, from mid C-rank to a low A-rank which showed his growth.
Nathaniel sat quietly, the thin tablet resting against his knees, screen glowing in the dim light.
He wasn't surprised at the classification change.The numbers, the rankings, the "elite" labels — they were just measurements. Tools.He knew the nature of augments went deeper than the way the Association cataloged them.
Augments weren't granted like medals.They weren't earned through training alone.
They were born — forged in the crucible of soul and body, shaped by genetics, willpower, trauma, even hidden facets of a being that normal senses couldn't detect.Every augmentation was a mirror to the inner self, an echo of nature given form.
Nathaniel understood that instinctively.Perhaps he always had.
The classifications — Multiplier-Type, Exponent-Type — were a framework designed by those trying to order the chaos of natural evolution.Useful, but ultimately shallow when compared to the truth he could feel blooming inside himself:
Uratsu — the life-force.Ura — the untapped, wild energy that existed in every living being but which only few could command.
He closed his eyes, breathing in slowly.
When he had first awakened, he had thought Uratsu was simply energy to fuel action — kinetic motion, bursts of strength, durability against attacks.
But now...
After the trial.After the surge.After the memory — or perhaps instinct — had reawakened something dormant inside him...
He could see Uratsu for what it truly was:Not just energy.A living record.
Every time his body touched an energy field — whether through healing systems, battle auras, or even environmental resonance — his mind captured it. Not just the shape, but the feeling, the memory of it.
His sensory perception was evolving without conscious effort.Not memorizing by thought — but memorizing by existence.
He opened his eyes again, silver irises faintly tinted with flickers of amber as his Ura stirred in response to his clarity.
He understood now:He was not growing stronger by accumulation.He was growing stronger by recognition.
Recognition of forces that were always there — that had always been part of him — and which the world around him merely reflected back.
Nathaniel stood slowly, setting the tablet aside.
No sense in chasing ranks, or classifications, or titles.
All that mattered was this:Understanding himself.Fulfilling the shape of the soul he had been born with — or perhaps created for.
The future was no longer something to ascend toward.It was something he was already walking within — step by steady step.
the interface opened up signed off as complete it read as follows
Stratagem re-evaluation
assigned mission has been completed
rewards: efficiency points
you have leveled up 5 times
you have been assigned 25 stat points which have been distributed evenly upon level up.
Nathaniel scanned the interface, his expression unreadable.
Level 5.Tier 1 Resonance: 0.12%.
The numbers themselves were meaningless without context — but to him, they spoke volumes.
Strength, Intelligence, Vitality, Stamina, Durability, Sensory...Distributed evenly across the board.It wasn't a bad growth pattern — in fact, it was optimal for someone whose foundation demanded balance.
No one stat dwarfed the others, and Nathaniel could tell instinctively that this wasn't random.His body, his soul, the strange systems entwined within him — they all valued adaptability over specialization.
Kinetic Muscle.
That was the name given to his augment.A crude term — but it captured the essence of what he did: store and release kinetic energy through muscle memory and tactile response.He wasn't just strong — he was a battery of potential motion, able to unleash devastating force when timing and intent aligned.
He leaned back against the wall, studying the numbers again.
STR 35. Enough to snap iron chains like twine.INT 30. Enough to remain fully aware of battlefield shifts without losing focus.VIT 40. A testament to his body's inherent resilience — maybe even beyond human parameters.STA 25. A little lower — perhaps because his energy efficiency hadn't caught up to his explosive growth yet.DUR 35. Reinforcing his frame, bones, muscles, tendons — making him durable under pressure.SEN 45.He paused at that number.
Sensory.The highest stat among all.
He could feel it — even now.The hum of the artificial lights above.The faint electromagnetic pulse of the building's security grid.The minute fluctuations in the heartbeat of the staff moving beyond the med bay walls.
It wasn't overwhelming.It was... clear. Natural.His mind filtered what was irrelevant without effort, focusing on what mattered.
Nathaniel set the tablet down and exhaled slowly, eyes flickering between silver and gold as his inner energies stabilized.
This wasn't something he had earned through ambition.It was something that had been waiting inside him — seeds long planted, finally given the right conditions to grow.
The term "Resonance Level" interested him the most.
He remembered something — a sliver of memory, not quite his own, like a whisper at the back of his mind:
"When the soul and the body echo each other perfectly...Resonance awakens."
Tier 1. Percentage 0.12%.Meaning he had barely scratched the surface of what true resonance could achieve.
Nathaniel wasn't discouraged.
He knew what this meant:The real journey wasn't upward.It was inward.
The more he understood himself, the more he remembered himself — the faster this hidden power would crystallize.
He smiled faintly, the gesture small and private.
"Let's see where this path leads," he murmured under his breath.
With that, he stood, the motion smooth and casual, his armor adjusting automatically to his movement.The journey ahead was still wrapped in uncertainty — but Nathaniel Alderman was no longer walking blind.
He had the blueprint of his existence in his own hands.
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Name: Nathaniel Alderman
Title:[ NONE ]
Resonance level: 5 Tier:1 Percentage(0.12%)
STR: 35 INT:30 VIT:40
STA:25 DUR:35 SEN: 45
Augment: Kinetic muscle.
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Nathaniel leaned back against the med bay wall, eyes narrowing as the Evo Matrix flickered across his inner vision — a seamless interface projected directly into his cognitive space.
At the center of the new system update hovered a strange object, displayed like a frozen thought:
[Reward: Thought Cube — Status: Acquired]
It spun slowly, an intricate geometric structure of pale light and shifting angles.No other details.No data strings.No instructions.
Nathaniel focused on it, but the Evo Matrix returned nothing — no readable energy signature, no hint of its purpose.
Strange.The Matrix was thorough by nature, an extension of his soul and biology — if it wasn't giving information, it meant one of two things:either the Thought Cube was beyond its current processing tier,or it was designed to only reveal itself through usage.
He frowned slightly, a subtle tension crossing his jaw. His black hair, tousled and uneven from sleep, cast a shadow over his right eye as he stared at the display.
"Not immediately hostile," he muttered under his breath, the words more for anchoring his thoughts than anything else.
It wasn't a threat.At least, not yet.
Nathaniel closed the interface with a small pulse of willpower, letting the Thought Cube remain stored within the deeper strata of his Matrix.He would address it when the time was right — when knowledge, not instinct, dictated the moment.
For now, it was simply another unknown.Another key, waiting for a door he had yet to find.
Outside the room, Nixon and Ginah stood by the door, quietly observing through the small glass panel. Nathaniel sat up from the bed, his posture composed, his black hair falling into place over his sharp features.
For a moment, he simply stared forward, unmoving — his expression calm but unreadable.
Then, almost inaudibly, they heard him murmur:
"Accept all rewards."
There was no grand spectacle. Just a slight shift in the air, like a faint gust stirring around him. Nixon instinctively glanced at his portable scanner — the undersheath readings from Nathaniel's suit had bumped slightly.Fortitude rating: 3.0 → 3.2.
Nixon frowned.That's not normal, he thought. The readings shouldn't have jumped like that without external healing.
Ginah glanced at him, noticing the tension in his jaw."You picking up something?" she asked quietly.
"Minor spike," Nixon muttered, tapping the screen. "Could just be a late-stage stabilization. Happens sometimes."
Still, even as he said it, he knew that wasn't quite right. Stabilizations were gradual, not instant.
Inside the room, Nathaniel stretched his hands slightly, as if testing the limits of his body. No visible wounds remained. Even the tenderness around his joints — which should've lingered for another day or two — seemed completely gone.
Nixon gave a subtle nod toward the door. "Come on. Let's do the final checkup."
The two entered the room. Nathaniel, still focused but polite, cooperated easily as Nixon ran a few surface scans and quick diagnostic spells. No irregularities showed up — just a body operating at a peak beyond what his chart from yesterday suggested.
By the end of the evaluation, there was nothing left to treat.
Paperwork finalized, Nathaniel was cleared for discharge.No questions asked. No answers offered.He simply gathered himself, nodded in thanks, and left the med bay behind.
Outside, under the white lights of the hallway, a strange silence seemed to trail him — not heavy, but perceptible, like the quiet before a distant storm.