Chapter 70 – Upgrade – Acceleration (2)
An experimental site attached to the Shelter Research Institute.
I am overcome by a strange sensation that I have never felt before.
If I were to express this feeling easily, I could say that I realized ‘electricity’.
It would be nice to say that I realized the ‘truth’ in martial arts style.
I stretched out my arms and clenched and unclenched my fists.
Fiery.
The five fingers and forearm muscles contract and relax. This is the familiar part.
But now one more sense has been added.
It is an electrical signal generated from the brain and spinal cord one step before clenching a fist.
It passes through the neck and shoulder and penetrates the ulnar nerve, which passes through the elbow, and the median and radial nerves further medially.
The moment the electrical signal arrives at each muscle and finger joint, it spreads out in all directions like high-speed lightning, scattering the brain’s commands.
You can vividly perceive the entire process.
“Why didn’t I know about this until now?”
Clench and open your fists, bend your neck, and jump in place.
Every time I do that, I feel the electrical signals that are created and destroyed countless times running through the neural network in my body.
[You can now feel the action of the neural network.]
“Is it a function of the implant?”
[That’s right. The implants that went into your body are derived from technology originally used for prosthetic limbs for wealthy disabled people.]
“Know. “I’ve read an article about that.”
I saw it in a copy of Hustler that I received from an American soldier I became friends with when I was deployed to Lebanon.
It was a photo of an old man shedding tears of emotion while massaging the buttocks of two naked women with his prosthetic palms.
A man who became a self-made millionaire after losing both his hands in an accident at the age of nine.
I could have sex as much as I wanted, but I couldn’t enjoy the feeling of touch at all.
Meanwhile, an implant technology was developed that creates sensation from a prosthetic hand through perfect neural control!
You can now feel the texture like a real hand!
A photo of a man over the age of 60 who touches a woman’s buttocks for the first time and sheds tears of emotion.
All of America cried.
The American soldier who gave the magazine cried, I who received it cried, and the Lebanese boy who gave it to me also cried.
[Since the implant and the neural network have just begun to interact, ‘feeling’ may be the limit for now. However, once you get used to it, your overall physical ability will improve, regardless of acceleration.]
“This feeling is so annoying. That annoyance when you try to force yourself to remember something you can’t remember… I feel it all over my body.”
[Hold on. This is because the inserted implant is automatically developing a neural network at this very moment.]
Since receiving the accelerated implant procedure, the nerves connected to it have been blinking and sending out their own signals.
“How long does it take to update this neural network? I think it’ll be hard to sleep like this.”
[About half a day from now? If you’re having trouble falling asleep because you’re worried, there’s a good way.]
“Which way?”
[You can use your stamina until you fall asleep from exhaustion. Normally, this would require you to move vigorously for a long time and be covered in sweat, but we now have a much more elegant way to quickly burn off stamina, right?]
It seems to be referring to the use of implants.
I focused my mind with the implant implanted in my spinal cord.
On and Off of the implants in my body.
I was able to ‘feel’ how to use it as naturally as bending and straightening my arm, as if it had been in my body from the beginning.
[I understand the excitement of obtaining powerful power, but be careful. Because the muscles and bones haven’t changed. If you are not careful, you will have minimal ligament damage, and in severe cases, even bones may be broken.]
Artemis warned.
It’s not like it’s broken, it’s broken… It’s just a real scare.
“I know.”
Soldiers who fell in love with new weapons and new technology have witnessed it in abundance during their active duty years.
A combat engineer from a humble background without a single implant.
He survived with all limbs intact despite spending most of his career deployed, preferring to roll around in the field.
This has several meanings.
Artemis didn’t know much about my career either, so she ended her warning with just one word.
This is the first practical test of the newly acquired power.
A drone came into the lab and flew close to me.
This is a Hornet drone developed by Artemis for urban security management.
A pair of coaxial rotating rotor blades are surrounded by a round plastic guard, and a battery, camera, and Taser gun are installed at the bottom.
The implant that I can feel inside my body, the neural network connected to it.
There was a kind of switch similar to an earth leakage circuit breaker between the two.
I don’t know if it’s made of organic tissue or an artificial prosthesis.
What is certain is that the breaker is currently off, and I know how to flip it.
It’s difficult to explain the principle to others, like raising and lowering your arms, but you can move them.
The drawbridge between the implant and the neural network goes down according to my will.
The moment the two legs connected in a straight line, lightning rushed from the spinal cord toward the nervous tissue of the entire body.
Gooooong!!!
A strange impact sound penetrates my ears.
At that moment, the world slowed down.
“Mmmuuuuu.”
Without realizing it, something similar to an exclamation came out, but it wasn’t human speech.
I hastily stopped my lips twisting into a bizarre shape.
“Ahhhhh.”
But I couldn’t even stop my lips right away.
My muzzle, which had already started pronouncing words, could only stop after a long time after receiving the command, ‘Shut your mouth!’
What I wanted to say was, ‘What is this?’
I can see the rotor blades of the Hornet drone moving one by one in front of me.
It’s as if the flapping of a fly’s wings was filmed with a high-speed camera.
I feel like I can stretch out my fingers and grab the rotor blades.
But unfortunately, unlike the hyper-accelerated consciousness, the body could not keep up at all.
Even if the bridge of your nose is itchy, and you want to scratch it, it takes ages just to lift your hand.
I was so frustrated that I raised the implant switch drawbridge.
Wooooo!!!
The world returned to normal speed with a strange ringing in my ears.
[What do you think?]
“Didn’t the scientist say in the lab’s audio recording that acceleration can be achieved up to 2.5 times? This isn’t at that level. It feels like it is accelerating at a much higher rate?”
The accelerated infectious agents we encountered last also moved at ridiculous speeds, let alone 2.5 times.
[That 2.5 times is the standard when a stupid doctor performs a poor procedure using cheap materials on an ordinary person.]
Artemis’ evaluation was scathing.
[The subjects I saw in the lab had the limits imposed to prevent physical damage released and were also deformed due to infection, so they were running at speeds that exceed common sense.]
I’ve heard stories about a mother who lifted a car to save her child who was trapped under a car, or a man who broke a metal pipe while under hypnosis.
This is a case where the restrictions that were normally placed to protect the body were lifted and superpowers were displayed.
However, there is not much talk about side effects such as injured ligaments or damaged muscles and bones.
“When you accelerate, your perception and awareness become faster, but your body movement cannot keep up. “It feels a bit faster, but it’s definitely not the 2.5 times the doctor said.”
[The neural network has been strengthened, but the muscles, skeleton, and joint tissue are the same. If you overdo it in this condition, you will 100% get hurt. So, the body movement was limited to be less affected by acceleration.]
According to records, the lab’s subjects only received nerve remodeling without musculoskeletal strengthening.
“But the lab scientist said it could definitely accelerate up to 2.5 times…”
Oh, now that I think about it, I don’t think they would have done research in that lab worrying about the subjects getting hurt.
They probably just changed people and experimented on them.
“It was like that. Well, the speed of the rotor blades has become so fast that I can see every single one of them spinning, and if my body moves accordingly, it will probably break in one or two places.”
[But it’s still worth it for now. Just shooting can have a great effect. Plus one more thing.]
Crash.
The Hornet drone in front of me suddenly aimed the Taser gun attached to the bottom at me and fired.
That moment.
Gooooong!!!
Acceleration occurred regardless of my will.
A silver needle flying towards me.
A thin wire connected to it.
The driving part of a Taser gun with sparks flying out.
All of that action caught my eye frame by frame.
I moved my body to avoid the needle aimed at me.
Moving your body under acceleration feels like moving your body under the deep sea.
Every time I take a step, I feel a pressure pressing down on my entire body.
If you move slowly without resisting it, it is the same as normal movement without acceleration.
On the other hand, if I moved against the intense water pressure, I felt like I was ahead of time.
Wooooo!!!
When I released the acceleration at the point where I had completely avoided it, the Taser needle passed 5 cm next to my temple.
[I programmed acceleration to be activated automatically when a dangerous attack suddenly occurs. It will help you survive in case of emergency.]
“For sure!”
It would be of great help in any situation, such as when a surprise attack occurred.
Originally, death on the battlefield was close to an accident that occurred at an unexpected moment.
Can you calmly face that accident happening?
It’s like learning how to avoid death.
Afterward, acceleration was used several times according to the training program designed by Artemis.
Moving the body at a faster than normal speed under acceleration takes a considerable amount of stamina, so even a short training session left me exhausted.
Thanks to this, I was able to fall asleep even while the nerves throughout my body were sending out signals and blinking.
