Chapter 7: Unreal

"You..."

Cassian's voice trailed off as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed his mind. His vision became blurry.

A feeling of numbness spread from the injection site at his neck, coursing through his veins. Soon, his entire body was paralyzed. He couldn't even move a single finger.

At this point, he should've been worried. But even his mind couldn't think straight as he started feeling sleepy.

"Synchronization initiated."

Esme's voice was the last thing he heard, as his eyes slowly closed. His body weakly rested on the Captain's cheer. Although his breathing had slowed down, it was extremely stable.

"Injecting the Bio-Enhance Serum."

Another syringe was inserted by the Automata, this time, straight into Cassian's chest.

The serum entered Cassian's blood stream and strengthened his heart. Through the blood that was pumped by his heart, the serum particles were supplied to the rest of his body.

It was a painful process, but Cassian couldn't feel any pain. The paralysis had temporarily numbed his body. Moreover, he had already fallen asleep, which further protected his mind.

The first serum had put him to sleep. It even stimulated his brain's activity to induce a good dream while Cassian was sleeping.

A part of his mind was busy projecting the dream of his subconscious. Meanwhile, a myriad of data was flooding the test of his brain, enhancing his thought process even more.

Some of the additional information even managed to find its way to his dreams through an unintentional trickle.

He witnessed streams of complex code floating around him. They were in the same unknown language that he had first seen on the screen. But strangely enough, he was able to understand them all.

They weren't words, but numbers. It was like complex mathematical formulas were around him. He could read them, but without the context, it was hard to fully comprehend them.

Cassian was observing the strange calculation, when he heard a growling sound coming from behind him.

His body momentarily froze. The growl sounded like it came from a fierce wolf.

Cassian hadn't even turned around when he saw a giant shadow covering his body and beyond. The shadow alone made it look as if the real body of that wolf was at least hundreds of feet tall.

His mind was warning him. It was telling him to not look back.

Fortunately, that overwhelming feeling didn't last long. The shadow slowly started shrinking, as if the beast was moving back.

Within seconds, the shadow was completely gone. And that overwhelming aura had also disappeared.

Cassian weakly sat on the ground. He had seen many frightening things, but he never had a feeling like this.

With that frightening feeling gone, he looked back. And just as he thought, there was nothing there.

...

Outside Cassian's dream, the synchronization process was almost complete. Although he didn't look drastically different, there were some visible changes.

His hair had grown a little longer, but it was only noticeable if one were to look very carefully.

Previously, his hair was completely dark. But now, a few strands of white were visible.

If Cassian was to open his eyes and look at his reflection, he would've noticed a more prominent change. His pupils had also changed color. His dark pupils had changed to bright hazel.

If one was to look with a microscope, they could also occasionally see a few microscopic numbers momentarily appear on his pupils.

..............

Battleship Name: Fenrir

Captain: Cassian Estafania

ID: 77-IX-FENRIR

System Status: Partially Online

Ether Reserves: 20 Units

Power Status: Critically Low

System Integrity: 10/50 Systems Online

WARNING: Core systems offline. Captain Link established. Awaiting core activation.

Combat Power:

Attack Power: 5,500,000

Defensive Strength: 3,500,000

Maximum Speed: 2,500,000 k/s

Captain Link Protocol:

Synchronization Rate: 15%

Synchronization Grade: B-

Captain Aptitude Grade: A+

Available Supreme Class Features: 2/10 (Unlocked)

Awaiting Captain's Command...

..............

"Congratulations, Captain. Synchronization has been completed. When you wake up, you will see the world in a different way." Esme's voice was calm, without any emotional turbulence.

...

An unknown amount of time passed before Cassian woke up, slowly opening his eyes.

The dream he had just experienced was still fresh in his mind. At the same time, he also felt relieved that it was just a dream.

"Hmm?" He rubbed his eyes and blinked them open again.

Even after blinking repeatedly, nothing changed. A semi-transparent screen hovered before him, following his sight.

When he looked left, the screen moved left. It felt as though the screen wasn't in the room with him, but inside his very eyes.

"Esme?" His first thought was to call Esme to get an explanation.

"Captain." A voice appeared in his head.

"Shouldn't you give me an explanation before I really start believing that I'm going crazy?"

"The Synchronization has been completed. Most of the available explanation has already been transferred to Captain's Neural Network. To accept the transferred information, please grant permission."

Cassian was deep asleep when the information was transferred to his consciousness. If he woke up with those memories, it could overwhelm him.

The information was temporarily restricted with his consciousness, only to be available with his permission.

Cassian rubbed his forehead. His body did feel a little stiff, but he didn't feel any pain. Nothing seemed to be wrong with his body either.

After thinking for a moment, he nodded. "Permission Granted. Let me access every information that I'm authorized to access."

At this point, he had given up on questioning the logic behind everything. His common sense had already started losing its mind.

Within seconds of receiving permission, the seal on the information transmitted to him had disappeared. And all the information had become available to him, albeit in a slow and organised manner.

The primary information was about the ship and synchronization.

There was no information about the history of this ship, but there was something that made Cassian almost jump out of bed.

It was the information about the features of the ship that were available to him after synchronization.

"This is... unreal." That was his only thought when he finished going through the information.