After an entire night's worth of sleep, it was finally time to leave the hospital. My results were out, and with them being positive, I could go back home. And even though I had missed an entire week of school, I wasn't angry or annoyed; I just wondered how I should act when people questioned me about my ordeal.
The hospital was far from our house; it took on average 40 minutes to reach it, but for my parents, it had taken them 2 hours because on Tuesday, at those specific schedules, traffic was abundant. Hence why it took them so long to reach me. Today was Wednesday, so it was less crowded on the roads. But during the 1-hour long drive that separated home and the health center, I had been mumbling in my head a way to use my new powers in the most efficient way.
The distinctive part was how long I could use them, on what kind of tasks, and how many hours of rest I truly needed in order to reutilize Nihility at full capacity again after using it. For now, my data were limited, and the insights at my disposal were scarce. The best shot I had at using my power was in deducing a heart disease cure formula's other half through another half of it, which took me 9 minutes in total for reading, memorizing, and deducing (including the calculating part). After that, I was entirely spent. But what if I tried something less tiring? Then perhaps I'd be able to last longer; that's what I had remarked via the changes that ''Void-State'' received.
But in truth, I hadn't been sure of it. I still needed to verify this claim. But I couldn't do it right away; I was still in my parents' car, and if something wrong were to happen, I'd be in trouble. That's where the second part of using my powers most efficiently comes in. I also needed to know my own limitations, meaning I had to check if after powering the rune and using it for, like, 15 minutes on an easier task and then deactivating it without being completely dead-tired would work and leave me able to continue with my mundane day-to-day activities.
Knowing all this would enable me to perhaps utilize Nihility multiple times a day at different moments and whenever I wanted, without risk. That would be what I call the ''most efficient way of using my talent.'' I thought back and reflected on how I always had the habit of comparing myself to the most hard-working guys among the younger generations, furthermore, a crazed perfectionist without any birth talent who was forced to rely on the diligent and endless grind.
After all, I had always considered myself as a 'self-entitled talentless human,' yet now I could do things I never imagined, even in my wildest dreams. This was simply mind-blowing. Perhaps this was my talent, being able to create and use ''Void-State''. Sho finally seemed to understand just how powerful and reality-breaking his abilities were.
But it was far from enough, and he had yet to allow himself a good laugh...
Avoiding discussion with my parents all through the whole journey, I instead focused sharply on 'Void State-Phase 0.' I could at least use the premature phase for a long period of time without worries. As planned, even after 30 minutes of usage, I was still fine, almost full of fuel. But I didn't just waste 30 minutes using 'Void-State'; I spent those 30 minutes reading and memorizing the world's geography.
I had gone on the Internet and then Google Maps and looked up any big city, country, or state names and imprinted their names and geographical locations all in my head. Now I know by heart 687 different city names. Among all those cities, I could point out the exact location of 426 of them. If someone were to ask me where one of the cities was in the world, I could easily say if it's in the north, south, east, or west of the specific country the city belongs to.
I also memorized 65 capitals and their respective locations too, by heart. Now it wasn't nearly as much, and that's because Phase 0 of Void-State had its limitations. Being able to remember 687 city names had already taken a long time in itself. After those 30 minutes, I tried to mentally visualize my rune and see how depleted my energy was inside its system. I was not out of steam yet; I could hold on for probably another 30 minutes, perhaps a tiny bit more, with the same exercise.
But we were reaching our destination, so I stopped. I'd been chronically silent in the car, and I knew it had badly affected my parents; they must have thought I was hurt or felt unwell. Yeah, I did feel unwell indeed. I was dead hungry. Hospital food sucked, and clearly it was worse for me since I didn't eat vegetables. Although over the course of my hospitalization, when I was in a coma, I had been fed some food through tubes, it hadn't been a proper way of satiety.
I told my parents I was hungry, and my father, hearing this, hurried to the kitchen and prepared food quickly. On the other side, my mother made sure I was alright and told me to be careful on my way up the stairs. I had expected this part of her demeanor, so I shut her off in just 3 sentences. I couldn't allow her to waste my time simply. My dad would take about fourteen minutes to finish the delicious meal that I was craving for, so I wanted to use those fourteen minutes to learn history like what I thought I'd do just before passing out 7 days ago.
As boring learning and memorizing history events once was, as well as remembering the important dates and names, it had now become a game. The game would be called ''Try to remember as much as you can in the shortest span of time.'' Which was too long of a name, so I'd just call it ''TTRAMAYCITSSOT'' instead. It kind of resembled a code, which made me think back to the story of the two boys concerning the secret code to log in to a website that supposedly gave access to the answers to an English test. This got a quiet laugh out of me; I didn't know why.
I opened my book and set the terrain for mass learning. Ready, I would read from page 45 to page 68. All the pages in between those, including 45 and 68 and excluding page 48, were talking about wars: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. I'd know almost everything about those three wars in 14 minutes. Yeah, I said 'almost everything,' which sounds unreasonable because how could just a few pages be enough to cover everything about the war? But this was no school book; it was a HUGE professional book about most of history's important events.
Fourteen minutes later, I had surpassed my history teacher's level of insight and knowledge when it came to the subject of 'Wars.' I knew that for sure since he was the one who taught us about WW1 and WW2 during my first year in high school. He himself admitted that he had given us about 80% of all the information he knew about world wars.
And comparing his overall knowledge to the information in the book was like comparing the height between a crocodile and a giraffe. He may be a predator at ground level, but he can never reach the sky. But I did. I reached the sky. That meant he was inferior to me in those subjects.
I knew of almost every subtle and unknown piece of information, even some that were classified. I could already be considered an expert in those domains. Yet becoming a pro historian still didn't quite fill my stomach. So leaving my daydream, disabling Nihility, I ran down the stairs to eat till my death.
Yeah, I had used Nihility; I didn't really have a choice; the book was too large, at least as large as an Atlas Folio. Its dimensions were terrifying, so huge that it clearly couldn't be placed on my shelves. Dividing its size by 2 wouldn't even be enough to permit that. Rather than that, I decided to just let it rest on the wall, perfectly straight. It stood there, silently proud, awaiting for something like a sultan waits for his people to praise him.
My father's food was indeed quite the deal; it might just be pasta, but they're different than mere common pasta; it was holy pasta. After eating my fill, I rushed back to my room once more, leaving the shores of washing the plates and tables to my dumbfounded parents. I had eaten the whole plate in a measly 3 minutes, probably a world-wide record. I wouldn't use Nihility again just yet; I was still tired; rather, I'd rest and try to plan the best way to make use of my powers.
I thought for a while—a long 20 seconds—and then I knew what to do. I would organize books, internet articles, and lessons about wondrous subjects—a whole lot of them, to be exact.
Be it politics, informatics, math, English, literature, geography, history, economy, management, art, poetry, sports, cars, movies, famous people around the world, chemistry, psychology, sociology, reasoning, martial arts, food, languages, and just overall general culture, I'd learn everything in huge quantities in all of those subjects.
If I could become not just an expert but a fully-fledged master in those 23 topics, I would definitely transcend entirely my human conditions and become something far greater. But I knew that an entire life's worth of time would be far from enough to become a master in just 5 of them normally, so I'd have to make far better use of Nihility. I acknowledged the fact that I needed training and some time to get used to my abilities. I figured that if I took a safe road, it'd take around a few months before I could use Nihility for a full hour without risk.
However, I had over 6 months before I became a third year in high school, so I would have to spend half a year working my ass off in order to become the best in my school. Hence I had 6 months to become a genius—no, to become something that surpasses even that.
My mind set, my heart ablaze, and my eyes filled with determination, I couldn't wait to march and conquer the lone dominion that the road ahead represented. I would grasp all of humanity's knowledge and ultimately make it mine.
'Everything that stands before my eyes, I'll make it mine.' I thought in my head.
'Without further ado, let's get to work,' Sho thought madly as he processed the possible outcome of his secluded training in his mind.
Sho sat on his comfy bed mattress and took a meditative stance. The first time he did, although it had resulted in him entering a 6-day coma, it had helped a lot in improving his rune abilities.
Sho closed his eyes and crossed his legs, creating an impenetrable fortress of mystery. He stepped into the dream realm that had experienced crisis, destruction, renewal, and now, peace. He felt relaxed as he gazed at the golden-white skies, floating atop the sluggish blue clouds of his universe.
He wondered, 'How can I improve Nihility's proficiency and duration while in this state like I did last time?' So he pondered and deterred himself, leaping across valleys of unknown as he jumped from cloud to cloud. It made him realize that he made a fundamental mistake when using the rune; he was wasting its potential.
When Sho used Nihilty to learn and remember information, he did so at the expense of losing a lot of time reading properly the text so that he could comprehend completely its content. This had been terribly wrong, apparently. He realized in his time here that he didn't need to do so because Nihility was the one in charge of comprehending and remembering.
His eyes may only see the passing mirage of a text zooming past the rim of a gaze, but his mind, him, could fully imprint the whole text's meaning and details. While using Nihility, Sho was still taking too many unnecessary measures, resulting in a waste of time of his precious superior state.
Sho's ethereal body concentrated and fastened his pace as the clouds he set foot on ushered away more quickly. He stared in the direction of the mirages; he felt a sense of belonging towards them, a feeling of familiarity. In the distance, he saw scenes of his past—dialogues and conflicts between him and his peers. Sho now remembered a lot of discussions and arguments he's had with all kinds of people, from his birth to his current age. He was able to look back at what had been said, for what reasons, about what and how, as well as why and by who.
He could tell with terrific precision all the lies that had been spewed out of everyone's mouth and the truths. Sho's memory seemed to have increased, or rather, it had broken free of its shackles and was now showing him a movie of the most important events of his life so he would gain answers to many questions that had restrained his mental growth.
And as Sho made atrocious discoveries, as well as marvelous ones, he felt a knot in his heart forming. Not in his stomach, but in his heart. It's like he could physically feel the lock that he had once placed on it, making him unable to live and think like a human being, but rather like a machine devoid of emotions. And before he could gasp for air, the knot shattered and left him breathless on the brink of unconsciousness. Sho reopened his eyes and looked at his restless, shaky legs.
He was quivering from this outburst of information, both positive and negative. As he took a deep breath, he felt something running down his eyes to his cheeks; the fluid was so foreign that it made Sho shiver when he understood what it was.
Tears, genuine and humane tears.