As dawn broke, I rode with Garth, who took the lead. Garth was in front, followed by some fourth-rank warriors who volunteered to guard. The children, the elderly, and the ill sat in the caravan driven by another fourth rank and pulled by two horses.
The remaining wagons carried the other people and supplies. People sat in the carts, rode the remaining horses, or walked alongside the caravan. I also switched to sitting on the leader's caravan as a lookout.
I wanted to try riding a horse, but Garth needed me to be on the lookout, so my horse pulled the caravan instead. We were riding west and would ride to the coast before heading north to the spot Garth suggested.
Occasionally, I would get down to take care of the threats. The monsters I hunted were valuable for food anyway. Around 30 people had come with us. The rest of the people had gone their own way or entered the empire.
We had enough food to last us a week, and we could hunt, so food wasn't a problem. Garth said the place we were going to had a river, and we had stocked up on water, so that wasn't a problem either.
The only things we lacked were shelter and clothes. While I could use magic, handmade clothes would be better quality. Once we reached our destination, we would have to set up proper housing.
As we rode along, I took the time to assimilate the metals I had gotten into my body. I had plenty of free time to chip away and smelt at the metals slowly. My fire control was impeccable, and I consumed the metals shortly after. My nanomachines were now a Mythril - Orichalcum - Adamantium alloy. I doubted that anything could even leave a scratch on me.
It took over two days, but I managed. Everything in my body was malleable metal from head to toe, except for my brain. I still needed to create a perfect scan of it to recreate later. I had magic running to scan and analyze my brain constantly, but it would take another week to finish.
It was a tough decision, but the benefits outweighed my moral dilemma. Even if I lost my humanity, I gained something much more useful.
Feeling good about my progress, I looked at the egg-shaped stone I got. I didn't want to split it open if it was an egg, but no one knew what it was. Even Garth had never seen anything like it. I tried filling it with my mana, but it rejected it, so for now, I just put it in a warm state and kept it around me.
If it was an egg, I wanted to try hatching it. I had always admired Beast Tamers. My late grandfather had a pet giant eagle, and he sometimes took me for rides with it. I didn't care what sort of beast came out, but I knew it would be fun to raise it.
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After a week of riding, we had reached the coast. The journey had strained the already exhausted people. We decided to recuperate here for a few days before heading back on the road.
I erected some temporary shelters, and Garth managed everything. Since I had some free time, I decided to play around. I took my horse on a ride on the beach to cool off.
I had grown up near the ocean, so it was nice to see it again. It brought back some memories, but that made it all the more painful to think of my home. The walk had the opposite effect of what I wanted, so I hunted in the forest, catching a sixth-ranked leopard.
I helped around the camp by doing chores. I cut up the meat, stored it for later, and wove the pelts into something useful. On the night of the second day, I decided to upload my brain.
The scanning was finished, and I was ready. I was already using my soul as an intelligence library. Mind magic worked wonders to create a neurological database. I barely understood the magic myself, but it worked.
The first thing I did was to create an actual databank inside my soul. This way, if my magic were disrupted in any way, I would still have everything saved. It wasn't hard to do. My nanomachines were all basically individual computers. I just let them grow naturally into a data-saving structure.
Starting with a single cell, I shaped it into the desired structure and grew it in my inner world. While the soul is intangible, it can still impact reality. You can create your inner world by using your soul as a gateway. It was in this inner world that I would build my brain.
The inner world was another dimension of sorts, determined by the size of your soul. I'd accessed mine long ago, but storage magic had always been more practical. I was putting my brain inside the inner world because it would connect with my soul and be safer.
My body could run on magic, electricity, or chemical energy. There was almost no chance of me ever shutting down unless somebody killed me. Even if my body were gone, my soul would still contain my brain and be capable of thought.
Before long, the nanomachines had grown into a data structure capable of storing petabytes of information. I then copied the scan of my brain inside my inner world. The brain was an exact scan of my current one, so I would be the same when transferring my consciousness.
I also implemented a failsafe system to reverse any actions I took. The brain scans were stored in the data bank, should I need to retrieve them in an emergency. The failsafe also could recreate my brain and reset me.
The next thing to do was transfer my consciousness. Consciousness was the physical ability of the soul inside a vessel.
Currently, the vessel is my brain in the real world. My consciousness will shift when I transfer my soul connection to the nanomachine brain in my inner world. It will be self-contained and free from any connection to the physical plane.
I would need an extra connection from the inner world's brain to my body to control it. But this way, my body could die without "me" dying. It also solved the problem of any physical vulnerability outside of my soul.
Once the nanomachine brain was built, I started transferring my soul connection to it. There would be a split second when I was connected to my flesh and machine brains. It would be head-splitting, but I had endured enough to withstand it.
The preparations alone took me an entire day. I kept my schedule open, so I had time. The actual transfer took the rest of the second day. The pain was nothing like I had ever felt before.
By self-containing my body inside my soul, I had just eliminated one of the things that could kill me. Unless someone directly destroyed my soul or mind, even if my body died, I would continue.
I had achieved quasi-immortality, but this had its drawbacks. If my soul or mind were damaged, my body wouldn't be able to protect them—at least, not until I merged my soul with my body.
My consciousness now existed in my inner world and was more robust. Because the computer ran on electricity and or mana, it was faster than my biological brain. Chemical signals were the limiting factors of biology (At least from what I knew; I never delved deep into biology, but it seemed to work in practice).
I also connected it with the database I built. It was like my brain was linked to an infinitely more powerful external memory bank. The database would also expand as long as I could access more material.
The database is currently the size of a cubic foot and can store more than a million petabytes of data. It was like one giant, supercharged SSD. With my brain and the database in my inner world, I had used up around three cubic feet.
I no longer needed the fleshy brain in my physical body, so I had extra space. A simple nervous system would be enough to control my body from the brain in my soul. This way, my consciousness could be split between both systems. I would be able to merge my soul with my body quickly if it was under attack and remain alive even when my body died.
The soul was usually one with the body, but I had removed it, linking the soul and body by one strand instead. I could merge it again if I wanted to, and my soul would still live when its tie to my body was severed.
My nanomachines significantly increased my storage space. I decided to do something I couldn't do before: record everything in the library. The memory could never be trusted, and this made up for that.
My body was now entirely nanomachines except for my core. However, I could move and shape the core, so it wasn't a big issue. With the new morning, I decided to test it out on Garth.