Chapter 8: Tests
A/N: Thought my lovely supporting readers deserved two chapters to quench their thirst, so here it is, originally I was planning on adding it to the stockpile I was creating to add on my Patreon but enjoy anyways I'll start the stockpile at chapter ten. Enjoy
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In the basement, Rex lay on his large bed, his fatigue slowly fading. He had recently convinced his mom to let him renovate the basement into his room. Surprisingly, she didn't object and even helped him with most of the process.
Now, he always had an excuse—or didn't even need one—to be in the basement. As he continued to sleep, his body adapted to managing fatigue on a higher level. Suddenly, his door creaked open, and his mom walked in, finding him asleep.
"He's asleep so soon. That's unlike him," she murmured. "I'll just leave the takeout by his bedside. He'll wake up soon." She placed the package close to his bed and, noticing the chilly weather, decided to properly cover him with his blanket.
However, Rex felt a probing sensation, and his sixth sense immediately reacted, stunning him awake. With restraint, he controlled his impulse to attack.
'What's this about? What's this feeling?' he wondered as he watched his mom quickly exit the room, her gaze downcast and looking almost disappointed. "What was all that about?" he muttered, confusion palpable. Still exhausted from his previous adaptation, Morpheus quickly drew him back into slumber.
Tia, Rex's mother, sighed with a saddened expression. 'Our bloodline purity has grown too weak over time. His mana is almost nonexistent. Is this how the legacy of the Verith family ends?' With her son Rex Jonaverith Çulsen and herself, Tia Nymeverith Çulsen, being the last of their kind, she worried.
Rex possessing low mana quantity meant the bloodline had grown too weak to pass on their long-established heritage of Magus Sorcery. Sighing, she walked away, hoping one day her son's situation would improve, lest she have to resort to other means she wished to avoid.
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A month had passed in the blink of an eye. School was as gruesome as always, but it had become too easy to be a challenge for Rex. Bored beyond reason, he casually surfed his phone in the classroom. Despite the teacher's attempts at embarrassing him, the situation would quickly turn around, with the teacher ending up looking foolish instead.
The classroom buzzed with subdued chatter as students waited for the lesson to begin. Mr. Thompson, a stern-looking man in his fifties, stood at the front of the room, writing a complex calculus problem on the whiteboard. The equation read:
\[ \int \frac{2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5}{(x-1)^2} \, dx \]
Mr. Thompson turned to face the class, adjusting his glasses as he scanned the room. His eyes landed on Rex, who was engrossed in his phone.
"Rex!" Mr. Thompson's voice cut through the room, causing the students to fall silent. "Since you seem to have better things to do than pay attention, why don't you come up here and solve this problem?"
The students whispered among themselves, a mix of pity and curiosity in their eyes. Rex sighed, put his phone away, and stood up. He walked to the front of the class with a calm confidence that surprised his classmates. Taking the marker from Mr. Thompson, he glanced at the equation on the board.
Without hesitation, Rex began to work through the problem, using partial fraction decomposition.
\[ \frac{2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5}{(x-1)^2} = \frac{A}{x-1} + \frac{B}{(x-1)^2} + \frac{Cx + D}{x-1} \]
He found the values of \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), and \(D\) by solving the system of equations derived from the numerator:
\[ 2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5 = A(x-1)^2 + B(x-1) + (Cx + D)(x-1) \]
Rex wrote the simplified integrals.
\[ \int \frac{2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5}{(x-1)^2} \, dx = \int \frac{A}{x-1} \, dx + \int \frac{B}{(x-1)^2} \, dx + \int \frac{Cx + D}{x-1} \, dx \]
Then he integrated each term separately.
\[ \int \frac{A}{x-1} \, dx = A \ln|x-1| \]
\[ \int \frac{B}{(x-1)^2} \, dx = -\frac{B}{x-1} \]
\[ \int \frac{Cx + D}{x-1} \, dx = \int \left( C + \frac{D - C}{x-1} \right) \, dx = Cx + (D - C) \ln|x-1| \]
He combined the results effortlessly, stunning the present students.
\[ \int \frac{2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5}{(x-1)^2} \, dx = A \ln|x-1| - \frac{B}{x-1} + Cx + (D - C) \ln|x-1| + C \]
Rex then noticed an error Mr. Thompson made in setting up the equation. He turned to the class and the teacher.
"Mr. Thompson, I think you made a mistake in the partial fraction decomposition. The correct form should have been split differently, and there was an error in solving for \(B\). It should be..." He quickly corrected the decomposition and solved the problem accurately.
The room was silent, the students wide-eyed. Mr. Thompson's face turned red, clearly flustered. Rex calmly handed the marker back and returned to his seat, leaving the corrected equation on the board.
\[ \int \frac{2x^3 - 3x^2 + 4x - 5}{(x-1)^2} \, dx = \ln|x-1| - \frac{2}{x-1} + 2x - 2 \]
Mr. Thompson cleared his throat, attempting to regain his composure. "Well, thank you, Rex. That was... thorough."
Rex smiled slightly, knowing he had proven himself. The rest of the class watched him with newfound respect, while some simply chuckled at Mr. Thompson's unusual silence.
Since that day, Mr. Thompson never attempted to interrupt Rex's continuous planning and streak of making money. He had even drawn the attention of the Global Defense Agency, which began giving him small projects like coding firewalls and software security, probably to test his prowess.
He chuckled slightly at their precautions, watching the constant movements through the security cameras, and the worst part was that he was doing this through his phone without the help of Helix.
He carefully surfed through their experiments on Kaijus and monsters of unknown origin. However, only a few drew his attention. One Kaiju, listed as Kaiju 1-020, was capable of absorbing solar energies for regeneration and minor physical enhancements and another Kaiju with an unknown jurisdiction capable of absorbing heat from its surrounding using it to fuel its cryogenic capabilities.
'Perhaps this is the key to Project Kryptonian,' he thought. "Helix, work on possible ways of absorbing and storing solar radiation. Use any research material you can find."
---
Over the span of a week, Rex and Eve had become quite close. A part of him wanted to refute this closeness, but another part wanted to make it closer, and soon he found himself longing for more.
With a soft sigh, he shot through the skies at subsonic speeds on his surfboard, its tip cutting through the air effortlessly. He leaned forward to reduce wind resistance as he flew above the clouds, feeling the exhilaration of flight.
Finally reaching ten thousand feet in the air, he leaped off the board, crashing down through the clouds.
He began experimenting, as his covered plasma shooters revealed themselves, glowing blue before releasing a hum.
Several projectiles flew across the sky, his targets. Aiming with calculation and precision, his plasma blasters emitted blinding light.
Pew! Pew! Pew! Explosive booms followed as the projectiles were destroyed. Falling, Rex quickly retrieved his board, which flew back to his feet, regaining control almost effortlessly.
Done with tests, he hastily retreated to the safety of his lab, placing the board on a holder before taking off his suit. Making sure the three arc reactors in his suit no longer supplied energy to it.
"Helix, any progress on the solar radiation absorption and storage?"
"Yes, Maker, progress has been made. However, the storage of the solar radiation might prove challenging due to a lack of proper utilities and necessary materials."
"Helix won't just stop calling me 'Maker' after I decided against it..." He thought for a while before shrugging it off. "Find the necessary materials and ways to access them," he quickly instructed, heading into the bio lab.
Upon entry, his gaze was immediately locked onto the experimental versions of sentient serum along with the AP-01 serum.
Glancing away from the liquid materials, he simply made his way to the monitor, proceeding to continue reading his father's accumulated research materials to further understand his own blood and the effect the two complementary serums have had on his body.
While reading through various research materials accumulated by Helix, such as the cloning and genetic tech of the Mauler Twins, and various other ones he depicted with significance.
'Wait, why haven't I thought of this? How would my blood infused with the AP-01 serum react with Viltrumite blood, even if the smart atoms are dormant?'
A sudden realization dawned upon him, his gaze full of exhilaration as he hurriedly moved to gather his tools. He suddenly found another route he could invest his determination along with the potential enhancement it could bring.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone