Ch 29 – Quirk Crystals (Extra Chapter)

(A Few Hours Later)

As Braun sits in his chair and watches the 2 mentally controlled heroes rampaging all around Japan, causing death and destruction upon everyone who he identified as under the control of the necromancer, and as their fists made contact with other human beings, he watches the tank behind him get filled by a multitude of souls, in just a matter of hours, thousands upon thousands of souls is stored right behind him.

Nodding his head, he decides to finally start his Quirk Crystal Experiment that follows the same principle of the Bootleg Death Crystal he has, which in theory, would harness the power of the quirk through its crystalline structure, and bring its effects through technology.

And if this were to succeed, this brings a whole lot of possibility for him, especially considering there are some wacky quirks out there like chewing on gum makes the quirk holder's IQ multiply by 2, now if he were to combine it with other mind-enhancing quirks, then perhaps the estimated time to be as smart as Rick would shorten from billions of eons to only millions of eons, in theory of course.

Deciding to try and crystallize a simple quirk first, he went to grab a soul through a special glove from the tank that holds the souls and picks one out, the soul of a certain hero who has the ability to control fire.

Putting it in the Crystallizer Machine which was just a metallic cylinder that zaps the soul with a special ray to force it into becoming a crystal, though he did base this power on All for One which he inspected for the last few hours when he was spying on the necromancer.

Turning on the machine, white light encases the whole silvery-black cylinder and in a few seconds, the light recedes to finally reveal a red crystal the size of a normal pebble, grabbing it, he suddenly felt like he was able to control fire, it was an instinctual feeling as if he was born with it.

'This… This is more useful than I first thought. If it's instinctual… Then I could basically use this as a training tool to multiply my progress speed for the fundamental forces, in a year I've gained slight control over space-time and my EM manipulation has advanced by quite a lot, and the 2 nuclear forces have been going well but is lagging behind the others. If I were to get some specific quirks, then I should be able to increase my progress by a lot.' Braun thought, walking towards the fabricator to design a new design for his armor that allows it to hold the crystals in place while also protecting them through an electromagnetic barrier.

Clicking done, a black suit envelops his whole body and he holds the quirk crystal in hand, putting it on the back of his left arm, a part of it caves in where he puts the crystal on, the crystal sticking in like a tight fit.

Stretching his right arm out, the crystal glows red and a small ball of fire appears in his right arm, shooting it forward to a light construct that appeared in the distance that was shaped like a normal target, accurately hitting the middle of the target, and soon, the data of the fireball was shown to him.

'Hmm, 300 degrees Celsius, that's pretty good for something made in a singular second. But let's finally see if my hypothesis is true.' Braun thought, and with a flicker, a fireball flashed in front of him but the crystal in his left hand didn't shine red, indicating that he was using his real ability instead of relying on the quirk crystal, and with a single boom, the fireball explodes upon making contact with the target as the data was shown to him.

With all the parameters being twice as strong and some were even more, he nods his head at his experiment's first resounding success.

As a slight grin creeps upon his face at how successful it was, he continues to experiment with precious souls that in reality, aren't really that precious when infinite souls exist in the universe.

With more souls being sacrificed for his experimentations, he slowly finds some interesting stuff in regards to the crystals.

For example, when he fuses two souls together, there is a chance it would fuse successfully or produce a dud, or one of the quirk crystals becomes more powerful instead of fusing the two quirks into one.

And in front of him, an assortment of crystals was shown to him in a multitude of colors.

Though one sticks out like a sore thumb, a floating crystal that shines the color of the rainbow, well almost as there were some missing colors but this one is a very special crystal.

'A crystal that holds the quirk to manipulate fire, water, earth, electricity, and air. My control over the elements would rapidly rise with this one.' Braun thought, grabbing it and watching it go on the back of his right hand, the power of the five elements coursing through his whole body.

Grabbing everything else except for a certain few, a multitude of knowledge engrains itself in his mind, as his feet wobble from his brain overloading, he kneels down on the ground to assort his mind and fix it, slowly regaining his clarity and balance once more.

With his armor now looking a bit ridiculous due to how colorful it now looks from the multicolored crystals littering it, he takes a deep breath and glances at the remaining crystals left, the last ones he has left from All Might and Izuku's having finally finished in Japan and he would have to wait for them to reach other continents and resume their soul harvesting.

'Once I fuse enough quirks into this one, then my mental progress would hasten by quite a bit, to have reached the level of supernatural with my mind would be quite exciting, though emotions probably won't even exist in my brain anymore at that point.' Braun thought, carefully putting the crystal in a metallic sphere made from special alloys he can make.

'Now I'll just read more for a few days straight and just put an alarm when All Might and Izuku are now fighting against the necromancer.' Braun thought, closing his eyes and floating in the middle of the air, sitting in a lotus position as a slight blue glow covers his whole body, an automatic ability he can already do without his mind even being bothered with it.

As his mind enters the library once more holding all of Rick's knowledge, he finally enters the second floor where he hasn't set foot on for more than a year since getting Rick's memories, appreciating the design of his library, he grabs the first book and takes in the knowledge, trying to understand the full detail of the book, not just the surface knowledge but the principles, the underlying laws, everything, he tried to get it all for himself like a hungry black hole absorbing nearby matter.

And even though it was a monumental task, his will never wavered for he fully enjoyed the process, to tackle and try to understand the mind of a literal god, it always felt euphoric to him whenever he even understands a single bit of knowledge from Rick, it was one of the best experiences in the multiverse for him, and just the thought of learning knowledge that even Rick doesn't know made his heart set ablaze.

A few hours later, he takes his gaze away from the book and felt his mind throbbing in pain, the level between floors 1 and 2 being so large it was like transitioning from a Type 1 Civilization to Type 2 for a race, just the ones he learned from floor 1 allowed him to create stars and bend the laws of reality such as the conservation of energy.

Manifesting a chair below him, he sits down to let himself rest for a bit, he even chuckles at those stupid novels some of the Eldians read about how someone shouldn't rest when it's a needed act, to rest would not only make someone feel better, but they would get better, faster.

Shaking his head after a few minutes of mental revision, he glances down once more at the book and resumes reading it, it was a bit complicated translating the memories into readable books but this is just more time-efficient, it was kind of like watching anime compared to reading a manga, the manga is much more compact and denser.

Though he does still tap into memory form for a more hands-on approach.

And as he reads through the book with his mind fully engrossed with the subject, a bloody scene was shown throughout the world with 2 bloody physical beasts flying through the air with their monstrous armor of silvery-white coated in crimson blood.

Each of their fists blows through a human's chest, and each of their laser beams cuts a horde of humans under the necromancer's control, a crazed grin appearing on their face behind the mask as the number 1 hero All Might becomes nothing but a crazed beast of death and destruction alongside Izuku, two valuable pawns under Braun's control who was peacefully reading a book.

And inside a white kingdom flying in the clouds, a singular boy was watching the live feed of All Might's and Izuku's massacre with shaking legs and arms, he couldn't even believe the amount of death the 2 were causing in a matter of seconds, cities were razed, thousands die with their merciless attacks, oceans of blood went to form on top of nations all around the world.

"H-how?" the boy said in disbelief, his heart palpitating in fear with each death playing in front of him, the fear of death slowly grasping his very soul.

"H-how did this happen? I was supposed to be the winner! I reincarnated away from my mediocre life and now I'll die just like this?! Who are they! Who gave the both of them that armor?!" the boy shouts, his eyes going bloodshot and smashing his hand to the throne's golden arm, his knuckles turning white while droplets of blood flow from his arms.

Gritting his teeth, he decides to end this once and for all while a group of cloaked people appears in front of him.

"All of you, kill those 2!" the boy shouts, pointing at the 2 humanoid figures flying in the air while wearing their silvery-white armor coated in blood and mincemeat.

As the group nods, a black gassy shadow covers the group and with a flash, all of them disappeared leaving the necromancer boy alone, watching the monitor in front of him with bloodshot eyes.

But back inside Braun's mindscape, he flips to the last page of the book and lets out a relieved sigh, he was finally finished with the single book that almost made his mind explode trying to comprehend this complex book holding knowledge beyond any human's comprehension, knowledge only fitted for Type 2 civilization and up, but from this one alone, he could make his miniature star's energy production double in output, a ridiculous feat that he didn't even think was possible so early on.

A been then appears from his mind and a floating holographic screen appears in front of him, the videos he waited for a good while finally presented themselves to him, the Illuminati, Star and Stripe, Archmage, and all other number 1 heroes of multiple countries were below All Might and Izuku who stood on op to of a mountain of dead corpses, far from the ideal versions they were supposed to be, instead of heroes, they look more like monsters or devils incarnate.

Opening his eyes in the real world, he watches a multitude of souls now filling his series of tanks and chuckles, oh how he will enjoy the increase in power, and how his mind will finally reach past the clutches of humanity and go reach a level beyond it, to transcend the human mind and achieve tasks he is unable to do as he is right now.

AN: This is 2045 words, you're welcome.

So as you can see, Braun is smart, ruthless, and willing to do anything for power.

Sigh, writing a smart and neutral evil main character is super hard considering that Rick is probably smarter than an Artificial Superintelligence shown in the episode where they face off against that robot that steals stuff, you know the one, but yeah, just as an analogy to show how smart ASIs are, imagine we are level 100 compared to monkeys or some shit, well the ASI would be Level 100×1000×10000×100000×1000000000, it would be so incomprehensible it would be akin to a god, just watch Sciencephile or Kyle Hill's video on AI on youtube to see how ridiculous Rick actually is, it's not a joke to literally call him god with how the plot twist bot is potentially an ASI.

What does that mean for me, well I'll have to eventually reach a point where Braun becomes smarter than an ASI which could mean two things, either I make him semi-omniscient and bullcrap my way through the plot, or just the same but less bullcrap and not just pull things out of my ass like "IT'S ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU!"

But you know what I can't pull out of nowhere? Your unrequited love to the novel, so just confess already by giving me powerstones, who knows, I might even consider your confession *blushes profusely*.

(May 30, 2022 – 187th day of writing)