The moment the system's assimilation was completed, the pod rang with a musical buzzing noise. The rhythm of Aron's heartbeat was disrupted, but immediately mended by the runes, resulting in it beating with more vigor than before. Then, the billions of runes that had been active through the process dimmed and reduced the rate at which they had been absorbing mana, prompting Nova to reduce the amount of mana that was being fed into the pod.

With the continual dimming of the runes and the reduction in mana intake, it soon stabilized, and the frantic absorption of mana was over.

That told Nova that whatever the system had been doing was over and she released the excess computing power to continue whatever it had been tasked with before, resuming the two universal simulation instances that she'd suspended and the rest of the tasks that were still ongoing.

That didn't mean that her abrupt termination of all of the tasks hadn't been resumed without any problems, as Aron had lost more than seven billion in the stock market due to the interruption in the high-speed transactions and monitoring of the stock market. It was her first loss since she had begun trading and, hopefully, would be her last.

She immediately scanned his body using the sensors in his pod and documented the changes, sending the data to the researchers in Lab City. They had no idea at all of what had happened, only that there was a loss of a few seconds of backup. Those that didn't constantly save their work were confused, while those that were lucky enough to have saved in the seconds leading to the unplanned shutdown were oblivious. Thus, Nova stepped in to help recover the lost data. Thanks to her demigod status within the universal simulation, the recovery went well and she stepped back to allow them to continue as usual without further interference.

From her scan, she realized that their plan had been terminated and couldn't be continued, since his body had undergone so many changesincluding his brainand she would need a new scan in order to know what exactly had changed. From there, they would know if they had to redo the removal of the system's influence, or if their actions before the upgrade were enough. There was also the possibility of conflicts arising that would cause future problems for Aron.

All of that would be done later, but for now, she suspended the project and let him continue sleeping until his body naturally woke up, which would indicate to her that it was safe to log him in the universal simulation. That would be for the best, as his body knew itself the best; even better than Nova did, in fact. Her actions could have, and might already have, caused some issues in his personality and mental health. An Aron with a split personality or antisocial personality disorder would be an absolute disaster, not only for her, but for the entire world as well. Thankfully, she had terminated the curing process the moment she'd discovered the abnormality in the data she was receiving from her sensors.

As for the pod near Aron that contained Vladimir, the healing process had been complete for a while. But he had been left laying in the pool of mana with peace of mind, which didn't last for long as Nova immediately injected the gene serum into him and logged him back into the universal simulation to finish the last parts of his 'reeducation' therapy. That would be followed by refresher training in his field before Aron and Nova decided what to do with him.

She wouldn't log Aron back into the universal simulation until she was assured that no new abrupt changes would occur with him.

...

Terry seemed to have successfully convinced Katrina to assist him, as they were planning their next course of action.

They had already accessed the bank account and found a very substantial sum of money in it. Terry, who still had grievances with Rina for interrupting his life right on the cusp of it being everything he'd dreamed of just as he was nearing the finish line, was ecstatic. He didn't feel any guilt over having betrayed someone he had been protecting since she was young at all. In his mind, it was just business and he had been bought by the highest bidder.

The plan didn't just involve the two of them, though, as they knew that killing her inside the compound would be impossible. They couldn't sneak or fight their way past the small army of private security in the Rothschild compound alone, leaving only one specific time they could attempt an attack: during her travel from one place to another. He couldn't attack the place she was going, either, as anywhere she went would also be heavily guarded.

Their plans had to be flexible, as they would only know when she was leaving the family compound through Arieh's monitoring of the traitorous board members through his spies in their houses. Rina hadn't gotten rid of them in her sweep; why would she do that in the first place? Not plucking her power-mad brother's spies out from the sides of her blackmailed and unwilling lackeys might later be used as a bargaining chip, after all. But the more important reason was to avoid solidifying her brother's suspicion of her knowing of the existence of his spies in the board members' families in the first place.

"This should make it impossible for her to come out of it in one piece, while reducing the chance of the family identifying us as much as possible," Katrina said after reviewing the plan.

"Aren't you worried he'll get rid of us so that there's no chance he'll be caught?" Terry asked, as Katrina seemed to have done these kinds of missions for Arieh more than once.

"Usually, powerful people do that, but he won't. He knows that we might have the evidence stored somewhere and it would come to light the moment he... removes us. But even with that, he won't be doing anything because we can't even use it by reporting it to his family head or something in order to benefit from it. If we tried, it wouldn't matter what deal we negotiated beforehand. They'd still kill us in the end, because even if we don't kill Rina, we'll have taken down Arieh, the scion of one of their pure bloodlines.

"You might wonder why we don't bring the information to their enemies, then. That would be worse," she brushed her hair behind her ear, "as their enemies will do the opposite and capture us alive. And trust me, that would be worse. Much, much worse. As for going public with the information, it won't reach anywhere before it's been covered up. Then we'd soon disappear.

"So even if we have evidence, we can't do anything with it. And Arieh knows that, so he won't bother getting rid of us unless we fail. Be a good dog for our master and he'll feed us. Be a bad one and we'll be put down."

...

Eden, Aron's pod room.

Evening fell, and Nova's allotted cooldown time had passed and Aron's body had shown signs of him being ready to wake up. Since nothing unforeseen had happened to him, she began his login process.