Aron could be seen sitting with his eyes closed, the veins of his forehead were pulsing as they bulged, indicating that he didn't want to lose even a single second of his focus.
His surroundings were serene, with a vast, flat, heavenly ground stretching for kilometres, which was surrounded by mountains of varying heights.
If someone was gazing at this scene for the first time, they would think Aron was practising the runic knowledge his clones had been training which he was assimilated with while he was receiving the treatment in the pod. Although this was partly true, it didn't hold the same meaning as they might think. Shortly after, Aron immediately opened his eyes but what followed it in the sight of the observer was the sudden vanishing of Aron's figure.
With his disappearance, the flat, tranquil grassland returned to its serenity which had once been there. However, the calmness didn't last for long as moments later, a flash of light, capable of blinding anyone who glanced at it, started to spread. But this was the least of the matters that might be of any concern because that flash of light was followed by…
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
The deafening sound was accompanied by a shockwave that shook the ground, uprooting the grass that had been enjoying its time as it bathed in the light of the sun.
A whole mountain had simply disappeared.
Aron on the other hand, for those who could see him even in his concealed state, could be seen meters away from where he had once been before he activated the concealment rune and disappeared with a smile on his face.
"Now, that's my in-house stealth missile for you. Survive that if you possibly can," he mused while still holding the previous smile on his face, feeling quite good and proud of himself.
Alas, that smile on his handsome face was short-lived as his whole being stiffened a moment after that while his eyes were covered in disbelief for a moment before he immediately erected seven protective shields, stacking one on top of the other, before…
BOOM...….
Another enormous explosion followed, rocking the area, and sending him hurtling about a kilometre in the opposite direction of the mountain range he had just flattened with his explosion.
"You really are brutal, to come and use the same attack I did on you moments ago," Aron said with a weary smile, realizing that he really had no chance of winning this fight.
[If you can dish it out, you should prepare yourself to receive it as well,] Nova said as she materialized a meter away from Aron.
Her sudden appearance scared the shit out of Aron, who could have sworn that she was supposed to be a few kilometres away and in the vicinity of the mountain he had just obliterated a few seconds ago. He was sure of that because he could sense her presence there.
"Are you sure you are not cheating?" Aron asked jokingly with the expression of someone who couldn't believe what he was experiencing.
[Nope, I'm just utilizing the runes with the same knowledge that had been assimilated into you and the same brain power as that of yours,] Nova bantered back, raising her already massive chest to show her feeling of superiority in front of Aron who wasn't even able to sense her when she was so close to him, while he remained focused on the decoy she had placed on a mountain.
[But still, I couldn't believe that you sensed it and also managed to create seven shields to save yourself from being blown to smithereens,] she remarked, her tone serious this time, indicating that she was genuinely impressed by him.
"Well, my life was on the line and I didn't want to experience the feeling of being cooked by the heat and then having my body broken to pieces by the shockwave before I die. It is quite a nasty feeling," Aron answered, conveying that today wasn't his first time to experience this. Thanks to his strong body, brought together with strong regeneration, he didn't die immediately, but he was able to endure it for a few seconds before his body completely gave up, but that was eternal to someone who was experiencing his nerves being cooked while the body tried to regenerate those cooked nerves, which was soon followed by his bones being shattered into pieces from the shockwave before he succumbed to death after experiencing all that pain.
[Pain is the motivation of growth, Sir. If we remove it, there won't be anything that will be enough to motivate you to work hard in finding ways to avoid such things happening. Now, it seems that you have finally come up with the idea of integrating two runes at once during serious times for a more effective attack, albeit taking quite a long time to accomplish it,] Nova said before she broke into laughter as she remembered how long it took for him to succeed in doing so.
Aron, who was acting slightly hurt due to her laughing at him, retorted, "You are leveraging your computing power to find different ways to mess with me." He knew that during this period, he needed to think of coming up with ways to at least win against her even once without any assistance from her. He had realized that he was becoming overly dependent on her, and that might risk him losing a bit of his critical thinking skills. Hence, he had asked her to implement this form of training, where he would receive no help from her until he at least managed to land a single hit on Nova, who had limited her qubits numbers to the number of neurons he had.
"Let's take a short break," he suggested, finally feeling the accumulated fatigue which had been accumulating due to him spending hours trying to successfully integrate two runes at once, specifically the concealment rune atop the fireball rune.
[Should I update you about the various ongoing matters while you rest?] Nova asked, immediately teleporting both of them to the ground while creating a bean bag for Aron to rest on.
"Yes," Aron agreed and in response, Nova started her reporting.
[The decision has been made to build the company headquarters on an island, with the blueprint already being selected.] Nova reported to him, and at the same time, she materialized a miniature model of the city that was going to be constructed from scratch. The centerpiece of this project would be the headquarters of the companies that was going to be the world's tallest, widest, and deepest building by the time its construction was completed.
"This should provide jobs to millions of people and generate millions of dollars of revenues for different small companies," he said as he observed the vast number of materials that were going to be used for the complete construction of the city to its entirety, which would dwarf any other projects Dubai or Qatar which they had been planning or were being constructed at the moment.
[Just this project alone should keep the country's economy growing within the next year it takes to complete,] Nova added as she also mentioned the short time frame it would take for the project to be completed given that all the foundation and underground construction would be expedited using the atomic printer to accelerate the project without leaking the technology being used to anyone else.
"How much is the entire project estimated to cost us?" Aron inquired as he continued reading the details within the file.
[It's estimated to cost around thirty-five billion dollars, Sir,] Nova responded.
"Do we still have that large sum of money lying around?" Aron inquired, aware that he had already expended more than hundred and fifty billion on the previous projects that were now completed.
And although he recalled they had more than triple that amount of money, he knew that it was not available in cash; instead, it was under the Plutus Investment as an investment fund to increase the money and for it to not just remain stagnant.
[Yes, although the funds we won from the Morgans' flash crash have already either been spent in construction, raw materials purchase, or in different stocks, we have gained ourselves a substantial amount of cash from the GAIA and Asclepius Biotechnology product launches due to the prices we are selling them at.]
[Only about fifteen dollars of the technological devices are being spent in producing them given the prices of raw materials and shipping them, and if you include tax and everything else, only about a hundred dollars from the $ 999 of the prices of the starting devices is spent as operational expenses while the remaining is nothing but profit.]
[So, we have more than enough capital at our disposal,] Nova responded as she showed him what they had been earning from the sale of just the phone, which had already sold 35 million units and even if all of them were of the lowest price, it would mean they had already earned more than $ 35 billion. Then, there were still computers and other peripherals.
Just GAIA technology alone was already earning more than a hundred billion dollars in profits from their product launch.
"In that case, there is no need to be stingy. Go ahead and start the project," Aron declared, immediately giving the green light for the start of the project.
"That is enough rest," he added before immediately rising from his seat to resume his battle with Nova.
