Regarding the actions of 'Georios'.
Most of the Aeons merely maintained a baseline level of observation.
Simply put, as long as a new Path wasn't being blazed like it was centuries ago, the general flow of destiny wouldn't stray too far off course.
Or at least, it remained relatively controllable.
Nanook, however, found it a bit of a pity.
Such a fine individual—why won't she walk the same path as me?
The thought that they might eventually have to trade real blows in the future was truly a shame.
And truth be told, THEY couldn't bring THEMSELF to do what Aha does: dragging someone to sit at the same table even when THEY knew they aren't kindred spirits.
When Nanook granted THEIR power back then, it was honestly because THEY felt the little thing's life was like a candle flickering in the wind; it would have been a waste for her to just die like that, so THEY gave her a spark of strength to survive.
The power itself wasn't particularly aggressive; THEY had essentially scraped together the most "gentle" bits THEY could find within THEIR Path to hand over.
THEY just hadn't expected Aha to have even fewer scruples than THEY had imagined. It was one thing to give power for protection, but Aha just had to ostentatiously shove her onto the center stage.
It was pure malice.
By now, Nous didn't particularly care; this wasn't the first time such a shift had occurred.
Like Aha, the Erudition was now more curious about how she had managed to hide from the Aeons and introduce so many variables.
If anyone was truly itching to move, it was likely HooH. In fact, the Equilibrium had been tempted to act a while ago, but Aha had blocked the way.
Then came 'Georios' being forcibly ascended to Aeonhood by Aha; once it reached that stage, any chance of a direct intervention essentially vanished.
HooH couldn't just rush over and get THEIR hands dirty personally, and the Arbitrators were no longer a match for 'Georios'.
As for the usual method—manipulating the grand trends from the shadows to guide her—that was unlikely to work on the 'Georios' of today.
But asking Equilibrium to just "out of sight, out of mind" it... well, THEY couldn't do that either.
After all, the road THEY practiced was the Path of Equilibrium; it was fundamentally impossible to ignore such a strange variable.
Yet, amidst the frustration, HooH couldn't help but feel lucky about one thing: THEY had stepped in to stop her hundreds of years ago.
If THEY hadn't intervened back then, seven or eight centuries ago, she might have already reached this point. If she had been allowed to develop for several hundred years until now, even an Aeon wouldn't dare imagine what kind of monster she would have become.
Besides, compared to her world-shaking feats of the past, merely plotting to occupy an ownerless Path now was actually... alright.
However, there was something else weighing on Equilibrium's mind.
Nanook had shown ambition toward the Path of Propagation, seeking to swallow some of its concepts.
Meanwhile, 'Georios' now had her sights set on Permanence, and given her situation, she'd likely have designs on Propagation as well.
Perhaps a battle loomed in the future? But for now, both of them held a fairly good impression of each other.
This made the highly probable clash feel uncertain. HooH had a massive headache, unsure of how it would all turn out.
Lately, Nanook had been busy expanding THEIR ranks, using THEIR Emanators and the Legion to play the Great Game against other Aeons. But 'Georios' was a special case.
Whether it would come down to the principals themselves trading blows or something else entirely was hard to say. Equilibrium pondered for a long time, but in the end, THEY did nothing—at least on the surface.
Aside from these Aeons who already had ties to 'Georios', there was one more who watched her with great interest: Yaoshi.
After all, Abundance was a Path that had branched off from Permanence. Now that Permanence was suddenly about to gain a living master, the Abundance couldn't help but pay attention.
Nowadays, 'Georios' was relatively sensitive to the gaze of the Aeons.
She could feel that after obtaining the Equation of Permanence and attempting to decipher its Path, multiple Aeons had begun to watch her on the sly.
She didn't care much, though. If there was something to fight for, she'd fight.
Aeons generally didn't strike directly; at most, they'd pull strings from the shadows. Besides, she still had Aha. That fellow wasn't exactly human most of the time, but THEY could be useful when it mattered.
The only issue was that her progress in decoding the Equation of Permanence was stubbornly slow.
Even with materials from various Scions of Long, she couldn't reach the same efficiency she'd had when analyzing the Equation of Elation.
To be honest, her efficiency in grasping Permanence was only slightly higher than Herta's progress in researching Elation.
While the power of Elation seemed versatile, it wasn't so omnipotent that it could provide a boost to her research into other Paths.
For instance, she could perhaps rely on Trickery to construct a falsehood that "she had already mastered the Path of Permanence" and then manifest it.
But that would merely be using the power of Elation to drive the Path of Permanence; it didn't mean the knowledge would go sliding into her brain on its own.
There were no real shortcuts to mastering a Path.
So, it was time to break out those strange, wonderful tools she had developed in the past.
'Georios' pulled out the "Personality Completion System," something she'd tucked away at the bottom of her storage after it was finished.
She didn't know if Herta had used it during her own research, but the puppets used the system as standard equipment now, and even AI Herta was integrated into it.
As for the one in her own hands, she hadn't used it much. Most of the time, she didn't need that extra layer.
Now, however, was the perfect time.
She didn't use it immediately, though. After all this time, the device needed some calibration.
She also had to find a way to optimize the system to push its efficiency even higher. A blunt axe cuts no wood; 'Georios' set aside the work of decoding the Equation of Permanence for a moment and turned her focus to enhancing the Personality Completion System.
Unlike the version used for Herta's puppets, she didn't have that many clones...
Wait.
A sudden flash of inspiration hit her. She might not have as many puppets as Herta, but that didn't mean she couldn't create clones to help her build the entire system.
With the Path of Elation, achieving "a thousand faces for one person" wasn't difficult.
In fact, 'Georios' sometimes suspected that the masks used by the Masked Fools across the universe were actually Aha's clones. She just couldn't see the trick behind it clearly enough to be sure.
Regardless, cloning was child's play for the Path of Elation.
And for the Personality Completion System, using the Simulated Universe to mimic different personalities certainly couldn't compare to having real clones linked together.
No sooner said than done!
'Georios' raised her hand and swept it in front of her cheek. A half-mask in the shape of a dragon materialized in her palm. Then, the mask began to multiply rapidly according to her will.
Like a flurry of snow, the masks quickly filled the entire cabin. As they hit the floor, clones of all shapes and sizes began to pop out.
Their forms took inspiration from Herta's puppets. Some looked like young girls, some were chibi-style, and some were even the size of a finger.
'Georios' also incorporated all the data she had on different Scions of Long, giving the clones' draconic features a variety of appearances.
The only commonality was that they all wore the same mask.
This served as the anchor point for 'Georios' to control them.
The clones were real—different versions of herself physically created by the power of Elation. But because they were controlled by the masks, they possessed no self; they were all managed by her alone.
As the masks in her hand continued to multiply, the clones in the cabin grew in number. Seeing that the entire laboratory was about to be crammed full, 'Georios' opened a hatch and activated the space expansion system of the vacant cabin opposite her to accommodate the horde.
The multiplication process lasted for quite a while.
Once the number approached ten million, 'Georios' finally stopped.
On one hand, the materials for the Halos used by the Personality Completion System were running low.
No matter how small they were, they consumed resources—unlike the masks 'Georios' could manifest by hand. Production could keep up, but the material supply was limited, so she had to stop.
'Georios' distributed the massive quantity of Halos to all the clones.
Once every impression was layered onto her own being, after an initial headache from the massive influx of information, the superiority of the system quickly became apparent.
Under this enhancement, 'Georios' suddenly realized something.
If a genius could be seen as a single neuron of Nous, then by linking and stacking her own massive number of clones like this... wasn't she, in a way, constructing a "brain" similar to the Erudition?
If puppets that weren't even true inorganic life could aggregate to mimic a fraction of a genius's talent, then what if the subjects added to the system were all clones comparable to geniuses?
Once these countless impressions were gathered, the resulting thinking capacity and talent would far surpass any individual genius.
Theoretically, if they could be stacked infinitely, there was even a chance of approaching the level of Nous.
Of course, that was only "theoretically." In reality, it would be difficult.
Even a human brain has nearly a hundred billion neurons; a being like Nous would require an even more staggering number of thinking units. No matter how much she expanded, she couldn't create a legion of a hundred billion clones.
Not only would the production of Halos require a massive amount of time and materials, but the Personality Completion System itself, acting as the link, couldn't match the exquisite structure of Nous.
The system had an upper limit; it couldn't carry such a vast number, nor could it reach the heights of the Erudition.
Furthermore, any plan that relied on stacking quantity was subject to diminishing returns.
By 'Georios's' calculations, ten million clones were about enough. Anything beyond that, and the actual improvement would become negligible.
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL