Chapter 1608 – Too Smart to be Called Cunning

It wasn’t always easy being the smartest person in the room. Yet, Brilliant wasn’t just the smartest person in the room, she was the smartest person anywhere.

What a burden she bore upon her carapace.

Surely there were people, or monsters, out there with higher Cunning than she had, of course there were. In fact, one could be found not far away, her Senior’s brainy pet demon had more mind-matter than she possessed by a large margin.

And yet… did that make Invidia smarter than her? Clearly not, since she was the one named Brilliant.

No, her inexhaustible mental faculties were dedicated to something other than weaving mana and casting spells, she had no time for that sort of nonsense. Her brain was wholly consumed with the knowing of things. Secrets she would ferret out, puzzles she would solve and mysteries she would de-mystify.

Right now, there was a particular puzzle she was working on, and it was proving to be rather tricky.

“I’ve told you already, we can’t go out into the mana of the fifth,” Assistant groaned. “We’ll melt into a puddle in five minutes.”

“Bah! Can’t is not a word I’m interested in unless there is hard data. And explosions! You know very well we aren’t planning on travelling by mundane means, so don’t bother me with your useless prattle! I don’t intend to expose us to the contaminating energy of the fifth for more than a split second!”

Assistant clacked her mandibles in frustration and tried to keep her temper. Brilliant was being unreasonable again, which was perfectly normal for her, but being shifted from one impossible project to another in a short span of time had done nothing good for Assistant’s state of mind. Of course, they should do everything they could to save the Eldest, that was their duty, but plucking them out of danger using an alternate dimension?

“We don’t understand how those dimensions interact with our own well enough to try and move something as powerful as the Eldest through it,” she said, sensibly. “Nor how to get in and out of it. You can do it, thanks to your evolutions and such, but we can’t.”

In fact, Assistant had no idea how Brilliant managed to hop from one dimension to the next. She had some ability that let her perceive them, an organ or mutation, but as for the actual jumping about? It was a mystery to everyone.

Stolen story; please report.

“That’s what the experiments are for!” Brilliant declared, sweeping her leg in a grand gesture around the lab.

“D-d-d-did you call me?” Experimant asked from behind a nearby desk.

“No, don’t worry!” Brilliant declared cheerfully, turning back to her instruments.

“Yes, you said you want to check dimensions for stability, but how are we supposed to do that? We haven’t created the methodology! We’re starting from scratch and we have to be ready in… hours!”

“That, my dear sibling, is why I am creating… this!” Brilliant declared, turning around and waving a design document in the air with great vigor. “Once we make it, we should be able to determine the relative stability of a given dimension at a particular point in space and time. With that, we can work out which will be our best path to move through the fifth without entering the fifth! It’s BRILLIANT!”

“You have the design?”