Human DNA is extremely complex. Even the most intelligent minds had failed to comprehend it fully before the System was given to the universe. After the System, it still was rare to be able to understand it let alone be able to edit it. However, understanding the foundations was what Zunzutoxian had created the Progress Druid class line for. Now Synexus was carrying on that legacy.

  Information flooded into his mind and normally when this process happened, it was over in under a minute, but the genes of a complex living being like a human needed to be digested a bit slower.

  Nearly five minutes passed before his sensors had gained all they could. He then turned to the seamstress and asked to press his hand against her skin. There was a chance he could dive into the daughter’s genes and find the part that needed to be changed, but after learning from Zunzutoxian’s Codex, he understood how genetic material was passed down from the parents to a child and her genes might be useful to him during the edit.

  When he was done absorbing the mother’s genes, he had to sit down for a second to fully sort through the knowledge. Within his Progress Garden he saw their genes floating before him as he called them from his library.

  “What exactly is it that you’re doing?”

  When the seamstress asked him, he realized he hadn’t even begun to explain.

  “I don’t want to go into detail. It may take a bit of time to work out a solution. How about I stay with your daughter while you work on the clothes with Yu? We will come to find you if something happens.”

  She nodded and started to walk away but turned around in the doorway.

  “You won’t hurt her, will you?”

  “Too be honest, I do believe there will be some pain, but I’ll do my best to avoid that. I will not intentionally hurt your daughter.”

  The seamstress seemed unsure of the decision and clearly wanted to stay, but there was a gleam of hope in her eyes that Synexus figured eventually beat out the logical side of her thoughts.

  Once she was gone with Yu, Synexus helped the daughter to sit down on the floor with him. He then entered his Progress Garden once more to look at the genes of daughter and mother side by side.

  When he had healed Snowfall, it felt like he was running through a dark labyrinth made of genes, but now that he had a visual in his Progress Garden, it felt like a complex jigsaw puzzle where the pieces needed to fit in all three dimensions. His brain was using every point of intelligence, and every bit of its mental processing to dive deeper into her genes.

  Thanks to his skills, he could see what each part of the genome did and then he worked out how that fits into the grand scheme of the human sitting before him.

  He passed by the genes for her golden hair, he barely glimpsed at the genes that instructed her body to grow to a certain height and stop, and shortly after he found the genes relating to her eyes. Instantly, he saw pieces of what looked like broken code which was what clearly caused the congenital defect at her birth.

  With great care, he inspected the genes closer and started to feel how their flow was incorrect. They just weren’t right, and little hints started to poke through at how he could go about fixing them. With Snowfall, he was able to reactivate dormant genes to basically grow a new eye, but with the seamstress’ daughter, he had to fix the genes and tell them how to grow the eyes correctly before having them regrow such delicate organs.

  His instincts told him what to do and that he was in the right place. He simply had to rearrange the genes to correct the issue, but he was holding himself back. This was a human being and that required some patience and care. It was his first time even delving into a human genome. Doing this would cause him to cross a line that he wouldn’t be able to step back over. He would be undermining nature’s authority in the name of progress. Even if he was doing it with the best intentions and saving someone from a lifetime of unimaginable loneliness, it didn’t matter. He was still doing something that could be deemed unnatural. His class was a burden, but in the end, he would withstand that burden if it meant he could help the world. He wasn’t there to save his home. Now he had the power to save Motholo even if it was only one person at a time.

  That made his decision for him. He would walk that line because that was what the legacy of the Progress Druid class line was. Balance between nature and technology to find the best optimization for progress. Advancement by bringing your origin with you instead of leaving it behind or destroying it. You could destroy every forest to build more buildings than you need, but then the world would suffocate. That’s why the balance was important. That’s why Synexus knew his class had the potential to change the world and maybe even the universe.

  His will hardened and with one metaphorical foot, he stepped over the line.

  He perceived the genes for her eyes rearranging themselves and then snapping together. His skill worked hard with his mana to rebuild parts that were completely broken by using parts of her mother’s genome. Then his mind found no more issues, and he sighed. That was one part down and now he had to do the other.

  Sifting through the jigsaw puzzle for the right piece, he continued to read the creation of the young woman more. It was a fascinating sight to be able to read someone like pages of a book. Seeing this woman before him made up of genetic code made him want to delve into his own sometime and see how he was written. He mused that he wouldn’t find himself to be a good read. Maybe he would be too complex or maybe not complex enough, and his mind would get bored.

  Another broken gene caught his eyes, and he refocused. Reading them he realized they were related to the ears, but they were also extending into the genetic code of the brain. There was more to her hearing loss, and he knew it would be a more perplexing edit than the eyes were.

  ***

  Yu and the seamstress were staring at Synexus and the young woman sitting on the floor of the private room. It had nearly been five hours since he had started whatever he was doing, and the seamstress had finished the garments for Yu a couple of hours ago. Both of them simply sat and watched the motionless figures on the ground.

  “Yu, is something happening?”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Yes. Most of his skills take place inside his head. Do not worry. If it can be done, then he is the one that will succeed.”

  “You have a lot of faith. Is he really that powerful?”

  “I’m not sure powerful is the correct word. He’s only level 21 after all. Unbelievable would be more of an apt description. He finds a way to do the impossible again and again.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone with skills like his. That fabric was extraordinary. I could have sold that one roll for thousands of gold. What is his class?”

  “That isn’t for me to tell, and I would advise not asking him. It has become somewhat dangerous knowledge. I’m sure he would appreciate it if you actually didn’t tell anyone about this.”

  “About what? Me making you some clothes?” The seamstress smiled and then winked at Yu.

  Yu let out a little laugh while cleaning the fur and feathers with her long cat-like tongue.

  They were both looking at each other but quickly turned towards the young woman when she let out a distorted scream.

  ***

  Synexus’ focus was split between twelve different puzzle pieces and how they were supposed to fit into the bigger scope of the puzzle. It was taxing to keep up with his intensity of mental processing, but he wouldn’t quit until the young woman before him could live the life she deserved.

  It wasn’t about twisting and turning the pieces to find out how they fit in. It was about figuring out how they made sense in the entirety of the woman’s code. How they flowed together with each other to create something greater than the individual instructions.

  The genes relating to her brain were the most complex and it took most of his focus to understand what he was looking at. It seemed her brain didn’t fully develop the auditory cortex meant to understand audio signals from her ears. He was attempting to change those genetic sensors to be able to interpret them and thus fix her hearing.

  Element Modification was even utilized to strengthen the parts of the brain that needed to work. He had ultimately already altered this woman’s brain and now all that was needed was to make sure the ears would fully develop from the genes and make sure the brain could understand those signals.

  Suddenly, one of the pieces snapped into place and things started to become clear. Quickly all the other pieces were pressed back into the genome in what looked to be the optimal pattern for the story of this woman as a whole. The jigsaw puzzle was complete and when he stepped back to look at it, not a single piece was out of place. It was beautiful.

  With the plans for the edits made, he started to flow his mana into the woman and edit her genes. As soon as he started, a scream shook his senses. He could feel his mana activating the edited genes and her body was being rewritten. Her eyes burned and changed. Her ears started to connect to her brain. It was all happening instantaneously while he tried not to make her suffer more than she had to.

  When the screaming stopped, he finally opened his eyes and looked at the young woman passed out on the ground in front of him. Her crying mother was at her side trying to wake her and Yu was trying to comfort the woman.

  “What did you do?! Is she…is she dead?”

  “Dead? No, she’s fine. That amount of pain would make anyone pass out. You’ll have to give her some time. Yu can you produce a cooling breeze for the young woman. I’ll get some water.”

  They all sat around the girl. She had a pillow under her head, Yu was giving her a nice breeze, and Synexus had placed a cold wet rag over her eyes after turning the light off and only growing some faint bioluminescent flowers.

  The seamstress had closed her shop for the day and was prepared to wait by her daughter’s side for days until she woke up. Fortunately, it didn’t take her that long and two hours later, she started to shift.

  “Mina, it’s mom. Are you okay?”

  A sudden jerk of fear came from the young woman and panicked breaths started to come from her lips.

  “It’s okay baby. I’m here. You’re alright.”

  “She’s probably scared because this is the first time she’s hearing you.”

  Surprise fell over the seamstress’ face.

  “I didn’t think she could actually hear me. I just always talk to her. My husband always thought the vibrations calmed her.”

  Synexus nodded and then removed the rag from her eyes. It took a minute for the young woman to open her eyes, but when she did, even in the lowlight you could tell that they weren’t the same empty eyes, they were nearly identical to that of her mother’s.

  A gasp came from the seamstress followed by more tears. She grasped her daughter’s hand, who looked at them all in confusion. Her eyes were darting back and forth between her mother, Synexus, Yu, and the glowing flower.

  “My name is Synexus. I fixed your hearing and your sight. I know this is a lot to experience right now and you’ll need to gradually work your way up to taking on more light and sound.”

  The young woman instinctively nodded towards him.

  “We should take our leave now and let these two settle in.” Synexus said to Yu before turning back to the seamstress. “If you need anything, we are staying on the top floor of the Dragon Fire Inn. We will be in the city a couple more days.”

  She nodded. He reached out and started counting gold guins in front of her.

  “300 like we agreed on. Take care and good luck.”

  She stared at the money like it meant nothing to her. She almost pushed it back towards Synexus, but he had already started to walk away after grabbing all the garments she made for Yu. Her gaze quickly looked back at her daughter, and she gripped her hands tighter.

  As they walked out of the shop Yu could tell Synexus was deep in thought.

  “What you did for that woman was incredible. You shouldn’t feel bad about causing that young woman pain.”

  “It’s not that, Yu. I realized something today and it’s making me question our approach to keeping a low profile. My class lets me do things others can’t even dream of. I can heal ailments that healers can’t. I can create wonderful new technology that could help people who are struggling along their path. Yet, I can’t expose myself and do all these things on a wider scale because the coalition is out there looking for me. It boils my silver blood with anger and frustration.”

  “Ah, yes. I understand. These enemies of your people are forcing you to turn away from your purpose of helping people through the progress of your class. It would be like a threat to the sphinx, making them stop absorbing knowledge and thus making them shy away from a core part of themselves. However, no one has the power over you to make you stop being yourself and using your abilities for good, Synexus. If you chose too, you could be blatant and I don’t know, make a rainbow forest that grew nothing but sweets to appease the human children. Something that would catch their attention and let them know that you aren’t afraid of them. That you aren’t going to stop being who you are because of them.”

  “Is it that easy though? Doing that could bring their whole force down on this world.”

  “If they choose to do that then it’s their prerogative. Just like they can’t stop you from using your abilities to do what you want to do, you can’t stop them from doing the same. It isn’t your responsibility, it would be theirs and if you haven’t noticed, this world is full of people who would proudly fight. So, the question becomes, will you do the good you want to do while you can or wait until they ultimately find you regardless of you using your abilities and then being reactive?”

  “You’re saying I should throw caution to the wind and be proactive. Take back control from this group that chooses to exterminate a race of people instead of trying to find a peaceful resolution.”

  “No, I’m simply saying that it’s your choice. Your friends will stand by you no matter what. You’ve helped me immensely already and I promise you that my sisters would stand by me to defend you and this world. No one would let an organization threaten their home and they wouldn’t give up one of their own to appease them either.”

  “You’re right, Yu. Thank you. I guess seeing what they did to my home planet, to my people, had planted some fear within me. I won’t let them control my actions anymore. Their choices are their own as are mine. I’ll continue to walk the line, carry on the legacy given to me, and help as many people as I can.”

  He turned to her and smiled as they walked through the bustling streets of Goldhill back towards the inn.