Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2024: Payment

The helmet shifted around Naysha’s head.

She froze as the outer shell softened and moved, sections retracting while others expanded, changing shape without ever losing contact with her. The process lasted only a few seconds before the transformation stopped.

She immediately reached up and ran her fingers across the surface.

It felt exactly like the old helmet.

Exactly the same.

The same curves, the same ridges, even the slightly raised section near the back that she had gotten used to over years of use had been recreated.

Naysha slowly removed it and stared. "This is my helmet."

Ning smiled. "Aren’t you happy to have gotten it back?"

"How?"

Before she could get any answer from Ning, she received another message from her helmet.

<Would you like the helmet to become visually concealed when not required?>

Naysha frowned.

"Invisible?"

She immediately shook her head. "No."

She needed to have her helmet on her at all times, so it made no sense for it to be invisible. The amount of trouble she could get into if she didn’t have her helmet on her was far too great, after all.

Another section of the interface opened.

<Current charge: 100%. Estimated operational duration under standard use: 61 days.>

Naysha stared at the number.

"Two months?"

A normal field helmet lasted about a week before it needed a proper recharge, and that was if you were not running heavy communication or combat systems constantly.

Two months was absurd.

"Well, looks like my work here is done," Ning said.

He took her old helmet and crushed it between his palms until it was nothing but a ball of metal.

Naysha stared at that absurd feat of strength with no small amount of awe.

Ning handed the ball back to her. "Dispose of this, will you?"

She gently took back what used to be her broken helmet.

Ning rid himself of the robe, revealing proper clothes underneath that in no way made him look like a beggar. He looked like someone who belonged in this district.

But then...

"Make good use of your new helmet. I will be cheering for your success in the future," Ning said. "Goodbye."

The very next second, he vanished from where he stood, leaving behind just the dirty rag he had used to hide himself beneath.

Naysha stood where she was for several long seconds before checking the dirty rag.

There was nothing there.

She could not, for the life of her, tell how the beggar had just vanished.

She stood there for several more minutes, waiting just in case something else happened, but when nothing did, she turned around and walked away, returning to the military academy.

In the meantime, Ning arrived on the moon outside the planet and waited for Crownus to appear as well.

The goat-headed Will appeared a second later.

"Has the System found a new host?" Crownus asked.

"Weren’t you watching?" Ning asked.

"I was. I was simply making some small talk," Crownus said. "Otherwise, I know everything that happens here, and there simply is no need for me to do any talking at all."

Ning chuckled a little. "So, let’s talk about your payment."

Crownus’s smoky body shifted slightly beneath the floating goat’s head. "You wish to increase the size of your Inner World, correct?"

"That’s what we agreed on."

The larger his Inner World became, the more useful it would be to him later. He was already planning to take in some planets in the coming days, so it was better to get started on increasing the size of his Inner World.

Crownus did not object to the request, though he remained silent long enough that Ning noticed something was wrong.

"What?" Ning asked.

"I can fulfill the agreement now if that is what you want."

Ning narrowed his eyes slightly. "Sounds like there’s a but in there somewhere."

"There is," Crownus continued. "Creating the System required a significant amount of my Energy. I am considerably weaker at the moment than I was before I began."

Ning glanced at him. "How much weaker?"

"Enough that if I help increase the size of your Inner World immediately, the result will be significantly smaller than what I could provide after recovering."

That was not what Ning wanted to hear.

He had already delayed this long enough, and after spending more than a hundred thousand years letting Crownus study him, Ning had been hoping to finally receive something substantial from the deal.

"So you can do it now," Ning said, "but if I make you do it, I get less."

He had spent all this time crossing galaxies, teaching Crownus about Systems, helping him design one, and waiting while Crownus figured out how to create it, only to reach the end and discover that he needed to wait again.

"How long are we talking about?"

Crownus considered the question before answering. "That depends on how much of my strength you want restored before I begin."

"Enough that I don’t feel like I wasted the payment."

"Well, that depends on how quickly I recover. It’s not as quick as you might have expected. The recovery is not perfectly predictable. It could take anywhere from centuries to a few millennia."

Ning thought about simply taking what Crownus could provide now and being done with it, but that would defeat the entire reason he had made the agreement in the first place.

He did not need a small increase to his Inner World badly enough to sacrifice a much larger one just because he was impatient.

After a while, Ning reluctantly accepted the obvious answer.

"Fine. I’ll wait."

Crownus gave a small nod.

"But no more than a few centuries," Ning added. "Go terrorize the galaxy if you have to. If you’re still not fully recovered by then, we’ll work with whatever you have."

Crownus nodded deeply. "That is acceptable."

That settled the matter.

He would have to wait for a few centuries.

"Well then, how am I going to entertain myself for a few centuries?"

Only one answer came to mind.

Naysha.