Formula 1: The GOAT-Chapter 184: Astronomical Changes

Chapter 184: Astronomical Changes
"Is he okay?" Rümeysa asked her mother when she saw Fatih, having woken up later than he usually did, walking weirdly.
"I’m fine."
"WHAT?"
Instead of clarifying, Fatih paused, realizing that his mother’s question was not directed at him, but despite that, he heard it as if she was shouting at the top of her voice right in his ears.
"Nothing," he answered, squinting and turning in the direction the voice came from. He found his mother all the way in the kitchen while he was still on the staircase, a significant distance away, too far to hear her if she had spoken in a normal voice, especially since she was talking to her own mother, who was right in front of her.
"You look really tired. How about you rest a little bit more? There is nothing you have to do today, so it’s better if you rest," Rümeysa said, this time loud enough for someone at his distance to hear. But to his surprise, the volume of her voice he heard didn’t change that much at all. He could now, however, specifically tell exactly how far away she was, and if he focused, he could distinguish the state of her emotions from her tone, relying on his knowledge of her to make his guess pretty accurate. At the moment, she was worried that the toll of the entire weekend, driving back and forth and attending different events with family, had finally caught up to him.
"Yeah, I think I will do that," Fatih said, not wanting to argue as he turned around and started walking up the stairs, trying to head back to his room.
Each step he took felt like he was walking on a nail-covered field. His sole felt the size of a football pitch, and every blade of grass on it could be distinguished individually. The bits of dust, sand, and splintered wood were all felt by him, and he could distinguish them individually, although to know which was which with higher accuracy, he would need to have identified or experienced them beforehand.
His hands’ sensitivity was at the same level. It felt like he had just become a bundle of nerves that collected every bit of data and sent it straight to his brain. Although a normal brain would have been overwhelmed by the amount of information and might have filtered it, leaving behind only the essentials, his, unfortunately, could handle all of the data. So he was currently being inundated with information from all the organs around his body that had nerves connected to them.
He could feel the texture of the clothes he was wearing, the air moving out of the way as he walked, and the slight tremors on the stairs caused by his movement.
When he finally arrived in his room, he sat down with his legs crossed as if he were meditating before he said, "Apollo, care to help?"
"Though I would have wanted to see you experience this full spectrum for a longer period so that you can understand the full range of limitless possibilities that are now in your hands, it is better we deal with it now, since there will be chances to experience it again in the future," Apollo said, appearing in the real world. But with Fatih’s eyes closed, he could not see him, since even his materialization into the real world was nothing but a mental image conjured by the system.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, catching the subtle foreshadowing in the response and asking for clarification.
"Do you think this is the limit of your Invictus ability?" Apollo asked instead of answering the question.
"I would think so, considering it had already reached Limit Break. Do you mean that there is a level beyond that?" Fatih asked, raising his eyebrows. Having woken up just a few minutes ago and not yet used to the new feeling, he hadn’t even had time to look at the system, as he was feeling all different kinds of things and was unable to fully focus on any one of them.
"No, that is the limit, but you are not yet capable of exploiting it to its maximum since the rest of your body cannot catch up. Your current body is the bare minimum required to have Invictus at Limit Break, but it is no different than a high-end game running at the lowest level of graphics. You can’t extract everything from it until worthy hardware is upgraded," Apollo said, going as far as to give an analogy for Fatih’s ease of understanding.
"So, only when Sponge Brain and Sponge Body reach Limit Break will I be able to extract everything?" he asked, imagining how it would feel to be at that level.
"Think of Invictus as the best building you can build on the current foundation. Every time that foundation gets upgraded and moves to the next stage, the building also changes to match that upgrade. So any ability of yours that reaches the next level will result in Invictus upgrading as well, meaning until all of your abilities are at Limit Break, it will continue leveling up as well," Apollo said as he revolved around Fatih, who was still in a meditative position, trying to filter the data to only what he needed at the moment.
"Now let’s focus on you compartmentalizing the information you are constantly receiving, or it will take you years to learn it on your own, just like it took you when you were born," Apollo said before Fatih could respond to his previous words, as he knew he was constantly receiving information that was making it difficult for him.
"Now I want you to try and discard all of the senses around your body other than your legs. You can continue feeling those different areas, but I want the highest sensitivity to be on your legs; that should be the main focus..."
Slowly, Apollo started guiding Fatih on how to choose a focal point so that he could have coherent data amidst everything that was being sent to his brain.
Once he had managed to fully focus on his legs, Apollo finally moved to have him isolate only the right leg, then up to the knee, before moving to focusing on only the foot, then the toes, until finally, he was made to focus on a single nail on his foot.
It took him an entire half an hour at the start to isolate his legs, but the next instruction of isolating only one leg took fifteen minutes, as his Sponge Brain, which had finally reached Ultimate, was learning how to deal with the current situation, adapting and rewriting the neurons to better fit the current model.
Since he was fully focused on controlling the Invictus situation, he had failed to focus on the other changes to his body, thanks to his other abilities being upgraded. A majority of them couldn’t be visually distinguished at all, as the changes were mostly internal.
Sponge Brain’s biggest changes were in brain elasticity; the ability to learn new things had been enhanced, along with logic, calculation, and every other part of it.
In Sponge Body, his body was now one of the best bodies an athlete in physical sports can have. Just like Michael Phelps, his body now produced less lactic acid, the main cause of muscle fatigue, and the rapid clearing of the acid allows for the muscles to perform at their peak for long periods and recover from fatigue faster. For someone who is going to be constantly going around the track trying to gain tenths from each braking point and high-G corner, this was an obvious advantage. But his was at a higher level than Phelps, and it didn’t stop there.
There were other major changes that, even having one of them, could give you an advantage in a physical sport, specifically tuned for his field of expertise. His reaction time was also at a genius level, so that too was among the abilities that had undergone massive changes, as he could now most likely recreate catching flies with chopsticks after a few tries.
By the time his mother came to check on him, he had already succeeded in the first level of data isolation and could at least function normally on the outside, though a large portion of his mental power was still being spent in the background, wasting energy. It would take him a bit longer than a week before he could return to the same level he was before the upgrades, at least in terms of operating as a normal person within his previous limits.
After every meal, he returned to his room to resume his meditation, wanting to spend as much time as possible to return everything back to normal before he could focus on training with his new abilities. At the moment, anything other than what he was doing was an impossibility, and he had exactly one week until he had to to Red Bull to officially start his F4 training on September 25, 2017. But before that, he also had the final parts of his documentary shooting.