For Lohan, going a whole night without sleep was no problem at all.
Given his current level of digestion, he hadn’t tested his limits yet, but Lohan was confident he could go at least three days without sleep without any loss of motor function.
But being able to go three days like that didn’t mean it would be comfortable to do so frequently.
Only during sleep could Lohan’s mental exhaustion be reset to zero, so even with the ability to stay up longer playing, the need for sleep for his mental health was very high.
Even more so considering his constant use of Parallel Processing, which, by creating other minds to process thoughts in real time, caused fatigue proportional to the number of minds he formed.
But in moments of need like this, Lohan didn’t bother sleeping, deciding to resolve everything he could right now.
The first thing he did was send a message to Lisa.
[Hayes: Hey Lisa, sorry to bother you this late at night, but I’ve had some unexpected problems here and I’m going to need a pass to skip class tomorrow, can you get one for me?]
Not even 30 seconds had passed when a reply was notified on his phone.
[Lisa: Is everything okay, Halon? Do you need my help?!]
-xXx-
In the Upper Zone, the silence of Isabella Vance’s room was broken by the intense golden glow of her holographic screen.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, her red hair framing a face marked by worry and intense coldness, she stared at Lohan’s message, her fingers trembling slightly over the virtual keyboard.
"Unwanted trouble at two in the morning in the Lower Zone is never small, you idiot..." she muttered into the emptiness of the luxurious room.
Isabella wanted to send a rescue team immediately.
She wanted Dylan to track Lohan’s exact location and send security drones to surround his building.
But she knew Halon; the Vice President of Astralis Requiem possessed a pride and independence that were, at the same time, his most interesting trait and his most irritating one.
Fortunately, he understood the limits well, so if he were in mortal danger, he would likely have already asked for help. As hard as it was for her to admit at first, both Halon’s current power and future potential were far greater than her own.
Considering how powerful she had become in the real world after reaching Level 12, she was even more curious to know how his opponents fared after dealing with a monster like that.
If he was just asking for a certificate, it was because he was dealing with the aftermath of the situation.
She sighed, her chest tight with a helplessness the Vance Group heiress rarely felt. The hologram cast light onto her golden eyes as she waited for his reply.
[Hayes: Relax, Lisa. It was just a few rats that got in where they shouldn’t have. The extermination is already done, but the cleanup process will take some time, and I don’t want to leave a mess around here. I’m in one piece, I promise. 😇]
Isabella snorted, with a mix of relief and frustration.
"Cleaning? Is he really going to do what I think he’s going to do?" she thought, recalling what Halon’s cleaning was like in Elysium.
Just as the possibility crossed Lohan’s mind, wondering if such results would be possible in the real world, Lisa, who spent all day with him in the other world, thought the same thing instantly.
Without arguing, since she knew he wouldn’t give specific details over messages, she quickly accessed the encrypted terminal at Eden-3 Central Hospital, owned by her family. With a few administrative-level commands, she generated an authentic digital document.
[Lisa: Okay. I won’t ask anything else... for now. But you better be at the base tomorrow, Halon. If you’re late showing up, I’ll go down to the Lower Zone myself to get you, got it? 😡]
[Lisa: Here’s the medical certificate. ’Severe respiratory failure due to filter contamination.’ Three days of complete rest. It’s already in the college system.]
Lohan read the message and, upon seeing the three-day medical certificate, smiled even wider.
[Hayes: Understood, President. Thank you... really. Sleep well.]
-xXx-
Lohan locked his phone and placed it on the table, next to his undamaged helmet.
He turned to the five unconscious men from the Asphyxia Gang lying on the floor. His conversation with Lisa had allowed him to calm down, but the need to remove the bodies was urgent.
In the Lower Zone, a disappearance was common, but five corpses in a student apartment would attract the Federation.
’Tbh, in Elysium this would take a few minutes, maybe even less. Here... let’s see how much my human power can handle.’ Lohan thought, approaching the group’s leader, who was still unconscious.
To start, he activated Efficient Digestion in a restrained manner.
In the real world, Lohan couldn’t simply turn into a puddle and envelop the bodies. Instead, he concentrated his Mana into the pores of his hands and extended extremely fine filaments of Magical Weaving that pierced the men’s skin.
The process began.
A soft, almost inaudible hiss filled the room. The speed was clearly slower than Elysium’s due to the limitations of Lohan’s human dermis, but it was still terrifying by this world’s standards.
Where the threads touched, the man’s flesh and bones began to break down at the molecular level, transforming into a bluish liquid essence that was absorbed through Lohan’s pores.
They were "biomass-poor corpses." Like ordinary people, their nutritional density was like a dead battery compared to the elite monsters of Mythlorien, rich in power and biomass.
Still, Lohan felt the flow of energy warming his veins.
As he began processing the leader’s head, the Memory Resonance triggered.
Suddenly, Lohan was no longer in his room; the vision he saw was of a completely strange place, but even stranger was the sense of familiarity he felt as he looked at it.
Realizing what was happening, Lohan smiled excitedly.
’Hell yeah!’