Imposter System

Chapter 20: Hypnosis Limits

Matt shamelessly followed the command and accepted her hand feeding. Since he was using hypnosis, why not follow through. It was science! Once the bowl was finished, he felt energized. He wanted to test more things, but decided to have Alexis go to bed. He looked her in the eye and tried to have her sleep, but he didn't gain any proficiency for it. This was surprisingly a good discovery. He could use this as a pseudo lie detector.

While she was cleaning up, Matt ate the rest of the soup. Once he got some food in him, his body became voracious. The improved metabolism is increasing his energy expenditure by quite a bit. However, the payoff was faster healing and recovery. Although his body still felt like a doll and it was difficult to move around, he saw the wound on his leg was healing quickly. By tomorrow, it might even be completely sealed.

After finishing the soup, Alexis came out of the bathroom in her night clothes. Matt looked up and had a sudden thought that scared him.

'I wonder if she'd let me feed on her.'

As soon as the thought came to the forefront of his mind, he suppressed it. This was dangerous. While he was only a grade zero organism, his primal instincts would only present themselves with his behavior and acceptance. Even then, he could unconsciously block it away. However, in his current state, his instincts were leaking through. Matt realized that this was an important stage in his development.

In order to not be constantly bombarded with his repressed instincts, he needed to address it. Feeding on Alexis was a possibility. It is not a matter of whether she would let him, but rather, whether his hypnosis was strong enough to make it seem like common sense. In order to overwrite her common sense and make her mind begin justifying things like that, his ability was naturally too weak. Therefore, by logically putting considering the situation, it was simply inefficient to break his act now.

Although he could not sense his subconscious where his instinct lay, something told him that ignoring it would be a mistake. While he was weakened, he would attempt to bring out all of his impulses to the surface and carefully break them down with logic. Only by doing this would he have a safe structure to rely on when he was weak or desperate. Matt refused to be controlled by anything besides reason. If he could not control his nature, then he would domesticate it.

Matt did find it a bit humorous that he was treating himself like a wild dog. However, being able to rely on his human intelligence and also have a strong predatory instinct was a powerful combination. If he did this training properly, his instincts would become a lethal weapon in combat. Although it was a branch weak in combat, he would make up for it by training the host. Most of this would have to wait until the weakness of evolution passed, but he could do brain training until then.

For example, every time he looked at Alexis's naked body through the transparent silk, the parasite within wanted to devour her. Instead, he slowly worked on those thoughts until they began to become more practical. Matt realized that something like this normally wouldn't be possible. However, it came to him in an ironic twist. His proficiency in hypnosis had gone up by twelve over the course of the night that he spent solely on fixing his subconscious. The power of autohypnosis was not to be taken lightly.

In his past life, Matt heard stories of monks that could enter a trance with autohypnosis and release the limits on their muscles. This would allow them to do feats of strength only possible in state of true emergency. However, since this application wasn't described in the ability itself, Matt wondered what was going on. Is it possible that the 'system' is not omniscient? The answer would be an obvious yes if one thought about it rationally.

But, if the system wasn't omniscient, then what exactly was it? Once, Matt had come up with a theory that the system was his weak human consciousness trying to justify the situation he was in. It created a hallucination that explained everything he was experiencing. And the easiest source of assets for the hallucination was the game he most vividly remembered playing. But this was all a huge coincidence. Because he still didn't have enough information, he decided to put this thought away and address it later. Unless you were a genius of the century, creating a conclusion from a hypothesis alone was a major pitfall for a scientist.

Since Matt spent the whole night hypnotizing himself, Alexis eventually woke. He had been staring at her the whole time to trigger his monstrous thoughts. Because of this, when she woke up, she immediately made eye contact with him. Since she was already looking at him, Matt decided to try a few more suggestions to see the limits of his influence.

"You're awake."

"How long have you been staring at me?"

"Five maybe six hours."

"H-hours!? Did you even sleep?"

"I slept plenty in the bath"

[Hypnosis Activated.]

"I'm sore all over because of it too. Could you help me loosen up my muscles?"

"Hah! Fat chance. Since you're so full of energy, why not get up and move your body a bit, that'll fix your problem."

After breaking eye contact, she sat up and stretched her back. Then she got out of bed and started her morning routine to warm up. Matt sat up slightly, still feeling like every motion is like moving through custard. Matt determined that there was either a limit to the number of uses in a certain amount of time on the same person, or Alexis really didn't like giving him a massage. She had never done it before, so he couldn't rule out either possibility.

Matt checked his injury and saw that the skin had regained its normal elasticity and the black fibers were not visible from outside. Although it could mean he was still healing internally, his wound was practically back to normal. Matt tried to get out of bed and put weight on his legs, but his body fell backward like a marionette with a beginner puppeteer. This was not what he expected would be the weakness of evolution.

However, it made sense. Matt was practically a completely new organism now. In order to fully integrate with his host, he needed to reform all of the connections he had previously. However, this would mean an improvement in performance in the long term. Not only that, but since his improved metabolism leveled up, his training speed should increase as well. Once his body was fully back to normal, he would need to request another significant increase in calories. Fortunately, he had the steak meal ticket from the Commander.

Thinking of the steak, Matt realized he missed last night's steak. This was a great oversight by him. He mentally kicked himself for not eating before evolving. He had three-hundred sixty-four steaks left. Matt would not miss a single one. With some more motivation, he pushed himself to get up out of bed. It was a but clunky, but eventually he managed to get control of his body. Now, it just seemed like he had a permanent case of dead leg. Alexis stopped her workout and looked over to see him struggling to walk and felt a bit bad.

"Hold on, I'll go get your boot. Sit down for a minute."

"Didn't you tell me to get moving? Heh."

"Come on, I was just joking. You should take care of yourself."

[Hypnosis Activated.]

"I'll be fine. But I wonder how the person I tackled is doing. Tell me what you know about his situation."

"Hmm well I'm not supposed to say, but apparently, he's in a coma and it isn't likely he'll wake up. Some are even suggesting to declare him dead. However, some of the higher up's are against it. I don't know much else since it's so recent."

"That's fine. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble so be careful."

"Thanks Ah right, your boot. Hold still, I got it."

Matt analyzed the situation. In the last few weeks, he discovered that there seemed to be three faction on the ship. The neutral faction, which he had always been a part of, typically stayed out of the politics of the ship. The Captain's faction, which seemed to be more toward the laissez faire, less restrictions style. And finally, the 'Mysterious' faction. He called it such because he doesn't know anything specific about this faction. The only solid lead he has is the vague mention of 'higher-ups' from Alexis and the call Dr. Lisinger had during his medical exam.

One thing he knew for certain though, this Mysterious faction knows about the presence of aliens and possible imposters in the crew. They were the main antagonists to his existence. In fact, the Captain could be said to be half on Matt's side. Based on his occasional helping hand and the sausages, the Captain was clearly hiding something.

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Pow Pow, second chapter of the day.

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