Due to the cautioned the Egyptian gods, nothing of importance happened over the next 20 years.
The only changes were those Adam made to humanity.
The first change was to make the enhancement of the senses through mana more intuitive.
Adam had noticed this when using mana in the eyes.
The second was protective layers of the skull to distribute the force further before reaching the brain.
Next was the durability and flexibility of joints with the ligaments; the only problem the bones.
Second, he increased the bones’ ability to repair in general in cases of breaks.
Some of the smaller changes were baldness, teeth, and hair durability.
Also their ability to stay clean.
Lastly, Adam finally got around to night vision.
Rather than do are the existing forms of night vision enhanced the brain’s ability to process echolocation at night to an extent that they could see at the standard of any other human at night.
All the changes he had made beforehand had spread through More than 70% of the population.
Warriors never really noticed; the fastest were the ordinary people who did so first.
People who once would have died young now lived long enough to become scholars, craftsmen, physicians, soldiers, inventors, and teachers.
A physician who should have died from an infection survived and discovered a treatment years earlier than he otherwise would have.
A craftsman who would have been crippled by an accident continued working.
A scholar who would never have survived an epidemic reached old age and passed his knowledge to another generation.
The effect was subtle at first, but over time it became impossible to ignore.
Humanity was no longer simply becoming healthier.
It was retaining more of its most capable minds.
The first Mages had little understanding of what they were doing.
Their earliest attempts were primitive, exhausting, and unreliable, but eventually someone learned how to shape Mana into something as simple as a Fireball.
That achievement was followed by countless others.
Some people approached magic almost scientifically, experimenting with Mana, recording their results, studying magical patterns, and trying to understand the laws behind what they were witnessing.
Others turned toward older and more traditional methods.
Tribal communities developed ritualistic practices involving chants, symbols, dances, sacrifices, spiritual ceremonies, and inherited traditions whose original meanings had been forgotten over generations.
Even when those traditions appeared crude to a scholar, they could still produce results.
Magic therefore developed in several directions at once, and humanity began discovering that there was no single correct way to use it.
Echovision followed a similar path.
When the first people were born with the ability, their advantage was so enormous that many societies immediately saw them as natural weapons.
They could perceive things ordinary humans could not, track movement with incredible precision, and detect threats that would have remained invisible to everyone else.
Those possessing the ability were therefore trained as assassins, scouts, hunters, and spies.
For a time, they were terrifying because almost no one could counter them.
But Adam’s alterations continued spreading, and more children began developing Echovision.
The ability gradually ceased being rare.
What had once made a small number of assassins exceptional eventually became another trait found among ordinary soldiers and civilians.
Their advantage faded, but the knowledge developed around the ability remained.
Echovision did not disappear from warfare.
Instead, warfare adapted to a world in which more and more people could see what they once could not.
The way Adam was introducing these changes slowly and minutely over the course of many years allowed people to adapt to most changes and change their lifestyle accordingly.
The real problem was those with higher genetic potential who got these upgrades to such a degree that most of them would be considered Supernatural.
The original purpose of most of Adam’s upgrades was survival, but he failed to think about how these things could be mistreated.
The culture of some cities and/or tribes was drastically geared more towards combat and less towards intellectual progress thanks to the enhancements of the body.
Due to some being born with more Mana in their brain than their heart, intelligence also skyrocketed in other areas, leading to inventions being made by entirely different people.
Adam didn’t know it, but he was both improving humanity’s overall level and destroying it at the same time at an equal rate to such a point that it made little difference.
The biggest change was the average population of most cities jumping from 2000-8500 to 45,000 and above.
This still escalated the conflict, leading to battles with bigger armies and longer fights due to the durability of the average human.
-Adam Age 58-
The last 20 years of my life have been truly peaceful.
Thanks to the caution of the Gods I could finally focus on my objective wholeheartedly.
Most of the changes I’ve made are for survival, so that should I ever get into a big confrontation, fewer humans will die, and they will be able to live on.
But survival was never my goal in the first place; it was just the first step.
My next objective is to enhance things such as Instinct and our ability to survive without food and water for extended periods.
After Humanity has settled into a proper course heading towards more than just survival, I plan to make several changes that will help in every field I have discovered.
Things such as craftsmanship, combat, cooking, and other jobs.
As Adam sat at home with his mother, talking about their day in ancient Egypt, he suddenly felt he had to be somewhere.
He didn’t know where it was; he knew what direction it was, he just knew he had to be there.
Something was wrong.
He pressed a hand against his chest.
He could feel it; something was calling him west.
His mother looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t”.
Zakiti smiled gently.
Adam looked toward the horizon again.
“I just do.”
Zakiti asked no further and was ready to go.
Before Egypt, there had been Babylon.
That was the entirety of their world.
They knew the Nile.
They knew the great cities.
They knew the desert, the rivers, the stars, and the lands they had personally traveled through.
Beyond that, the world was mostly stories.
Adam had never seen an ocean.
Zakiti had never crossed one.
Neither of them knew what lay thousands of miles to the west.
But Adam knew there was something there.
And it was in danger.
Zakiti studied her son.
She could not feel the presence that disturbed him.
She could not sense the invisible pull in his chest.
She had nothing but his word, which was enough.
“Then we go,” she said.
Adam looked toward the horizon.”We don’t even know where we’re going.”
Zakiti laughed softly.”Then we will find out.”
They began at the Nile.
Adam summoned two horses.
These horses could be further enhanced by the energy in an ordinary human.
In their case, these horses could reach up to 250 miles an hour.
The animals appeared as though they had stepped out of the air.
Adam shrugged.”I’ve never tried to summon a horse this large.”She shook her head.
“Sometimes I forget you barely ever use your powers “They rode west.
Neither knew the names of the lands ahead.
Neither possessed a map.
They traveled by the feeling inside Adam’s chest.
West.
Always west.
When they reached places where the animals could no longer cross the terrain, he summoned other creatures.
Camels for the desert.
Donkeys for rough roads.
Birds to scout ahead.
Adam discovered that his Eternal power was far more useful than he had understood.
The farther west they went, the more uncertain the world became.
The desert eventually gave way to unfamiliar lands.
Eventually, they reached the Mediterranean.
Adam stood on the shore.
For perhaps the first time in his sixty years of life, he was speechless.
The water stretched beyond his vision.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“How far does it go?”
“I don’t know.”
Adam looked at her.
She smiled.
“Why are you asking me? I’ve never seen it either.”
They found a vessel.
Adam had no idea what it was supposed to look like.
He only knew that it floated.
He used his strength to help prepare it, carrying timber that would have taken teams of ordinary men to move.
Their new ship was crude by later standards, but Adam did not care.He had a deadline; he did not know who or what was calling him.
He did not know what waited at the end.
He only knew that every hour mattered.
They sailed west.
The Mediterranean seemed endless.
Adam spent hours at the front of the ship, staring into the distance.
Whenever the wind weakened, he took hold of the oars.
One woman moved them.
The strength of twenty-five eternals drove the ship forward.
As fast as she could without compromising the oars.
Zakiti watched him from the deck.
“You should rest.”
“I cannot.”
“You have been rowing for hours.”
“Something is wrong.”She nodded.
That was all.
She never asked him to prove it.
Several days later, they reached the western end of the Mediterranean.
Neither knew the name of the enormous opening before them.
They only knew the sea continued.
Adam stared at it.
“More water,” Adam said, exasperated.
Zakiti stood beside him.
They entered the Atlantic.
The ocean nearly swallowed them.
For the first time, Adam understood how small a person could feel.
The waves rose higher than their ship.
Storms came without warning.
There were nights when Adam could see nothing but black water and stars.
Yet the feeling never disappeared: West.
It pulled him onward.
Adam summoned birds.
Hundreds of them.
Some disappeared into the distance and returned.
Others flew away and never came back.
That last word, or whatever instinct represented it, became the one he waited for.
On the fourteenth day, a bird returned and refused to leave him.
“Land?”
The bird circled toward the horizon.
Adam turned the ship.
Zakiti looked at him.
“You found something”
“I think so”
They sailed onward
Land appeared.
Green mountains rose from the ocean.
Adam felt the pressure in his chest intensify.
His hands tightened around the railing.
“There”
Zakiti looked toward the island.
“You are certain?”
Zakiti nodded
The closer Adam came, the stronger the sensation became.
Something was here.
Something that had called him across a world he had never known existed.
By the morning of the twentieth day, Adam stepped ashore.
He simply stood there.
And neither mother nor son had any idea that the land they had just reached would eventually be known as Puerto Rico.