Returning to his room, Latham repeatedly reassured his anxious parents outside the door that there was no serious health issue – he simply needed rest. Only after hearing their retreating footsteps did he approach the miniature computer.

  A million weekly salary... The contract's allure was undeniable. Were it not for his deteriorating physical condition, he'd have accepted immediately. Yet this didn't equate to surrender. His core issue remained inadequate organic mecha piloting skills – solve that, and the fortune would be his.

  Donning neural sensors, he resolved to drill fundamental maneuvers until muscle memory transcended technological aids. Confidence surged through him; with his seventh-level psychic prowess, mastery was inevitable.

  But as eyelids fluttered shut, his body jerked involuntarily. A foreign luminescent speck materialized in his mind's eye. Bewildered, he mentally inventoried his sensor-linked consciousnesses – all present, none mutated. This intruder bore different signatures entirely.

  Trepidation crystallized into icy dread. Cautiously, he extended mental tendrils toward the anomaly.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Information detonated behind his eyes – a hypercompressed biographical montage. Perspective shifted jarringly, visual clarity oscillating between crystalline precision and myopic blur. Despite playback speeds defying natural perception, every frame imprinted vividly.

  The narrative unfolded as a mechanic prodigy's life – an orphan excelling in machinery manipulation, culminating in mecha piloting prowess eclipsing standard training protocols. Final frames froze on a hauntingly familiar tableau: humanoid battle armor suspended mid-air, crimson energy beam erupting from its arm cannon.

  Recognition struck like lightning – this was the very mecha from his lakeside encounter! Those "camera angles" weren't cinematic tricks, but literal eyewitness perspectives. The chilling epiphany arrived: that absorbed white light contained a human soul's entire lived experience.

  Fingertips grazed his forehead as phantom itches crawled beneath the skin. Modern science couldn't prove souls' existence, yet here irrefutable evidence pulsed within his cranium. Necromancer techniques had crossed dangerous thresholds – sensor consciousness integration paled against housing an entire foreign psyche.

  His gaze flicked to a gleaming utility knife. Macabre fantasies of cranial excavation surfaced briefly before being quashed. Whatever this spectral hitchhiker portended, he vowed never to let anyone know about the strange occurrences happening to him. The path forward demanded absolute secrecy... and perhaps, reluctant symbiosis.