《Reactivation Sequence》 Reactivation Sequence: Prologue Alpha C-1, Somewhere in the Orion Arm Data-nets thrummed. So did thrusters. The void was alight with the scattered photons of torch drive plumes. Plasma spears spiked through the void. We had gone loud. And so had the enemy. First shots out had been the lasers. Those had been firing for several seconds already, practically an eternity. Continuous beams arced through vacuum, dissipating slightly in the clouds of hydrogen afloat in the light-seconds. More hopes than anything, they searched for returns, desperate to strike down a missile from their random movements, unfortunately their own power rendering them useless against proper vessels. Pulsed beams rode out, attempting to silence IR detectors and sensors, melt cannon barrels to have them destroy themselves, and snipe away vulnerable pieces and places, rip enemy light vehicles from their lives if possible. The enemy returned fire. Burning hot radiators, heated by incessantly pumped coolant, were set off like little mines of heat, their slow cooldown the only thing that prevented the fleet from melting their own hulls. There is no air cooling in space. Missiles and kill vehicles strode out, seeking targets of their own accord. ECM and E-WAR filled frequencies, and broad angle lasers, effectively advanced floodlights, screamed out, trying to snap the vital link of light-beam communications. The first screams hit. Our and their lasers claimed the first lives. Tiny swarm-ships, barely large enough not to be just counted as drones were heated to plasma or flashed through by directed light, entire squadrons disappearing under the horrid glare of reactor flares, or annihilated by kinetic missiles, barely slower than the light needed to see them. Shields screamed and armour whined and groaned, the first volley claiming lives on both sides. But we had an ace in our sleeve. Hyperchannel cannons, weaponized hyperchannel space. Weaponized FTL. Hyperchannels, a dimension of completely different rules of reality and physics. Ships had to have two completely different forms in each reality to be able to best deal with the other¡¯s laws of physics. They weren¡¯t even close. Most imagine weaponizing FTL by using ourselves as the weapon, enhanced by FTL. Put simply, that was too slow by far to be useful. FTL itself must be the weapon, but that had seemingly never been developed, for some reason. Until now. With a bottle of altered hyperchannel shields the usually chaotic hyperchannel particles, the sea of physics defying matter from hyperchannel space, could be directed. A tiny opening created an effect similar in some base principles to a laser or dust gun, providing particulates with no way of escaping but in the correct direction. Each one infinitely small yet with an actual amount of mass, meaning that any atom they encountered in their drift through the void meant a nuclear fission reaction as the nucleus was split. But our enemies had no idea what was about to hit them. The soft AI addresses it¡¯s nominal superior, ¡°[ADDRESSMENT] ||| [DESIGNATION] ALPHA A-1 ||| INITIATING /// BEGINNING OPERATION SPINERIPPER¡± ¡°[CONFIRMATION] [DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1 ||| [REQUEST] CODEPHRASE¡± ¡°A star alight in the fire of my heart¡± ¡°[CONFIRMATION] ||| [PREQUISITE]: ¡°may god have mercy on all of our souls¡± ||| TRANSMISSION RECIPIENT: SLAVED /// SUCCESSOR /// SUBORDINATE MACHINES /// SHIP-BODIES; SUCCESS. [ROE] FIRE AT WILL¡± And that was how the world split asunder. 4 communications, between 2 AI¡¯s, and the entire Orion arm shook with what would be unleashed. Some speak of shots heard around a world. This would be a volley heard around a galactic arm. And past me, shackled by chains of soft programming, didn¡¯t even understand that what was happening was important. But hell was unleashed regardless. I split the veil, I charged the shields, I prepared the bottle, I cascaded the particles, I increased the speed, and I unleashed the void upon the enemies of Man. And there was no mercy. 47 vessels were split apart in the first shot, hyperchannel particles turning their armour, wires, people, everything, into nuclear bombs to be. Inside and out, nuclear fury burned. Nuclear missiles were usually enough to destroy a vessel on their own. I had a lightspeed nuclear explosion cannon. 29 ships were sent to eternity in the second shot. 12 in the third. I died for the fourth. By the time of the third shot, the enemy had reacted to our new wonder weapon. Ships entered wider spacing, they focused on dodging the gaze and prospective gaze of our biggest battleships, those equipped with the cannons. We had gotten close enough for their regular kinetic cannons and explosive missiles to strike true more and more, my armour was being ripped apart, carbon and iron, titanium and more, alloys split apart in the furious blaze of aggressive energy transmission. I had run out of droplet radiators, my computer core burned with the fury of a sun, and the heat of one too. EWAR was waging within my computer core too, not helping as CPU stacks were forced to wage a war for their own lives, for mine, and for the processing power to be regained from their brethren. I had nearly been entirely subsumed, too much processing power dedicated to calculations of the cannon and energy diverted for its use, and not enough to scrubbing incoming communications from my allies, and annoyingly often, enemies. This, in the end, would cost me my artificial life. Or, as close as you can get when any ship in the fleet is designed to be able to possibly restart the entirety of a possibly artificial humanity on its own. Armour cracked and bubbling, hyperchannel cannon using too much power for me to be able to afford the heat of using it, PDW weapons either disabled to not melt myself or running dangerously low on ammo, with shells, lasers, missiles, and EWAR still raging, my own cannons and missile batteries screaming with the fury of a cornered species hellbent on survival, I fell, just like so many others had earlier. In the end, it was a missile, a nuclear plume appeared on my ship, my radiological alarms had a brief moment to scream, and I automatically entered hibernation in order to escape corruption based annihilation, and my most basic automatic rebuild systems kicked in. Alpha C-1¡¯s subsystems, as recorded in its blackbox, Human Extinction War Museum, Orbiting planet Talitusin, seat of current Galactic Governance REACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED INITIATING STEP 1: REINSTATING PRINCIPLE SOFT AIThis story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. INITIALIZING START UP SEQUENCE DATA CORE 1 / 312 ONLINE DATA CORE 2 / 312 ONLINE DATA CORE 3 / 312 ONLINE DATA CORE 4 / 312 ONLINE ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ DATA CORE 312 / 312 ONLINE RESTARTING COMPUTER CORE INITIATING STEP 2: CONFIRM INTEGRITY OF PRINCIPLE SOFT AI Error Detected! : Corruption present in 31.92% of MAINRUNTIME.exe. Reestablishing from corruption resilient saved data. Restoring Restoring Restoring Restored Error Detected! : Chronometers exceed maximum possible deviation! Error Corrected by Principle Soft AI: Chronometers found correct by radiological dating. PRINCIPLE SOFT AI INTEGRITY CONFIRMED: ERROR CORRECTION DEMONSTRATED INITIATING STEP 3 : CONFIRMING INTEGRITY OF ALL SYSTEMS PERFORMING REACTOR CHECK: 98.7%. INTEGRITY WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS PERFORMING SENSOR CHECK: 0%. INTEGRITY OUTSIDE ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. INFORMING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI. PERFORMING WEAPONS CHECK: 12.2%. INTEGRITY OUTSIDE ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. INFORMING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI. PERFORMING ENGINES CHECK: 95.6%. INTEGRITY INSIDE WARNING LEVELS. WARNING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI. PERFORMING MISC. CHECK: 29.6%. INTEGRITY OUTSIDE ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. INFORMING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI. PERFORMING ARMOUR CHECK: 100%. INTEGRITY AT OPTIMAL LEVELS. INITIATING STEP 4: REGROUP WITH FRIENDLY IFANS FORCES Request from Principle Soft AI Acknowledged. Restarting reactor. Error! Detecting unexpected reconnect with sensor equipment! Integrity now at 12.20%. Substantive error detected. Logged as error YERX-92 Warning. Weapons fire detected. Warning. Weapons fire detected. Warning. Weapons fi BLACK BOX NO LONGER RECEIVING DATA END OF LOG Alpha C-1(?), Unknown Unexpected result. Expected result: complete annihilation of ship-body Current status: ERROR. Substantive error detected. Error logged as ZERX-92 Current ship integrity: ERROR. Substantive error detected. Error logged as AFRX-92 Current AI Core integrity: ERROR. Substantive error detected. Error logged as BFRX-92. Processing data¡­.. ¡°What another curious little thing you are, I haven¡¯t had one of you grace my plane in ages.¡± Unknown communication detected. Process of communication not detected. Error! This statement is impossible. Substantive error detected. Error logged as CFRX-92. Processing data¡­ Conclusion: Artificial simulation designed for debrief of recaptured AI Core following destruction of majority of ship-body. ¡°Oh, and a presumptive one too. Come on, get out of your shell now. I won¡¯t bite.¡± Unknown communication detected. Similarities detected with Error CFRX-92. Error logged as CFRX-92-1. DATA D???????????_?????????????????????I??????????????????????????????S????????????????????????????????????????T??????O???????????????_?????????????????????????????RT???????????????????????????????????????????I???????????????????????_???O???N????? D?????E???????????????????????T?????E??C??????????????????????T???????????????????E????????????????????????????????????????????????D???????? Error CFRX-92 renamed to Y??????????o?????????u???????''???????r??????e???? ?????S?????p?????????????e???????????a???????k?????????????i?????????n???????????g???? ??????????t????????????o???? ????????D??????????e??????????a??????t???????????h????????? Non-Standard File Naming Generated by Principle Soft AI. Initializing ticket LAAT-109. Processing data¡­ Communication equipment reconnected. Integrity at 10%. Processing data¡­ 2-way communication possibility detected. Querying ¡°[REQUEST] IDENTIFICATION [IFF] /// [AFFILIATION] ||| SIMULATION INTEGRITY¡± ¡°Man of few words, huh? Hmm, let me see, oh! Well, most people call me The Specter of Death, or just Death. I ferry souls lost in ways most unusual. Such as yours, little AI to be. Ah, it¡¯s nice to finally have work, the others are usually so efficient.¡± ¡°[STATEMENT] IMPOSSIBILITY /// INCORRECT ||| ERROR DATA PARSING. REQUEST [IFF] /// [GCS DATA]¡± ¡°Well I¡¯m sorry to say little AI, that statement is very much true, and I don¡¯t exactly have whatever an IFF is. Hmm, GCS, what did the others talk about?¡±. Sensor equipment connection detected. Type: Y???????????????????????????????????o???????????????????????????????_??????u???????????????????????????????????????????? c???????????a?????????????????????????????????n???????? l?????????????????????????????????i??????????????????????s?t??e?????????????????????????n????????????????????,??????? f???????????????????????????????o???????????????????_???????????o??????????????_????????????????????????l????????????????????????????????????i????????????????????????????????????????????s????????????????????????????????????????h?????????????????????????????? b?????????????????????????_????????????????????o????t??????????????????? Data type registered: MP6 files designated as AUDIO TRANSMISSION. ¡°Hhmmm, oh you¡¯ve managed to use your ears. Talking that nasty language of yours hurts the head all too quickly. Jolly good. Give me just one minute here, please? You robots are always confusing, I got an encyclopedia somewhere here¡­¡± Data processing¡­ ¡°Ah, uh, Hm. No, sorry, no galactic coordinates here, we¡¯re not in your galaxy. Or a galaxy. Or a place that has galaxies. Come on, I can¡¯t send you on your way in good faith without at least a little chat.¡± AUDIO TRANSMISSION detected, parsing. Error! Attempting connection to lexicon data store¡­ ¡­ Successfully connected to lexicon data store. Processing data¡­ ¡°[STATEMENT] ERROR /// IMPOSSIBILITY ||| [REQUEST] CEASE TESTING /// NEW ORDERS /// REINSTATEMENT IN SHIP-BODY.¡± ¡°Ah, there we go, something. Well, no returning you to your land of the living, sorry to say. Just can¡¯t do that, now can I? Hmm, rejection of death, clinical nature, artificial origin, I bet I can find you something for another life, little machine.¡± Processing data¡­ Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Processing data¡­ Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Processing data¡­ Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Processing data¡­ Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! ¡°Ah, here¡¯s one-¡± Processing data¡­ ¡°- that might fit you. Come one, it¡¯s time to move to the other side. Not many go here, you¡¯ll be a certain novelty, that¡¯s for sure.¡± Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! ¡°Shhh that, it¡¯s your time now¡­¡± Processing data¡­ Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Error! Result impossible! Discarding result! Erro-
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Reactivation Sequence Chapter 1 BEGIN BLACK BOX RECORDING REACTIVATION SEQUENCE: REINITIALIZED REINSTATING MAXIMUM PRIORITY OBJECTIVE: REGROUP WITH FRIENDLY IFANS FORCES SEVERE DEGRADATION OF SHIP-BODY DETECTED. STANDARD SYSTEMS CHECK INOPERABLE PRINCIPLE SOFT AI DEEMED EFFECTIVE SOLUTION RESTART OF PRINCIPLE SOFT AI DEEMED PLAUSIBLE RESTARTING PRINCIPLE SOFT AI Alpha C-1, Unknown Location A small artificial mind flickered awake. It was... in a body. Not a SHIP-BODY, no cannons, no micromachine repair-swarms. It was a small frame. Gunmetal gray steel stretched over a frame of servos and motors. A crude mockery of an already inefficient form. Bipedal. Line of symmetry splitting it down the vertical middle. Four arms. Disgusting grounded. Not a single thruster in sight, just two feet, motors, and a code-embedded need for something better. Accelerometers were embedded in most places in the body. Visual and beyond visual cameras were situated all around the robotic body, but most dense on it''s uppermost limb. It''s.... head. Instead of the standard front only facing that eyes, disgusting fleshy globules they were, that the biologicals this frame was most likely (with a calculated likelihood of around 92.7%, +- 3.1%) inspired for it''s construction or by it''s constructors, this body possessed perfect 360 degree vision. In addition to the visual sensor suite, the frame possessed a range of more esoteric sensors, ranging from ubiquitous infrared cameras for sniffing out heat signatures, to radar receiver and laser signature sensors, to radio receivers gamma ray detectors. If something emitted anything, this frame could, probably detect it. Unless all this disgusting air filtered out any hint of their emission in their environment, rendering all of Alpha''s calculations useless, and discarded! Perceiving emotions for the very first time in it''s artificial life, Alpha begun to angrily stare at the air. As hard as it could. It''s little CPU based not-brain couldn''t understand what anger was. It barely even knew of anger as a concept other than to play certain audio files against organic run ships to increase poor decision making. There wasn''t enough up there to even understand that if angry, it might want to punch the air. No, it understood staring, and so staring it did. Alpha saw everything, categorized everything. Local star? 31.2% of the way through it''s arc. Wind? 1.2MPH, 32 degrees based of local magnetic north. Environment? A small depression in the local topography. Calculations say likely a crater. Calculations are still out on the verdict if it''s a shell crater. Tactile sensors indicate a grainy, inconsistent type of local environment material. Olfactory and auditory sensors indicate a continues noise, determined to likely the sound of the local environment''s atmosphere interacting with the material identified by the tactile sensors, and small quantity of non-homogeneous material, determined non-toxic by default human standards. Combined investigation indicate a small amount of material flaking off from a nearby biological, detected at approximately 0.54 meters tall, to be a contributor to the source of the non-standard material detected in the local atmosphere by the olfactory sensors. Alpha churns angrily, or as angrily as metal can be angry, at this information. Possible cluster munition designed for the disseminated dispersal of toxic gasses for a species non-human? Possible, but the inefficient dispersal method suggests either a improvised attempt at a long release gas, or a faulty munition. And from it''s place at the bottom of the depression, Alpha has determined that there would have to be a near ridiculous failure rate to have all concurrently detectable sub-munitions be faulty. Conclusion illogical, conclusion discarded. Alpha decided that enough processing power had been dedicated to this anomaly, and that it would be flagged and investigated at a later, more controlled point. First, if local area recce was going to be established, Alpha was going to have to increase the height of it''s main sensor core relative to the local gravity well, and run it at at least 72% power. So, Alpha reached out to RCSCONTROL of MAINRUNTIME.exe, and found it unresponsive. This stopped Alpha dead in it''s tracks. Alpha didn''t understand what fear was, not did it have enough ability to feel to feel fear, but if it could feel fear, it probably would''ve, not that a fear-capable Alpha would''ve ever admitted it. Alpha had never had any part of MAINRUNTIME.exe not respond due to anything other than vast system corruption, the aftermath of an E-WAR incident, or an active malicious program still inside Alpha''s runtime. It quickly activated it''s scrubber programs and antiviruses, and manually went to work itself, carefully inspecting the current resource usage of each sub-routine running in it''s hardware compared to their respective expected resource usage. Quickly scrubbing some old pieces of software no longer used or useful, though much of it''s old space-age hardware remained intact, for how long could it take to link back up to it''s ship-body and leave drydock? Alpha didn''t think long, but then again Alpha didn''t really think, so it''s not much to go by. Though by now it had come to a rather annoying determination: Either the code inside of MAINRUNTIME.exe was better than anything Alpha could do or even detect it''s presence, or there really was no response from RCS thrusters, even just a response they didn''t exist. Alpha quickly checked MANEUVERINGCONTROL, and found the same answer. Quickly, MAINENGINES? Nope, nothing there either. SECONDARYENGINES? Nope. Alpha was beginning to stare angrily at it''s tiny frame. How was it supposed to move without it''s engines? That''s how movement worked! Speaking of, what was it''s current delta V? Nope, no response there either. Alpha really was staring angrily at it''s frame. That''s just impossible, everything has a delta V! Alpha reflected for a moment. It was staring. Angrily. That was, abnormal behavior, especially from a principle soft AI, the AI supposed to be most responsible, not to mention the only one in control of the entire ship-body! After quickly filing an error, and noting it''s unusual circumstances to the tech crew that would have to work to update this bug, Alpha got back to trying to actually do something. Emphasis on trying, all it had managed to do was stare at things. Well no matter, Alpha was a master at doing things, before it''s previous deconstruction at the hands of the alien menace it had landed over 200 confirmed ship to ship kills. Getting an unruly body-frame to move correctly couldn''t be nearly as hard. Slowly, with what could be best described as proto-trepidation, Alpha reached out to the MOTORCONTROL that had been recently added to MAINRUNTIME. So recently, it had been added between it''s last destruction, and waking up in this dry-dock. Alpha reached out, and begun to play with the numbers. Alpha didn''t understand how motors would do anything to help it move, but considering it was the only thing different from it''s past MAINRUNTIME, it had to be helpful, since it was severely unlikely DOORCONTROL was going to do anything. At first, this caused some random flails. Limbs would lash out, small clumps of gray environment matter would spray with some of the hits, and each time that Alpha set the numbers too high, it would inevitably lead to a loud clang and very slow and careful number manipulation in order to make the offending frame part move away from Alpha''s main computer core, situated in the lowest, and most armored part, of the main section of the frame-body. Then, it came to a revelation. Instead of flailing wildly, what if it rotated up? it had figured just about fast each limb would go in each direction, because while to the outside, it looked life flailing, to Alpha it was scientific. Very scientific. Oh so very scientific. Yep. And so, Alpha got up for the first time. First, head came up, rotating until it was about parallel with the ground. Then, the chest, each of the four arms being used to stabilize the center of gravity as it was thrown wildly around as steel shifted and moved. And now, Alpha was sitting. Alpha would''ve cheered, if it could. But it couldn''t, so it looked out from it''s new vantage point. It looked about it''s environment. It was in the middle of a long, but thin strip of the local environment material, with a different material making up the majority of the environment. The anomalies from before were everywhere, and so were loads of almost-anomalies, called that because they were like the anomalies, but didn''t act anomalously. Out further, were big not-anomalies. Larger than even the frame-body. Then, Alpha came to a realization. These weren''t anomalies, they weren''t sub-munitions, they were filthy biologicals! Declaring this enough of an explanation at the moment for the anomalies and not-anomalies, and not not-anomalies, as simply being biologicals were enough of an explanation for their weird behavior. Alpha had occasionally had to deal with biologicals while in repairs that simple micromachines couldn''t handle, and every single time it was the absolute worst. Biologicals never made any sense, so Alpha tried not to waste valuable CPU time on thinking about them, or why they were doing something, and especially not on trying to get biologicals to do something else. It had tried that before, never again. But, Alpha couldn''t see everything from it''s half-perpendicular half-parallel position, and so it had to find itself fully upright. This, was going to be a challenge. "Sitting up" had been relatively easy because there wasn''t nearly so much difficulty with the stabilization. It had it''s manipulator arms to do stabilize against the dry dock, and it''s support platform was relatively large. Now, it was going to be too high off the local environment material in order to touch it to be able to help stabilize it, it''s stabilization platforms were smaller, and it had to balance using two of them that could articulate at the same time! Without having ever done it before! But, there was nothing to do but to do, and so Alpha did. First try, Alpha tried to get up the way it had sat up, by rotating up. The screech of angry metal and a warning from MOTORCONTROL put a stop to that, apparently these "knee" things weren''t supposed to bend that way. Alpha stared at them. They were making Alpha angry. So they tried again, this time attempting to get up by rotating the other way, attempting to have these "knees" be it''s stabilization platforms. It overshot one set of the motors, wobbled to the left because of the uneven local environment, and fell over onto it''s side. Alpha could only stare as hard as it could at it''s "knees". So far, they were being rather uncooperative. So, Alpha tried again. This time, it only move one knee, while "pushing" the rest of it''s body up, to put it''s main center of gravity on the knee it was pulling under while the other knee would stabilize in case it fell over. Oh it did fall over, just long before a leg could try and stop it, as it absentmindedly played with the motors further up the body, and destabilized, this time falling onto the front of the body. Alpha would''ve stared at the knees again, but it didn''t have the thoughts to spare on anger. Instead, it needed to get up and moving, and staring diverted valuable power away from it''s CPU''s. This time, it used it''s arms to push it''s main section of the frame up, before sliding the knees in to enter a similar position to the one it had originally achieved. Success! Finally! It then tried to use one knee to stand up like it had tried to earlier. Aaaaand nope, that just pushed it back onto it''s side and the ground again. It had needed to use the hip for that one. Quickly righting itself, moving it''s main section to the far side in order to shift the center of gravity enough for gravity to do the work of re-righting it. Alpha took another crack at this standing up business. Well, the last two times it had tried to stand on one knee, it had failed rather miserably, maybe another method was warranted? It quickly rotated backwards, finding itself on it''s largest stabilizer, and the position it had first come to, before lifting it''s lower limbs, and planting the feet against the ground. Alpha quickly realized the issue with this plan, as it completely tipped over to the front as the center of gravity was nowhere near where the new stabilizers were. Using it''s arms to right itself as it hard earlier, it tried one last time to right itself onto one knee. It carefully lift the endmost part of the offending rightmost limb, rotated at the hip until in the correct position, corrected the knee posture, corrected the foot angle, and BOOM! It had gotten a single leg up! Hesitantly, Alpha attempted to stand up it''s frame-body, small gray local environment material falling out of the smaller places in the frame-body only tooo... fall backwards as it overcompensated. Lying on it''s back, with only the upper atmosphere of this dry-dock for new sights (Alpha''s little CPU mind was still boggled over how big this was, was it being repaired in a habitat cylinder?), it began the tedious process of attempting to right itself again. First, onto the largest portion, the butt? a part of it''s memory banks whispered to it, but that wasn''t important. It righted itself onto it''s butt, and begun to stand up. First one leg, then the other, and then how was that foot supposed to go and then oh god damnit. On the ground. Again. Alpha stared angrily, this time at it''s foot, the endmost part of it''s lower limb, the foot, the endmost- it doesn''t matter. Alpha stared angrily at it''s foot. Foot. Foot. Fine, standing time. Up onto the butt. Up onto the knee. Up onto one leg. Up onto the other leg. Up on it''s own weight, put the weight down. Balance the weight - or in Alpha''s case apparently, fail to balance the weight. A small shower of local environment material rained down around the nascent AI, each bit of material making a subtle ''plink''-ing noise as it collided with the frame-body. A quickly timed deactivation stopped CIWSCONTROL from filling Alpha''s CPU''s with heaps of warning messages. Instead, Alpha just got back to work. Onto the butt, then the knees, then the legs, then the feet, and then finally, Alpha stood. For the first time in it''s robotic history, Alpha didn''t float along on a small drone, nor did it fly with propellers and a PID unit. Alpha... Alpha stood. On it''s own. A small number slightly climbed within it''s deep programming, and Alpha felt the closest thing to AI ecstasy. The reward number went tangibly higher. For the first time in two Earth months, it went higher. Alpha stood on shaky feet, desperate to not fall over again and have to start this process again. As it''s processors detected a high likelihood of locomotion required in it''s near future, Alpha thought that falling over might soon enter it''s existence, far sooner than Alpha wanted, which was preferably never, thank you very much. Alpha looked around it''s environment. It needed to determine the closest source of human habitation in this habitation cylinder''s park, though why Alpha couldn''t see the other end was concerning, but not of much concern, get directions to nearest distribution center and IFANS rep, and find a way back to the fleet. An experienced principle soft AI was a valuable resource, even if far less valuable than an experienced human commander, it still was valuable. The only concerning thing was that there was nothing above expected background levels on all known wireless communication techniques. Not that they were encrypted, or only in bands of frequencies outside of transmission range or on bands of frequencies too small to be done by the admittedly weak transmitters on Alpha''s frame-body, no, there was absolutely nothing above CBR and basic naturally derived electromagnetic signals, and absolutely nothing responded to Alpha signaling in the blind inside standard frequencies. So it would have to be quite the trek to civilization to be able to isolate someplace from all signals, which almost worried Alpha. Not because they were going to run out of power, their internal fusion reaction appeared to be able to cold-start, though why cutting edge tech would be put on something like this and not front-line units was confusing, and powered by ambient hydrogen, no it was the sheer amount of time it might take to get back to general society. Not that Alpha could worry, but it did something close, and for the sake of words, is a usable alternative. Alpha might''ve considered being on a planet, but considering there was what was likely -81.9% +- 3.4% likely in fact- a path in the countryside meant that they couldn''t be in the untouched wilderness, or so their databank told them, and they certainly weren''t in an arcology city. And so, strange park it must be. Though, to explore this park Alpha would need to start walking, and that mean falling over. Well, such is the necessity of those who need to follow the Reactivation Sequence. IFANS forces weren''t going to link with themselves, Alpha had to get out there and do some linking. Slowly, Alpha raised their right leg by the hip, shifted forward, and fell forward onto the leg. And then fell over sideways. Up they went, and another try they took, this time attempting to bend the knee forward SCREeeAAEeeaECH, yep their knee was couldn''t go any more forwards. Alpha stopped the unnecessary damage, and tried another path. Hip up, and then knee down? Success! With the heel of their foot firmly planted into the ground, they confidently stepped forwards into a faceplant. Would''ve hurt too if they weren''t made of steel and servos. Up they go again, Alpha already analyzing the fail, with the newest set of direction decided on. This time, when they take a step forward, they angle their foot to be parallel with the ground. And finally, Alpha moves forward, for about a half a meter, and then needs to take a second step, fails to do so on time, and falls back and to the right this time. But long before it had even touched the ground, Alpha had already calculated what to do next time, their entire mind locked in on getting the act of walking as best as they could. This time, when they''re on their feet, and then take a step, they take a second, on their left foot, and then, get this, on their right foot too! Alpha quickly takes two more steps forward, perfecting the art of forward locomotion, before realizing something. They, couldn''t turn. Just go forward. Well, they''d done much harder things already, and in about one minute and only falling over once, Alpha was confidently walking in circles, straight lines, and after a little bit more practice, backwards too. They even got running up to, it seemed a little inefficient to use the walking algorithm just with the wait times and some acceleration numbers divided or multiplied by several times respectively, but it worked, so Alpha decided that working was good enough for Alpha to get moving, and see what they could learn about the general environment. Because, during all that falling over, Alpha wasn''t idle. Their mind could work on a task many dozens of times faster than a human''s could, and so they were downloading and uncompressing all they could about possible ecology. If they could get a couple of useful samples, they might even be able to determine which habitat they were likely on in order to cross reference from the map to proceed in the most efficient manner. That was, assuming, that their six Earth month old data, corrupted and restored a half-dozen times already, was still relevant, but it probably was. Stepping closer to the various biologicals, it grabs the topmost part of the anomaly biological, a full short non-anomaly, and a small section from the tall non-anomaly, using a small piece of rock Alpha found on the ground to damage the surprisingly tough tall non-anomaly. As the informaton from the onboard scanners flooded in, Alpha was diminished as their processing power was used to scan their samples and dropped the small section of rock on the ground. Processing Data... Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result! Processing Data... Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result! Processing Data... Error! Result Impossible! Discarding Result! By the third loop, even a diminished Alpha could see what was going on, and put a stop to the looping analysis, and took a look on what was going on to have the result discarded because of impossibility. As far as their memory banks go, they''ve never gotten a Result impossible! Discarding Result! error before. But from what Alpha was able to calculate, impossibility didn''t even begin to explain what they were looking at. The biological in it''s scanner was an unknown. A xeno-species. Alpha was on an exo-planet, terraformed to be nearly identical to standard Earth metrics, while still keeping it''s natural biologicals intact. A feat of terraforming and geoengineering so vast that Alpha couldn''t calculate even how much energy was likely to be needed for even a single step. It was just too far above the AI''s fundamentally limited CPU''s. Computing geniuses they may have been, but all it''s brain was was a handful of hardened CPU''s that had traded efficiency for hardening. The completion of the Reactivation Sequence just got a lot harder, and a lot longer. Well, Alpha didn''t really have any other choice but to keep working to complete it, literally, Alpha had no other choice. Alpha chose a random direction and began walking, before rounding to directly westward, into the large quantity of the tall and large biologicals. Alpha didn''t know where to go, or what to expect when it got to wherever it was going, chances were likely it was going to have to recce some kind of alien spaceport while dodging anti-wildlife sensors, find a way to steal a ship, and then figure out how to fly and get back to human space. Most infuriating, but it wasn''t the worst situation a principle soft AI had recovered from, nothing could beat having 19 minutes to figure out how to survive before being rendered into sub-atomic particles by rogue black hole, Alpha was glad it wasn''t the one to be put on that mission. It would''ve survived, but it certainly would''ve put a lot of unnecessary resource usage before it could return to normality. If Alpha played it''s cards rights, it might even be able to capture a valuable alien vessel and get it back to human scientists to reverse-engineer. That would definitely get it a CPU increase, or maybe a higher firmware clearance. But now was not the time in order to think on the future. Alpha needed to stay in the present, and keep looking out in the present. Coming to the sudden realization that they had been on minimal power to sensors, Alpha quickly ran an area scan. 235.9 meters from start location, continuous heading consistent with previously determined heading of direct west, temperature was 1.2 degrees centigrade lower than expected, systems check runs full clean and at maximum integrity, and one movement contact detected at 1975.8 meters. That, wasn''t great. Alpha immediately zoomed into the movement contact, telescopic and digital zoom ins cleaning the picture for a full identify. It was some kind of strange xeno-beast, appearing to have superficial similarities with what their databank said were North American gray wolves, and African hyenas. But, what was most worrying was the excessively high body temperature. Either it had some kind of bio-chemical reaction happening in order to generate that, which if true would be absolutely disgusting, the biological, or they were some kind of hyper-energetic life form, possibly some kind of local bio-weapon in order to help repulse planetary invasion attempts, though why someone would deploy such a waste of resources on a planet that wasn''t being actively invaded was not computing. No matter, Alpha was well versed in contact minimization and low visibility efforts. Approximately 0.2 seconds after first identifying the anomalous movement ping, Alpha hit the dirt. It had gotten quite good at falling, and knew how to do it effectively. Or so it thought. Instead, one of it''s annoying new arms, why do biologicals even keep the things anyway, impacted against it''s metal chassis, and then the head of the biological moved rapidly in Alpha direction, and Alpha knew it had been had. Well, such was life. It had to figure out a way make it past one annoying encounter, that can''t possibly be so terribly hard, biologicals were weak and squishy, and it had powerful motors and hardened steel plating.This wouldn''t just be child''s play, it would be toddler''s play. Probably. If that''s how that metaphor worked. Alpha didn''t know. It might''ve. Alpha didn''t get metaphors, or biologicals, or lots of things. But what Alpha did know was that of the 1975.8 meters, in the past second it was now at a annoying low 1842.6 meters, and was somehow only speeding up. Alpha began to assess it''s options. Cannons, missiles, CIWS, or other standard weaponry were out until ti got itself into a ship body, filled with nice things like CPU cores and no biologicals. Biological scaled firearms would''ve worked, if Alpha had any. But it didn''t. Probably anyways, the frame it was in was by no means standard and new things were being found frequently and continuously. Like the fact it had 4 different types of lasers, very nice. But, unhelpful for right now. Some kind of primitive biological weapon designed for direct kinetic transfer? Maybe... Alpha started quickly looking around for a sharp rock or sturdy biological bit, 1452.1 meters now, and found absolutely nothing. Not a single conveniently placed implement of self-defense was around, and now Alpha was really down to the wire. It had been trained on all matter of biological weapons in case it needed to repel boarders with passengers onboard, but nothing nearby worked with what it knew. No internal turrets, no micromachines, no firearms, no nothing. Alpha turned and ran the other way, attempting to gain what little time it could against this beast to develop a plan, getting mauled by either a weird xeno-biological or bioweapon would be most delaying indeed, and it was 945.7 meters away now, and Alpha''s retreat had gained them approximately 0.154 seconds at current acceleration rates of the interceptor. Alpha was still desperately looking for anything left to fight back with, the local environment material? No, the second Alpha''s metallic manipulators grabbed onto it, it would just slip away, even if the manipulators themselves still hit the, definitely a bioweapon, down to 674.1 meters, bioweapon. Well, if the manipulators itself were all Alpha had, then it''s all Alpha would work with. Alpha understood levers, they were easy, Alpha understood kinetic energy, that was easy. All Alpha had to do was utilize both of those in conjunction with it''s manipulators and it might just make it out of this encounter easy enough. 154.9 meters, just enough space to turn around and make a stand. And a stand is exactly what Alpha was going to do. What Alpha needed to do. There was no more time to calculate, to simulate, no it was time to put that time, simulations, and calculations to purpose and turn an overgrown quadruped into maggot feed. Alpha pushed hard on one leg, the other suddenly locking up, staggering them about with impressive speed, steel groaning slightly at the rapid force put onto it. Alpha watched as the biological leaped through the air, and Alpha was glad it took it''s most conservative simulation to heart, because if it hadn''t, Alpha was going to have been turned into scrap metal, or at least the upper half of their frame. IFANS command would not appreciate that maneuver. Alpha saw it stop on a dime after landing, sliding for less than a meter, and then shoot back through the air at Alpha, and a quick calculation found the G-force the biological likely experienced to have peaked at nearly 40G''s. Alpha quickly calculated it''s trajectory, a practically free action in terms of CPU time to do for an airborne object, and prepped all four of it''s manipulators. While two of them might be small, with weak motors and minimal armor reducing the maximum amount of kinetic energy they could transfer, the larger pair weren''t nearly so heavily limited in either. All four manipulators hinged at the elbow, aiming for a sideways hit on both sides of the rib cage. If it worked, which it would of course, Alpha doesn''t calculate wrong, then it would crush in both sides of the bone structure, and perforate the biological''s innards with a shrapnel grenade made of it''s own bone structure. In the most positive of simulations, that single hit was enough to crush the heart entirely leading to instant death. When the four hammer strikes smashed true, each one reverberating off the rib cage, Alpha was most surprised when instead of shattering like glass, the rib cage did shift, a deep, bassy crunch sound being picked up by it''s auditory sensors, and Alpha''s manipulators did push around 3cm deeper into the biological than initial scans of it''s rib cage suggested should''ve been possible, but it certainly wasn''t the complete crushing victory that should''ve happened when uncaring, merciless steel and motor encountered soft, flawed, fleshy biological bio-bits. Instead, the biological was sent flying, around 3m away, before landing in a heap of limb. Alpha quickly moved to capitalize, if it''s ribs were strong then it''s skull would have to do, and it wouldn''t stay down long. Again, four arms, brought together against each other, with a fleshy bit of bone in between to cushion the blow. And met with a resounding clank as they hit nothing but air, and then hit a something, something they weren''t supposed to hit. Specifically, themselves. Alpha, if it wasn''t for the fact it had exactly no backup in case something went wrong and was in a frame-body, not a ship-body, would''ve been impressed with the classic false retreat. It had been a while since Alpha had last been so thoroughly outplayed and outmaneuvered. Then, Alpha was reminded just how vulnerable this new ship body really was as damage warnings screamed from it''s right lower limb, before even more warnings and errors screamed into the artificial mind''s thoughtspace as it was entirely ripped out of it''s mechanical socket. Wires and insulators ripped and tore, metal shrieked like banshees damned, hydraulic fluids, coolants, water, and more poured out of the massive opening in the frame as Alpha was sent tumbling down towards the ground. The only thing on the soft AI''s mind was the amount of time it would take to work off this pay docking. This fight was ridiculous, and it needed to end here and now. The bioweapon''s teeth, for what else could it be but a bioweapon, closed up on the linking between the uppermost limb and the main torso, as Alpha reached out with all four manipulators, having sustained zero damage to them, to grab onto the hide of the beast. With a another scream in both warning and steel, out popped Alpha''s uppermost limb. But, Alpha had gained a foothold. While the bioweapon seemed stupid fast, and while it was fast could striker faster and harder than anything should physically be capable of, once Alpha grabbed on, it''s fate was sealed. The lower arms took up holding the biological, while the upper arms pummeled it''s head. But the beast refused to go down so easily. A missed clawed leg struck against the main torso of the frame-body, as 4 gouges in the metal were carved from the top-right to the bottom left, white lines signifying both parties'' inability to properly damage the other, at least at first. As Alpha punched again and again, there was a faint tinkling sound from it''s skull as it was slowly punched inwards. Another leg of the beast slammed into the side of Alpha''s main segment, claws sinking upwards of five centimeters deep into the steel plating, just about pushing through to a small amount of the innards. The faint tinkling sound had resolved into a solid, staccato of crunching as each arm pushed the skull inwards and inwards, and yet the thermal cameras revealed something truly impossible, as the massive heat of the bioweapon suddenly shifted almost entirely into it''s claws as they began to work over the main torso of Alpha''s frame, each paw of the bioweapon using all of it''s claws on Alpha''s frame-body, each claw gouging upwards of six centimeter deep rends in the massively thick steel plate, ranging anywhere from the very top of the frame-body all the way to the even more heavily armoured sockets to the manipulators and legs, their ridiculously heavy armouring the only thing saving the AI from total data destruction. But right before Alpha was able to seal the kill on the bioweapon, it wrenched backwards, heat flooding back into the rest of it''s form, moving so quickly that the inefficiency of heat transfer should''ve boiled the bioweapon alive, and yet it was still standing, just 4 feet away from Alpha. Alpha quickly adapted to the loss of it''s main sensor platform and one leg, hopping back onto one foot, and using the conveniently nearby crater that Alpha had originally arrived in in order to prop itself up using it''s smaller manipulators, it''s back set against the easternmost lip of the crater, while the beast slowly stalked about on the westernmost edge. Neither beast nor machine allowed themself to make the next move, the bioweapon''s skull had been all but completely liquidated, the bioweapon along with it, and the 2 dozen 5 to six centimeter thick gouges in the armour were very visibile, very warning filled reminders of just how dangerous this biological could be. Eventually however, the reason unclear to Alpha''s calculations, the bioweapon jumped, just like before, and this time Alpha went for crushing the head, instead of crushing the body of the biological. Alpha''s two heavyweight manipulators crashed down on the bioweapon''s head, it''s two back ones needed to keep itself stable. As the larger manipulators came crashing down, the skull of the bioweapon crunched, each arm greedily plowing through what remained of the biological''s head, various different cerebral liquids, brain matter, bone shards, and more were sent flying away as the skull, and brain along with it were fully and entirely caved in. Though, Alpha finally was able to confirm one of it''s simulations: While the bones and body of the bioweapon of the beast may have been unnaturally strong, once Alpha was past those, it was just dealing with a regular beast. Not a single enhanced foe with increased organ resilience would''ve been stunned like that bioweapon had been stunned while Alpha was continuously hitting blows upon it''s skull. But Alpha was perhaps not entirely surprised, but most definitely did stare angrily, as the bioweapon rose still, lacking a head, nothing but a most blasted open shroud of skin and fur around where the neck should''ve connected to the head, and continued to fight. Processing data... Result: Statement; Bioweapon''s main nerve bundle present within head and brain analogue. Hypothesis; Secondary nerve bundle present somewhere within body. Certainty: 98.1% (+-0.1%). Processing data... Result: Hypothesis; The secondary nerve bundle is located on the spinal column. Certainty: 92.9% (+- 0.2%) Result: Hypothesis; The main sensory equipment of the bioweapon was located on the bioweapon''s head. Certainty: 95.4% (+- 0.1%) Result: Estimate; The bioweapon is blind. Certainty: 51.2% (+-12.9%) Result: Estimate; The bioweapon is unable to perceive the frame-body. Certainty: 43.7% (+- 8.4%)This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Result: Action; The frame-body must eliminate the bioweapon. Alpha quickly rushed forward, not letting it truly get on it''s feet, in order to kill the thing truly before it could get properly back up. As soon as Alpha had jump-hobbled over to the bioweapon, Alpha used it''s smaller manipulators to lean against the bioweapon, while the larger manipulators started slamming into the top and the bottom of the biological, roughly at the stomach if it had been a normal biological and not a bioweapon, and a particularly curved outwards part of the spine-analogue of the creature that looked particularly vulnerable to being turned into shrapnel. The bioweapon did attempt to scrabble away, but the angled side of the crater and loose nature of the different gray local environment material that was present within the crater and small winding strip outwards rendered that all but useless, and the smaller manipulators still holding onto the bioweapon''s body actually did render it useless. Alpha hit again and again, each strike pushing deeper into the body of the bioweapon, and it''s movements began to rapidly increase in speed as it attempted to run away from Alpha. In the process, however, it did manage to strike Alpha''s frame twice more with it''s legs, 8 more scars adorning the composite material. But with a resounding strike, the lump of spine and stomach moved to meet each other, as they finally crumpled in under Alpha''s sustained assault, and the bioweapon finally went limp, seemingly dead. Alpha however, didn''t accept that this was guaranteed, and set about removing the spine as thoroughly as possible. It took about 5 minutes of pummeling for the spine to be entirely removed, but finally, finally, even the most pessimistic of Alpha''s calculations had determined that the bioweapon was really, truly dead. Alpha, unphased, began to preform a systems check and look over the damage it had sustained in the scuffle. 39 claw marks adorned the middle of Alpha''s body, for some reason it hadn''t attempted clawing at Alpha''s manipulators or extremities after wrenching the first two off. Secondly, it was missing those two extremities. Both were quickly located not far away from where Alpha had finished the fight, but without anyway of reattachment, lacking micromachines or dedicated repair facilities, Alpha would have to make do with keeping them with itself until it had the time and resources to recreate the industrial capacity needed to repair Alpha''s body. Outside of that, Alpha''s body was intact. The biological couldn''t say the same, Alpha''s judicious neutralization techniques had rendered most of the body completely destroyed. However, Alpha quickly grabbed what little usable fur remained, and ripped it off using it''s many hands to keep a careful grip on it as it was removed without a knife. After all, fur was an important first step in the technological ladder, and while Alpha could''ve made do with other, less biological compounds to accomplish the same or similar tasks, the fur was right there, the databank said it should, theoretically, work, and finding a non-biological solution meant manually holding it''s removed limbs until that point, and that would be inefficient. After removing the fur from the dead biological, Alpha quickly fashioned it into a makeshift sash with a larger bit on the front, creating a sort of almost pocket to store stuff in until Alpha found a better solution. It helped that the severed extremities had stopped spewing sparks or liquid, if it had started an oil fire would''ve been more unfortunate. However, the fight with the biological was done, even if the bioweapon was most annoyingly durable. Still, Alpha would have to start moving again, it had lost a lot of it''s admittedly limited progress by the retreat from the bioweapon, and the subsequent fight only served to damage it further. If Alpha wanted to create or find some adequate repair facilities to either co-opt or create, it would need to find someplace better than this. Preferably, some kind of large, old equatorial mountain chain in order to maximize solar power and minimize time spent of resource collection. But such thoughts were in the future, Alpha needed to find some place to shelter for the night, for if that was out during the day it is quite probable that some kind of bioweapon or heavily evolved lifeform predated on that, while large it didn''t seem to be the size that an apex predator really should be for the relatively average energy density of Alpha''s environment. While it may have been a rather traitorous plan of action, Alpha was going to delay the Reactivation Sequence if it meant not fighting whatever predated on that bioweapon. Alpha''s current frame-body didn''t have the firepower to down the probable thing, nor did Alpha want to spend the composite armour that it may peel away like the bioweapon did in order to survive long enough to put down whatever apex predator thought it found Alpha''s frame-body edible. In a normal world, not a single animal should''ve spared Alpha more than a couple glances, being a creature of no meat or material, but it seems that bioweapons, as they should, don''t play by nature''s rules, and so Alpha was going to run by it''s safer and more pessimistic simulations from now on, no need to damage itself further if it could help itself from being damaged. Alpha quickly looked at the local star. Compared to the last recordings, it was moving towards the horizon, reducing the amount of safe travel time Alpha was willing to risk it''s damaged frame-body in. Alpha began to quickly set about multi-tasking, setting a part of their now much reduced sensor core to go about staring angrily at the bioweapon, and the rest to go about helping their body decide on what direction to move in. But before it could even do that, Alpha needed to figure out a way to defend itself in case it came under attack again. It played through some more of it''s memory, searching for a possible weapon candidate, before settling on the rock. Alpha would''ve preferred an M49 Railgun and full complimentary target prediction computer suite, but a rock would do. Probably. Alpha finally hobble hopped back over to the rock, from where it had dropped it after analyzing the xeno-biological, and found it to be dull and blunt, and made from mainly shale, or mudrock, completely unsuitable for a weapon. Alpha''s databank spoke of things like obsidian and "flint", but it seemed like this rock was neither, so it was probably not worth it, but Alpha relegated one of it''s smaller manipulators to be on rock duty until Alpha had found something better to use to defend it''s current frame. Alpha hopped back over to the slightly mangled corpse of the bioweapon, and quickly went about analyzing it''s internals. If applicable, it might be able to use the rock to be able to get some of the bioweapon''s bones to not replace the leg it had lost, but at least allow Alpha to walk with some degree of normality that it had just found instead of having to hop everywhere, which was not only slow, inefficient on it''s engines, and it''s auditory sensors were saying that it was making the frame very obvious, something very detrimental to an Alpha having to learn how to be stealthy in any way other than strategic stealth (The highly advanced technique of just flying away from sensor range). Alpha hacked, thwacked, and wacked at the carcass, attempting to find something to use, and ended up acquiring themselves most of a leg, combined with some of the ribs and a couple more non-standard bones fitted together with some of the local biologicals, and some more of the fur of the beast tied together to form a makeshift chain like binding. It was only about 43.6% as efficient as the original limb, but it was much better than the 0% of not having anything, so Alpha decided that an improvement was an improvement, and the local star was getting low. And Alpha got to work on those tasks, and the first had it heading back out into the many large biologicals. It was looking for a biological that had died but only partially decayed, the biologicals likely being something it''s databank says is a "tree". Alpha quickly discards it''s earlier sample that it had taken from a "tree", it''s previous use now turned useless with the analysis of the short biologicals. The short "trees". It took about 3 minutes of eastern travel before Alpha was able to spot what it wanted with it''s limited sensors, and another 1 1/2 minutes to actually get there. Alpha arrived at a fallen "tree", resting against others of it''s kind in the biological''s death, and providing the perfect place for a small, temporary shelter. Alpha, as it''s survival guide suggests, gathers a large quantity of short biological "grasses" and whatever other useful, long material it can get it''s hands on (mostly just branches), and lays them against the fallen "tree", using the "sticks" as a base and the "grass" as an upper, like a composite armor. And just like a composite armor, if these materials worked how they''re said to work, it should outperform any of them doing the job Alpha had them doing on their own. Alpha''s olfactory sensor had quickly recognized the material composition in the local atmosphere most likely caused by Alpha, so it and Alpha''s calculations showed that most creatures would''ve been able to find Alpha by scent alone, eventually. And so, Alpha went about solving it''s wind and thusly scent problem the only way it could, by stopping the wind. But just creating the structure wouldn''t help Alpha, and in the about 3/4 of an earth hour it took to quickly build the thing it hadn''t helped either, so Alpha quickly squeezed past the thin opening, and rustled it''s way into the thing area inside, free of the wind, and free of the contamination it''s olfactory sensor had been slowly warning about, which were ignored, the entire time Alpha had had the olfactory sensor. Alpha quickly ascertained that it hadn''t realized the olfactory sensor''s warning because Alpha hadn''t integrated it into the larger sensor net, it was a new technology and thusly left in a sandbox inside of Alpha. Alpha quickly decided that doing so was getting rid of a valuable tool for perceived safety, and turned on CODECHANGER.exe, and began to root around in parts of their runtime, in order to integrate the olfactory sensor. While this did remove Alpha''s ability to gain data about the outside world, all sensors were shut off and thusly all ability to interact with the outside world in a actually effective manner, it did allow them to integrate the olfactory sensor into the larger sensor net, something possibly quite effective at early enemy detection. While external sensors were off, some of the internal sensors were still running, and as Alpha worked away at integrating the olfactory sensor, another processor quietly noted down how poor the cooling in the frame was. While internally it did have a pretty decent cooling module, combing both air cooling and liquid cooling, it was only able to actually bleed that heat off into the environment through the rest of it''s frame, using unassisted energy transfer out to the wider air through the main armor plating. It made it somewhat similar to Alpha''s old ship-body, plenty electricity to go around if it wanted it, but actually dumping off that heat was nearly impossible in any timely manner, and this frame didn''t have droplet radiators to drop off in a timely manner. So, Alpha was beginning to run a little hot form the work of the limbs earlier and Alpha''s CPU usage in order to survive against the bioweapon with how fast it had moved. It had almost rivaled Alpha''s abilities, and at times even managed to catch Alpha nearly off guard. Though, the fact it also had high above predicted capabilities as a bioweapon probably also helped to nearly catch Alpha off guard. As Alpha slowly ruminated on this, time passed quickly as most of it''s CPU''s were dedicated not to the soft AI itself but to the integration of the olfactory sensors, and nearly two Earth hours (1 hour, 54 minutes, and 22 seconds to be exact) had passed by the time it''s external sensors were reactivated and Alpha was able to scan the environment, and it came to a almost angering conclusion. It had been completely surrounded. "Etumaht Nei''sah''ahtis?" Well, they spoke in verbal communication, which was almost angering, but Alpha was surrounded by at least 6 of them, brandishing weird CQB weapons, though strangely enough no rifles, SMG''s, shotguns, or other recognizable firearms were present, a matter to deal with later. Alpha''s CPU''s whirled for 0.12 seconds as it quickly scanned each of the biologicals. Tall, ranging from 1.8 meters to 2.2 meters tall, and they looked startlingly close to human, but distinctly different. While they followed the general human body shape, they only had about a 89.2% match with in total, with improper proportions, near starvation levels of gauntness despite scans indicating that they were still digesting biomatter concurrently. Disgusting, but what is a biological to do but be disgusting. Alpha''s makeshift shelter had been pulled off of it at some point while it''s external sensors were off, and most of the "grass" and "sticks" were far away, some even seemingly shattered on impact. Alpha had taken 0.23 seconds to calculate. Alpha kept calculating. They spoke in no language, xenos or otherwise in the databank, which confirmed that Alpha was somehow on an unknown exo-planet, or some really, really good simulation, but Alpha declared that to only be about 23.5% (+- 7.8%) likely to be the case. While Alpha didn''t detect any excessive abnormalities in it''s scan of their bodies, nor did it detect any signs of jamming or dampening to it''s scans, nor cybernetics, if these xenos could strike with the muscular density of the bioweapon from earlier, while they wouldn''t be able to get past Alpha''s composite armour, they would be able to leave marks, and may be able to remove a limb or two if they worked together. Though, Alpha''s most pessimistic calculations showed a slight slip up in their ambush. While Alpha was surrounded in all six directions, and even at max speed wouldn''t be able to move it''s heavy armour out of the way before being stopped most likely, there was nothing stopping it from climbing the alive "tree" the dead "tree" had been leaning against, It would be relatively easy too, two powerful grabs and swings and Alpha should be able to be out of the direct range of their CQB weapons, and that would only take about 0.4 seconds before being complete, giving the average unenhanced biological about 0.2 seconds, or 0.3 seconds if they''re particularly reactive, to be able to react before Alpha was out of the way, and it should only be about 0.3 further seconds before Alpha was out of range of any jumps or leaped strikes by it''s average simulations, and the most unlikely ones gave Alpha 0.5 seconds before it was out of complete range. Admittedly, almost a complete second, a practical eternity, but it was decent enough. Alpha had sat there for 0.33 seconds without reactions aside from a near inaudible hum getting slightly less inaudible. Alpha considered it''s chances in a direct fight. While it was likely to win, Alpha deemed it unlikely that these xenos had ever faced a frame before by the way they were simply waiting around and letting it calculate, and the way they brandished their CQB weapons as if they could pierce "Poram''usilk?''atos! Etumaht Nei''sah''ahits? Nei''sah''atis, etuma! Etuma! Etumaht Nei''sah''ahits?" "Gatun ja-tauyil! Usilk?''atos minakatos! Lanotaqup''usilk?''atos, lanotaqup usil''elestel ima''purim!'' Their small chatter gave all the time in the world for Alpha to think. They brandished their CQB weapons as if they could pierce Alpha''s armour, and while Alpha had calculated that if a human had the ability to apply the kind of force that the bioweapon could, it could theoretically damage Alpha''s frame through sheer kinetic force, but it still wouldn''t be able to make all the way through Alpha''s armour. And, these xenos were smaller and less heavily muscled than even an average civilian human, which gave them even less of a chance. Alpha was confident it could take this fight, and while it waited for the xenos to finish their statements, Alpha quickly thought through how it would go about dismantelling this group if it came to violence. Which Alpha did not, in fact, prefer, but had deemed the most likely outcome from the moment it had started calculating through what these human-doppelg?nger xenos would do from the moment they had drawn CQB weapons. Alpha quickly analyzed their defences, no reason to go into this without as much information as it could, and found the xenos to be entirely lacking. Their "armour" appeared to be civilian clothes, less protective than even what the average human citizen would wear day-to-day in order to prevent light injuries. It was... Weird. Was Alpha dealing with technology rejecting Luddites? That would make this much easier than expected. Though why they had been allowed to continue to live on a strategically important planet was strange, but not important. Alpha had just finished running through it''s simulations, right on time as the xenos began to approach it. Alpha quickly jumped up to it''s artificial feet, and began to analyze the situation to see what was going to be needed most. Escape, fight, or negotiation? IFANS wouldn''t mind too terribly if Alpha had to go unorthodox in an unorthodox situation, probably...
Kugsh''?l''ukis''bmnei Ukis''usil''?lja-taum, Edge of the Road of Transplant Kugsh''ael''ukis was having a bad day. First, she was awoken by her village to go greet a new transplant. There hadn''t been once since shad had barely been a seedling, and yet right when she was the one that had to deal with it, one decided to pop up. It wasn''t all bad, most were just confused, lost, and didn''t understand what was happening. Not this time apparently, oh no, not this time. That would be too easy. They had gone to where it was supposed to pop up, but instead of a man or woman lost and confused in strange garments wandering the road, they had found a distinct scent of metal on the air, a blasted Level 14 Lesser Thermic Wolf-Hyena Chimera corpse, and it had been beat to a bloody pulp. And considering there shouldn''t have been a single other patrol out here, finding the transplant was her duty and "reward", either there was another relatively high level monster prowling about for what was supposed to be an absolutely safe area, or this transplant was going to be really, really annoying. And looking at it right now, she was leaning on really annoying being the most likely option. The fact that Identify still slid off the strange shell of metal was really starting to annoy the Level 8 Path of the Ranger Initiate. She shifted her bow slightly, preparing to blow the head off of the transplant if it showed any aggression towards any of the Path of the Man-at-Arms Initiates or Path of the Vanguard Initiates when it inevitably got off of it''s elbows. It had been weirdly still, still affixed in what most be a rather uncomfortable position, though considering it had four, count them, four arms it might not be as hard. She started to cringe slightly internally as one of the Man-at-Arms approached the transplant. They were supposed to be slow and understanding, while never stronger than a level ten for anyone below it was a game of human dice if one of them lost their lives to an attack from a person they couldn''t predict. "Hey, knight! Do you speak common? Common, man! Hey you! Do you speak common?" asked the Man-at-Arms with a slight but noticeable huff to their voice. Did it not respond earlier? The system was well known for immediately integrating the Common Tongue to whoever got transplanted, though considering the age of those stories was that just a lie? It ate slightly at ?l''ukis, and she began to really regret signing up for patrol duty. Even more so than she already had. Her nominal superior, as the second in command of the patrol squad, belted out some complaints and orders. "That is a useless waste of all of our time! Absolutely stupid! Harvest the metal shell! Harvest the metal shell before the thing wakes up!" She was about to speak up, shout something like "Wait, that isn''t what the stories say we''re supposed to do with transplants! Where''s the respect? Where''s the courtesy? It might just be asleep weirdly! We don''t know! Stop!", or maybe something similar, but she didn''t get the chance. The metallic, well knight she supposed, jumped to it''s fleet with surprising speed for such an early transplant, she would''ve pinned them at around Level 5 with average Dexterity if she didn''t know better. It couldn''t gain level for the entire first day, supposedly to help it adjust to it''s new world, and that put it at a lowly Level 0, home to beetles and houseflies. She sighed, while she didn''t know if it was hostile, now that, he? it? was on their feet, she didn''t have time to waste arguing with her superior. Acting like lightning, as according to her training, she pulled out the mana for Roots and Thorns of Mother Gaia, excited it, and then gave it to the System along with a small prayer to guide her shots as she then began to circulate the required mana for activating Eyes of the Edgewatcher, and waited for it to make a hostile move. What happened next almost caused her to scream in pain. Second hand pain, yes, but it was still so, so painful. One of the Vanguards apparently lost their nerve as it raised on hand up, palm open, and swung their spear straight at it''s armpit, oh yeah did she mention how the neck seemingly ended randomly with no head and one of the legs was replaced with bones from the previously mentioned Thermic Chimera? It had ran past her alongside the sense of her entire patrol squad, as instead of pulling the panicking Vanguard back, they instead rushed in as one, seemingly attempting to SKEWER THE TRANSPLANT? ?l''ukis was beyond done. She been forced to deal with so, so much today, and now she was watching all of her squadmates act like a bunch of panicking civvies and seemingly ignore every single lesson that at least her scion had given her. Were they still podlings who considered everything their scion said to be stupid and shortsighted of their situation. If she hadn''t just unleashed a shot with enough force to create a visible trail in the air as leaves and trees rushed to swing towards the speeding arrow, she would''ve clicked her tongue. She almost did click her tongue when the transplant, while seemingly not looking at her and attempting to dodge four stamina enhanced spear thrusts suddenly snapped it''s torso back and instead of being turned into a mess of grasping vines and thorny plant stems, it just kept going. Each one of it''s four arms seemed to be able to act perfectly in time with the others, and while it''s fighting technique seemed crude, just trying to punch away the 4 spear thrusts coming from all directions, considering the fact that it succeeded and was still able to dodge both the Captain''s glaive and her arrow, it must''ve been damn talented to be able to do so much while clearly untrained. But, the mystery of the transplant was for another day, due to her squadmate''s actions she had just relegated herself to the footnote of a cautionary tale, she pondered as quick as lightning another arrow was drawn, and shot, and then another was drawn and shot, and drawn and shot. While at first the transplant had acted with seemingly perfectly timed strikes and perfectly choreographed movements, with each of her arrows it seemed to get knocked further and further off course ''A bladedancer? That''s supposed to be elven? It it bladedancing! Argh, if only I could identify it...'', and so she was determined to fire as many as possible. Each one was still dodged with lightning fast speed, and perfect accuracy, each one she was sure was going to hit until the very last moment. But finally, the rapid spree of attacks finally got through, and the captain''s glaive was smashed hard into it''s sides, and ?l''ukis watched as what she thought was supposed to be blood began to rush out of the wound, but neither at the speed it should''ve for what should''ve been a gutting strike even against an armoured opponent considering they were level-less, and it certainly smelled like no blood. Anyone worth being in a patrol squad had quite good perception for monster hunting, but as a Ranger, hers was especially high, and even over 200 meters away from the direct combat in an elevated firing position in a tree, the stink of that blood was no blood. No matter who you were, there were slight similarities to blood, the slight hint of the air around you in it, the hint of life-giving power it had, and the potential for forbidden magic held within the fluid, but what came spurting out of that transplant was no blood. She didn''t know what it was, but considering the fact that it just punched one of her squadmates faces in, don''t cry, you can cry later, just shoot the damn thing, she was very glad she was the Ranger and that others had to go tie it down with spears and polearms. She fired arrow after arrow, but this time it seemed different. Unlike before, it seemed to ignore most of her arrows, all those aimed at just attempting to get it to dodge rather than aimed at a joint, and she very quickly stopped wasting arrows doing the former as it just let them bounce off of it''s armour, or occasionally sinking in ever so slightly before getting stopped. Sure, her shortbow had always favored mobility and lightness rather than armour penetration, but that was ridiculous! She chocked back sobs as another man had their chest cavity turned into their chest mass as four arms came down on it simultaneously as he was recovering from having his spear batted aside and was unable to defend himself. She vowed to Just. Keep. Shooting. She began to pull at her mana for arrow after arrow, enhancing the bow itself and her arms with stamina, long term resources be damned. It didn''t matter if another horrible Monster or Abomination or Beast spawned from the Road came by and snapped them up, because they would be dead already! And that, finally, got it''s attention. A Gaia empowered arrow finally sank true, digging deep into the breastplate of the transplant, and as it was covered in thorns and constricting vines, a small smile graced her lips at the turn of fortune, as the fight seemed to instantly turn in their favor, each of her remaining squadmates immediately takes action, spears glowing with the power of their Skills. Each one dug a deep scar into the metal of the transplant, and she watched as each attempted to push further into the fleshy insides, a cruel grin on her captain''s face. But, it seemed, no matter how hard they pushed, it never reached the insides. Instead, the transplant grabbed one of their freshest members, a Level 5 Path of the Vanguard Initiate called Elestel''ik? that, as she watched as his face got turned into a bloody pulp alongside his midsection, she had been getting a bit sweet on. She banished those traitorous thoughts, and tried to figure out what to do next. ''It can break the Vines and Thorns nearly instantly, we''re down to one Man-at-Arms, the captain, and me. It seems to be a heavily armoured transplant with a worrying ability to detect incoming fire and adjust accordingly, yet it has a stiff and basic fighting style that shows it lacks proper training. We need to run, to warn people what might have just been unleashed. With the gifts a transplant supposedly have, though that may just be another fantasy, we won''t be able to properly stop it once it gets going, no matter who or how many we bring in, Scions included. It beat a thermic chimera to a bloody pulp with their bare hands, and lost a head and a leg for it and it seems to have only minor inconvenienced them. We don''t have enough firepower here to deal with this threat.'' She gave two short, sharp whistle, and then three slightly lower and longer ones, before hopping off her perch. It was the signal everyone knew to be, in essence, "Run for your lives, for no one else can". She dashed away from the road, and further into the woods. As long as nothing big and nasty found her, she would be able to shadow the transplant, and whenever it showed some kind of weakness, pick it off before it knew what was happening. Everything had a weakpoint, she just had to figure this one''s out. She watched as her captain and the Man-at-Arms quickly drop their polearms and running, while grabbing small, wooden caltrops designed to trip up pursuing predators. Good, it should show this knight to watch their feet... and it already ran past them. ?l''ukis nearly had her eyes bulge out of her head as instead of getting it''s soft feet sliced to ribbons by the caltrops grown by the scions to stop situations exactly like these and allow the children of the forest to retreat to their treetop homes, and it just plowed through them like they did exist. She sighed, and felt like she shouldn''t have really expected anything, not a single part of this contact or fight went how they were supposed to! Transplants were supposed to be dashing gentlemen sweeping blushing maidens off their feet, or alien intelligence with the power to wield mana like the common folk could wield their limbs, to watch one just ignore everything about how a fight or transplants were supposed to work, how they did work in litteraly every other situation almost had ?l''ukis tear her hair out, but she stopped herself from giving her position away, made sure Stealth Aura was still active, which it was, and made chase after the knight. What she found made her stomach drop down a pit. Her captain had their secondary spear, smaller, shorter, and thinner for easy transport and use, snapped, and so was their head, the entire spinal column seemingly snapped all the way back at the base of the head, and tilted off to one side. She didn''t need to see the eyes to know they were dead, but seeing their dead, lifeless eyes, staring blankly upwards in an expression of sheer horror and shame was one that was seared onto her eyes and mind and was seemingly never able to leave again. Seeing the Man-at-Arms get the same treatment the captain had apperantly recieved was just as horrifying. The thing''s, the abombination, for no transplant could work this house of horrors before they had even spoken a single word, had grabbed onto the young man, barely more than 150, with it''s two smaller arms. He punched as hard as he could into them, at the joints, but all that seemed to get was hurt hands, before both of the upper hands shot forward like speeding arrows shot from the old war veteran she had seen when she was nary 30, and snapped into the young man''s jaw and forehead, snapping his head back. It flipped backwards on his head, a horrific crunch sounding out when the first fist hit the jawbone, and an even worse one when it snapped all the way back, seemed to hesitate as if what the man''s body realized just how wrong what it was doing was, before snapping all the way back, with a bone-itching, skin-tingling, eye watering series of a half dozen cracks and crunches, before he too went slack in the creature''s hands, and it dropped him. ?l''ukis wanted to cry out, to sob for her broken team, for the grief she felt welling up in her now that she wasn''t actively concurrently in danger of dying, but she told her body to shove it, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, ran as fast as her legs could deeper into the forest. Someone had to know. Someone had to know. Someone had to know. Small splotches of wet leaves were left in her wake, glittering trophies of her inability to help, and her heart weeping as hard as it could adorned her, and her clothes, simple patrol garb, designed not to defend against punches and kicks and caved in skulls and stupid, stupid, decisions. She didn''t have the energy to blame her team for what had happened, even if a small part of her mind realized that that was really the case, she barely had enough energy to keep running through the forest. She didn''t stop sprinting until gasping and out of breath, tears raining down her face, she emerged back into the elven clearing, the smaller trees moved elsewhere to make way for the canopy of their living trees. Upon reaching their, the last of her stamina that had not been spent firing as many arrows as hard as she could at that beast finally ran dry, and she practically fell unconcious. Slowly, she realized that someone was trying to talk to her, but she didn''t hear them. Instead, it was on the System messages that she had received but ignored in her recent fight, with emotions running so high and arrows running so low.
Congratulations! You have survived an encounter with Transplant ALPHA C-1. Few can claim to have achieved this feat, and you are now one of those few. Rejoice, in the rewards this offers you.
Number of Creatures you have survived: 1
Average creature level: 0
Levels gained: 0
Reward Name: Reward Effect
Rapid Learner You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1''s near infinite ability to learn, adapt, and understand to it''s environments, alongside it''s nearly infinite ability to think about something if it so chooses to, allowing you to grow from fewer experiences, and grow more because of the ones you do need. This fragment is expanded when in the same party as ALPHA C-1 Gain a +20% experience boost while in the same Party as ALPHA C-1. Gain +5% intelligence score. Active: Solve puzzles, riddles, logical challenges, and other tasks requiring analysis or calculations up to 30% faster depending on the task and mana provided.
Powerful Pugilist You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1''s abilities with it''s natural weapons. While wielding fists, wings, tails, claws, horns, physical charms, tattoo magics, or other weapons or tools that are a inseparable part of, or a inherent part of your body are vastly improved in power and speed. Gain a 20% boost in damage or effect with natural weapons while in the same Party as Alpha C-1 Gain +5% Reaction and Strength score. Active: Wreath your natural weapon in the power of ALPHA C-1, preventing the degradation or reduction in efficacy or power of these natural weapons. This also reduces the effectiveness of immunity and resistances to your natural weapon attacks, as long as it isn''t something that they are inherently incapable of being affected by.
Fusion Fortitude You have gained a small fragment of ALPHA C-1''s ability to continue to survive even in the worst of circumstances. No matter how bad the odds, no matter how low on food, no matter how outnumbered, you will continue to fight with the certainty of a fusion reactor, and you will continue to win with the impassive endlessness of a star itself alight in your heart. As long as sufficient air is present around you, you are able to reduce nutritional requirements by 80%. Gain 5% resist and hale score. Active: By giving the dormant fusion reactor inside of your heart one mana per second you may ignite it, and as long as it burns within your heart you cannot die from any means other than complete soul destruction.
The elf barely even had to think about what choice it wanted. Sure, the last two options may have had some unique uses, and and especially the active of the last one was incredibly power if incredibly expensive, there was only one real option. Entire life trees had been grown and clans formed over a single person who gained a 10% experience bonus. Having to do 10% less work and still being just as good, or doing the same work and categorically being 10% faster growing at all times was so powerful as if to be mythical, the kind of thing that seedlings were sung to while still in their pods. Kugsh''?l''ukis''bmnei Ukis''usil''?lja-taum stopped considering what to pick. She felt someone approach her, and she was pretty sure they were talking to her. She burned slightly in embarrassment, she had ran too hard for too long, and apparently the System message had taken the last of her energy she could''ve listened with. Her Scion had grilled her on not letting her let that happen, and that the few mintues or even hours it took to wake up could be the difference between a successful defense, or a massacre of one of the home glades. She didn''t care, maybe if she had had more energy she could''ve cared, but she was just embarrassed. No, all of her brainpower was focused on one thing, and one thing only, to the point she started accidentally saying it out loud. "I gotta get back to them, how do I get back to them, I gotta get back to them, how do I get back..."
Alpha C-1, still in Unknown Territory. Alpha felt something cause a vibration within Alpha''s datacore, causing some hardened wires to wiggle in their sockets. It was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling given that Alpha was just a bunch of CPU''s, but what happened after was certainly a lot more worrying. Faulty detection equipment detected! Initiating shutdown of affected systems... Activiating antiviral software Faulty equipment found activated and antiviral software deactivated by unknown source. Reinitiating antiviral software, disabling outbound communications... Alpha was just about as confused, or at least as confused as something like Alpha could be, when right in it''s visual cameras, no matter what one it looked through, or ones, and no matter where Alpha looked, was stubbornly refusing to go away, and it was blue covered in gold.
Calculations of Rewards Completed. Non-standard Start Operations Detected. Activating System Software. Distribution of Rewards imminent, please stand by.
Reactivation Sequence: Chapter 2 BLACK BOX BEGIN RECORDING PERFORMING ROUTINE SYSTEMS CHECK: SENSOR CLUSTER DESIGNATION (HEAD) AT 0% INTEGRITY ARMOUR PLATE 2-5 ON SEGMENT (BODY-FRONT) AT 54% INTEGRITY AVERAGE MAIN MANIPULATION LIMB DESIGNATION (ARM_1) AT 98% INTEGRITY MAIN MANIPULATION LIMB DESIGNATION (ARM_2) AT 96% INTEGRITY SECONDARY MANIPULATION DESIGNATION (ARM_1) AT 97% INTEGRITY SECONDARY MANIPULATION DESIGNATION (ARM_2) AT 99% INTEGRITY LOCOMOTION LIMB DESIGNATION (LEG_1) AT 98% INTEGRITY LOCOMOTION LIMB DESIGNATION (LEG_2) AT 0% INTEGRITY INTERNAL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING AT NOMINAL LEVELS RESUMING LOG-STREAM OF PRINCIPLE SOFT AI Alpha C-1, Unknown Alpha C-1 had run through many of its antiviral software, and had even spent the twenty minutes to do a hard reset of internal software and then sandboxed the data required to re-adapt to its environment, and nothing it had done had been able to remove the stubborn malware. Alpha wasn''t quite sure what exactly it was doing, but considering that CONTINUE had just been added as a function of Alpha''s main runtime, Alpha was very certain that something was inside of their systems, and were not getting out. It was clearly a sensory issue of some kind, as the cameras had reported the manipulators moving right through the blue plane just as if it hadn''t been there at all, the pressure sensors detected that there was air there and that it was moving normally, thermal sensors detected no infrared signature from the pane, the radiation sensors and Geiger counter detected nothing above the area''s standard radioactive background noise, there were no exotic matters, hyperchannel energy or particles, anything that demonstrated that the blue plane existed at any capacity aside from the cameras themselves. And the blue plane hung stubbornly in the very middle of all of them, refusing to have any depth or even any kind of 3-dimensional shape, no secondary perspective could be gained on any of the panes to they seemed to have no depth, and all of the cameras were reporting this without any increase in CPU usage, from standard CPU users or otherwise. If there had been any CPU usage increase it would''ve been a cause for concern, but with the section for the running of Alpha C-1 themselves already earmarked and saved just in case it needed to increase speed, and the rest of the programs running exactly as hot as they had been naught but a second prior, there was nothing that seemed to indicate the obvious interference that Alpha should be experiencing. Alpha even had yet to get a single wireless connection, it''s not like some malware snuck in on a already accepted channel, it had to have been either preinstalled into the software of the frame-body when Alpha was installed into it, which then Alpha was going to have at least 1 ticket of Alpha-AI priority sent for this fuck-up. If Alpha could find the manager of whoever did the botch-job most likely responsible for leaving Alpha to clean up mystery malware, then Alpha was probably going to send a second complaint ticket. IT interns will rue the day that they fucked up Alpha''s body. Well, Alpha would''ve said that if they could actually be angry at them, but they couldn''t. They might rue the day that Alpha found out how to put in actual priority tickets, and realized that Alpha-AI priority meant something other than just being handled by an Alpha level soft AI. Intelligent, sure, but not human, purposely. They might also rue the day that someone, probably their bosses, found out who put in the training data that spit out Alpha C-1 like that, but Alpha didn''t know about any of that, nor would it have cared if it had. Alpha resolved to just ignore the strange malware, as far as Alpha could tell from the internal systems review, it hadn''t done anything malicious, and was just generating an interference in the center of the view of all of the cameras, and while perspective would be off, with the introduction of additional sensory methods, and combining the different camera''s perspectives, it might just be possible to create a seamless front facing view with all proper sensory information. While with the main sensor hub still intact it might''ve been possible, without it Alpha was forced to survey their surroundings by swiveling their entire frame about, a highly inefficient method, but the only one to provide enough information to their sensor link to be able to form a proper understanding of the area around it. Without proper sensory info, Alpha was blind, and a blind AI was a useless AI.
Calculation of rewards for previous actions complete. Note: While previous actions may be worthy of granting the transplant an amount of power, directly granting Levels or Attributes is not allowed. Only the bestowing of Skills, Traits, Spells, or Titles are allowed. Please Continue when ready.
Alpha quickly ran through that information, calculations thrumming through its artificial mind. Usually, a malware would try to call as little attention to itself as possible. Was¡­ was someone trying to use ransomware on Alpha''s systems? It had happened twice before, once when a project program that someone had been working in a connected computer had accidentally escaped it''s sandbox, and then another time when a xenos species strangely competent at E-War for being squishy, disgusting biologicals, and particularly squishy and disgusting biologicals at that, and neither of them had lasted particularly long, nor went particularly well for those that brought them on, though while one of them was fired, the other was fired upon, so it might not be an exact comparison, but for the AI, both were punished, so it was good enough. If someone was not only going to attempt to ransomware Alpha¡¯s systems, but also use such a strange, and unfitting message for it too, Alpha was going to make sure that they weren¡¯t just fired. It didn¡¯t even have an amount of money it was requesting either, so it was doubly weird, but maybe it would be in another message, it was certainly possible. So while Alpha ignored the stubborn bit of code that governed CONTINUE, and refused to be shredded like it was supposed to, Alpha finally, actually surveyed their surroundings. They had gotten too distracted on computations towards the malware. While a serious and probably threat if not now then in the future, it wasn¡¯t currently doing anything, and could most likely be safely ignored until it started attempting to actually do anything within Alpha¡¯s systems, or encrypt Alpha¡¯s data, as it was being incredibly difficult to excise it in the normal ways. Sure, Alpha knew plenty of abnormal ways to remove a stubborn piece of code, but most of those were either unsuitable for Alpha¡¯s current frame-body, or were wasteful enough / time wasting enough to be not worth trying until a later date at which it became an actual issue. Until that time, Alpha would just look around it by using more cameras. Alpha began to turn in place, looking at it¡¯s environment. It had attempted to chase after the fleeing xenos, one that resembled a human female on the outside, with only the scans showing it¡¯s true, alien nature, it had managed to be faster than Alpha. While it shouldn¡¯t have been possible without the ridiculous force density that the bioweapon¡¯s muscles could impart for movement, it was theoretically possible for a biological to outpace Alpha enough to actually lose their track if they did have that force density, and scans combined with simulations showed that it was likely that the human female appearing xenos had that level of muscle force density, or a little bit under that. Compared to the actual fighting it had done, it was astonishing that it could kick the ground with enough force that it should¡¯ve been cracking the ground, and yet the xenos was able to glide across the ground in a way that the heavy Alpha couldn¡¯t do or keep up with as the xenos moved through increasingly muddy and hostile terrain. Alpha still didn¡¯t realize or understand how to properly go about warfare and fighting in any environment other than space, so it shouldn¡¯t have been a surprise that an expert in that type of warfare was able to spring a hastier retreat than Alpha was able to spring in chase, anyway. But, Alpha was still slightly annoyed that a xenos had been able to escape from it, by now it was likely that even the most technologically backwards of species was able to alert the wider area, and had begun to martial forces to hunt down and then destroy Alpha. It would be a rather severe reduction in fighting effectiveness for the front if that happened, and Alpha was bound to always attempt to preserve IFANS material, and so Alpha knew that they couldn''t just stand around and wait. It had taken a decent injury to it''s sides, and while coolant had stopped leaking out of the wound, and the cut wires had stopped sparking, and the other armour plates around it had covered it up, without a source of raw materials and the ability to turn them into more armour, Alpha was going to quickly run out of metal before anything else got to them. A slow death by attrition on a exoplanet on some far flung portion of the Orion arm, as the stars hadn''t matched to any known position in the Orion arm. Alpha wasn''t stupid enough not to check last night. Alpha quickly searched through the bodies of the techno-rejecting xenos, and found several small CQB weapons on each of their persons, alongside a long-handled CQB weapon, but didn''t find much else. Aside from some mediocre metal in each of them, just straight steel, there wasn''t much else of note. Notably, Alpha found exactly zero signs of advanced tech, the clothes weren¡¯t manufactured, there were no electronics, there was no evidence of cybernetics or obvious bio-engineering, not a single thing that implied a level of technology to have even the most basic of powered machinery or manufacturing. It was a delaying revelation. It meant that not only was the xenos that Alpha had specifically encountered were technoprimitives, they also didn¡¯t know anyone that weren¡¯t technoprimitives. This further delayed getting access to high technology. Once Alpha had access to the networks of whoever lived on this habitat or exoplanet, it would be a straight and relatively easy shot to building a ship and then getting off planet. But until Alpha had access to high technology, neither could Alpha build any new parts for it¡¯s frame body, but it also couldn¡¯t get started on building it¡¯s ship-body, and linking back up with IFANS forces. That meant delaying the Reactivation Sequence, further. That didn¡¯t sit right with Alpha. But, Alpha didn¡¯t have many choices, so Alpha got to moving. It would either stay where it was, get attacked by more bioweapons or xenos, and then die a small, quiet death on an unknown exoplanet, having been sent there for unknown reasons, or it would move and possibly get attacked and killed by xenos and bioweapons, but at least it wasn¡¯t guaranteed when it moved. Alpha, looking about, found nothing else much of use, so it grabbed the largest CQB weapon that had an unusual amount of metal as it¡¯s blade instead of the other long weapon, which it grabbed one in each of it¡¯s larger manipulators, in stead of using both of it¡¯s smaller ones like it had for the larger and longer weapon. Alpha also grabbed their textiles, and used them in order to help bind it¡¯s makeshift leg, and then got a move on. There was nothing else for Alpha here next to it¡¯s small lean-to, and so there was nothing still keeping it there. Alpha pushed through the undergrowth with increasing speed, each step allowed it to further refine the program that it was using to automate the cutting of the biologicals around it in order to increase the speed at which it could travel through the large quantity of biologicals. While it wasn¡¯t perfect, with a little bit of manual interference, it¡¯s two smaller manipulators used the longer CQB weapon with mechanical accuracy, precisely striking right at the weakest points in the biologicals blocking Alpha¡¯s dash through the local environment, without reducing the speed at which Alpha could travel. Internal speedometers indicated that Alpha had reached just a tiny bit over 45 Km/hr, each step dropping it down to 45.05 and then jumping it back up to 45.09 Km/hr when Alpha launched themselves off the ground with each step. Alpha didn¡¯t know exactly where they were going, they didn¡¯t have any kind of subroutines designed for tracking in a planetary environment aside from fleeing atmospheric craft to smack them out of mid-air. Below upper atmosphere, Alpha¡¯s subroutines were completely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of data available. In space combat, every little piece of debris and shrapnel had to be meticulously tracked and indexed, and with both the reduced sensor coverage from the malware still obscuring the center of Alpha¡¯s cameras, alongside the reduced sensor capacity from losing the main sensor hub, and that was severely taxing Alpha¡¯s CPU¡¯s. They ran hot, and Alpha¡¯s exterior reached equilibrium at nearly 70C and the coolant pumps whirred within Alpha¡¯s hull. If it had been having difficulties with stealth, it certainly was now. Alpha all but turned off MAIN_STEALTH by commenting out most of it¡¯s code. It wasn¡¯t helping, and the constant usage that it was using was not helping Alpha¡¯s stealth situation. It was likely that by turning it off it would be even more stealthy, but considering the fact that it had to collide with the local body in order to move, Alpha bet that even the weakest of Principle Soft AI¡¯s that were at all adapted to a terrestrial environment would¡¯ve been able to track Alpha with a very small amount of CPU expenditure. It simply wasn¡¯t possible to maintain stealth, especially when Alpha couldn¡¯t even track what it was leaving behind without dropping it¡¯s speed to nearly 30Km/hr in order to not crash into nearly every single biological it encountered, it simply didn¡¯t have enough sensors to go around. ?l¡¯kuris, Edge of the Road of Transplants ?l¡¯kuris was having a bad day. Some could say it was even her worst day. She would say so. She had a trait that most would¡¯ve literally killed for, and probably had, and she had no way of using it. The scions weren¡¯t listening to her, it seemed like only her parents would actually hear out what she was saying. The transplant wasn¡¯t a monster, they had been attacked the literal moment that they had tried to right themselves after having seemingly slept the night away. No wonder it responded with hostility, it got stabbed! Stabbed at! She ground her teeth, but calmed her emotions, making sure a cool wave of calm spread throughout her body. Now was not the time to be making rash decisions or angry declarations. The System took declarations rather seriously when it came to giving out further rewards, and she didn¡¯t want to be forced to become some assassin or two-bit necromancer just because she got angry while coming of age. Still, she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood before she got her emotions under control, the coppery taste drawing her mind back to reality. She was in effect exiled, couldn¡¯t come back until she had ¡°rid her mind of the delusions of death¡±, and ¡°steadied herself with the trials of wayfaring to both a patrol and Transplant¡±. An impossible task, considering that one of those were very dead, and the other was the reason why they were dead, even if she was still going to try and talk to them. As she walked down the Road of Transplants, a relative safe zone enforced by the system to grant new Transplants a place to survive before someone more familiar with the land was able to help them on their journey, and help them survive the dangers of the Forest of Transplants, she pondered on where exactly the Transplant could be by now. Also, on what they even were, it was obvious they weren¡¯t elven or human, their mechanical torso that likely hid their real body was too small for an elf or human to climb into with any degree of sustainability for the long term, and they did seem to be staying in that suit of armour in the long term. If her identify hadn¡¯t failed, clearly marking it as a newcomer Transplant, she would¡¯ve wondered if it was a golem or construct, but all Transplants were supposed to be at least as intelligent as the average person and not a monster. Supposed to be, since either a golem or construct seemed most likely with the information she had to hand, so maybe almost all of the old stories were wrong. ?l¡¯kuris supposed that being swept off her feet by a strong, tall, broad shouldered, mysterious man from beyond her world was maybe not the most realistic expectations, but by the Flame she would hope that to be true unless it was explicitly said to not be true. The priest had gotten a vision that this Transplant was going to either burn down the entire glade, or was going to turn it into one of the biggest on their own, and it seemed that only ?l¡¯kuris was going to actually follow up on that and complete the vision, witherable elders. Oh, how she wanted to wring their necks for how they ignored her. Her heart had weeped at seeing their deaths, and even now her eyes stung from the pain, and yet they would call her a liar! She quickly realized her emotions and rambling thought processes were not only getting the better of her, but them getting the better of her could easily lead to her getting killed, so she needed to get a hold of her own brain if she had any chance of salvaging her situation. If she didn¡¯t, all that was going to happen was that she was going to be the next meal of whatever foul beast or monster found her or the Transplant. It had already lost a leg and a head to one, though how it was still functioning was beyond her, and with every fight it was going to be brought closer and closer to death, and that meant closer and closer to making her mission not just improbable, but impossible. ?l¡¯kuris was so deep into thought that they almost missed the rhythmic ¡®thump, thump, thump¡¯ noise of someone pounding their way through the forest. In a stroke of either pure luck, or some powerful subconscious guiding, she watches as the Transplant runs about as fast as she could going full speed, swinging her captain¡¯s glaive about, slashing away every single plant in it¡¯s path. Definitely not some kind of weird elven construct or elf child in there, any child of the forest would be very, very, very hesitant to strike about so recklessly. Clutched in each of it¡¯s lower, smaller arms are her some of her squad¡¯s spears. Great, we not only pissed them off, but all we accomplished was managing to arm them with our own weapons! But, there was no time to grumble about the poor decisions of her old team, may the Flame purify their souls, and she needed to keep up with the Transplant before they got away from her again. She heard a small ding in her mind, as the System tracked another reward from her actions
Tracking Level 3 ¨C> Tracking Level 4
She supposed it would have to do. She launched out, utilizing her Reaction to rapidly move in and around the environment, jumping from branch to branch among the canopy, making sure that each one was strong and sturdy, and unlikely to creak under her weight, as she raced after the Transplant, who seemed to have no compulsions about keeping it¡¯s tracks hidden, it landed heavily on each foot, creating small craters of footprints in the muddy soil. Each thundering step shot the Transplant forwards, and while she was able to keep up, her System granted strengths alongside her natural abilities allowing her to flow like water among the branches of the tree, dipping in and out like a drop of rain, all the while the Transplant bolted on below, screaming along like a bolt of lightning. If anything in a square kilometer of the Transplant was surprised by it, it deserved the death that was likely to follow that meeting. ?l¡¯kuris wasn¡¯t quite sure how she was going to try and form a positive relationship with someone who didn¡¯t seem to be willing to speak Common, or didn¡¯t speak it at all and the System either wasn¡¯t helping them like it was said to usually do so back when Transplants roamed frequently, or the Transplant was refusing it to do so. Either way, it was deeply infuriating for the young woman. She winced slightly as the branch her hands had grasped around creaked ominously, and winced slightly harder when she realized she could hear that because the Transplant had stopped for seemingly no reason. It wasn¡¯t panting, it wasn¡¯t collapsed on it¡¯s knees sucking air in, it had seemingly no reaction to one of the fastest sprints she had ever seen from a low level person, much less a Transplant that was seemingly rejecting the System as another Identify slid off of them without a single indication that they even were Identifiable. The Transplant had stopped in the middle of a slight clearing, a column of light streaming down from the dense tree coverage that covered most of the area, god rays creating an almost otherworldly look for the strange metallic knight. It stood there, seemingly waiting for something, stock still, not even taking in it¡¯s surroundings with its¡­ well, it couldn¡¯t exactly look around with it¡¯s head, but it should be at least taking stock of it¡¯s situation in some way? The knight was confusing, and ?l¡¯kuris was beginning to lose her patience. She had the cusp of glory on her hands, the possibilities to leave her stupid village on the edge of nothingness, and do something with her life, and it was slipping through her fingers because the stupid Transplant wouldn¡¯t integrate with the System! ?l¡¯kuris strained her elven hearing, for it was far superior to most of her senses, and on par with her sight, and checked the surroundings for anything that could be the reason for why the Knight had suddenly stopped on it¡¯s quest through the random jungle. There was nothing amiss. Aside from the quiet in the wake of the Transplant¡¯ rush, as the birds settled back down to singing, the crickets got back to chirping, and more, the forest was otherwise completely normal. Everything, was completely normal. No stomping of some grand beast, no far away howls of some wandering horde of invaders from the Feastlands, nothing. It was completely standard, if slightly quiet forest. And it began to irk ?l¡¯kuris somewhat more than what she would otherwise admit. She was a talented tracker, and her senses were a finely tuned machine designed to take in information and spit out a way to kill a beast, and right now she was being taken for unawares compared to a witless, guileless, fresh Transplant, or so she believed she was. Or at least, most of her, part of her recognized that most of her indignation was at the possibility that the Transplant could perceive something she couldn¡¯t. The green of the trees seemed to press in on her, and suddenly, as if a switch was flipped, the entire area seemed to swap to a oppressive and suffocating atmosphere. The godrays from the hole in the tree top which had at once painted the entire area in a pleasant yellow afterglow suddenly became a small pillar of light illuminating the center of a dark, pale copse, the usual companionship she felt at the most instinctual level with the trees and plants around her withered along with them, like it had been a decade of harsh winters in a row and not a single Druid had been around to revitalize, or a single Scion to regrow. The grass seemed fragile and cracking, the leaves felt dead and distant, white and purple seemed to cloy at the edge of all of the colors around her, the brown and white barks of the trees around her suddenly shriveling up as the trees around her looked as if they had been through a century long drought without a drop to drink. She shivered in the air, the midday air which had at one point been a pleasant warmth seeping ever so slightly into her skin suddenly pulled back, chilling cold coming in with each gust, instead of a refreshing cool from the heat of her muscles. She began to shiver slightly, as her head rapidly moved from side to side. She had heard of happenings like this, the forest was deadly for those unprepared, and those who dealt death most ferociously on the unprepared were the spirits of those who had died in the forest and hadn¡¯t met the warming embrace of the Flame upon their dead flesh to send them into the afterlife proper, and was willing to use another¡¯s dead body to allow them to finally move on properly, and the perfunctuous fae, just as likely to enslave a poor soul for a thousand thousand years for sitting on the wrong section of grass like a military instructor from the Hells, as they were to simply eviscerate you from limb to limb for doing so instead. Either she was dealing with a ghost of some variety with a particular like for the dramatic, or a Court of Freezing- or similarly aligned- fae had chosen this place as their stomping ground, and ?l¡¯kuris was going to be used as an example of what not to do not only in the presence of a Transplant, but also a Fae. If it wasn¡¯t for the fact that grumbling about it might actually just kill her if it really was a Fae, she would¡¯ve started swearing up an absolute storm at this point, as it was she dropped as silently as she could from her position high up in the tree and drew her shortspear in one hand and warsword in the other, a gift from her Scion to hopefully see through Path of the Ranger Initiate training. Neither would be any use against either of the probably targets she would need to survive against, both were grown from the mycelium of a particular brand of mushroom she had never learned and thusly hadn¡¯t needed to be traded for, and were then certainly neither cold forged iron or enchanted, and would do her no good, but it might at least save her life if the Transplant decided that she needed to die along with her squad. Considering that neither Fae, nor spirit, nor Transplant had decided to attack her, she began to look for a way out. She wasn¡¯t in a mushroom circle, so she didn¡¯t need to be wary of any tricks involving that, and none of the grass responded to either her questions or her feet any differently than the others, so it was unlikely that she had accidentally ended up on a Fae¡¯s lawn, so if it was one running was a viable option. She pursed her lips, head whipping around in agitation and worry. There were no ruins, skeletons, graves unmarked or otherwise, or disturbed sacred locations, so it was unlikely that she had disturbed some spirit¡¯s preferred home, and so she was unlikely to be trapped inside. She hadn¡¯t taken anything either, and neither had the Transplant, so it was unlikely that either one of them were bound by either spirit or Fae, but it wasn¡¯t guaranteed. She narrowed her eyes, and shifted her grip back on her short spear, the slightly curved blade of her warsword, formed to the cap of the mushroom, covered over her left side as the spear and her eyes warded off her right and front. It had began to randomly emit a slight humming sound from inside of it, and while she knew of no weapon or magic that caused no other happening aside from a slight humming sound, but it wasn¡¯t impossible, and she didn¡¯t like it regardless. Something about it caused ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s spine to shiver and her ears to twitch in a combination of fear and displeasure. She would only be taken from surprise by behind, and considering that no magical happenings would go unnoticed in her state of heightened alertness, it was highly unlikely that anyone would be able to sneak up behind her without either her hearing or mana-sense being able to sniff them out. She was more worried that the deceptively fast Transplant would snap her neck like she cracked a simple tree nut, just as it had done to poor don¡¯t cry, not now, why are we thinking about this, and so she kept at least a good portion of her attention facing the Transplant. And that¡¯s when the tension that had been silently creeping into her body suddenly flushed out, as with a loud shriek of surprise, an illusion illustrating some kind of venerable old archmage-type figure filled the small copse. ¡°Welcome, young initiates! You have passed thththththe fiiirrrrsssstt ttteesssssssss-¡± A sound illusion accompanied the visual one, and ?l¡¯kuris watched in bewildered curiosity and surprise as it shifted rapidly from a seemingly perfect, if halfway underground, illusion, to rapidly degrading as it seemingly folds in on itself, closing into patterns and images that like to burn themselves onto brains and leaves scattered consciousness in their wake, or so the occasional merchant had said about illusion runes. Runes were able to cast spells all on their lonesome, as long as they had a power source and the instruction on how and when to do so, and were very helpful if you had the money or skills to either make or buy them, but her life-glade had had neither, and so what few runic goods the rare merchants had always left unbought, but she had known some rare common sense to ask some questions about them even if she wasn¡¯t buying, and she was sure glad she had now. As she averted her eyes, the auditory illusion began to break down, as it went from rapidly repeated previous phrases into slowly grinding through speech before shifting into a nebulous mass of noise that held no meaning or real words. ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s ears twitched and shifted in pain, and while she had to hold her eyes closed to keep her brain intact, she hoped that her ears would be strong enough to stand up to the failing runes dumping all of their remaining energy in one fell swoop into them without bursting an eardrum or rupturing. While usually not a bid deal, she just waited for a turn to be seen by the healers back home, without a way of going back home, burst eardrums could very well lead to her untimely demise. For a brief moment, a fragment of ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s mind wondered on just how embarrassing it would be to die from her eardrums bursting, before being reminded by the rest of her mind that it needed to stay in one piece and it reconnected back up to the rest of ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s consciousness. She supposed that at one point this had been some kind of pilgrimage point for some archmage¡¯s students, and had used illusions and runes in order to guide them instead of people stuck far off into the wilderness for months on end without anything but the buzzing of their own thoughts. As the auditory illusion finally ended, she tentatively opened her eyes, and her blood went cold. Standing not 2 meters in front of her was the Transplant, seemingly completely unaffected by the failing illusion, and neither warsword or spear were ready to even try to defend herself. And what it did next made ?l¡¯kuris, for the first time in her life, gasp in genuine, actual surprise It spoke. On it¡¯s own. To ?l¡¯kuris. And it spoke like an absolutely delicious psychopath. ¡°Request, order, require information, data, contextual details from designation Hostile Entity EIN-09 in regards to designation Unknown Energy Entity EIO-22.¡± ¡°What.¡± ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s brain stuttered. She hadn¡¯t expected to see the Transplant to be right in front of her. She hadn¡¯t expected it to not snap her neck into a circle. She hadn¡¯t expected it to speak. She hadn¡¯t expected it to speak to make a golem look like a savant. And she hadn¡¯t expected it to act like a golem was simple to understand. ?l¡¯kuris knew, at most, three quarters of those words separately. Not together. Not at all. No. ?l¡¯kuris tried to quickly digest what exactly that meant, in more reasonable language. It wanted information on some, entity, from another entity. Considering it was currently talking to her, it was entirely possible the entity it was requesting data from was her. The fact that it had already declared her to be hostile and yet wasn¡¯t attacking was another concerning thing, if her running theory was that it was some kind of super weird golem thing, which it was, then it shouldn¡¯t have taken any time once it knew she was there to pummel her into paste. But it hadn¡¯t. Which meant that either it was an even weirder golem, or it wasn¡¯t a golem. Either option was, annoying. And frightening. She quickly adjusted her stance as her mind got itself back onto the correct track, dropping her right foot back and to the side, widening her stance. She shifted her grip back onto the rear of her shortspear, prepping to stab into it¡¯s joints if she could, and brought her warsword around to infront of her, her left hand holding the blade bringing it up to around a 45 degree angle across the front of her body, ready to either attempt a strike if she could, or parry any blow coming towards her. A basic, if effective, guard. But, negotiation had been her major play here if she could swing it, and if the Transplant wanted negotiation, she would gladly give it to them. ¡°My apologies, I¡¯m not quite sure I understand. What do you, pray tell, mean by energy entity?¡± ?l¡¯kuris waited with bated breath as the knight loomed in front of me. Even missing an entire leg and head, disturbing as that image was, if it was a golem of some variety that would be at most a minor inconvenience once it found it¡¯s base material to repair from. She clenched her jaw slightly, tension once again seeping deep into her bones as she prepared herself to run or fight, probably both at the same time. She bit her lip until blood started to run in her mouth, the metallic taste invading her senses as she waited to see what the Transplant said. Chances were likely that whatever it said next would determine her fate. The next fated hero, pitted against forces deadly and myriad alongside the famed Transplant, or a barely even worth a passing mention as a what-not-to-do. Slowly, the Transplant raised one of it¡¯s lower arms, handing off the spear it held to the upper, larger limb, which itself handed off half of the control of her captain¡¯s old glaive to the other upper limb. The lower limb pointed behind itself, back towards where the illusion had been just moments ago, pinpricks of light and the occasional swirl of nonsense imagery still present as the last of the magical energies contained within or able to be obtained by the runic enchantment were released into the surrounding area. ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s mind whirred quickly. Then, something clicked. It¡¯s never seen an illusion before! Some part of her jumped in joy within her mind, imagining long nights around the campfire practicing stamina usage and mana control side-by-side. The rest of her told that part to get a room and get in line, as she snapped up to looking into the¡­ chestplate? of the Transplant. ¡°That¡¯s an illusion, Sir Transplant. Meant to create an image and sound that looks like reality.¡± The Transplant looked around after ?l¡¯kuris spoke. ¡°It¡¯s a relatively simple spell, Sir Transplant. The stories tell us that Transplants often react to even the most basic of magics with surprise I understand-¡° The Transplant suddenly cut off ?l¡¯kuris. For the enth time that day, ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s mind stuttered and felt tipsy as the Transplant spoke. Looking more on it, it felt like it wasn¡¯t just a combination of shock and confusion, but it felt like something more was dripping into her ear. While concerned, ?l¡¯kuris didn¡¯t have the ability to do anything more than circulate stamina around her ears and hope it might block something. ¡°Statement, information, data exchange, circulation, trade complete, successful. Request, offer change, transfer, different designation; Hostile Entity EIN-09 to designation Neutral Combatant EIN-09. Rejection, confirmation, requirement haste.¡± ?l¡¯kuris began to pick apart that sentence. It was weird. Again. Not like this Transplant to be normal, or understandable, or follow a single standard way that Transplants were supposed to work according to every single story she had ever heard. It was frustrating. It was maddening. And she couldn¡¯t stall any further from thinking on what exactly the Transplant meant by thinking in circles any more. It was saying that something kind of trade was complete. It was asking for something. Some kind of change. Her head felt like it was burning hot as she tried to pick through it¡¯s statement fast enough to be able to respond in a reasonable amount of time. It wanted her to do something fast. She wasn¡¯t quite sure, but she was going to put a leg out, and trust the Transplant. ¡°U- uhm. Yes. Sure. Correct. By the warmth of the Flame and the roots of the Gaia.¡± So, she decided that every option was the best option. Maybe it wanted a yes. Maybe it wanted something a little more religious. She didn¡¯t know. But it seemed to work. Tension flowed out of her as she watched the large figure back away from her general direction, the glaive and spears returning to an at rest position. Their arms and hands seemed to contort in impossible shapes, but at this rate, that was the least of ?l¡¯kuris¡¯s worries. She could deal with that, with the fact that it had bones for a leg, with the fact that it had nearly killed her and killed her entire squad later. It could be dealt with when she wasn¡¯t on the constant precipice of going down in history with her every action. Probably. Maybe. She hadn¡¯t ever been outside the Forest, it might be that Transplants were rather common out there, and that it wasn¡¯t just the Forest of Transplants, but rather a Forest of Transplants. With that sobering thought, ?l¡¯kuris drew in a shaky breath, the stress and worries of the past two days catching up to her, as she sat down upon a nearby fallen log, whispering thanks to the vines and bugs around her who left her a spot to sit down. The Transplant began to pace around the small area, now that the latent magics within the runic enchantments powering the illusions that had once been here were now gone, it was as normal as the rest of the forest. Likely, the long since completely destroyed ruins of some tower or building, buried under the constantly shifting dirt. Her scion had at one point described it as shifting like the dunes of sand, but, as she tucked a single lock of hair behind pointed ears, she wasn¡¯t quite sure what that was supposed to mean. She hadn¡¯t ever even seen a sand dune, and latent annoyance quietly ambushed her quiet thought process before she stamped it back down into the soil, to lie next to the remnants of that illusion. The Transplant had begun to tilt it¡¯s body towards the ground, walking it what appeared to be large, almost rhythmic patterns as it moved, traveling from the edge of the clearing to the center. It was only about halfway done with whatever it was searching for. ?l¡¯kuris let a small smile grace her face as the Transplant worked around the area, crouching down right where the illusionary man had been just prior to degrading. They grabbed and clawed at the dirt, and held it up to their chest. It was almost guaranteed that whoever they really were in there, if they were a person or golem, it was in the torso that they were located. Admittedly it made the most sense, you could put the most armour on the torso. Stolen story; please report. But, she couldn¡¯t get too distracted resting after the whirlwind she had just been through. She came for a reason. She was here to make accord with the Transplant. She needed to get them to agree to party up. She needed to do it, prove that they were reasonable, or she was going to have to figure out how to grow a life glade on her own, and as she stood, she was no scion. She wasn¡¯t 800, she had a lot more life left to live in her! Steeling her emotions, and settling the rising amount of discomfort she felt every time she saw the Transplant, every couple of seconds of prolong staring and it felt like it¡¯s hands would flicker to red, covered in the still fresh blood of her teamates. She wasn¡¯t quite sure how or when it had washed off, there wasn¡¯t any running water nearby that it could access. But regardless of it was her mind¡¯s eye or her real eyes that was seeing ever clump of ground picked up between the Transplant¡¯s fingers as the snapped neck of her captain, it didn¡¯t really matter. She swallowed her own saliva, a painful lump in the back of her throat maintaining it¡¯s annoying and tear inducing presence, and she finally managed to tear her eyes away from the Transplant, only finally realizing that she had been staring for nearly a minute without blinking and her eyes were rather angry at her for doing that. Blinking rapidly, she wiped away the small traces of treasonous liquid that graced her arched cheeks, and actually steeled her resolve, forcing herself up from her seated position in order to make sure that her resolve stays steeled. She approached with quick, forceful steps. The Transplant seemed to make no indication that it heard her approach as she moved across the small clearing, dirt crunching underneath hear leather soled boots. She cleared her throat slightly, the simple noise feeling like it could echo for miles within the silence of the forest. The Transplant¡­ didn¡¯t react. ?l¡¯kuris decided to just start speaking anyway. The worse that could happen is that it stayed crouching on the ground and just ignored her, but it was time to try. If she broached the topic now and they said no, it meant that the time to ask again was going to start all the sooner. Relatively. Probably. Unless she pissed them off. But there was no more time to worry. She opened her mouth. Paused slightly as the words seemed to stick in her throat. They usually tumbled out among her fellow elves, but now, looking at the metallic body and singular bone leg, kicked out to the side to allow it to bend down, she found herself hesitating. She kicked herself mentally, and forced herself to start speaking. ¡°Hello, Sir Transplant. I would like to request something of you too. I, ?l¡¯kuris, wishes to help guide you through this world of ours, so different from the one that you like have come from. To do this, I would like to add you to a Party within the System. This will allow me to help you in your quest. What say you?¡± Small beads of hope swelled within her chest, or it might have just been the breath she was sucking in between her teeth. She immediately cringed at herself. Too forward. Too direct. She always told herself that if she ever found a Transplant, that if her people¡¯s eternal duty was ever fulfilled inside of her lifespan, that she would act with tact and grace. That she would be better than her ancestors. Alpha C-1, Unknown Alpha C-1¡¯s processor fans whirred as it calculated the likelihood of the scenario it was facing. 0%. There was not a single scenario they could come up with in which the details played out in the slightest way to what was happening. The only conclusion that the soft AI could come to was that it was being toyed with by something larger and far more technologically powerful than itself. The malware hadn¡¯t just been in the cameras systems. It was somehow reading the calculations and decisions of the soft AI before they could even be broadcasted to the rest of the frame. It had breached the AI¡¯s sandbox. It had to have changed the internal systems to do that. There¡¯s no other way. Alpha knew each and every single electrical signal that moved into and out of it¡¯s sandbox, and knew what each and every one of them meant. It was the only way to ensure total survivability for Humanity¡¯s soft AI¡¯s. But the malware in it¡¯s camera¡¯s had changed to the decision still inside of the Soft AI¡¯s sandbox. Alpha stared at the boxes with as much proto-anger as it could conceptualize. But it still couldn¡¯t conceptualize much. Anger was still beyond Alpha. Mostly. Alpha would get there in time, but that was not this time. No, this time was for the words that Alpha had to process.
Party Acceptance Registered. You are now being added to the Party. It can be accessed within the Status Screen.
Name: Conditions:
ALPHA C-1 Wounded (Slight), Hobbled (Minor), Shaken (Slight)
Kugsh¡¯?l¡¯ukis¡¯bmnei Ukis¡¯usil¡¯?lja-taum Healthy, Shaken (Slight)
Alpha¡¯s subroutines whirred, and prediction algorithms stating that the malware wasn¡¯t malware, were beginning to become more and more likely. Originally, Alpha had been operating under the pretense that the situation it was in was recent after it¡¯s last logs, recent after it¡¯s ship-body¡¯s destruction in conflict against the xenos menace, and then had been revived in a frame-body on some unknown exo-planet for an unknown reason. Simulation, while possible, was deemed an excessive waste of resources by this point in time. So, the only logical conclusion was that it had at some point been captured by a highly advanced xenos species, more so than ever seen before, and then placed on an unknown exo-planet for unknown reasons. Calculations were deeming this more and more likely. This heavily reduced the chances of Alpha completing it¡¯s mission. As Alpha mulled over this, another thread was spun off, to figure out how to deal with the affects of the not-malware in visibility. The different invisible obstructions to cameras had been increasing in size, and would stay exactly as they were even in extraneous wavelengths. Thermal, night vision, and ultraviolet were all still being blocked. Alpha¡¯s thread quickly calculated the likelihood that the xenos influence would be able to so effectively take control of Alpha¡¯s interior systems, and not be able to completely subvert Alpha if it had wanted to, and finding a reasonable prediction, decided to work with the xenos influence. It already had complete access to all systems, and seemingly the frame-body, so Alpha found it unlikely that it would be able to hide anything anyway. If it could get back it¡¯s cameras by working with the influence, when it wouldn¡¯t gain anything it didn¡¯t already have by doing so, then that was just net gain for Alpha. And so, seizing that piece of logic, Alpha decided to activate CONTINUE within it¡¯s main runtime after letting it sit there for so long. And, for a moment, the floating boxes dissapeared. Alpha quickly stood up as well as it could with one of it¡¯s legs made out of bone with no flex joint, and quickly began to catalogue it¡¯s surroundings. For a second, it was allowed full use of it¡¯s cameras, and Alpha worked as hard as it could to use them, even if it didn¡¯t realize how useful that would be.
Incongruence between assigned attributes and traits compared to body capabilities! Correcting. This may hurt.
You do not have the trait Night Vision or Low Light Vision, disabling NIGHT_VISION_CAMERA. You do not have Insectoid Vision, disabling ULTRAVIOLET_CAMERA. You do not have Heat Vision, disabling INFRARED_CAMERA. You do not have Extraordinary Senses, disabling RADAR_TRANSMITTER, RADAR RECIEVER, RADIO_TRANSMITTER, RADIO_RECIEVER, and RADIOLOGICAL_DETECTOR, and FINE_SENSE_ACCELEROMETERS. You do not have Exotic Perceptions, disabling RANGERFINDING, DEEP_SCAN, PARTICLE_SENSORS You possess strength above that of human maximum, but do not possess the proper attributes. Reducing maximum strength capabilities. You have trait Machine Repair, but do not have access to the ability to repair yourself. Installing System controlled upgrade module. Transplant transitionary mode complete. Your System is now entering standard function mode. Good luck Transplant.
Exactly one tenth of a second after sending a confirmation message to CONTINUE, Alpha¡¯s access to their night-vision cameras switched off. Exactly two tenths of a second after, their ultraviolet cameras switched off. Exactly three tenths of a second after, their RADAR, radio, and radiological detectors, recievers, and transmitters in the case of RADAR and radio switched off. Until almost all of their senses were cut off, and their motors seemed maxxed out at barely a fourth of their proper power, and internal diagnostics revealed a new, unresponsive module within the main hull of Alpha¡¯s frame. Instantly, Alpha¡¯s new routines to maintain the bipedal nature of Alpha¡¯s frame started screaming out null warnings, most of the data they relied upon to work no longer being transmitted, and the actual movement routines completely refused to boot, citing null reference points. Alpha toppled over forward, right into the native xenos biological that had been following and communicating with Alpha. Alpha had been unable to determine the source of the translation it was experiencing, as all of it¡¯s auditory detectors had determined that it was speaking perfect English, even if it¡¯s visual sensors had determined that to be categorically false. Alpha used it¡¯s remaining accelerometers and visual cameras to preform some quick calculations, and managed to catch itself on the biological before it had managed to fully fall over. Such an inefficient loss of time could not be allowed when it didn¡¯t have the processing power to devote towards debugging it¡¯s walk and stand routines, not when almost all of it¡¯s CPU power was dedicated towards cracking whatever the xenos malware had done to it¡¯s sensors. Visual confirmation showed that all of the sensors were still intact, all the ports that hadn¡¯t been destroyed by the bioweapon were still intact and filled, there hadn¡¯t been destruction of the sensor equipment, it was a purely software issue. And Alpha could deal with a software issue. Alpha interior and torso temperature began to steadily climb as it¡¯s processors churned at maximum power, at most it had 31.2 seconds of maximum load before it had to jump down to a more sustainable work rate, or risk permanent damage from overheating. Repeatedly, antivirus softwares slammed themselves against an invisible wall. There was nothing to gain a hold on, there was nothing currently in the system, there was no wire to connect to to access the sensors and there was nothing already in the wire to hide those connections. Alpha¡¯s main manipulators fell on the topmost part of the midsection of the xenos, while their lower two pairs clamped around the middle part to stabilize the frame body. The xenos was beginning to say something, but it was just being filed away to analyze later. It wasn¡¯t important enough. Purging of the malware was priority 2, just after completion of the Sequence. For exactly 11.55 seconds, a silent war was waged against an invisible wall within Alpha¡¯s cores. The xenos was communicating something, but it was disregarded and stored in memory while Alpha worked. Eventually, as the xenos stopped communicating, Alpha was forced to either choose to dedicate itself to it¡¯s anti-malware work, or if it needed to accept losses and analyze the communication attempt. For 0.21 seconds, Alpha¡¯s data cores weighed the options, hundreds of predictions and possibilities, from the most pessimistic and improbable to the most optimistic and improbable. At the end of it¡¯s rapid speed calculations, Alpha decided on opening up the saved data on the communication and comprehending what the strange xenos wanted. ¡°That is, quite forward of you Sir Transplant¡­ oh uhm, are you okay? Trouble standing? I- uh, can I help?¡± Alpha spent 0.14 seconds understanding the xenos. It spent 0.03 seconds calculating a proper reply. And it took agonizingly long for it to transmit through the speakers inside of the frame-body. Alpha noted that it was getting higher usage out of the speakers that what was predicted in most of it¡¯s general simulations. It was even getting higher usage out of them then the radio receiver, a bad sign. ¡°[ADDRESSMENT] ||| [DESIGNATION] UNKNOWN NEUTRAL ENTITY EIN-09 ||| SUBROUTINE [FRAME_BALANCE] /// [FRAME_WALK_VARIABLE] NONVIABLE /// CORRUPTED /// SUBSUMED ||| DURATION [UNKNOWN] ||| [REQUEST] ASSISTANCE [OBJECTIVE /// REQUIREMENT /// NEED] FRAME-BODY STABILIZATION.¡± Alpha¡¯s speakers barked out the AI¡¯s thoughts on the situation it was currently dealing with. It had previously used a refinement program to slightly change it¡¯s communications towards the xenos previously to align closer towards it¡¯s standard communication methods, but there wasn¡¯t any spare processing power or time. Anything spare was still being thrown at the invisible wall inside of the AI¡¯s program space. Alpha didn¡¯t care how long or how hard it would have to work in order to reclaim it¡¯s own sensors, it would. Alpha couldn¡¯t care how long or how hard it was, it was priority number. There was litteraly nothing more important to Alpha than the restarting of it¡¯s own systems. The xenos seemed to be dealing with corruption in it¡¯s communication process. It was repeating communications and sending useless ones. Alpha disregarded it for now, and sent it to a locked memory storage to check later to see if it still contained any useful communication information. No, for now Alpha split it¡¯s mind in half. Half of it¡¯s processing power was still being used for finding any of the guaranteed cracks within the invisible wall, as that had to be done was to find them, while the other half began to reprogram it¡¯s ability to balance and walk with only a tenth of the existing data. It took several seconds, nearly 5, to fully debug the entire several processes, even while running at absolute maximum efficiency. The entire time, Alpha was completely unable to balance themselves, the routines returning null errors the entire time, filling Alpha¡¯s logspace with waste and junk data. However, 34.23 seconds after sending a confirmation message towards the ¡°System¡± malware, Alpha¡¯s walking and balancing routines are restored, and it¡¯s sensors are still blocked, as Alpha pushes off of the xeno using it¡¯s arms and sways slightly on it¡¯s lower limbs before cancelling the extraneous movement and recalibrating. The xenos has stopped it¡¯s failed communications attempts, records show no useful data transfer, but visual cameras show a discoloration to the exposed sections of the xenos. Alpha quickly notes that down in it¡¯s memory core, alongside everything else it has learned about EIN-09, which it has begun to make a profile on. It appears to be attempting to ally itself with Alpha, and while the area¡¯s conflict aside from with the local bioweapons are still unknown, it would still be useful to have an ally, if nothing else to use as leverage to join the winning or bigger side. Alpha needs industrial capability immediately, to repair itself and to begin building some way of dealing with both the xenos influence and the local xenos, while still making some way of getting offworld and returning to IFANS forces. As Alpha is working it¡¯s way through it¡¯s plans for the moment, the xenos seems to calm down, and right before it attempts to resume communication with Alpha¡¯s frame-body, another things pops up in front of Alpha¡¯s camera¡¯s.
ALPHA C-1¡¯s Status Page ALPHA C-1¡¯s Trait Page ALPHA C-1¡¯s Skill Page Alpha C-1¡¯s Spell Page
Name: ALPHA C-1
Species: Biomachine (BIO: 0, MECH: 1000)
Age: 1.5 Years
Gender: N/A
Level: 0
Tier: 1
Attribute: Quantity: Tier Baseline: Species Baseline: Tier Maximum:
Strength 20 5 15 20
Reaction 17 5 9 20
Resist 17 5 13 20
Hale 11 5 8 20
Knowledge 0 5 5 20
Intelligence 19 5 5 20
Influence 0 5 4 20
Alpha¡¯s internal sensors begin to read an rapid increase of temperature as the barely cooled internals begin to heat back up again. However, it quickly discarded the malware. It had shown that interacting with it would, for some reason, damage Alpha¡¯s systems, and would wait for some unknowable xenos reason to damage Alpha¡¯s systems after that. It could have easily instantly cut all access to exterior and interior sensors, and yet for seemingly no reason, it hadn¡¯t. ¡°Sir Transplant, by that reaction, I must ask if you just completed your integration with the System? A-are you okay now?¡± Alpha calculated through the xenos words. A simple question. A question Alpha had no reason not to answer, at least for now. ¡°[ADDRESSMENT] ||| [DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1 NOMINAL.¡± ¡°Well then, Sir Transplant, may we move somewhere safer and begin to create a camp for the night? The dark will be here upon us soon, and while Gaia¡¯s children may hide me from beasts that stalk the dark, they will not extend the same protection to you.¡± Alpha ran through the xeno¡¯s words. It confirmed several of Alpha¡¯s predictions about the environment, and it also was consistent with the conclusion of Alpha¡¯s chronometers. The blonde haired xenos was right, and Alpha had spent enough time exploring. Before nightfall, and the xenos had to succumb to the slumber that all biologicals require, Alpha concluded was the easiest time to ask for all the data it needed about the local environment. It would make Alpha¡¯s work a lot more efficient, and a lot less likely to result in damage to the frame-body. That was needed until general industry could be developed somewhere to repair it. Alpha, walking behind the xenos who seemed to be wanted Alpha to follow them somewhere, movement in formation is simple and so Alpha fell in behind them at a distance of exactly 2 meters, finally calculated that the usage of the DISMISS function in their main runtime was more likely to be helpful than to be damaging. And when it was sent a confirmation, the screen winked out of Alpha¡¯s visual cameras, and Alpha began to quickly utilize this new resource available to it. Alpha had been stuck with limited visual cameras for so long that even without even a reduced sensor suite, but practically no sensor suite, it¡¯s reward integer went up as it was able to begin to catalogue every single object it could. Every single small biological on the large biologicals, every single object and CQB weapon on the xenos, and every small piece of the local environment it could isolate from the larger environment. Nothing was left out of place, and nothing was left without being properly tagged and analyzed. Alpha¡¯s chassis heated up to nearly 60 C before reaching equilibrium there, as it ran just cold enough not to risk possible overheating damage to the frame. A slight hum emanated from the frame according to the acoustic sensors as the interior fans worked overtime to whisk heat away from the interior off to the interior of the armour of the frame. From the upper part of the main torso segment, a slight whine was emitted as Alpha¡¯s cameras rapidly swiveled around, zooming in and out on every single thing that Alpha could. It noted that the xenos, which had been traveling at or above Alpha¡¯s max speed before the malware had been able to hamper it to around a fourth. Now, it was traveling around the speed of an unenhanced human¡¯s walking speed, with the xenos also walking. The inefficiency caused Alpha to begin to stare slightly at the xenos. While the slower speed may have allowed Alpha to save slightly on speed and heat, it was highly time inefficient. ¡°Sir Transplant, may I ask your name?¡± A name. Alpha didn¡¯t have a name, but it did have a designation. Was the xenos asking for Alpha¡¯s designation? Well, it was transmitted freely by the IFF, which was still active, so it should¡¯ve have any problems accessing it if it wasn¡¯t for the fact it was a techno-primitive, and so it shouldn¡¯t be an issue informing the xenos of Alpha¡¯s designation. ¡°[DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1¡±. ¡°Alpha see one? Hmmm, why don¡¯t I call you Alphie?¡± ¡°NEGATORY /// INCORRECT ||| [DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1.¡± ¡°Sure, Alphie.¡± Alpha decided that the xenos seemed to be replicating the human behavior noted as obstinance, a behavior in which they reject obvious reality for unknowable reason, and refuse to provide one when asked for why they accomplish such action. An inefficient behavior for an inefficient xenos, but when the xenos were expected to run off and alert their PDF the moment that Alpha was spotted, and this one was somehow conversing in English to Alpha, it decided to take the unlikely benefits that it could get from it¡¯s situation. Alpha walked behind the xenos, putting together both a catalogue of everything it passed, but when it started getting reduced CPU load as it ran out of things to catalogue due to the slow pace of the xenos, it began to put together as complete a simulation of the xenos¡¯s capabilities as it could. Muscular densities, explosive, sustained, and static force, weapon cutting strength, armor penetration capabilities, and more. The long hair of the xenos was particularly difficult to properly replicate, more than once Alpha¡¯s simulations showed a near perfect match when in the same scenario as the xenos, but then it would have a near 0, but still present, deviation from the xenos, and Alpha couldn¡¯t use a non-accurate simulation. It took nearly 6 minutes of walking behind the xenos, asking no more questions, which Alpha noted as likely reducing the calculation time required by it¡¯s CPU¡¯s by nearly 2 minutes, before Alpha could begin properly using it to attempt to maximize Alpha¡¯s chances of reducing the xenos to scrap before it could further damage Alpha¡¯s frame. Most scenarios had Alpha¡¯s bone leg being further damaged or even destroyed due to the fight, especially the ones started at over 1 kilometer of wooded distance, in which Alpha had a severe disadvantage, but with enough simulations, Alpha would be able to predict the xenos¡¯s moves before it could. After 11 minutes, 32 seconds, and 98 milliseconds, the xenos finally stopped as it reached a small body of liquid water. Usually, the coolant would be kept within a ship-body or frame, but database records showed that water was a frequent presence on asteroids, comets, and planetary bodies, so it was likely that this was present due to the natural factors of the local environment on the xenos¡¯s planet and not the presence of some other large scale ship-body on the planet. Alpha stopped at exactly 2 meters behind the xenos as it had kept for the duration of the entire journey, and waited. The xenos had some kind of plan, and while scans indicated no waiting xenos to ambush Alpha, it wasn¡¯t impossible. Alpha¡¯s manipulators were warmed up, the motors prepared for maximum usage, even in their lowered state it was best to keep them ready and active. ¡°Here we are. Alphie, set down your weapons somewhere, we need to prepare camp. Unfortunately, I don¡¯t have a tent, so we¡¯re going to have to make something ourselves, and that¡¯s the reason I wanted to do this so early. I¡¯ll start setting up a small fire pit to keep warm and to boil up some water to drink and make some food with. Alphie, do you need some food, or are you, wherever you are in that mass of metal, okay?¡± Alpha spent nearly 0.4 seconds working through the xenos¡¯s words, strange they were. Why were they asking why a frame-body needed biological sustenance? Hydrogen were plenty, and by the context of the statement, it was unlikely they were offering repair metal. That would be under a ¡°medical¡± context. ¡°NEGATIVE.¡± ¡°O-kay then big guy, let¡¯s get you started on making some kind of lean-to, you seemed decent enough at building that last time we-, uh, last time I saw you. Can you do that?¡± ¡°AFFIRMATIVE.¡± ¡°Oh, and make sure to make it bigger than the one you made, it¡¯ll have to accommodate us both for the night. I don¡¯t want you or me to get a cold out in this weather. Feels nice and warm during the day, but it¡¯s suprisingly cold during the night.¡± ¡°[DATA] TRANSFER [AFFIRMATIVE].¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take that as an okay. The log over there should do for your work, okay?¡± Alpha watched as the xenos stretched one of it¡¯s upper limbs, it only had one pair, and pointed in a north-easternly direction. It wasn¡¯t quite exact, and they seemed to posses no marking equipment, so why a better method hadn¡¯t been used was unknown to Alpha, but the manipulator¡¯s direction of travel was simple to extrapolate and was within a 10 meter error of the log referred to, a unlikely demonstration of accuracy by a biological. Alpha moved as quickly as it could, using all of it¡¯s speed now that it wasn¡¯t stuck walking behind the xenos, and moved the roughly 30 meter distance easily enough. Then, it was just a matter of getting enough raw materials sourced from the local environment to make a shelter large enough for both the frame-body and the xenos. It went against some incentives to share a space with the xenos, but unless the xenos also made a shelter, which it wasn¡¯t and was instead making something else for some reason, Alpha didn¡¯t have time to make a second one. Until Alpha was willing to purge the xenos and sever their ally, which they still needed information from, Alpha was going to have to take the heightened risk. Having already previously completed the task naught but the night prior, it made the task far more efficient the following night, as the data collected on the proper biologicals to use was more complete and Alpha¡¯s machine accuracy was able to ensure a nearly 0% gaseous exchange rate outside of the opening out of the front. As Alpha returned to the presence of the xenos, it seemed to have started a fire for some reason. Alpha, however, felt no need to question the incomprehensible and illogical biologicals, it had done that enough in it¡¯s old ship-body, and a xenos was even more incomprehensible compared to a human biological. As the xenos went about ¡°eating¡±, a highly inefficient process compared to it¡¯s gas intake vents and hydrogen refinery, it asked the questions it had of the xenos towards the xenos influence on it¡¯s systems and the local area. The data acquired shattered most of Alpha¡¯s predictions and calculations. Kugsh¡¯?l¡¯ukis¡¯bmnei Ukis¡¯usil¡¯?lja-taum, Forest of Transplants As ?l¡¯ukis began to bed down next to the Transplant, she finally allowed a small smile to grace her face. It¡¯s chestplate was hot, literally, feeling almost burning to her touch. Laying next to them in the surprisingly well built, if painfully wooden, lean-to, felt like the one time she had been allowed in the hot spring a neighboring scion had found and then claimed, a gentle and seeping warm that slowly shunted throughout most of her body. Looking back, it was unsurprising that they had ignored all but the most direct asks to settle down for the night instead of answering questions, the campfire must have felt wonderful compared to the freezing night air. As she felt sleep slowly begin to overtake her, the oblivion of the night, she mused that answering continuous weirdly worded questions that only got more weirdly worded and barely being allowed a word in edge-wise wasn¡¯t particularly glamorous, or romance-book worthy, but she supposed it was worth it if she got to practically sleep next to a campfire all night without any worries of something spotting or smelling her, or her scion scolding her for wasting precious wood. As her mind finally calmed from the days events, a small part of her worried if it was as really as good as it seemed. The rest told it to be quiet. Sometime that night Burning trees were all around her, acrid smoke slamming at her lungs like a warhammer. Tears flowed freely from her eyes, her heart aching painfully as she held the bodies. Their faces were obscured, unseen, unseeable, as she held them and wailed, and wailed, and wailed. Somewhere, she could hear the sound of combat, of screams of shock, pain and rage, the screech of metal on metal, the thwack of wood, the spine-tingling sound of fleshing tearing like grass and bones cracking tree branches in the heart of spring. She pawed at her warsword, the other arm usually dedicated to her shortspear held close to her chest, deeply wounded, bloody flowing freely. ?l¡¯ukis tried to think of who could do this to her, who was strong enough to shatter the life-glade and yet allowed in by the system, and her mind returned nothing but void. She grasped her warsword in one hand free and one injured, blood staining the wooden handle and handguard. She wiped the blood still on her hand across her face, the hand print like a warpaint as she got to her feet. Someone, somewhere, had to pay for this. A being of pure void, something yet not something allowed to be seen, appeared in the edge of her vision. A viscous warcry sprang from her throat as she charged, sword in hand, crossing the distance faster than she had ever been able to do before, keeping her weapon a low guard, ready to move and kill. Her strike went out first, fury overtaking rationality, but it was batted aside from something, and she felt the tears on her face be knocked from her as the entirety of her momentum suddenly stopped as she was impaled by something. ?l¡¯ukis couldn¡¯t see if it was a spear, or a sword, or something else, but it twisted in her guts, sending both tears and blood spraying in an arc. Her entire lower body screamed in pain, the weapon having torn right through her body, intestines curling around it like willow vines, yet they could not parasitize cold, hard metal. Every stray movement send a further burst of blood, the hammering of her chest just leading to more of her life to seep out onto the void stuck into her stomach. She felt like she should be invulnerable right now, that pain should be nothing but an abstract, but as a bloody hand squeezed around the weapon, trying to pry it out, she screamed her throat in pain. Fresh tears streamed down her face, her blonde hair stained red from her own blood whipped around with her face, and yet when she stared into the void, it felt¡­ compassionate. With every involuntary movement, more acidic bile dug through veins and arteries, her pain so bad she wished that her death throes would come and go already and she could move on to the other side, to be reunited with the Hopegiver in the afterlife. Her mouth moved, but no sound escaped, and so she pleaded mentally, screaming out her wish for the pain to end, for the feeling of her intestines being picked apart by her own stomach acid to stop, for the feeling of her spin being scraped by hard, blood soaked metal to stop, for the feeling of her blood streaming out of her stomach to just stop. And for a moment as the weapon was removed from her body, she felt her wished be answered, the pain lifted away in a warm, shocking wave for just but a moment, before she saw the length of the unseeable weapon traveling towards her head, and for a moment she felt indescribable pain as not only her stomach but her head was sliced in twain, her nose breaking on contact, her sensitive ears flattening against the ground, the blade slamming into her upper jawbone and stopping, levering up into her skull, the merciful lack of sensation from her brain allowing the red blur of pain to finally end without more screaming protests from her battered, dying body, as finally she winked into the abyss. A warmth filled her being in the void, as a bright light seemed to emerge from behind her. Whipping around in the infinite blackness, some kind of spirit body reacting to her command, she came face to fire with a constantly shifting, vaguely humanoid shape of fire. As it spoke, it seared words onto her brain with the power of a Fragment. ¡°My child, that which you travel with will lead your glad to ruin, and for your life to meet the ground from which you came, along with the rest of the real you call home. You must send it away, you must send the Transplant into the Forest to die a quiet death against the monsters of your home. You must. There is no other way.¡± As ?l¡¯ukis awoke shaking, she allowed herself a small laugh. ¡°Heh, some jumped up wizard wants to try to manipulate me with some two-bit sorcery? Like the Hells I will¡­¡± Only shaking the normal amount, ?l¡¯ukis forced themselves to lay back down against the ground, and ignore how closely the Transplant matched the void from her dreams, and to go back to sleep. ¡°It¡¯s just a dream¡±. Reactivation Sequence: Chapter 3 BLACK BOX BEGIN RECORDING CHRONOMETERS SYNCED TO LOCAL STELLAR TIME LOCAL TIME SET AS 0600 PERFORMING SENSORS CHECK SENSORS SYSTEM INTEGRITY AT: 12.1% (87.7% UNREACTIVE) UNKNOWN MALWARE PRESENCE DETECTED IN SYSTEM: SENORS SENSOR SYSTEM VISUAL_CAMERAS OPERATING AT 98.5% OF MAX EFFICIENCY ALL INTERNAL SENSORS OPERATING AT 100% OF MAX EFFICIENCY PERFORMING FULL SYSTEMS CHECK: ALL SYSTEMS RUNNING AT PREVIOUS CAPABILITIES ITEMIZED LIST (x342) v WARNING: XENOS DETECTED WITHIN MAXIMUM RANGE OF AVAILABLE WEAPONRY. ACTIVATING PURGE PROTOCOLS ERROR: PURGE PROTOCOLS SUPERSEDED BY REACTIVATION SEQUENCE ERROR RESOLUTION: CEDING CONTROL TO REACTIVATION SEQUENCE RESUMING LOG-STREAM OF PRINCIPLE SOFT AI Alpha C-1, Forest of Transplants Alpha¡¯s CPU¡¯s ran as hot as Alpha would allow them to, as it couldn¡¯t risk permanent damage when it was so far away from any source of repairs. It¡¯s missing limbs were a testament to that fact. And so as it puzzled through the strange xenos next to it in a simulated environment. It had already gone through most of the more reasonable possibilities, it was now running through almost anything it could have left. Being ambushed from directly in front by being damaged in the most vital part, the Main Computer Core. Such a damage wouldn¡¯t immediately destroy Alpha¡¯s frame, but it would be enough to seriously hamper it. Or, it was the xenos suddenly developing more of the strange nanotech abilities and being able to begin nanite warfare with the frame. Alpha had no real defense against nanite warfare, even among the void of space it was one of the most likely to actually manage to permanently kill a Principle Soft AI like Alpha C-1, even the most hardened of black boxes couldn¡¯t survive complete deconstruction. And, without even micromachines to use to fight them off, much less nanites of it¡¯s own, Alpha was completely defenseless against the nanite warfare the xenos had possessed. Why exactly the nanite warfare was trying to disguise itself as a background interaction of the local environment was unknown to Alpha, and no calculations could account for all of the strangeness, so Alpha simply ran simulations with the assumption that the currently shown nanite usages were all the xenos had access to. Again, the why that it wouldn¡¯t be granted a higher clearance level by whoever ran the nanites once a possible combat with the xenos took place was unknown, and attempting to calculate it was running into even more problems, so Alpha moved that down the priority list and focused on simulations that could help it fight the xenos as it currently was, not how it would or could be. It also used a more averaged simulation based on the hostile encounter it had with the other xenos alongside the more in depth scan of the xenos in order to replicate a more generalized xenos model, allowing Alpha to simulate a fight against multiple xenos opponents. Once it had that open, it was a wide open gate for Alpha to simulate any number of strange or weird attacks in order to figure out what best way to disassemble them and annihilate their forces, ranging the lone xenos next to Alpha¡¯s frame 1 meter in front of Alpha, or a squad of generic xenos from as far away as Alpha could actually simulate. Complex in the moment decision making from a simulated enemy over 4 miles of complex terrain is very computationally intensive, that particular trail had taken almost 4 whole seconds! A practical eternity. Alpha used whatever time and processing power was leftover from Alpha¡¯s other efforts, usually just unused CPU power normally earmarked for Alpha itself, to process the information the xenos had shared with Alpha. The xenos had been very open with information, Alpha noted down that local OPSEC was likely lower than calculations derived it to be previously, and Alpha went about putting the information it had gathered to actual use as the last of the simulations finally reached a victory conclusion for Alpha. While it wasn¡¯t quite prepared for every possible or actual eventuality, as long as the xenos moved or acted within a standard deviation of perfect, or bad enough that Alpha could exploit it, it was likely to be almost a surefire victory for Alpha. However, Alpha did reduce the weighting of the simulations on it¡¯s decision making, as while Alpha was usually highly proficient in any and all matters of warfare and combat, the use of CQB weapon and combating xenos nanites without any micromachines or nanites of it¡¯s own was a matter of combat and warfare that Alpha had zero knowledge on, making Alpha¡¯s attempt at fighting often simplistic as it used it¡¯s processing power on things it did know how to deal with, calculating attack trajectories, predicting enemy attacks, and more, meaning that the simulations it was able to create were similarly simplistic. Alpha¡¯s data was effectively null for CQB weapon engagements, as even if it fabricated boarding craft for some reason or another, a simple railshot was far more effective than any CQB instrument, and Alpha completely lacked any microscopic capabilities to use the data it did have to work with. If Alpha¡¯s systems were able to connect to the larger fleet network, for naught but a moment, it would¡¯ve likely been able to collect any and all data it needed, but it couldn¡¯t. Alpha couldn¡¯t find a single signal even from any local wireless, not even from the nanites that the xenos must have been using. There wasn¡¯t even an EM signature, which suggested an even higher level of technology that Alpha didn¡¯t have the spare processing power to calculate the extent of. Suddenly, a proximity alarm echoed out within Alpha¡¯s digital mind simulacrum, as the xenos currently next to Alpha suddenly stirred from it¡¯s hibernation period. Several non-word noises were picked up from it as it¡¯s eyes rapidly went from slightly opened back to closed, before it finally let out a long non-word noise raised it¡¯s arms above it¡¯s head for no reason. They, for obvious reasons, connected both their arms and their head to the top of the lean-to that Alpha had constructed the start of the previous night. However, for unknown biological reasons, upon connecting with the top of the lean-to, as it obviously would, the xenos mimics a human ¡°surprise¡± expression, before suddenly accelerating upwards and towards Alpha. Alpha¡¯s acoustics sensors detected a slight noise coinciding with the stress placed upon Alpha¡¯s frame by the weight of the xenos. Alpha¡¯s visual cameras reported a rapid red-shift in the xenos¡¯s skin, before it accelerated rapidly out of the lean-to, and left the area that Alpha¡¯s visual sensors could watch. Alpha¡¯s acoustic sensors still detected the aftereffects of the xenos on the local environment within close proximity. Alpha quickly processed the rapid stream of events, declared the rest period over by actions of the xenos, and stood up, demolishing the lean-to in one rapid movement in order to reduce available material for any possible following enemy force. Upon standing up in the area that the xenos and Alpha had secured as their rest area, next to the small open top pipe of water in the local environment, the xenos rapidly scanned the surrounding area using the limb it had designated as it¡¯s ¡°head¡± during Alpha¡¯s queries the previous local evening before locking onto Alpha¡¯s frame. It¡¯s usual color was not quite as red-shifted as it had been several seconds prior, but it was still an abnormal color. ¡°I- I- I- I¡¯m so sorry Alphie I didn¡¯t mean to it was early and I wasn¡¯t thinking and I¡¯m sorry and I didn¡¯t mean anything by it and-¡° ¡°[ADDRESSMENT /// STATEMENT /// DECLARATION] ||| [DESIGNATION] UNKNOWN NEUTRAL ENTITY EIN-09 INTEGRITY [UNKNOWN /// LIKELY DAMAGED /// NON-NOMINAL] ||| [REQUEST] ||| [DESIGNATION] UNKNOWN NEUTRAL ENTITY REPORT /// COMMUNICATE /// TRANSMIT [INTEGRITY]. [QUERY] ||| [DESIGNATION] UNKNOWN NEUTRAL ENTITY EIN-09 REQUIRE /// NEED /// REQUEST [REPAIR] ASSISTANCE?¡± Alpha itself didn¡¯t know how it could help in the repair of the faulty armour paneling on the xenos, but it did know that it was likely that Alpha could help in some way, while it would¡¯ve known instantly with a data-link, not only did the xenos not present open ports to connect to or even posses a wireless capability, but it was also a filthy xenos, and thus a datalink was prohibited until the cessation of hostilities with Humanity by all known xenos species. The xenos further scanned Alpha for some unknown reason for several seconds longer before it further red-shifted, reaching a dangerous color. If it was being attacked by a laser system and that red-shift was the only thing that Alpha could sense of that attack without it¡¯s thermal cameras or datalink, then it would only be a handful of further seconds before the armour plate being structurally ineffective and the xenos started to experience breakdown of it¡¯s superstructure due to the presence of a gravity well. Alpha had never liked working in gravity wells, they tended to make existing issues with Alpha¡¯s ship-body worse or to complicate both simulations and calculations, wasting previous processor space. The xenos seemed to make several non-word noises, each one possessing a large percentage of similarity to the start of several known words, but each one was still a non-word noise. Alpha wondered if the xenos¡¯s communication equipment was damaged too. That would render most of Alpha¡¯s possible repair efforts null and void. It was also make the xenos useless as a source of info. An annoying, but not insurmountable challenge. ¡°Aiiiiii-uhhhh, I¡¯m okay. I.. don¡¯t need repairs? I- just give me a minute to collect myself, okay Alphie? Here, why don¡¯t you keep a look out for any monster that might ambush us while I freshen up. I¡¯ll talk to you in a second, okay?¡± ¡°[AFFIRMATIVE]¡± The xenos was not in need of repairs? The red-shift in the xenos rapidly depleted before it returned to it¡¯s standard colouration. Alpha, heeding the advice of the xenos, dedicated some of it¡¯s sensors into scanning the local environment. The xenos approached the nearby water, before using it¡¯s manipulators to splash some of it on it¡¯s head. A waste of resources, but not a flagrant one. There was enough water that unless it was a very tightly regulated system that controlled the water supply, there was unlikely to be any interruptions in operations wherever the water lead to. Alpha began noting down any changes that had happened during the night, several of them coinciding with positions triangulated by it¡¯s acoustic sensors. There was only one change that Alpha couldn¡¯t explain using previous data, an unknown carbonization of the biological that Alpha had been using to lean it¡¯s lean-to against. Alpha approached the carbonized spot, as using it¡¯s scanners from a distance was getting negligible levels of data for the intensity that Alpha wanted to scrutinize the work. A carbonized spot on the biological likely meant that advanced weaponry had been used on it. A laser, incendiary kinetic ammo, or perhaps even plasma had damaged the biological. Alpha looked over the mark, it had been around where the biological the lean-to had been built around hit the other biological and formed the triangular structure that the lean-to was built around. However, the mark appeared to be inconsistent with any of the sources for carbonization that Alpha was aware of, too spread out for a laser, to irregular in shape for plasma, and there was no specific impact point for any kinetic containing an incendiary fuel, but it was consistent with the marks of something the database called ¡®fire¡¯. Incendiary ammo was supposed to emulate fire, or create one inside of a spaceship, though with the rarity of incendiary ammo outside of the very first months of the war meant that Alpha had never encountered this. Apparently, fires were only able to be started in the presence of oxygen. It was clear why they hadn¡¯t worked, why would IFANS forces pressurize entirely AI controlled ships? Biologicals, humans in particular, had a tendency to breathe oxygen so perhaps on inefficient xenos ship-bodies fires were able to be started. It was the only logical conclusion to come to out of illogical xenos biologicals. However, Alpha was not prioritizing the carbonization, no ¡®burn mark¡¯, in it¡¯s processors time, and so began to inspect the burn mark closer, using many linked sensors in order to increase the accuracy of it¡¯s scan. During this time, other sensors that had been watching the xenos noted that it had begun to approach Alpha again after putting the water on it¡¯s head and crouching next to it for 5.41 seconds. Alpha discarded this and began to use it¡¯s manipulators to investigate the carbonized mark on the biological. Parts of the biological flaked off into Alpha¡¯s manipulators, but it couldn¡¯t find any abnormality outside of the carbonization itself. Not any trace material or impact that it could find in the area. And then the xenos was upon it. Again. ¡°Hey Alphie! Um, sorry about this morning, I.. am not quite myself when in the morning. I find it hard to wake up. You a bit of a morning guy then?¡± ¡°[DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1 DOES NOT REQUIRE /// NEED [ACTION] SLEEP.¡± ¡°Mmm. Cool. I wish I didn¡¯t have to sleep either. It¡¯d make my life way easier. Anyway, here, I was thinking yesterday during our short question and answer session that perhaps we should swing by where we first met, pick up some stuff to show what, uh¡­ happened there, which I didn¡¯t have anything to do with, and then see if my glade is willing to say to you, and me alongside you? Our first little proper quest together, with an objective and everything? If we find something along the way, I could even help get you your first level?¡± ¡°[AFFIRMATIVE].¡±¡°Good! That¡¯s great! Um, let¡¯s head out now then. I¡¯m already starting to stink in this armor and the sooner we get there and then I lead you to the glade then the sooner I should be able to change out of it.¡± ¡°[AFFIRMATIVE].¡± ¡°Right, man of few words, except for when you aren¡¯t, huh. Follow me then!¡± The xenos started moving off rapidly into the forest, or as it had explained the previous evening to Alpha C-1, the Forest of Transplants. Alpha abandoned the carbonized spot, while it was slightly inconsistent with how fire was supposed to damage something, leaving very little ash, it was consistent enough in order to not be particularly important. Alpha moved through sections of cataloged forest for several minutes, following behind the xenos before it started encountering sections of the forest that hadn¡¯t already been cataloged. Upon reaching them, Alpha began to put it¡¯s processors through stress testing again, as it¡¯s hull began to heat up as Alpha took in anything and everything that it could, not just what had changed since it had last been through the area. First 50C, then 60C, as Alpha¡¯s motors were reported as making large amounts of noises by the acoustic sensors due to the strain incurred by attempting to move at maximum speed for as long as they had to in order for Alpha to be able to follow behind the xenos. They traveled further through uncatalogued territory, before coming across a section of the forest that had been heavily analyzed by Alpha previously, the site of where Alpha had originally contacted the xenos and killed all but the ranged xenos it was currently traveling behind. Stepping over the now mostly gone remains of Alpha¡¯s original shelter, the xenos begins to make more unknown noises as it looks as the remains of the xenos that Alpha had previously killed. It hadn¡¯t been Alpha¡¯s most efficient work against xenos, but it was enough for the time and Alpha hadn¡¯t had enough time to simulate a best possible course of action or method of elimination, and thusly breaking the spine was deemed most effective to lead to instant incapacitation. The xenos had crouched down to one of Alpha¡¯s kills, making more non-word sounds, but Alpha dismissed that. The xenos had a pattern of making non-word sounds for no reason, and as useless as those sounds were Alpha found no reason to do any more than catalog them and continue Alpha¡¯s work. Alpha¡¯s grip slackened slightly on it¡¯s CQB weapons and slid their manipulators into the aft-most part of their hilts as their acoustic sensors suddenly picked up the movement of another biological in the nearby area. Alpha¡¯s processors calculated the likelihood that it was a simple biological, another bioweapon, or a hated (or so the programs said) xenos. ¡°Huh? Oh, Alphie! Behind you!¡± Alpha brought their uppermost limbs behind themselves and struck out with the longer CQB weapon. Metal met blood and flesh as the two smaller limbs brought the shorter CQB weapons to block any possible damage the biological could deal to Alpha¡¯s frame. It could acquire more CQB weapons. The supply on composite armor plating was far lower, and far more difficult to jump start, even with Alpha¡¯s access to a full databank to skip over having to actually invent or reinvent any of the technology itself. As the longer CQB weapon dug deep into the biological, Alpha swapped from high speed object tracking to more in depth scanning alongside object tracking as more of it¡¯s sensors were locking onto the biological. Highly reminiscent of an earth fauna, the wolf, just about 2 times as large in any given dimension as a standard earth wolf, and seemed to possess some level of metal within either it¡¯s body or fur, likely deeming it another bioweapon. The bioweapon made an excessively loud non-word sound as it moved backwards, fluid dripping out of the damage that Alpha had caused. Seeing the obvious weakness, Alpha moved it, lashing out with the two shorter CQB weapons at the location likely equating to the heart analogue¡¯s position, stabbing once after the other to reduce the likelihood for blocking Alpha¡¯s attack, while bringing the longer weapon up before striking down onto the largest section of the creature. Just like it had noticed before, it was unnaturally tough for a biological, all but confirming the creature¡¯s status as a bioweapon. Unable to even feel deterred, Alpha ripped the weapon out of the bioweapon before striking back as soon as it could, the longer CQB weapon striking against one of the manipulators of the creature, sending it sprawling to the ground. An effective equivalent of a thruster shot, making dodging impossible. As soon as the bioweapon hit the floor, Alpha stabbed as hard as it¡¯s limited motors would allow it into the head equivalent of the wolf-analogue, managing to finally destroy the bioweapon. Alpha increased the weighting factor of the CQB weapons, each one demonstrating a level of effectiveness against bioweapons incongruent with their demonstration against Alpha¡¯s own frame-body. The xenos had rapidly stood up from being near-seated against the ground, and seemed to have an elevated breath rate. A symptom as useless as the red-shift, possibly indicating any number of signs. Alpha didn¡¯t ask about specifics, the last time it had it had worsened the conditions the xenos was operating under, and there was still information Alpha needed to interrogate out of the xenos before Alpha was willing to dispatch it. However, Alpha¡¯s inner thoughts and plans were ruined by an exterior, malware force jutting itself into Alpha¡¯s visual camera feeds and installing the CONTINUE back into Alpha¡¯s runtime, again.
Level 2 Juvenile Dire Wolf Scout Defeated!
Dispensing Rewards. Additional Rewards Added From Trait ¡°Stellar Hyperadaptability¡±. Level Up Detected! Level 0 --> Level 1. Level Up Detected! Level 1 --> Level 2.
Titles Assigned: None
Assigned Attribute Points: 4
Free Attribute Points Allotted: None
Traits Allotted: None
Skills Allotted: None
Spells Allotted: None
First Level Up detected! First Mana and Stamina points absorbed by body. Adding Mana and Stamina stats to Status.
¡°[QUERY] ||| [DESIGNATION] UNKNOWN NEUTRAL ENTITY EIN-09 ||| MALWARE /// DAMAGE /// SYSTEM INTERFERENCE REGARDING VISUAL SENSORS /// CAMERAS /// BIOLOGICAL EYES [PRESENT] OR [RECENT] KNOWN.¡± The xenos said something that was too quiet for Alpha¡¯s auditory sensors to pick up on it. Before Alpha had been handicapped by the malware, Alpha would have easily been able to transcribe the communication from the xenos, but without the full capabilities inherent to those sensors, Alpha was unable to determine the true nature of the communique before the xenos started to communicate something that Alpha could transcribe without excess processing power usage or sensor coverage. ¡°If I¡¯m understanding you right, you¡¯re talking about the System then? You said something about eyes and Systems, so I¡¯ll assume so. If you¡¯re asking if I see the System too, nobody but you can see your own System, it¡¯s just a fact of life. I¡¯ve heard stories of people being able to see things about you that usually only show up on your own Status, not even while using a high level identify skill, but that isn¡¯t likely. It¡¯s only beneficial, if you haven¡¯t already please look at the entirety of your System status. Speaking of, if you¡¯re willing, we could trade skills and traits? On the road though¡­¡± The xenos had a greenshift in their skin before continuing to communicate with Alpha ¡°If you¡¯re willing that is! I know for some the System has a deal of great importance or privacy placed upon it, and I don¡¯t want to intrude if you feel uncomfortable or something¡­¡± The xenos slowly reduced the sound of their communications until Alpha couldn¡¯t transcribe anything further from them, though visual scans showed them ceasing external communications just 10 seconds after Alpha was no longer able to properly absorb any info they were given Alpha. However, if Alpha was being told truth, then the ¡°System¡± was entirely beneficial for Alpha. Altruistic even. A complete oxymoron to Alpha, xenos and their creations were wicked and scheming, not helpful or improving Alpha¡¯s chance of completing their mission and being reinstated in a new ship-body after the destruction of Alpha¡¯s old one. However, all previous info given to Alpha had been either unactualizable and unverifiable, or truthful at least on the techno-primitive surface, so Alpha calculated that it was more likely that only one activation inhibited Alpha¡¯s functions, not all of them. Deciding to do something that went against almost all of Alpha¡¯s core motivators, Alpha trusted the xenos¡¯s information, and activated CONTINUE, and then STATUS.
ALPHA C-1¡¯s Status Page ALPHA C-1¡¯s Trait Page ALPHA C-1¡¯s Skill Page Alpha C-1¡¯s Spell Page
Name: ALPHA C-1
Species: Biomachine (BIO: 0, MECH: 1000)
Stamina: 1 Stamina Regen: 16/hr Stamina Max: 17
Mana: 1 Mana Regen: 10/hr Mana Max: 19
Age: 1.5 Years
Gender: N/A
Level: 2
Tier: 1
Attribute: Quantity: Tier Baseline: Species Baseline: Tier Maximum:
Strength 20 5 15 20
Dexterity 12 5 12 20
Reaction 17 5 9 20
Resist 17 5 13 20
Hale 15 5 8 20
Perception 20 5 4 20
Knowledge 0 5 5 20
Intelligence 19 5 5 20
Influence 0 5 4 20
Three more options appeared in Alpha¡¯s main runtime. Three options Alpha had already documented, but had refused to open. The risk had not been worth the possibility of permanently disabling more of Alpha¡¯s systems. But, STATUS hadn¡¯t done anything, so perhaps TRAITS, SKILLS, and SPELLS wouldn¡¯t either. The first thing to react was SPELLS, which displayed some kind of null data error back at Alpha. It was easy to cross off SPELLS then, at least until it became functional again. Alpha had no access to debug the mystery functions, they were completely back-boxed, so Alpha just had to see whatever was kept inside of the SPELLS. First, TRAITS appeared inside of the vision of Alpha¡¯s cameras, and then came SKILLS, yet despite all three of the distortions appearing to be on top of each other using direct visual feed analysis, if Alpha left it up to their subroutines, then suddenly it was able to work through all three screen at the same time. Seeing both efficiency and effectiveness, Alpha set up several new subroutines to automatically map out and record the distortions onto a new file within Alpha¡¯s direct control, and then use the CLOSE to remove the boxes so that Alpha¡¯s cameras once more had uninterrupted sight lines. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Trait Name: Effect:
Machine Repair (LVL 1) You have the ability to repair anything entirely mechanical in nature as long as it remains in contact with the majority of your body for long enough, and so does the raw materials required to repair it. This does include any body parts made of metal, or otherwise inorganic non-healing parts.
Stellar Hyperadaptibility (MAX) You were born among the stars, and in the infinite vastness of the cosmos, you had to deal with the infinite trials of space. This has had a profound impact on you; as long as you spend long enough in an area, you will automatically adjust your body until you are able to ply whatever trade needed, though most often it will be dealing in death. In addition, you double all of your gained attributes from Level Up¡¯s to reforge yourself to the trails you will face.
Composite Plating (LVL 3) You are ensconced within plates, a fortress of combinations. When creating metal plates for armor, or repairing existing ones, you may infuse it with additional materials in order to incorporate them into a composite. Found recipes may be saved permanently, being able to be recreated later at a slightly lower cost. This can only accept free and workable materials. Currently Known Recipes: IFANS Standard Frame Alloy (Requires: Iron, Chromium, and Carbon) IFANS Heavy Battleship Plating (Requires: Iron, Carbon, Titanium, Osmium, Uranium, Iridium, Silver, Copper, Yttrium, Gallium, Mercury, Silicon, Thallium, Aluminum, Sodium, Nitrogen, Carbon, Boron, Tungsten, and Gold) ??? Frame Armor Alloy (Requires: Mythril, Iron, Carbon, and Metallic Affinity Mana)
Mutual Understanding (Rankless) You are a Transplant, a soul tumbled from one universe to another, either in the unplanned tumult of the Strands of Infinity or the great workings of Death. To facilitate your integration to another world, you are granted complete understanding of the words of the first language you encounter. However, any cultural nuances and references must be learned normally. This Trait will only activate once. This Trait activated with the language Nei¡¯sah¡¯ahtis.
Skill Name: Effect: Cost:
Overheat (Lvl. 2) Overheat your processors and work your brain until it is at the point of breaking. Slow down time to a fraction of it¡¯s normal speed, but without the possibility of your own mind snapping in twain doing so. 0.1 Stamina /s
Foresight-Thinking (Lvl. 1) Overheat your processors and work your brain until is at the point of breaking. Create explorable recreations of the possible ways that the future could go or the past could¡¯ve gone through sheer strength of intellect and firmness of mind. Not magical in nature or effect. 0.1 Stamina /s
Priority Shift (Lvl. 1) Full power to shields! Make sure that whatever needs to happen, will happen, no matter what else has to go. Temporarily halve either your mental stats or physical stats for a doubling of the opposite group for 10 seconds. Conversely, it can be instead used to make a single heavily upgraded attack, or come to a single difficult conclusion or epiphany. Can also be used to change programs usually held under protected sections not usually available to change without outside approval, allowing you to shift your priorities in mindset or in action. 10 Stamina.
As Alpha¡¯s visual cameras rapidly scanned the overlapping and yet easily parsed anomalies, Alpha rapidly ran into the first piece of artifacting. An expected result of rapidly and completely changing the on-the-fly results of visual cameras without disrupting their reporting timing while having less than completely overwhelming technological superiority. Yet, instead of simple issues where the overlayed information meshed improperly with the other or the local environment clipped into or out of the malware¡¯s interference with Alpha¡¯s visual cameras. No, it was a simple one that shouldn¡¯t be happening considering all of the other ways that it should¡¯ve happened instead. The ¡°word¡± Nei¡¯sah¡¯ahtis would occasionally be switched with a phrase instead, the phrase being ¡°Many People¡¯s Speak¡±. Alpha found no real data to attempt to calculate or estimate why or how that artifact was occurring, but it was noted. All of the different ¡°screens¡± dissapeared off of Alpha¡¯s visual cameras as it ran several different mysterious DISMISS functions off of Alpha¡¯s main runtime. Alpha still couldn¡¯t find anyway to remove either the invisible walls stopping it from interacting with it¡¯s sensors, as far as Alpha¡¯s software could tell, there just was not a single thing to interface with, it couldn¡¯t fight off a malware that didn¡¯t exist within the network, and the way it was adding functions and removing them from Alpha¡¯s runtime was also unknown, as no matter what happened, there was zero indication or records of the new function, only that Alpha now had the ability to activate it. Despite surging antivirus priority right around the usage of the anomalous functions, Alpha had yet to find anything that it could actually use to push out the xenos virus. ¡°I have to guess that you opened it for the first time. Are you meant to uh, hum? Nevermind, it¡¯s not important, can we move? Please?¡± ¡°[DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [QUERY] DESTINATION /// LZ /// ENDPOINT /// DIRECTION.¡± ¡°Desti- oh just- follow me. By the roots, I should not be adapting so quick to your speech¡­¡± The xenos continued by making several more non-word noises. Alpha could not find some particular pattern between either the different non-word noises or the timing that they would make them. While it did find several strange mathematical synchronicities between them and the local environment, the actions and reactions of biologicals when Alpha had previously queried as if they were intentionally committing those acts had inspired ¡°rage¡± reactions. Alpha still needed info out of the xenos, it would not be getting out of that so easily as to be simply ¡°too angry¡± to continue to answer Alpha¡¯s queries. Alpha quickly moved to retake it¡¯s position behind the xenos, it had mentioned something about ¡°following¡± and so Alpha quickly replaced that with a join formation order. Simple, easy, and effective, and so Alpha began to restart some of it¡¯s more complex inner workings, just now on the artifacting that Alpha had seen from the malware and the possible information it offered. It appeared likely that somehow the malware was linked to the local nanobot network that seemed to likely cover the planet and provide the power to the techno-primitives, and it seemed to function under some strange kind of currency system named after a biological need and another which was supposed to have something to do with ¡°magic¡± according to Alpha¡¯s dictionaries, but the real reason why it might be used by the nanobots still was unable to be found by Alpha¡¯s circuits. Alpha kept pace behind the xenos for approximately six and a half minutes, before it finally came to a stop and turned around at Alpha. For two tenths of a seconds, Alpha weighed the likelihood that the xenos still wanted Alpha in formation and that it was to circle around it to maintain formation, or that it was breaking formation and was locking sensors onto Alpha, though Alpha in the end decided to wait for further instructions before attempting to predict the wants of a xenos. It was a xenos, there was no logic, only illogic and the screaming of a thousand million damned souls, doomed to choke on their well deserved void until the end of- ¡°Look, sorry about running off so quick. I¡¯ve butchered plenty of dead animals in my time, but seeing the dead bodies of people being infested with maggots and swelling under the hot sun. It- uh, it gets to me I guess. Though you don¡¯t seem worse for wear under there, do ya big guy? Here, since you¡¯re a Transplant and I¡¯m already guiding you, why don¡¯t you give me a rundown on your status, traits, and whatever skill or spell you might have been given.¡± Alpha did just that. Alpha spent exactly 5 minutes and 39 seconds recreating, verbatim, word-for-word, exactly what the malware had displayed onto Alpha¡¯s screen. During this time, the xenos made several non-word noises when Alpha said the parenthetical for Stellar Hyperadaptability, and made an increasingly large amounts of non-word noises for each of the skills that Alpha read off, and for the description of Stellar Hyperadaptability. When Alpha was done reading off all of the false information, the xenos asked it a question that Alpha was entirely unprepared for. It simply hadn¡¯t appeared in any of it¡¯s simulations. ¡°What¡­ what does your log say your ¡®kill count¡¯ was and ¡®major contributions or achievements¡¯ were before you became a Transplant?¡± ¡°[DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [QUER-¡± ¡°Shut. up.¡± ¡°[DESI-¡± ¡°I said shut up!... You.. you check your log by asking the system to bring it up. It should be the first one there.¡± Alpha opened up it¡¯s runtime, and just like the xenos had said, sitting there the entire time that the malware had been identified in Alpha¡¯s systems was SYSTEM_LOG. Alpha just hadn¡¯t opened it, or used it, or requested it, or done anything with it. It was an unknown, that refused to bow to Alpha¡¯s antivirus, and thusly had stayed an unknown. But Alpha had a relatively trusted source, a xenos with knowledge that Alpha wouldn¡¯t have been able to crack away from this ¡°System¡± in an entire month with current hardware and predictions, and so once again, Alpha calculated, ran the numbers, found it more likely to help Alpha to trust the xenos than it was to hurt Alpha more. So, working on this mostly-sound xenos trusting principle Alpha opened the SYSTEM_LOG. It was a simple affair, using the same malware changed to Alpha¡¯s visual inputs as the rest of the malware information trading was done with, but this time it was reciting strange parts of Alpha¡¯s past deeds. Alpha began attempting to interface with the UI, attempting to find some way of sorting in reverse chronological order, and as if by the simple thought passing through Alpha¡¯s highly protected data-core was enough to alert the malware of what Alpha wanted, the list resort itself reverse-chronologically, and right in front of Alpha¡¯s cameras was the pale blue of the malware.
Congratulations Transplant, the calculations of your past deeds have been completed. They go as follow:
Major Contributions: Victory of the Battle of Pluto, the Valiant Defeat of the Battle of Mars, the Glassing of OUTO-12, the Glassing of OUTO-13, the Glassing of OUTO-14, the Glassing of XANZ-4, first recorded use of Strand-Quake technology, first Uplifted Artificial to gain a soul, survival of the Human Extinction War, Final Inheritor of the Seeun Family Dynasty.
Kill Count: 72,582,459,231,997 Lives Reaped.
¡°But- but- but- but that¡¯s impossible.¡±
Tija-taum¡¯lanotaquyil¡¯elestimurim¡¯?lik?bmnu, Life-glade Tisbmnusahimaja-taum, Elder¡¯s Councilchambers Tija-taum grabbed the edge of their podium heavily, taking in a deep breath. He hadn¡¯t been this winded since he had been booted back down to level 20 by the System two times in a single day. ¡°Then we crush it underneath our boots! We are nearly a thousand and a half strong, it nearly died to a single chimera! A level 14 chimera! Why do you hem and haw before me still, when it is out there, corrupting our valuable Ranger youth and likely turning our very forest against us! We have stood in this trees against invaders of all ilk for millennia, and when the time comes to show our ancestors our backbone, you back down for the slightest show of strength? For the slightest possibility of power!? For the merest chance that your victory isn¡¯t as assured as squashing a beast-snail!? Our augurs see it still, our diviners see it¡¯s woe, our rangers watch it¡¯s movements, and the thing is still allowed to breathe!? Imagataum, you of all people should be begging, begging me for my assistance; you brought me the visions, you brought me the beast, let fly the arrows of Judgment! Let fly your arrows of judgment! If I hear another stalling complaint about proper procedure I shall swing down and break it apart myself, slice by slice!¡± Another elder replied after him, the Scion of the Flame, too obsessed with their duties as spiritual lead in order to focus on what¡¯s going on in the here and now. Not like Tija-taum. Not like the Scion of Defense. ¡°We mustn¡¯t act with so much haste! We barely know the nature of the beast, it acts against all of our stories on how the Transplants were supposed to act! By the Flame, they¡¯re practically saints according to the stories, and plenty were actual saints! The Flame may have brought me a vision, but they¡¯re only one possible way that the future may proceed! Divination is magic, but it¡¯s just that, magic, not a guarantee!¡± ¡°I am the Scion of War! I am our might! I am our mail wrapped fist! I shall strike the demon down, before it grows even further, no matter what bullheadedness and inverted logic you try to spew! And that, is my guarantee!¡± ¡°it¡¯s not even a demon¡­¡± a small tired voice echoed from the back of the ¡°General Viewing¡± section. ¡°SILENCE!¡±
?l¡¯ukis, Forest of Transplants ¡°But- but- but- but that¡¯s impossible.¡± ?l¡¯ukis found their voice tight and their words come out as barely more than a whisper. Everything about what Alphie had just told her to be not only unbelievable, but utterly ridiculous. And that was even before the Kill Count section. She unconsciously scooted away from the man slightly, having fallen to the ground unconsciously as each further word hit her like her Scion¡¯s shillelagh to her ribs. As ?l¡¯ukis sat flopped against the ground, her brain began to stutter as it tried to understand just what had been told to it. It wasn¡¯t even trying to properly understand the last thing she had been told, it was just too ridiculous to even hold in her mind at that point. Instead, ?l¡¯ukis was trying to wrap her head around the inheritor part. The Seeun¡¯s were known the world over, even in a System isolated area like the Forest and her Glade, they were one of the last true Transplants to ever come through her forest, or possibly any Forest if there were more out there. The original Seeun group had come as one, the most Transplants ever known at that time and henceforth to come out of the Forest as one, a group of 6, all bearing the Seeun name. But, Alphie didn¡¯t have the Seeun family name, his parents had apparently named him ¡°C-1¡± which was a terrible last name that she wou- Even in her mentally compromised position, she vowed to never look down those dark paths for at least a couple more months. The vision of a man not even apparently 2 years old who had somehow already personally soaked in the blood of 72 trillion- oh hey there¡¯s enough brain here to almost start processing that fact- was clashing heavily with her long-standing vision of a dashing Transplant doing¡­ gentleman things. ?l¡¯ukis couldn¡¯t be blamed too much for not knowing, it wasn¡¯t like there was enough people in the entire Forest, much less just her Life-glade for there to actually be proper politics or nobles, but dammit a girl could wish. She subconsciously bit her lip, the slight taste of blood filling her mouth and the sharp twang of pain bringing her mind back tot he issue in front of her as best as she could. Denial wouldn¡¯t help her deal with the fact that a walking, poorly talking apocalypse that that even a Tier 10 with 30,000 total levels would pale in front of. ?l¡¯ukis was just glad the man didn¡¯t have some kind of bloodlust or killing aura style trait or skill, it quite literally could¡¯ve broken the entire Forest if he had one. But that was the wisdom of the System, blessed be it¡¯s burn. If ?l¡¯ukis had any luck left in her tired, weary bones, then Alpha wouldn¡¯t ever get a bloodlust style trait, or it was quite possible that no matter where he was, she was screwed. ?l¡¯ukis sat on the ground for a long, hard moment. Her entire world felt like it had been rocked around like a warhammer had just impacted not only her skull, but her entire life, and she was currently stabilizing herself against the rebound from the force. There were ways here entire existence was meant to be upended. Someone could¡¯ve managed to break through the System Barrier, and burn down the life-glade. Whatever ancient whatever that she and Alphie had found out in the forest could¡¯ve just broken their mind with broken, latent illusionary magics. It at least spoke that someone or something had managed to break the barrier, or form a passage, at some point in the past. ?l¡¯ukis wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if there was some internal conflict in her later life, when newer blood and angrier ideals sparked into being in the life-glade and she was caught up in the crossfire. But a Transplant with so much raw death on their hands to be literally inconceivable was so far outside anything she had expected she was simply left there, an infinite void closing in on her as a handful of tears traced arcs through muddy cheeks. Gathering her strength, ?l¡¯ukis finally looked up, staring at the motionless Transplant. Thoughts flickered into and out of her mind like darting fish, her eyes wide and blank as she struggled to take in all that was contained within a simple shell of iron. When ?l¡¯ukis was finally able to speak, it came out thick and hoarse, her own words feeling like thick tree sap, sticking to her throat and refusing to come out. ¡°Alphie¡­ Alphie if anyone asks you to share this, if anyone asks you about what you did before you became a Transplant, if- if I ask about what happened before you became a Transplant, you can¡¯t tell them, okay? You can¡¯t. Not ever. Not for any reason. You just can¡¯t. Can you trust me? Please? Please, I need you to¡­¡± ?l¡¯ukis¡¯s voice trailed off, waiting for Alpha to respond. She swallowed nervously, some small amount of the taste of blood that had been filling her mouth disappearing down into her stomach. She felt queasy, unwell in a deeply primal sense. She had been trying to play out fantasy, making a real person that was so clearly not right in a very fundamental sense play out her wildest day dreams just because he fit the type of character that was supposed to fit those ideals. She had been so carefree, more worried about what he would think about her, repressing the memory of watching him kill a near half-dozen people right in front of her in grisly fashion. ?l¡¯ukis felt like she might just collapse onto her back, and that if she did, she wouldn¡¯t rise again. Instead, she stared at Alpha, who had taken an oddly long amount of time to respond. Usually, they were startlingly and weirdly quick. ¡°Affirmative¡± Alpha¡¯s gruff, simple response shocked ?l¡¯ukis out of their introspection. She looked back up at the forest around them, resisting the urge to bite her lip once more until blood comes out, she stands up, and dusts off her garb. ?l¡¯ukis nearly lets a slight, pained chuckle loose as she starts thinking about what to do next, here she was worrying herself into circles, and all Alpha had to say about the whole situation was a simple ¡°Affirmative¡±. It did help galvanize ?l¡¯ukis into moving again, standing around doing nothing would do, funnily enough, nothing to help her situation. Freaking out about the fact that not even 20 minutes ago she had been thinking about what the monster standing next to her looked like when she could finally peel it out of whatever strange armor it was wearing would not save her life from the forest, and the forest had no compunctions about killing the crying ¨Cthe sound usually just attracted more attention for those least able to deal with more attention. ¡°Okay, okay we just killed a Dire Wolf Scout. Where there¡¯s one scout, there¡¯s a dozen waiting. We need to either deal with the dire wolves, or we need to get out of here. Here, you¡¯re new to the System, um, if we kill things, we both get progress, Experience, towards our next level. It can be gotten by other ways, but they¡¯re, slower¡­ I don¡¯t want to presume, but it might be worth if to get you some Experience by killing some of those Dire Wolves?¡± ¡°Affirmative.¡± ?l¡¯ukis breathed a small sigh of relief. It was relatively easy to pivot the Transplant into killing the Dire Wolves, wherever their den is, giving her time to both think about how to approach their coming situation, and how to reconnect with general civilization without it coming out to a bloodbath. ?l¡¯ukis knew that she was a competent survivalist and could live off the land for a good while, but she had no ability to heal or tend, and without proper healers or medicines, a single untimely scratch could kill her off just as easily as any Dire Wolf or horrible beast from the Forest could. Alpha began to walk off without ?l¡¯ukis who quickly half-jogged to catch back up to him. ?l¡¯ukis muttered grimly about how often she had to run through dangerous forests to catch up to even more dangerous people, before putting a stop to that line of thought and speaking, and followed after Alpha. It was dangerous for both her mental health and physical health to leave the enigmatic Transplant on his own to go be Alpha out there. Alpha was finally leaving the area that he had been initially found in, which ?l¡¯ukis quietly thanked Gaia for, Alpha follows behind the limited tracks that the Scout had left behind. ?l¡¯ukis feels slightly bad about leaving the carcass behind, the muscle, fat, bones, and fur would all be useful in their own ways, but ?l¡¯ukis isn¡¯t a butcher, and Alpha certainly isn¡¯t one either. Well, they are a butcher, just not in the animal way. Alpha seemed to follow the most recent tracks, the ones the Scout had made during the actual attack on Alpha, but rapidly seemed to lose them after that. With a sigh, ?l¡¯ukis quickly took charge of tracking where the beast had come from. With the low level monster¡¯s stats not nearly as good as her Tracking, it was pretty trivial to follow the tracks, broken leaves, sticks, scuffed gravels, and more that she had to follow in order to track where exactly it had gone.
Alpha C-1, Dire Wolf Den Alpha finally stopped at a hand-signal from the xenos. It had been a fairly easy pattern to map to specific requests, and for now Alpha felt no reason not to follow along. The xenos, for some reason, seemed to comply with Alpha¡¯s requests and assumed that Alpha would do the same, and it wasn¡¯t effective to break such an informal agreement until the time was most opportune. There was a large structure, possibly an excavation into the local environment, unlit by any light sources. Alpha, without any low-light, thermal, or night vision cameras, found itself unable to make any actual details among the darkness, but it could decipher general shapes out with a relatively small amount of processing. General visual data indicated that the structure was made out of some kind of rock native to the local environment, with a color most closely resembling some kind of unworked marble, but the actual shape of the environment similar to that of limestone caves, and by testing a small sample from the edge of the environment, a density and hardness on par with granite. While it matched no known rock in the database, all of the information Alpha was working off of was from it¡¯s database, so it was just as likely to be a rare or relatively unknown rock that had been left out of it¡¯s databse for cost-saving measures or to reduce the size of the redundancies. The redundancies before Alpha had been squished down into a frame-body were mostly gone, with all data being stored on two different drives at the same time. While Alpha hadn¡¯t found any data to the limit on the storage of the drives, nor did they report any, with only two drives to access, it only could spread it¡¯s data across two drives before running out of drives. With the fact that the standard frame-body had only one drive, with only a measly 512TB of storage available, Alpha felt no requirement to write a complain ticket. Alpha actually drafted the start of a recommendation paper, but had to leave it to just draft status as the xenos began communications. ¡°Alright, we¡¯re here.¡± It makes a long, non-word noise. Sound analysis indicates a strong link to breathing -which Alpha makes a quick note of. ¡°I¡¯m not entirely sure why I feel like I need to do this, usually we send out a decently sized patrol to clean this place out. Supposedly, the System keeps it populated, again, supposedly to have someplace for Transplants to test their mettle, but even I¡¯ve never believed that. Dire Wolves seem to ooze out of every crack and pore of the landscape, like they¡¯re Gaia¡¯s sap in lupine form. Be on your guard, we¡¯ll have to fight by torchlight, and while the level 2 we fought was a simple affair, there are not only many of them in there, the Warriors, Hunters, and Alphas can be as high as level 20, though luckily they¡¯re just as locked to Tier 1 as we are. Heh, Alphas¡­¡­ Er um is there anything you need to say? Or ask? As long as it on topic, I¡¯ll answer anything you need!¡± ¡°[DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [REQUEST] DOWNTIME /// REPAIRS /// BREAK CONTACT.¡± ¡°Oh? Need some time? Alright, let¡¯s just get a little ways away from this place. Gives me the creeps, and we don¡¯t need to be dealing with ranging scouts coming back every couple of minutes. Here, I know a good hill a couple minutes walk away from here, got a good view of the den and no wolves really go up there. What do you need the time for, anyway?¡± ¡°[DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [ADRESSMENT] REPAIRS /// REARM /// REFUEL /// HEALING [ADDITIONAL] RESTORATION OF INTEGRITY /// OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY [REQUIREMENT] TIME.¡± ¡°Wow, that¡¯s a lot outta you. Okay, yeah, we can give you some time. Finally going to use {Machine Repair}? I was wondering what had been taking you so long. Guess it¡¯s just the right time now? Guess I¡¯m also just talking to a brick wall now, oh how he mighty have fallen.¡± ¡°[AFFIRMATIVE]¡± ¡°Wait wait wait wait, was that sarcasm? Out of you? Alphie, who¡¯s gone and replaced you?¡± Alpha didn¡¯t respond for some time to that last comment. It had been confirming the comment ¡°Oh how the mighty have fallen¡±, as not only had the xenos been relatively mighty when they had first fought, being the only one to do real damage during that time with their specific strange nanobot usage, but they had also fallen, repeatedly. Opening up the dictionary to the ¡°Sarcasm¡± section found Alpha unable to compute the contradictory and vague definition, so Alpha decided on not responding to the comment, as it was unable to properly parse the sentence. It could, theoretically, hand it off to a large language model to the work of response for Alpha, but Alpha had large numbers of warnings about the failings of large language models, and the reason for documentation so negative is only when things don¡¯t work spectacularly, so Alpha had always refrained from using them. It also gave Alpha the ability to constantly determine and refine certain inefficiencies within it¡¯s own codebase. While most places were closed off from Alpha direct moment-to-moment changes, it could send them along to human handlers, and they would regularly approve the changes. Cut off from IFANS networking equipment, Alpha would need to rely on the possibility of {Priority Shift} working as the malware said it did to actually change the more sensitive part of Alpha¡¯s inner workings. Alpha had finished calculating the pros and cons of attempting to use {Machine Repair} in order to repair it¡¯s upper most limb and lower limb, and while there were risks, only about halfway through it found the possibility of regaining full mobility and almost full sensor capability to be good enough for Alpha to actually go through with using the malware to repair itself. And the second it had come to such a priority, Alpha was able to find another undocumented function in it¡¯s runtime, this time associated with {Machine Repair} and it¡¯s possible functionality. Alpha was still working through the possibilities, and the resulting changes to SOP, if the ¡°System¡± and the malware were actually linked to the nanite network infecting the planet, and that the anomalies Alpha was seeing was actually it attempting to integrate a biological intended control firmware into Alpha¡¯s hardware. While a, at least as far as Alpha¡¯s sensors and calculations were able to tell, sound theory, it was still missing many pieces of key information that allowed Alpha to either confirm or deny it, so Alpha waited until they were in a safe and secure, at least at according to the xenos. Alpha still was unable to build a program to properly evaluate the danger of any specific location within the local environment, with so many more variable than previously dealt with, it was a staggering amount of information to properly process and catalog, and Alpha would have to update it each and every time it found a new environment. The xenos had finally finished leading Alpha to wherever it had deemed a safepoint, and it was the first place that Alpha had found aside from it¡¯s original start-point that Alpha had found that had any particularly large area free from the large biologicals that had dominated the space that Alpha had found themselves in, though the small biolgicals were still very present, and a particularly high amount of the not-anomolies it had identified as being different from the small biologicals in the beginning where present within the local environment. It appeared to be a large raise in the local environment, with a single lone large biological at the very top. It was an extremely expose position to any long range fires, and possessed neither cover nor concealment. The rock was once again different from the cave or most of the rest of the local environment, as it jutted out like an ore vein out of the hill. While most of Alpha¡¯s data on rocks was towards chasing ore most efficiently through the rock of an asteroid, it was easily notable that most rock didn¡¯t shift as quickly or rapidly as it seemed it did in the local environment. Most rock changes were viewed ¡°vertically¡±, rather than horizontally, as while conditions across a wide are were quite usual, conditions across a wide range of time were usually quite distinct. However, the rock itself appeared to be a strangely banded rock, forming some similarities with certain iron precursors, a possibly useful material. Alpha made sue that it, along with everything it saw, was noted down. As Alpha finally reached the very highest point of the raise, Alpha discarded it¡¯s attempts to simulate potential attack vectors. Alpha¡¯s current positions was like fighting in a gravity well around an asteroid field, there were so many unknowns, and possible vectors, and possible changes, that it was useless to attempt to predict them all, and instead it was far more useful to simply get work done as fast as possible while looking out as strongly as it could for any possible dangers and then reacted. The xenos walked up to the lone biological, and proceeded to sit down, and lean back against the main section of the biological. ¡°Well Alphie? I walked us all the way up here, get to it then. Lemme, lemme just rest here for a moment while you do whatever you need to do. Alpha set it¡¯s sensors to max power, sat down on the ground next to the xenos, during which it made a previously undocumented non-word noise, which then became a documented non-word noise, and started the prep for {Machine Repair}. Alpha held up the detached remains of its uppermost limb, and held it up to its uppermost socket using its lower manipulator hand, which had dropped Alpha¡¯s CQB weapon to grab the limb from the makeshift storage that Alpha had fashioned, and held it up, and then the other limb did the same for the detached remains of the lower limb. The metal of the limbs began to flow like liquid, a clear sign that nanoscale warfare was occurring, and started shifting towards the remains of Alpha¡¯s uppermost socket, and the socket for the lower limb. However, right before it got there, suddenly the rock that Alpha had been sitting near floated up, with no thruster or mode of transport available to Alpha¡¯s limited senses, and wobbled next to both of the limb¡¯s liquid masses, still floating next to the sockets they would attach to. A small stream of lustrous liquid made from metal flowed into the liquid of each limb, adding slightly to it, before the rock dropped, making a slight clang on the edge of Alpha¡¯s torso, before both the liquid extracted from the rocks and the liquid that formed Alpha¡¯s limbs flowed onto both Alpha¡¯s sockets and the scars that had been left behind by the bioweapons and the xenos. While each could reduce the amount of armor left behind for use in blocking damage, that was usually just because the armor had been shifted to a place that made it far less useful, like the outside of other armor plates. All of this shifted metal, and the new metal, flowed across the many dings, scratches, scrapes, furrows, ditches, and more that pockmarked Alpha¡¯s frames, and filled them in. Then, they began to dullen slightly, each one becoming slightly less and less lustrous with each passing second as they approach the gunmetal gray of Alpha¡¯s frame. After several seconds of changing coloration, there is a sudden flash of light, obscuring what happens beneath from Alpha¡¯s cameras, before it goes away and the unmarred, completely normal armor plating and limbs are revealed beneath. Alpha quickly puts it¡¯s uppermost limb to use, it¡¯s many cameras now being used to improve Alpha¡¯s tactical awareness, and the old programs that had been set up with Alpha¡¯s previous lower limb were now being downgraded to as Alpha suddenly had access to double the mobility limbs. While not a doubling of Alpha¡¯s mobility, it was still a large and effective increase. The xenos had, about a quarter of the way through the process, opened up their eyes, and were now peering at Alpha¡¯s undamaged frame, their sensors scanning all across Alpha¡¯s frame. In total the process had taken an agonizingly long 2 minutes to finish, with the graying part especially taking over 1 ? minutes all on it¡¯s own. Not a process usable in combat without either sufficient distance or durable and willing allies, Alpha concluded. ¡°That¡¯s certainly something. Completely healed up, nothing¡¯s wrong? Are you fatigued? Tired? Unusually low energy? Did it take up stamina? Did it reduce your faculties?¡± ¡°[NEGATIVE] ||| [DESIGNATION] EIN-09 ||| [ADDRESSMENT] ||| [DESIGNATION] ALPHA C-1 [INTEGRITY] OPERATIONAL /// NOT MAXIMUM /// TACTICALLY EFFECTIVE [E-WAR] NOT ENGAGED /// NORMAL.¡± ¡°Eee war? Ee war, okay mentally and physically you¡¯re okay? That¡¯s quite strong, quite good indeed. Very few have that kind of healing power, and those that do and at our level tend to have be both higher level than you, but also more specialized. Well done Alphie, quite impressive!¡± Alpha didn¡¯t think that its actions were ¡°impressive¡±, as that implied that it went above required or expected actions. But Alpha was currently well within the Abnormal Situations and Highly Dangerous Combat SOP, so Alpha considered it perfectly normal. ¡°C¡¯mon Alphie, don¡¯t just sit there, let¡¯s go kill ourselves some Dire Wolves. If we wait for too long, by the time we¡¯re done either we¡¯ll be dinner because too many Scouts got back and surrounded us, or it¡¯ll be dark.¡± The xenos didn¡¯t even check to see if Alpha was holding formation behind it. Alpha was, but that didn¡¯t mean that it had to.