TtOW! - Chapter 32: The Flesh is Weak (Patreon)

A group of men and women gathered in a tavern in the slums of the town.  The building was worn, the stone crumbling in places and reinforced with now rotting wood.  The interior was little better, damp and dirty, with furniture made of splintering wood.

The men and women themselves wore worn and tattered clothing.  They each had muscular and scarred bodies.  And the largest one among them sat at one of the booths, drinking from a dirty mug.

Suddenly the door slammed open and another man entered the tavern, wrapped in a dripping cloak.

“Boss, check this out!”

“Niall?  Your shift ain’t half over yet!  This had better be good!”

Niall walked over and took a seat as the boss glared at him.

“Check this out!  Some chick came into town with a magic box!”

The boss closed his eyes and sighed, a vein bulging on his forehead.

“Niall, if you’re going to try and get out of your shift, at least put the bare minimum effort into coming up with a convincing lie!”

“No lie this time, boss, I saw it with my own two eyes!  Some knight type with shiny armor, clearly not from around here.  Magic knight I think, had a barrier to stop the rain and everything!  She had this big glowing magic core in the center of her armor, I saw her put something there and it vanished!  Her guides got all flustered and tried to take her away after that too.”

The boss just stared at Niall for a moment, then rubbed his chin, then started to grin.

“You know where this knight is staying?”

Niall made a sleazy smile.

“Of course, boss!”

A woman leaning against the wall frowned.

“Boss…don’t tell me you believe this loser.”

“Shut it, Sabucia!  Just because you and the boss…”

A knife appeared in her hand.

“Choose your next words wisely, Niall.  They might be your last.”

Niall glared at her but gulped and fell silent.

“As I was saying…boss, you don’t actually believe this crap, do you?”

The boss grinned.

“About a magic box?  Who knows?  What I do believe is that there is a rich visitor who doesn’t know crap about this place.  And I definitely believe the part about her having a big magic core, even Niall wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

The woman’s frown grew.

“Even so, it’s too risky.  If she’s flaunting magic spells and shiny armor, she’s got to be fairly powerful.”

“Anyone can go down if you hit them right.  Especially when they aren’t looking.”

“I don’t like it.”

“But I do.  Get ready, everyone.  We’ll wait until she leaves town, and then we’ll find out exactly how rich this visitor is.”

***

[Level up!  Your Dungeon level is now 30!]

The group restocked some supplies and made their way out of town, NSLICE-00P gaining another dungeon level over the night.  They walked along a road through a small forest, just outside of town.  As they did so, NSLICE-00P’s eye flickered.

“Observation: This unit has tracked several signatures leaving the settlement immediately after us.  They have followed at close distance and are now taking up positions around this location.  This unit calculates the probability of hostile intent at 74.61%.”

Ateia and Taog glanced at one another.  Taog heaved a sigh.

“They’re probably after your magic box.”

“Acknowledgement: It seems friendlies Ateia and Taog were correct about the dangers of exposing this unit’s core.  Updating classification level of core activities.  Activating termination protocols.”

“Seero, we talked about this.  You can’t just kill people!”

“Observation: The probability of hostile intent is above acceptable limit.”

“They haven’t actually acted hostile yet, Seero!”

Ateia nodded at that.

“We should at least talk to them first.  Seero, you can protect us with barriers if they try to ambush us, right?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then let’s wait.”

Still, Ateia and Taog moved their hands to their weapons.

The group walked for a bit longer when their followers made a move.  Arrows shot from the forest, aimed at all three of the team.  Three of the assailants approached with stealth and launched themselves at NSLICE-00P, knives at the ready.  As they did, the rest of the attackers stepped out from behind the trees, archers opening fire while warriors with clubs and axes and scavenged swords started running forward.

The arrows and assassins both bounced off of magic barriers.

[The spell Mana Barrier is now level 8!]

“Hostile intent confirmed.  Initiating termination protocols.”

***

Sabucia heaved a sigh as she made her way through the forest.  This mission was entirely too risky.  She knew her ‘boss’ wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but she hadn’t believed he’d be dumb enough to try and rob a knight of all things.  A magic knight at that.

She had just gotten new orders too, these ones from her real boss.  Something had happened that she needed to investigate, if their ultimate goals in this province were to be achieved.  So this little ambush was a dangerous and risky distraction from the work she actually needed to get done.

Still though, that didn’t mean she could just walk away, not if she wanted to maintain her cover.  So she heaved a sigh as she pulled out an arrow.

Well, at least it seemed like the knight hadn’t noticed them yet.  She took out a small glass bottle and dipped the arrow into it.  The boss was seriously underestimating knights but they could be brought down, with adequate preparations that is.  Sabucia went ahead and drew her bow.

The boss gave the signal and Sabucia loosed her arrow.

And her eyes immediately widened.

The knight formed multiple magic circles simultaneously at an impossibly fast speed, without even chanting as far as Sabucia could hear.  And some of those circles were formed behind her.  And were started and completed in the time it took her arrow to fly.

That level of magic control…was impossible for any regular mage, much less a magic knight splitting focus with combat skills and physical attributes.  So either she’s an archmage-level caster…or she has artifacts with automatic defense enchantments.  The kind that are extremely coveted by anyone of means.  And so only the people of greatest means tend to possess one.

This assault just got a lot more complicated.

Three spherical barriers formed around the three targets.  Sabucia blinked her eyes at that.

Everyone knows it’s bad form to make spherical barriers, unless absolutely necessary.  A barrier that wide spreads out the user’s mana and renders the entire thing weaker, with a lot of mana wasted to guard areas not receiving attacks.  A simple circle or square is much more efficient.  Likewise if there are attacks coming from multiple directions, blocking those attacks with the same barrier will cause said barrier to shatter almost immediately.  The theory for that situation is first of all don’t get into that situation.  Mages should be well-screened and protected long before they’re surrounded at this range.  If a mage does find themselves in that situation, then they should have someone else cover the other angles.  And if there’s no one else, use a physical barrier like a shield or some cover.  Spherical barriers are the last resort, at which the mage is generally considered dead.

Unless the mage in question has truly extraordinary mana density.

So Sabucia’s jaw dropped as all the arrows and three of her ‘comrades’ bounced off the barriers, which didn’t even flicker.

Ok, their little criminal band in a far flung corner of the Empire wasn’t the strongest group, not by far.  It’s not inconceivable that some actual bigshot might have an artifact that could stop their little assault.

But that meant they were assaulting some actual bigshot.

Which meant either way this little ambush went, they were screwed.  And from the initial volley, Sabucia was pretty sure she knew how the little ambush was going to go, too.

So Sabucia turned and ran, as fast as she could.  She dropped her bow on the ground, not bothering to put it back.  Her real organization had big plans, so she could not allow herself to die here.

Behind her there were flashes of light and something that sounded like thunder, if thunder could strike several times a second that is.  She heard the screams of men, one of which sounded suspiciously like her boss.  Her heart began to pound and sweat dripped from her brow.  She pushed as much power and mana as she could into her legs as she ran.

Within seconds, the lights and sounds and screams stopped.

Sabucia kept running.

A shadow passed overhead.

Sabucia tripped and fell to the ground.

Two metal feet landed in front of her.

She looked up and gasped.

The knight was standing over her, now with a full helmet covering her head.  Her eyes were glowing red, like burning embers in the dead of night.  The knight said nothing, raising a hand at Sabucia.

“Wait!  I’m not actually with them!  I’m from…!”

The last thing Sabucia saw was the knight’s palm glowing bright.

***

[You have slain Human (Level 20)!]

[Compiling experience…you have gained 38 Personal XP and 36 Dungeon XP total!]

With that, NSLICE-00P launched back up into the air, flying back to Ateia and Taog.

“Engagement Report: All targets terminated.”

Ateia and Taog glanced at each other.  Taog sighed once more.

And so Taog began yet another lesson on reasonable self-defense according to Imperial Law, as best he understood it.  Or perhaps, as he hoped NSLICE-00P would understand it.

***

As Taog continued to talk about why one shouldn’t just kill people, NSLICE-00P split her focus.  She wanted to use this transit time to continue improving her capabilities, but her valued allies had been somewhat surprised when she began forming magic circles out of the blue.  They raised a reasonable argument about accidentally triggering hostility if anyone happened to pass by, so NSLICE-00P deferred magic experimentation while on the road.

Because she did have another area she wanted to improve.

As such, she once again split her mind into two separate threads, one utilizing her cybernetic hardware…and the other her organic.  And then she released the Leashed Intelligence system controls on the organic components.

Her last experience with the wulver had revealed a weakness in her organic components, in that they were completely unused to operating on their own.  That had not been a problem before arriving in this place, as all her weapon systems had been inherently linked to her cybernetic side, her organic mind would never be interacting with the world without going through the cybernetic half.

But now?

Now she had this foreign system she could interact with without her cybernetic components.  She had spells her organic half could hypothetically cast on its own, contributing to combat directly.  And managing these new capabilities on top of her original implants required multiple threads.  So she could not rule out scenarios where she may need her organic and cybernetic halves to act separately.  On the negative side, her original combat protocols had already proven insufficient in this new environment.  She could not use the organic mind solely to update those protocols, nor could she devote her cybernetic software to running simulations and cost-benefit analysis mid-combat.  Her original decision-making process was simply too slow, and inflexible.

Which meant her organic side needed to learn to act independently, without any guidance if possible.  They had nearly frozen when tasked with this before, and that could have deadly consequences if it happened again.

And there was another angle.

More than once, NSLICE-00P had logged what she could only classify as an emotional response from her organic components.  It seemed that her emotional controls were failing.  Perhaps the foreign system was interfering with her Leashed-Intelligence system.  Or maybe the hardware modifications to her implants had an impact on her techno-organic interface.

Or maybe the circumstances she found herself in were out of predictions when the emotional controls had been designed, and so could not perfectly handle the emotions her circumstances were now generating.

In any case, while it had not impacted her function yet, it was a potential point of failure.  Should her emotional controls fail at an inopportune moment, her organic components may start acting inefficiently.  Worst of all, this phenomena would be unpredictable, so she could not develop a contingency protocol at this point in time.

She had two ways she could solve this.

First would be to recalibrate her emotional controls back to full efficiency.  But there was a problem with that solution.  Her emotional controls had always been calibrated by maintenance staff and she had always been shut down while the calibrations were in progress.  Additionally, her original protocols stated she was under no circumstances to attempt a manual calibration.  Said restriction had been removed but the point was that NSLICE-00P had no data or protocols whatsoever on how to recalibrate her emotional controls, and had never attempted to do so herself.  After being reprogrammed she could turn them on and off or adjust their magnitude, but a full-scale revamp was beyond her.  She didn’t know if she even was capable of that feat, there was a possibility the process required greater infrastructure than she had available as well.

In other words, that solution was not viable under the assumption of independent action.  It could not be pursued until she found a commander with suitable maintenance facilities.

So she would have to pursue the second option.

Which was to gather data on the organic components and the emotions in question in a controlled setting, so that she could develop adequate contingency protocols.  Make the phenomena less unpredictable by observing it in progress.

So she released the controls entirely and tasked her organic half with managing transit and interacting with the allies, and turned her cybernetic half to observation and simulation.

Her organic eye blinked as her human mind was suddenly ordered to both walk and listen to the ongoing conversation, without any assistance from the cybernetic side.

Which immediately caused her to step in a ditch and trip, falling face flat on the ground.

“Seero, are you ok?!”

“Response: This unit is undamaged.  This unit’s organic components appear unused to multitasking with primary control enabled.”

…her cybernetic components logged that observation.  And then increased the desired boost in capability of the organic components.

Author’s Note:

RL Update: Turkey Day’s coming up for those of us in the States!  And would you look at that, I do in fact have some folks to spend it with.  So, like, I might not end up writing/posting every day, or something?  Well we’ll see, I also won’t have work so I won’t call it just yet but I also won’t be writing at the Thanksgiving dinner table haha.  And you probably shouldn’t be reading this at said table if you’re in the States yourself.  Probably.  Well I’ll try to leave comments if it looks like I won’t get one out on any given day, just want to set expectations so it’s not a surprise should it happen.

Now back to the story.

Poor NSLICE-00P, if only there was someone who could train her and make this process less…annoying.

Oh well, sadly there’s no one like that so she’ll just have to figure it out herself.

Slowly.

Inefficiently.

…her cybernetic half is resisting the urge to take control again.

…yeah I know Rattingtale and Lilussees haven’t done much recently huh?  Sorry bout that, we’re still trying to hide them from the valued allies and it’s too early to reveal such things.  Soon Ateia and Taog will take a bit of a backseat and the monster pair will get more involved.  Cause, like, the humans are better for emotional development, or something.  Like, that’s a lot of work monsters don’t care about, you know?  So we’ll let the man-things handle that part, yes yes.

Anyways!

Who exactly was the random criminal working for?  Can NSLICE-00P successfully boost her organic side’s capabilities?  Can Taog successfully reduce her trigger-happiness?  Tune in next time, to find out!