Chapter 321: Vulcanus?
The walk to [Vulcanus] was less problematic, at least compared to how it had been when going to [Elder], for one, she had the full software update to the mask. Which meant that Main Core had an updated version of the software to work with.
So her navigation system was doing a good job at showing her the surrounding areas and how to move in the most efficient way. It was doing its job quite well... So why was Ale frustrated at the moment?
Well, first of all.
"[This way.]" There was a PA System that was broadcasting instructions to Ale and all the minions around. It was making sure there was nothing in Ale's way to [Vulcanus] office.
She didn't need the guidance system of course, not with the mini map that Main Core had given her, on the other hand, thanks to the PA system she didn't need the mini map.
So with one of those two things available, she didn't need the other, but since she had both, the travel there kinda turned somewhat bland.
There was no surprises, no problems, no development up there, no hidden traps springing from nowhere, no sudden betrayal, she had half expected Gabriel [The Fallen Angel] to pop up from nowhere and kidnap her.
And yet, she had arrived without much problem at the office of [Vulcanus]. The door was the only one that looked like a pair of containment cell doors instead of a normal door.
A fact that Ale had not noticed before this precise moment, more so since the door opened by itself when she was about to stop in front of the door, so she moved into the office.
Its doors closed behind her, kinda obvious, but the vibe made it look somewhat ominous when one considered that a tall robotic figure was waiting with its hands crossed in front of his chest. Looking at her.
"[Greetings Rhapsody, been waiting for you.]" [Vulcanus] spoke as soon as she walked in, as if he had been waiting her...
Which he said he had been doing so, so perhaps he had been waiting for her?
Ale was of course, derailing her train of thought, why? Simple, she couldn't see behind his face.
Right now all she could see was the window-like face that he had on his helmet-head-thing. Before they were able to see a face-like representation on that crystal screen, but now it was gone. And yet she knew the man was there, he was speaking to her after all.
[Detected the activation of an isolation barrier.]
[Detected the manual deactivation of the surveillance system.]
[Detected manual stop of 90% of active functions within robotic body.]
That last one was worrying, why would he go that far? Or did he install monitoring system inside his own body?
"[I have questions.]" [Vulcanus] started speaking, he was not moving, not because he was waiting for her to answer, but more like because most of the machines within his body had stopped working.
Ale could see it, her [Core Power] let her know the overall status of that machine body. It was almost as if she could extend her hand and take over it.
As the machine parts had stopped moving, the mana within the body stopped flowing. Before he did that, she didn't got that feeling, so perhaps she could only do this when she was able to overpower the machine with her mana?
And since it was turned off, there was no resistance?
"Do you want me to give you a report?" Ale asked, she had uploaded her report about what had happened during the mission and so, she was unsure what he was expecting from her.
Granted, it had some empty spots when it came about a few things, for example, she did not elaborate on how Alexandra had saved her, and only said that she was knocked out and Alexandra had solved the issue in a manner that allowed them to escape.
She did not know what she had done after Alexa and her got teleported away. She hoped that Melissandra Singh was teleported to the sun, Big Sister seemed to imply that she was able to teleport to the moon, and Alexandra's power seemed to be more powerful, as she had teleported them to a place she didn't know.
And Big Sister needed environmental data to teleport into a place.
So that meant that Alexandra's power was of a higher quality, probably.
"[I have no issues with your written report, nor with the way you phrased it to gloss over some of the events that happened.]" [Vulcanus] answer meant that he knew that Ale had ommited some information on her report, which was not a good thing for her at the moment, "[Most minions do this to some degree, just like how Eleanore has never actually reported the full extent of her power, or how it was possible to bind someone using mana. That has never been reported or written in any of our databases.]"
It hadn't but people had been aware of it, hadn't they?
"[It is standard procedure, as some minions end up moving to work as Villains, heroes or straight up join a corporation.]" [Vulcanus] continued speaking, "[But my problems are more basic than that, the powerset you displayed -albeit with great care to not let yourself be found out-, and your actions are what worry me.]"
What?
Before Ale could ask him to elaborate, a series of videos started playing on his crystal-like helmet, the scenery where Ale had released the eldritch flesh to run rampant, and how she had dealt with it.
The scenes of what she had done within the laboratory, basically it was a video resume of everything she had done in that mission, and how she had dealt with the things as they came.
"Well... that's not scary, at all..." Ale said as she went about to check out her current mana pool, and what she could build and do, all the devices around... had been turned off. And while she could take over them, they had their power cut.
Ale could check on the devices and categorize what was usable, but she didn't know how he had done this, or well, she knew he had turned them off, but how was he planning to turn them on again? They would need to power up them. But cut out and isolated from the exterior...
Was he banking it to someone turning the power on again from the exterior? But how could he be sure that nothing was going to happen? He had seen what Ale had done, had he not?
Unless...
"You... are not really here, are you?" Ale asked as she narrowed her eyes, if he was able to do something similar to what Alexa had done as P4 to move their consciousness stream from one body to the next.
Then this body may not be his main one, so even if he lost it... But what about the data they acquired? No wait, Ale was at a disadvantage in that front, so even if he lost the data, at best he would get ahead since he confirmed some of the theories that he had.
Meaning, if Ale moved against [Vulcanus], she would lose.
"[I am.]" [Vulcanus] said in a serious tone, as serious as a mechanical voice could get anyway, "[My Main Consciousness is here, all that I could squeeze into this minituarized AI Core.]"
....That Ale did not see coming.
"You isolated yourself, inside this box, with someone you are turning hostile?" Ale asked confused, this did not seem that smart if Ale was to be honest, had she overstimated [Vulcanus] IQ?
"[I am not turning hostile against you.]" [Vulcanus] pointed out, "[I have turned off all my defenses, ensured no one can hurt you and even depowered my local defenses, why would you think I am hostile?]"
Ale pointed at his faceplate, and then pointed to the door behind them.
"First of all, you are showing video footage of things that happened in an environment that was supposed to be a place with no surveillance." Ale was confused on that bit, how had he managed to pull that off? She hadn't detected anything monitoring her, had she?
She hadn't gotten any report on those at least, how had he managed to do that? No one should be able to do that, not even Alexanders had managed to do that, and she had been on his crown gem.
This seemed to imply that there existed a surveillance system that could get over her sensors, which would in turn imply that Alexanders was able to achieve that; there was no way that something that [Vulcanus] was able to do would be impossible for Alexanders to achieve...
The implications were horrifying to say the least.
"[Do you think yourself to be at the peak?]" [Vulcanus] asked, "[Truly the hubris runs in the bloodline.]"
"Point taken." Ale said grumbling, "So, you see no issue with that? There are very few ways that one can achieve what I did there."
Ale said pointing behind her, flooding the wall with her mana and fueling the machine there with her Mana as a way to make it work. The efficiency...
[Burning Mana to power up device, currently burning 3 Mana Units for every 10 minutes.]
It was very bad, almost as if the device here were made this way on purpose, but why would someone do this? Ale could not see anything wrong with the blueprint either, this was intentionally dispersing her Mana all over the place and doing it in the most inneficient way possible, but also were made to only work in this way. Trying to optimize it in any way or form would require her to burn even more mana to reconstruct and remake the whole thing.
Either way, for this example she was getting what she wanted, a first person point of view of the Tendrils who had ran rampart and destroyed all the ghouls, eating everything on its way and had attempted to run away to the city.
Ale had censured the sound and ensured it didn't show the thing had any degree of intelligence. Just in case.
"What part of the powerset I showcased before could allow me to do this?" Ale said in a mocking tone, "There is a reason I don't go saying that I can do these kinds of things, I know exactly how it looks."
"[You mean the fact that you aren't a Shapeshifter, nor a Molecular Shifter, but something else?]" [Vulcanus] said in an even tone, "[There is a reason I wanted you close, you are the proof of concept that Nanites are not the reason people run out of control.]"
...Yeah, she suspected as much, [Elder] also didn't seem worried about her, meaning that they truly suspected it?
"Say it anyway, what kind of Core Power do I have?" Ale said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, annoyed.
"[Your Core is closer to a Nanite one, or how Billy said. A technopath user.]" [Vulcanus] was also spying on [Elder] then? But he had set up anti surveilance barrier had he not? "[I know he suspects this, and seeing he updated your profile, he probably talked with you about this, did he not?]"
"Glad there are some things you can't spy then." Ale said as she added a grunt to her answer, "Then what? Do you want me to help you with Nanites? Want me to build you something new? Help you reprogram yourself?"
Ale was unsure if she should even continue speaking with this one, perhaps [Vulcanus.exe] would let her know what was going on? Actually, why hadn't that one surfaced yet?
"[I want your help getting a new body.]" [Vulcanus] finally said his bit, "[I doubt there is much I can do to transfer my body to a normal human body, but if it's you who managed to create a Core in children who had failed to catalyze one? It should be possible.]"
So he even peeked at what Alexa was doing? Talk about creepy big broth-
"... Wait a second." Ale stopped what she was about to say and reviewed what he said, "You want My Help, to make a new body? What's the issue with that one? Doesn't [Eleanore] have a good relationship with some Saintsworths scientists? You should have access to the data on their cloning technology, getting a new body should not be impossible for you to achieve."
"[Those bodies will not work for me.]" [Vulcanus] stated as if he had already tried, "[And even if they did, I would never manage to get one.]"
Why not? Ale doubted Miriam Eversoul or Vivian Kellet would be against helping [Vulcanus], if anything one of those would jump at the opportunity to screw over Alexanders by outing one of his pawns.
"I think it should be possible for you to get one." Ale said, actually she could probably call Miriam Eversoul and set it up right now... "Want me to try and get you one of those?"
"[I will not be able to move into one, because my other problem.]" [Vulcanus] said as part of his body started to power up, had he finished making his point? Even so, the power up sequence was kind of slow... Did he have too many tests on the power sequence? "[I have noticed some weird logs and changes on my thought process.]"
Oh... Oh no...
"[Some ideas float too conveniently to help move my plans in certain ways.]" [Vulcanus] body seemed to want to power up fast, but the order of things seemed to be the bottleneck, as far as Ale was seeing at least. "[I suspect getting a fully organic body would be impossible and something would fail along the way, destroying even more of my organic parts.]"
... More of his organic parts? Wasn't he fully synthetic? Full mechanical? That was what everyone seemed to imply, even [Elder] only said that [Vulcanus] saved some of his organic parts, and referred more like spares than parts of his body.
"You... are not fully mechanical?" Ale asked surprised, even now she couldn't see any organic part on him, granted, it seemed she wasn't able to see as well as before.
Because even now, she couldn't see the phantom of [Vulcanus.exe] behind him.
"[I have-]" And it was at that singular moment when the body of [Vulcanus] finished booting up, "[-Sorry about that Lady Ale.]"
Only for the tone to shift slightly, not by much, but Ale noticed that the way [Vulcanus] referred to her changed, and his posture turned more rigid. Which was a surprise, considering a second ago 90% of his body was off.
"[I have been having some issues with Edwards.]" [Vulcanus] spoke as one by one the devices around them started to power up, soon the officine felt alive again, and at the same time, it felt way more sterile and cold, "[To elaborate on what he was asking of you. He is seeking your help to create a body to separate his logical side from his emotional side.]"
"He wants to separate himself from you." Ale said nodding in understanding, "He found out?"
That was the thing, she was under the impression that he didn't know, but here [Vulcanus.exe] was saying that he did?
What the hell happened while she was away?