chapter 109
Days turned into weeks as we continuously raided portals and then headed back to base to offload, just to go out once again. It was a good thing that I didn’t tell anyone about what my Sense Aura skill showed me.
With the constant portal raids, I had gotten stronger. My body was already at E rank, along with my mind. My soul aspect was not too far behind. All of that has allowed me to use Aura Sense longer and better.
It has confirmed to me that while the most complex AI I have had the spark of a soul, that was all that it was. It was most definitely not growing. There would still be some benefit, but I would most likely need another skill to actually make the presence of a soul strong enough for all my crew members to hopefully be able to start manipulating mana.
It was all a bit disappointing, but right now I had bigger things to think about. There was still some loose mana around my core that I continued to channel into my mechanist affinity. It was so close to advancing to the next rank.
Perhaps that was what was needed for the souls to get stronger, but something told me that it wasn't. We were currently back at our base just in case something went wrong with this breakthrough, but it shouldn't.
While channelling mana into the mechanist affinity, I also constantly contemplated the meaning of this affinity. This combination seemed to work, as I finally reached a bottleneck and managed to squeeze enough mana into it to break it open.
Pain shot through me, and all of a sudden my mechanist affinity wanted to dominate my entire core. It was difficult to hold it back, but it was what I needed to do. The other affinities were simply too useful to let them disappear.
It took me a while, resulting in me looking like a sweaty mess, but eventually it settled down. Gradually the constant pressure I was feeling eased down into something comfortable.
Finally, it was done. As soon as I tried to do anything using this affinity, it felt easier and stronger. Almost immediately, I tried to see if any of the flames of my crew members grew, but they still seemed the same size, with even the flickering not changing at all.
Sometimes I wished I was wrong about my hunches, but I guess the 6th Sense skill made that unlikely. Speaking of it, it was finally getting close to ranking up as well.
It was a good thing that my core was now complex enough to easily handle the added complexity of higher-ranked or more complex skills. In fact, I was pretty sure that I could even get Hardened Connections to the next rank thanks to the added complexity of my core with all the different rank-ups I’ve been getting.
The souls not growing was pretty disappointing, and soon I found out that there were more problems with the rank-up. My current limit was close to 400 proper bonds. With all the nesting I’ve done and simplifying of some of the AIs, currently I had close to 800 bonded to me.
This rank-up seemed to have increased my bond limit quite a lot. Running a quick test using nano machines and individually full bonding to small groups of them, my full bond limit was now close to 700. That increased it by quite a lot.
As suspected, I was going to start having storage problems. It seems that it was time to stop increasing the number of drones and droids and perhaps focus on something smaller.
After Lola’s constant reminders, I have finally started to remember to rest. Instead of diving into the next project, I decided to use the small spa built just a few steps away. The pool was quite shallow, but the water felt nice. Like this, I decided to soak for the next few hours at least, trying to let my mind wander and not think of anything specific.
“Captain, I am being hacked,” FH communicated through our bond.
Instantly, I sat up, emerging from underneath the water of the pool. I had found that submerging myself fully felt even better. Looking at the timer, I got a nice hour and 50 minutes of relaxation.
FH was already transferring me information about the breach. It was obvious that whoever was doing this had a lot of skills to help. The way they are connecting to the ship’s servers and bypassing defences is something that shouldn't be possible.
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“We won't be able to stop whoever is doing this. What I need you to do is spin up a fake version of the ship and use it as a decoy.”
Immediately, FH started doing so. This was one of the scenarios we had practised, so we already had a blueprint of how we should be doing this. At worst, we would need to shut down the ship’s servers.
This could just be a distraction or a way to disable the ship to stop us from using it when a real attack comes. Nothing seemed to be happening outside; otherwise, Bob would have notified us.
Whoever was hacking us was doing it faster and faster as they were getting used to our system. When they got through, what waited for them was not our actual ship but a fake version of it.
There was a large pause as whoever was doing this was simply observing how my ship functioned. Instead of trying to shut it down or cause damage, whoever was doing this started planting booby traps and back doors.
Wait, he thought that he was undiscovered. I watched what he did, barely understanding how he did it. He eventually disconnected, making obvious their future plans. Whenever they trigger their booby traps, it will disable the ship for quite a while, but more specifically, it will allow them to take control of a lot of drones and droids.
“I think it’s the cult again?” FH finally spoke after we’d both been quiet for a long while, looking at how our systems were dismantled and rebuilt so someone else would actually be in control.
“Most likely, but this was masterful. Am I correct that you can’t even shut down the fake version of the ship without physically pulling out the storage devices it’s on?”
“That is indeed correct. This was quite scary.”
In that, FH was completely correct. There was one mistake this hacker made, and that was that my bond command would override anything he did. But I am guessing that whenever they will try to take control, there would be people here who know how to mess with bonds as well.
This was troublesome. “Any news about happenings in the rest of the city? This seems bigger than just us.”
FH didn't answer immediately, but I didn’t mind, as there was much to learn about the changes this hacker made. I believe there are some ways of making our current defences better, even without using any skills against this type of intrusion. This will take some testing.
“The overall situation in the city seems tense, but there doesn't seem to be any known reason for it.” FH eventually explained.
“If that's the case, then the current leadership knows what's going on. There's going to be a power struggle soon.”
“Unfortunately, Captain, it seems that this is not something uncommon. The current leadership in charge seems to have taken over from the last one just 12 years ago. Changes of power have been kept secret, but all of those who are old enough have witnessed the internal struggles.”
FH sent me more data on what she found. There weren't any records, just the talks she had with the older individuals who still remembered how things used to be. It seemed that she was correct, it was always an internal struggle over who was in charge.
“Scrap all the plans to go offensive against the cult. They are either connected, or their leaders are a part of the current leadership of the city. There's no way this isn't another internal power struggle. Start finding the real actors, we most likely can't stay neutral here. If the cult is on one side, we must be on the other.”
“Understood, Captain. I will keep digging.”
With the tension ramping up, it might be best to stay in place for a little while, better to be in a more defendable location than split-up our forces.
Thanks to the factory, we were getting enough passive income to take care of all of our operational costs. That meant that time wasn’t a problem for us, it was better to stay safe. That didn't mean that we couldn't continue to advance, as we had more than enough materials for me to continue to make stuff.
I guess it’s time to start testing out how well my Hardened Connection skill worked with nano machines. The reason why I couldn’t use them as an endlessly modifiable armour was because they couldn't handle shock, as their connections weren’t comparable with solid metal.
This skill of mine might be able to fix that problem, so it was time to start testing. This could help my survivability immensely, and even better, this would help fix my problem of having too many available bonds.
My 6th sense flared up, but this time it wasn’t warning me of trouble, but something good that was happening. Immediately, my head snapped towards Lola’s workshop, and I rushed towards it.
As soon as I made it inside, I saw Lola getting up from one of the medical beds, but she looked different now.
“You made yourself a new body? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her, confused and mesmerised at the same time.
“You had your own things to worry about. I also didn’t do it alone, Sam here helped me,” she said, and for the first time, I noticed that Sam was indeed here.
My 6th sense was still flaring for some reason, so I looked towards Lola to try to figure out why. She was in a smaller body, her height was only 5 feet 4. She went with a petite body type, but I could sense the power of her bio-cybernetic muscles.
“Please don't tell me that you are testing out your prototypes on yourself?”
“Those are my inventions, so I can do whatever I want with them, right, Captain?” Her tone made it clear that I was in no way going to win that argument.
She seemed to be testing how her new body and its capabilities worked. Her skin still had that translucent robotic look that then changed as her skin started to change texture and colour. That would be perfect for camouflage. She settled on a normal tan human skin.
Most of her was bio-cybernetic, basically everything being made out of portal materials.
“Captain, how about an arm wrestle?” she said that so casually. Were those muscles really that strong? Then my 6th sense warned me about something. It was not good or bad, but it was giving me a feeling of bad timing.
“Lola, wait a second, something’s off.” She stopped and got serious, and so did Sam.
I tried to figure out what was wrong, and I started to use my 6th sense more actively. I thought about my skills, getting a feeling that I was going in the correct direction. My eyes snapped open as I figured it out and used Sense Aura.
Immediately, I saw how Lola’s small flickering flame had grown stronger, barely ever flickering out. Visibly, it seemed to be growing stronger. I switched to my mana sense, seeing how mana was moving towards her body.
“We need to get you out of that body now.”
“Remi, what's wrong?” she asked, a bit scared.
“You don’t have much time, I’ll explain later.” Immediately, I moved with Sam helping, with Lola doing everything she could to help disconnect herself from that body.