Soul Venerable (Re-written)

 

 

Shion kicked the last ruble that blocked her path. The granite wall which was sturdy enough to endure a bombardment from a rank 2 mage has finally collapsed. A small tunnel that connects the underground storage room to the entrance of the minor inheritance has been made.

“Is that a blast door?” Sakuya raised a question as she glanced at the black metal door. There’s a computer console beside the blast door, the dust accumulated on its surface indicates nobody has come here for a long time.

Alanis wanted to interact with the console, but she was stopped by Shion. “Do not touch anything unnecessary. Although this is the ‘Great Archmage’ minor inheritance, not the ‘Devil King's', it is still unwise to touch every point of interest without meaningful purpose.”

Alanis’s wolf ear dropped after Shion’s warning.

The Great Archmage is ‘Lawful Good’, the inheritances he left are helpful for the later generations. Inheritance from people of the ‘Good’ spectrum are highly educational, the content of the inheritance isn't covered under layers of traps. 

As for the Devil King, he is ‘Evil’ (the Sacred Alliance wouldn’t want to label him with Lawful due to various reason, but he also isn’t Chaotic like Demon King Maximillian), the inheritances he left usually contain an ungodly amount of traps to kill or to find the most suitable ‘inheritor’ through survival of the fittest. If a hundred people entered, the official ‘inheritor’ might be only 1, the rest would be killed in the competition. Furthermore, there was also a high chance of being possessed by his devil minions, so it was mostly destroyed instead of inherited. 

Though, those that could successfully inherit the Devil King’s legacy, even the minor ones, have experienced qualitative growth.

The two contrasting identities that Mordred has sometimes made people forget that they are the same person.

Although it is true that the Great Archmage was virtuous and kind because he single handedly shared various inheritances that advanced the power level of mages, most of the good stuff are reserved for those who’s close to him.

“How do you propose we enter the inheritance, then?” Sumire asked.

Shion wordlessly interacted with the console. She entered the password that she ‘received’ from the previous inheritance. 

< Password Correct >

< ERROR: ###Y@@#^!&$!)%)#% >

< Access clearance: Transparent Stars >

< Welcome to Combat Exosuit Minor Inheritance >

The black blast door slowly opened, revealing a portal. From a glance, it was obvious that the circular portal was a product of high-magic technology due to the amount of magical runes and circuits.

< Initiating Inheritance Trials >

< Please step into the gate >

Then, the portal activated as the runes shone. A purple gate is now opened, but nobody wanted to enter first. Everyone glanced at Shion to make sure. 

“Ayame, please.” Shion asked her team member.

Ayame nodded as she materialized three small robotic spiders. She then sent the drones through the gates. A few seconds later, she raised her thumbs up. “Clear!”

“Tell us what’s inside.” Shion asked.

“A dusty corridor of metal. It was dark, then the lights turned on.” Ayame did not conceal anything.

“Ok, let’s go.” Shion checked the gunlance in her hand one last time before entering. Kasumi, who took her form, carried the heavy axe and followed suit. 

Sumire brings 10 of her best kobolds whose bloodline have been stimulated and experienced some level of atavism, rendering their bodies to be stronger than hobgoblin. These evolved kobolds also have bigger muscles and taller bodies, each standing 1.5 meter from the ground. Their bone armors were quickly modified under the help of Shion during free time. The difference between them and the normal kobolds are evident from a glance.

Before going in, Ayame took out several digitized artifacts from her [Cloud Storage] because she could only access her local storage within the inheritance space, and it is obviously not enough to store digitized artifacts as they took a tremendous amount of data storage space.

Each Twin Helix member quickly entered the micro-plane after her. The last remaining kobolds are ordered to stay in the underground storage room for protection in case anything happens.

Just as everyone went through the gate, the sound of metal colliding against metal could be heard. 

“Shion?” Sumire asked.

“The console did say something about Inheritance Trials. It should be our first obstacle.” Just as Shion finished her words, they could see a wave of objects coming from the edge of the steel corridors.

“Battle puppets?” Shion traced her gunlance, transforming it into combat configuration. She also did not forget to reload some cannon shells in case of emergencies.

The battle puppets are humanoid, but they do not have an outer skin. They looked like skeletons made out of metals with some parts attached to their bodies. Some carried metal swords, spears, shields or halberd, while a select few carried small caliber gunpowder-based guns like pistols or submachine guns. 

“I heard the Great Archmage was extremely passionate about battle puppets before his ascension. I see it was true.” Sakuya unleashes her battle intent. She had already stepped up to fight against these puppets. The vanguards such as Kenji, Shirogane and Kurogane also stepped up. Both wouldn’t let these puppets initiate attack sequences and jeopardize the rest of their team. 

“Is there a need for them to get so worked up?” Ayame asked Shion in amazement.

“Let them have some fun. Otherwise, they would feel bored.” Shion replied casually. 

“What do you mean by that?” Sumire asked Shion.

While they are casually conversing, the vanguards are fighting against the battle puppets. Because they are made out of metal parts, they are tougher than the orks, but their movement and combat techniques are subpar at best. Fighting against them feels like battling against sandbags. Even the training puppets in the academy are better than this.

For elites like them who have experienced true slaughter to reach this place, this was nothing.

“Well, Ayame could instantly deactivate them with her information-path methods, why bother wasting time?” Shion muttered casually. 

“The programming language used on these battle puppets are, due to the lack of better words, primitives. They are refined when my ancestor has yet to become a Sovereign, after all.” Ayame added.

“Then, it isn’t wise for them to exhaust their stamina. Please help them.” Sumire asked, her eyes rolled at their casual attitude.

Shion shrugged. Letting Ayame do what she needs. She typed something on her omni-gear, then an information-path magic spell was produced from it. It turned into an invisible wave of pure information current, infiltrating the battle puppet’s operating system and bypassing their ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ firewall.

In an instant, these battle puppets dropped to the ground as if their strings were cut.

The vanguards frowned. “If you can do that, why didn’t you do so earlier?” Sakuya was somehow tickled off.

“You’re too worked up. Please be patient.” Shion chuckeld. “Although there’s nothing worth taking from them, you can get some crucial parts such as their crystal processor and internal battery. Those are the most precious parts of the puppets other than the weapons. Though, I do not recommend taking them until we get the content of the inheritance. Just take what you need.” While saying so, she telepathically took all the visible non-used bullets because with slight alteration, it can be used for Devastator.

Sumire, who almost ordered her kobolds to process these battle puppets 'corpses’, retracted her intent. Shion’s words are correct. These squad of battle puppets wouldn’t be the first, it would only slow them down if they carry too much ‘junk’. Still, she followed Shion’s lead as she ordered her kobold to take the best weapon they could find.

After this little skirmish, they passed through the dead puppets while relaxing their guard. 

“Ayame, do you mind enlightening us regarding the battle puppets we fought?” Sumire tried to initiate a casual chat. 

For an enslavement-path cultivator like her, battle puppets are an excellent alternative combat resource that could be fully utilized. They are not limited to elemental paths as there are all sorts of battle puppets. Unless one is blind, deaf, and beyond retarded that they could not function in society, one can easily identify the battle puppets in this place are metal-path from first glance.

The role of metal-path materials in the creation of battle puppets is too advantageous as it supports lightning-path (the Great Archmage’s primary element path) the best. Snow and ice-path battle puppets will melt unless special ice is used. This situation is worse for water-path and fire-path puppets as liquid or plasma machines are harder to refine unless special solid ‘water’ or solid ‘fire’ is used. As for earth-path materials, they might be more common than metal ones, but they lack durability unless special earth is used. 

Of course, mass of weak units is completely okay since enslavement-path battle strategies rely on swarm tactics, but Sumire couldn't achieve that with her meager soul foundation. Also, refining battle puppets from earth is quite a hassle unless one possesses the proper method of mass refinement.

Thus, metal ones are the best for battle puppets, this was already proven by Great Archmage’s fondness of any form of metals.  

Though, the weakness of these battle puppets are truly crippling to the point of unusable. How could a single information-path spell completely make them irrelevant? Sumire wanted to know if it is possible for her to refine one personally in the future, and if it was possible for her to make it stronger than the ones that they found in this micro-plane.     

“Sure.” Ayame gladly replied. It was her favorite pastime to tell stories about her ancestor the Great Archmage. 

“According to my analysis, he must’ve left this inheritance when he was younger than 100 years old. The architecture of the puppets are primitive by todays standards. It even uses C, one of the first programming languages he created. Nowadays, it is not used anymore for virtual intelligence itself since countless other languages and frameworks were developed, which focus solely on that task. I do not cultivate information-path as my primary, so I didn’t master a lot of those programming languages.”

“Sorry, I don’t follow. Can you explain to me in a way that I can understand?” Sumire pleaded. 

Ayame patiently explained. “There are two core components to refine robotic battle puppets. The ‘hardware’ and the ‘software’. The hardware is the body, and software is the mind. You can make the battle puppet with the best specification, but if it does not have the corresponding Virtual Intelligence, then they are just glorified sandbags. This is the case with the battle puppets we found here. Considering how old they are, the hardware is relatively good ‘hardware’ for rank 0 battle puppets, but their virtual intelligence is outdated and pretty basic. Actually it seems like he put more effort into the 'hardware' compared to the 'software'.

About the point how I'm seemingly can disable them with ease, is by sending conflicting data to their sensors. Fusing inputs from many sensors is actually pretty difficult, especially if they disagree. The norm today is that this would be handled by the 'virtual intelligence'. Much like a human, it can see patterns and notice that it sees illusions and then can ignore them, but for the puppets here that fusion is still done by the C part and one that can't handle it at all it seems, it causes the 'software' to not be able to calculate any plan of action to be able to stand upright anymore.

So without the ‘mind’, those puppets are just a chunk of metals. It’s just that simple.” She added.

At this moment, another group of battle puppets approached them, but they instantly went limp after Ayame used her information-path method.

“I feel like we’re cheating…” Kurogane scratched his cheeks. 

“If it stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.” Shion reacted to his remarks. “If you want to fight. Be my guest.”  

“No thanks.” Kurogane smiled. 

“Something is wrong.” Ayame suddenly muttered.

“Hmm?” Shion raised her eyebrows.

“They are… adapting. The first group suffered fatal kernel errors after 0.0014 second. This one manages to last for 0.03 seconds.” Ayame reported, her eyes turned serious. Since she could not access the [Cloud Storage] through the [World Wide Weave] in this micro-plane, it would be unwise in spending information-path resources in foes that could potentially adapt to her methods. What if eventually they become immune to digital viruses?

“Which means, they have some sort of local intelligence, or is the correct term ‘swarm intelligence’?” Shion asked herself before shaking her head. “Whatever it is, their central intelligence must be running diagnostics and troubleshooting all the necessary features to catch up on hundreds of years of updates. Let’s stop using digital viruses.” 

“Understood.”

After Shion’s decision, everyone who let their guard down because they thought this would be easy raised it back up. How can an inheritance of the Great Archmage be that easy?

It wouldn’t be long before the third squad of robotic drones blocked their way through. This time, because they do not want to use digital viruses to instantly crash their system, they will have to fight them physically. 

“Hmm… weird. They are faster than before?” Kenji, who broke a battle puppet in one serious punch in the first encounter, complained as the robot dodged his first strike. Of course, a second hit still pulverized it into scrap metal, but it needs more effort for him to kill one now.  

After hearing Kenji’s complaint, Shion did not watch casually as the vanguard tangled themselves up with the robotic puppets. She made a move with [Bell Palm] to instantly turn one into metal scrap.

“Fuck, we’ve been had.” Shion said with urgency. “This is a battle against time, we need to hurry up! The more we show combat data to these battle puppets, the more adaptive measures they can take.” When she becomes serious, these robots become scrap metal shortly. The vanguards followed suit in raising the pace under Shion’s influence. Soon, the robotic puppets become scrap metal.

“It’s rare for you to misjudge something.” Sumire commented as they ran towards  the central area. “Did you notice an important clue?”

Shion nodded with a grim expression. “I haven’t figured it out, but we are constantly under a saturation attack of telepathic distracted thought that bypassess my passive defensive methods… I’ve got the urge to talk about useless matters with you. Even Ayame got affected. Keep in mind that we are in the inheritance space of the Great Archmage Mordred. He cultivated two paths and invented two more!”

Sumire was shocked. She immediately activates defensive measures against foreign telepathic thought invasion and finds out that she’s affected too! “So this is why we didn't notice it earlier. If we don’t have Ayame who told us that important clue firsthand, we would be wasting time on our first and second encounter with those puppets.”

Just as she finishes muttering those words, their paths are blocked with another squad of robots. Their numbers never went beyond 10 but their equipment and armor thickness are getting better and better each encounter. 

“This is our fourth meeting and they already have heat blades and heat axes? What will we encounter in the end stages, robot squads with railgun weaponry?” Ayame cursed.

“Don’t you fucking dare speak another word.” Shion retorted. 

Ayame immediately shut her mouth after her harsh rebuke.

 ….

At the same time.

Boom! An Exo-Primate wielding an experimental railgun rifle has its unprotected head exploded under the fire of a railgun projectile. The killer was another Exo-Primate, but its body is covered under a large amount of black pixels as if it was censored. The dark fog-like pixels completely shrouded its body, one can only see a dark silhouette of a humanoid.

“Warehouse#4125 has three areas: the outer, the middle, and the core. Since I’ve entered from gate #14, I skipped the outer and immediately went into the middle.” Mordred touched his primate chin in ponderation. “Also, this increase in activity means Kasumi has entered with the rest of Twin Helix, it was faster than expected… Or was I slower than I expected?”

Because his soul has the form of pure information current, Mordred is capable of detecting the change in the air. It was the natural ability of Chaldean Souls to detect radio signals or electromagnetic waves in his proximity. Though, the existence of sensors would amplify this ‘racial talent’ significantly. 

Mordred glanced at the armored corpse of the creatures that he killed. “These soulless cannon fodders… If only I can bring them to the main world.” He sighed in regret. Doing so would attract the attention of the gods. “This ‘minor inheritance’ has some link to the Human Refinement True Inheritance that I left in Kaiserreich, without a rank 6 cultivation base, the gods would immediately swarm me the moment any noticed a trace of Replicant roaming free without certification. Heh.” 

He wouldn be that retarded. The Exo-Primates might be powerful and useful, but he has no ‘identity’ that he could exploit. Keep in mind that time-path and wisdom-path exist, it would be hard to assume a random person without a real identity if Inquisitors from various churches started to investigate thoroughly.    

“Right, this is the end of the middle-area. Beyond this door should be… the [Dragon’s Shadow]. I’ll just need to wait until Kasumi brings me Xi Ling’s corpse so we can start killing it. In the meantime…” Mordred started dismantling parts from the armored corpses; he was thinking of making an exosuit from the scraps of these exo-primates.

 

…

 

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!” Ayame cursed as she used her railgun to return fire and energy shield to protect herself and her teammate. 

“I fucking hate you!” Kenji cursed at Ayame as he took cover behind her shield while retreating further behind.

“DON’T BLAME ME, I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS!” She retorted with indignance.

“YOU FUCKING JINX US!” Shion lashed at her as she was the only one who dared to get angry at Ayame. Her rebuke contains the feelings of everyone. While retreating, he threw some white phosphorus bombs and return fire with her gunlance’s cannon. The explosion of HE Shell and white phosphorus flooded the corridor with thermal signature, making the puppet’s sensors blind.

“Fine! Let me find a way to…” Before Ayame finished her sentence, a burst of metal bullets and a few railgun projectiles hit her energy shield. Due to the amount of hits it received, the energy reserve has been depleted and the barrier broke. Fortunately, she is under protection of [Vector Distortion], an information-path defensive spell that could alter the vector of any attack. The lighter the projectile, the more it can alter. Since railgun projectiles do not exceed a few grams, it was very effective in protecting her from them. 

The projectiles have their trajectory altered to barely miss Ayame’s body. She was safe from the time being.

“Thankfuly I have some of my white phosphorus bomb left. Without it, we’re dead meat.” Shion muttered as they reached the last three-way intersection. The corridors are labyrinthian, even with Sumire and Shion’s intellect, it took them almost three hours to reach this place. 

The endless amount of ever-growing battle puppets and constant saturation of wisdom-path attacks already put a migraine in everyone’s mind. They have yet to find a respite in this place and when they reach the middle-area, there’s actually a squad of primate wearing exosuits! And… the captain of this squad held an experimental railgun weapon!!!

“You want to share what you know about… these monkeys?” Sakuya did not dare to pressure Ayame, but that does not stop her expressing displeasure.

“I… I don’t know. They should be the early model of Replicants, the slave army of Galatreon, but from the dust and rust accumulated on their armor indicates that my ancestor haven’t found out the propper replicant production methods in this place… most probably, they were left behind as the Inheritance Trials…” 

“What the fuck are Replicants?” Sumire asked, annoyed.

“Some refer to them as clones or haemonculus.” Ayame took a deep breath. “These infertile clones of biological lifeforms do not have souls and have no big difference compared to a battle puppet. You can even consider them as biological battle puppets, but they have an ‘organic’ ability to learn from mistakes, thus they can be trained in simulations and… they can be used as slaves for labor or other needs…”

“Since they’re equipped with primitive railguns and exosuits, what’s the difference between these primates and real soldiers? God dammit.” Shion cursed. “I’ll find a way. Kasumi, let’s go.”

“Wait!” Sumire wanted to stop them, but Shion went ahead rushing towards the white smoke-filled corridor with Kasumi following her from behind. The exo-primates are closing in their position, further delay would be unwise. 

“Tsk. Rushing ahead like a fool again. Should we help her?” Sakuya asked Sumire.

“You can’t. You don’t have a lightning-path mage as your Soul Armament like her. Most probably, Kasumi could resist some level of..” Before Sumire finished her sentence, a loud sound of explosion followed by mechanical parts breaking and railgun projectiles buzzing through the air resounded from the white smoke. In less than thirty seconds, silence returned to the steel corridors as the white phosphorus dissipates under the push of explosion.

Then, Shion’s voice resounded from the center of the exo-primate corpses. “These fucking monkeys…” Shion reveals her almost severed left arm. The wounds are hidden behind a flowing silver blood that dripped onto the steel floor, but it is slowly returning back to where it belongs.

‘What kind of bloodline did you have, Shion?’ Sumire mentally asked herself, while Ayame was shocked.

“Big sis… You’re a Convert?”

‘This fucking bad luck. I was sure that dumb monkey was dead.’ ‘Shion’ silently cursed in her mind. A stray railgun projectile managed to hit her at the last moment, completely piercing her bodysuit and almost severed her arm. “Yes. Some parts of my body are… mechanicals.” Shion has to bullshit her way through. Thankfully, it was one of her limbs, not her head nor torso. 

Otherwise, she’ll have to kill all of them in this micro-plane, ruining her plan in the long run.