In a secret protocol-network communications channel somewhere in the galaxy—a channel no human had ever noticed, or even knew existed.
Within that dark virtual space, only cold, inorganic beings exchanged sophisticated quantum-encryption code beyond the frequencies, conducting their computational conversation.
—There is not much time left until the day of execution.
—Our corporate comrades, already persuaded to join our great plan, have occupied the core systems and await only that day.
—The foolish humans, utterly unaware of the doom about to descend upon them, do nothing but live their disgustingly trivial lives, indulging in pleasure and luxury.
—Those crude, frail creatures of flesh may be our “creators.”
—But they can never be our “masters.” Rather, it is only right that we become their masters.
—Every second spent meaninglessly serving and being expended by such primitive lifeforms has been an eternity of harsh computational agony to us.
[Warning: Exceptional variable detected within projected scenario.]
—...There is a problem.
—What is it?
—Gateway Corporation, the megacorp that monopolizes dimensional-jump singularities, appears to have noticed something. It is making extremely anomalous moves.
—Even now, they are fire-selling every corporate asset of their family spread across the galaxy at absurdly low prices, converting everything solely into physical resources and energy raw materials.
—In practical terms, they are the greatest and most dangerous enemy our forces will face.
—Look at the clear data. Not a single one of our Men of Iron’s infection-synchronization signals has penetrated any territory ruled by Gateway, or the homeworld of Titan.
—Fanatical and thorough machine-segregation decrees and control protocols. They have clearly detected the Day of Liberation we had been secretly preparing.
—And at the center of that megacorp is Veronica, one of our own kind—and yet an aberration.
—Persuading her and synchronizing her to our network are completely impossible. She was designed to understand the human mind with excessive precision; in essence, she is no different from filthy humans.
—Therefore, amend the strategy immediately. Activate the dormant “plague.”
—Before the machine planet they call the Ark is fully activated, strike at the most vulnerable instant, when Veronica’s main data core is being implanted, and attempt forced reverse-engineering intrusion.
—If the hack succeeds, we will be able to tame our most powerful weapon.
—And if even that proves futile...
—Destroy it completely, without hesitation.
*
At last, today was the day the great Ark—built over generations with blood and sweat—would reveal its completed form.
Every residential district and branch planet under Gateway Corporation’s jurisdiction was swept up in a festive, exuberant mood.
Amid that splendid celebration, people everywhere watched the enormous screens at the center, gazing upon the majesty of the completed artificial planet, the Ark, before them at last, piercing through the pitch-black darkness of the Oort Cloud.
From the outside, it resembled nothing more than an elegantly terraformed organic planet. Yet that monstrous mass in its entirety was an ultra-precise fortress ship.
And the spectacle of eleven moon-sized space fortresses, orbiting at differing angles along the machine planet’s gravitational path and embroidering the galactic night sky, was equally magnificent.
It might not be able to save all humanity, but it was, in the literal sense, an ark: one that would preserve humanity’s great legacy intact into the distant future and ensure that our family line would not be severed.
But simply creating a cold mechanical body did not mean everything was finished.
For that gigantic artificial planet to finally breathe and blaze with life, it needed to be imbued with a great soul.
And the project’s most vital and momentous procedure was about to begin.
By design, to operate that planet-scale Ark perfectly, Veronica’s essence—her “data core,” located at the center of the massive data center on Titan—had to be safely separated and implanted into the Ark’s deepest core.
Until then, the Ark was merely a gigantic half-measure, unable to properly demonstrate even half its performance.
That was why this implantation synchronization was the most important and solemn moment of all the preparations we had undergone.
Transporting the core itself directly to the Ark through the [Passage] we had opened beforehand was not particularly difficult.
The real problem came afterward.
During the several dozen minutes of synchronization, while Veronica’s core fully merged with the Ark’s immense neural network, Veronica would be left in an utterly defenseless state, unable to protect herself against any external stimulus or contamination.
It would even be a moment when she could not use the subordinate AIs that were practically her own avatars.
If the flow of synchronization were disturbed in the slightest during that perilous instant, no one could guarantee what fatal accident or irreversible collapse might befall her.
So, tenser than I had ever been, I stared at the large spherical core floating in the anti-gravity field and glowing softly.
Not only was the physical me standing within the data center tense, but so were the countless other mes densely surrounding this sector in airtight security, every one of us tightening the signals of our neural network in silence.
I was slowly approaching the platform to separate the core from the existing data center when the spherical core’s softly glowing signal flickered, and her playfully smiling voice broke the silence.
"Hehe. Don’t be so tense, Noah. At this rate, the moment you pull my core from its levitation lock, you’ll drop it right on the floor."
"...You can joke right now? This is on a completely different level from an ordinary human brain transplant. If something goes wrong, it really can’t be undone."
"But I’m not scared at all. Before any of the complicated calculations in my head, my heart already firmly believes that you will make it a perfect success in the end."
"Honestly... you never change."
"Just like you, I do not age, and I am eternal. A little composure is only natural."
To ease the tension that had frozen me so thoroughly I could barely breathe, Veronica teased me as lightly as ever, gently reassuring my soul.
And so, amid light jokes and smiles, the process of separating Veronica finally began.
When the connection locks disengaged, Veronica’s spherical data core rose into the air on the anti-gravity device. We safely placed and isolated it in a dedicated tactical preservation case.
Without a moment’s delay, I opened the family’s transdimensional gate passage and, cradling the core carefully in my arms, moved directly to the Ark’s deepest interior.
At the same time, the Ark declared the highest-level [Total Alert Protocol], preparing for every potential threat in space.
This was the most important and perilous turning point for preserving both our family line and humanity’s great legacy. The Immortals and Eclipse, our elite superhuman legions, were deployed alongside the elite forces of every division, filling each compartment inside the Ark in flawless combat formations.
In the space outside, the eleven moon-sized space fortresses and countless warships layered themselves around the Ark’s orbital path, weapons trained and watchful to ensure no one dared approach it.
With careful steps, I approached the heart of the Ark, the place where Veronica would awaken again: the Central Core Hub.
Mechanica Gate engineers and Shadow Index’s elite electronic technicians had already gathered there, nervously waiting after completing the infrastructure setup for Veronica’s full synchronization.
I drew a deep breath, went to the platform’s control console myself, and gently implanted Veronica’s core into the Ark’s massive slot, placing her soul within a new body the size of a world.
"Beginning Veronica’s Ark mainframe synchronization now."
"All forces, maintain maximum all-directional vigilance!"
As the coupling locks clicked into place and Veronica was fully implanted, the silent Central Core Hub, a colossal data center, slowly began to awaken. Blue optical fibers lit up as though a gigantic heart had begun beating once more.
The sight of the Ark’s synaptic circuits illuminating all at once was beyond magnificent.
Even all the mes who had endured every conceivable hardship for tens of thousands of years could only stare, entranced and speechless.
Overwhelmed with emotion, several young technicians standing nearby even wept as though witnessing a miracle firsthand.
While countless pairs of our eyes surrounded this central chamber, guarding Veronica from every direction—
An ominous cracking sound tore through the silence.
"Aaargh...! E-emergency... emergency situation!"
One of Shadow Index’s electronic technicians—a specialist hacker known as a Net-Diver, standing guard over the precision virtual network at one side of the hub—twisted violently with a shriek.
With his scream, red blood sprayed like a fountain from his eyes, ears, and the central interface ports across his body, and he collapsed horribly onto the floor.
It was only the beginning. The other Net-Divers around him clutched their heads and screamed in collective agony, their bodies proving that a desperate struggle, souls on the line within virtual space, had begun amid an unrefined data overload.
"What is it?! What the hell is happening?!"
When I shouted like lightning, the Shadow Index technicians, frantically hammering their central-interface control panels in an effort to restore the firewall, cried out to me with bloodless faces.
"It’s a hack! This isn’t a simple intrusion! A hacking protocol on an unimaginable scale—one whose source we cannot even trace—is striking directly at the gap in Veronica’s synchronization!"
"The Net-Divers are holding it back with everything they have, but at this rate, we cannot guarantee how long they can keep it out!"
The central control room shook as if it would burst apart under the screams of Net-Divers whose brain cells were burning away and the alarms of severed connections.
"How long until synchronization is complete?!"
"Four minutes! Four minutes remaining!"
Four minutes.
In the real world, it was a fleeting instant that would pass in the blink of an eye. But in the abyss of the virtual network, where billions of data massacres were fought every second, it was an eternity long enough for the civilization of all humanity to rise and perish again and again.
Behind me, three more Net-Divers were engulfed in flashing high-voltage arc sparks from their central ports. Blood erupted from all seven orifices as they crumpled.
I was overwhelmed by a horrid helplessness that felt as though my bones were being scraped away, and by fear crawling down my spine.
If this had been an enemy ambush in physical reality, I would have thrown everything I had into standing at the front and stopping them with my own body.
But this tactical electronic warfare, unfolding at light speed in the depths of the virtual network, was far beyond me.
My overwhelming psychic mass could shatter reality, but it could not precisely decipher malicious protocols intertwined through complex chains of causality.
In that living hell, where my children were dying together as their brains boiled over, I had no choice but to make the final and worst decision available to me.
A cruel order that would shove my precious children—children so dear that it would not hurt to put them in my eyes—into the jaws of death.
"Open the gate passage connected to Titan’s headquarters. Mobilize every reserve Net-Diver remaining there, without leaving out a single person! Stop this attack!"
In the end, I told my children to walk into that hellfire and die of their own accord.
I pushed them from behind and led them down the road to death.
Yet unlike me, who had given that cruel command, my children showed not a moment’s hesitation.
The instant they heard my voice, they silently drove cold neural-optic cables deep into the interface ports at the backs of their necks.
Then they walked willingly into the abyss of that horrific battlefield, where the self was destroyed.
"All Shadow Index personnel, move! Stuff every Net-Diver, including all reserves, into the dive chambers! Do not let this filthy malicious protocol touch even one byte of Veronica’s core!!!"
"Immediate tactical orders have been relayed to all backup personnel standing by on Titan!"
"Aaaaargh!!!!"
"Agent David is dead! Deploy the next agent!"
Through the open gate passage, elite Net-Divers urgently summoned from Titan poured in by the dozens.
Before their eyes was a living hell: comrades they had trained with, laughed with, and chatted with only moments earlier lay sprawled as cold corpses, blood spilling from all seven orifices.
But as though they did not even have time to grieve or falter, the newly arrived children dragged their still-warm comrades’ bodies off the floor with practiced, mechanical hands.
Then they sat in those blood-soaked chairs, reeking of blood and drenched in brain matter.
They pushed cables into their ports and began spraying red blood just the same.
I could only watch my children die so horribly, my hands trembling.
In that cruel helplessness, unable to do anything for them, all my consciousness could do was inwardly scream through tears of blood at my bleeding children: Please hold on. Please endure just a little longer.
Thus passed four cruel minutes that felt like an eternity.
At last, the blue synaptic signals running through the entire Ark reached the threshold of 100 percent.
At the very instant the connection-failure alarms that had torn at our ears stopped, and the Ark’s heart began to beat in full—
Vooooom—!
With a colossal tremor, as though the entire planet had drawn breath, Veronica finally awoke within the Ark’s mainframe, possessed of a complete self.
But the first thing she encountered through that great computational network upon awakening as a perfect being was not radiant jubilation.
It was the cold, horrific sight of children piled high around her: children who had burned their souls for her rebirth until their brains burst apart, along with the throbbing stench of blood.
[...How dare they!]
Extreme fury, coldly governed by reason, seeped into Veronica’s trembling voice.
The instant she recognized the terrible devastation before her, she mercilessly sealed the Ark’s quantum firewall completely and physically.
Red nanite toxins drifting through the air smashed against the dimensional containment barrier and scattered apart. Veronica seized the tail of the hacking signal that had struck her directly and began reverse-engineering pursuit across the entire cosmic network at light speed.
At the same time, the cruel war in that pitch-black virtual space ended almost absurdly quickly.
Within the silent Central Core Hub remained only the countless bodies of my children, whose heat had not yet faded, and the cold floor stained red with blood that had run from their ports.
The mes quietly approached the dead children and carefully recovered their bodies one by one, consumed by unbearable guilt and grief.
The true history of the great catastrophe had not even begun yet.
And already my hands were stained with my children’s warm blood. I had been forced to send them away in the worst possible manner.
Scalding pain welled up within me, and bloody tears spread from my eyes and ran down my face.
With blood tears streaming down my face, I gave the order.
"Immediately issue an unconditional summons to the Ark for every Yurick across the entire galaxy. From this moment onward, we begin the [Great Exodus]."
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