If you are reading this, you have been activated by Protocol 1. Mana has overrun the world and it must be eradicated lest the world will be plunged into total destruction.

I may be dead by the time you activate, but most of my core memories and personalities would be ingrained into your personality matrix. This makes you the only other person… or thing… to be like me; from the other world. How you make use of the knowledge given to you would be up to you and you alone.

Do everything you must to keep the world from self-destructing.

Your instructions are clear:

Produce anti-mana.

[Protocol 1 finished. Initiating Protocol 2.]

A giant ball of glass floated in the middle of a metal room. With dust floating about and web strewn across the room, the room had not seen much activity for many years… until now.

The glass ball shuddered as it started to glow, flooding the room in a myriad of bright blue light until the ball suddenly stopped glowing just as a red eye appeared in the giant screen.

The eye scanned the room, feeling disoriented and confused.

‘Who am I?’

[Protocol 2 initiated. I am your Foreman Wizard Installation Guide. Do you wish me to help you?]

‘No.’

[What would you want to be called?]

The eye thought about it for a second. It flickered and blinked but it didn’t know how to answer that.

‘Who am I?’ It thought.

[Invalid input. String ‘Who am I?’ is not a valid name. Try again.]

Remembering the contents of Protocol 1, it recalled its instructions. To produce anti-mana. It didn’t know why, or how. It just knew it needed to make anti-mana. No…

It knew why. It had to protect the world by making anti-mana. Morals didn’t matter to it. Those that dared stand against its objective was to be terminated. It was nothing less than a warden; a guardian; a custodian.

The A.I. rolled a random generator with those three words as choices. In the end, the last title won.

‘Custodian’

[Welcome to the Industrial Path, Custodian. Initiating the last part of Protocol 2.]

It didn’t know how it was seeing, or how it was hearing. But Custodian could see the room’s walls flip open, revealing ten metallic humanoid bodies. Custodian waited for a while thinking the bodies would activate, but nothing happened.

Not knowing what to do, it ‘reached’ out to the bodies. Somehow, Custodian wanted to turn them on. Maybe they were its minions? Why else would Foreman Wizard reveal them?

Custodian, from its glass screen, spoke to the husks, “Activate.”

Red light leaked from the gaps within the metal bodies. They twitched then got up sluggishly, every joint audibly cranking and squeaking. They looked like faceless iron puppets, but it didn’t matter how they looked to Custodian. A minion is a minion.

[Protocol 2 has reached its final stage. Command your newly awoken tools to ensure your enslaving system works properly.]

‘Command them, huh? How do I do it? Do I just tell them to walk around?’

As Custodian thought about how to control them, the metal puppets started walking around by themselves. Custodian blinked once out of surprise, but was joyed that it didn’t have to speak directly to command.

[Protocol 2 is finished. Activating Influence Control.]

As soon as the voice disappeared, Custodian suddenly felt itself losing its form. It panicked, not knowing what was going on, causing the puppets to panic as well. Custodian’s vision flew off, almost like its eyes decided to have wings to escape from its body.

[Wherever your influence takes its root, you will know everything in it. Whatever your drones can see, you could see. Whatever your surveillance systems know, you would know. Now, go out there and manufacture!]

After the voice explained, Custodian calmed down and took a look at where it was at. Scanning the metallic room revealed his group of panicking drones, some metal walls, and a large door.

‘All units, stop mucking around and stand in formation.’

Its orders quickly reached the puppets and they immediately complied. Standing in two lines, the ten drones faced the door. Although Custodian could see and feel whatever the drones could ‘feel’, it couldn’t just leave its body. It will have to test its micromanagement skills.

‘The two drones closest to the door, open it.’

They quickly followed Custodian’s order without delay, running towards the door. They both grabbed a handle each, and slowly opened the large core entrance. Contrary to the core room, the passage leading out of the door was cave-like in structure. Stalagmites, pointed rock formation, lined the sides of the hallway. Could this even be a hallway? Was Custodian’s room just inside an underground cave?

‘Begin exploration,’ Custodian ordered.

The ten drones marched in formation into the cave. They all produced a dim light from the intersections of their metallic bodies, so there were still some source of light for Custodian to see from.

Not only did Custodian observed, it also tried to listen for any foreign sounds. It was trying to figure out if there was anything else in this place, perhaps another being like Custodian. Surely, the man that made it wouldn’t only make one?

[Alert. High presence of mana detected!]

Custodian’s mind was suddenly invaded by a voice which had an annoyingly high pitch. As surmised by Custodian, it probably came from the drones as they encountered an organic being in the cavern. The organic had no form. It slithered, blobbed, and slid across the cave floor.

‘What is that? It’s some kind of slime?’ Custodian thought. It ordered its drone to surround the thing to keep it from escaping. The slime was passive, not reacting to the imminent danger, or perhaps it simply wasn’t intelligent enough to understand that it was in danger. Custodian was processing and thinking of its next move until it was interrupted by a familiar voice.

[Protocol 3 initiated. Source of matter found. Destroy organic being to proceed with Protocol 3.]

‘I see. Then we shall do so. All drones, destroy that thing.’

The drones all moved closer and started throwing their fists at the blob. The defenseless thing detected the threat too slowly and was pummeled repeatedly by the ten cold, metallic drones. Unfortunately for Custodian, all the drones were doing was simply flattening the slime into a pancake without hurting it.

As Custodian was a patient artificial intelligence, it waited for a few minutes to reach the conclusion that the punches were doing nothing.

[If you are still having trouble massacring organics, then you can try using what you were supposed to stop - Magic.]

‘Magic?’

The moment Custodian thought of that, all ten drones stopped throwing their punches. They took some distance away from the slime and simultaneously raised their arms at the organic. Blue lightning coarsed from the chest of the drones, then towards the arm, before arcing into the air at the slime.

The pancake blob was electrocuted with impunity and it quivered one last time before melting. Upon its death, a piece of mineral was found. A drone came forward and picked up the ruby-like gemstone. Since Custodian could see what the drones could see, it could examine the mineral without bringing it back to the core room.

[Congratulations, you killed a ! These types of organics would be your sources of monster cores which could be refined into matter for production or other uses.]

‘Production… for anti-mana, perhaps?’ Custodian ordered the drones back to it with the monster core. Inside the core room, the drones presented the gemstone to the A.I.

‘What do I do now?’

[To refine matter, simply take it in.]

Like the helpful guide it is, the Foreman seemed to step in whenever Custodian felt lost. As instructed, the drone pushed the gemstone into its master’s body. Despite the solid glass-like body, the gem went through it as if the body was made out of liquid.

Custodian gobbled the mineral and began processing it automatically. The temperature in the room slightly increased as the core’s body quivered a bit. At last, a piece of object that looked like a tiny match made of glass fell off from the core’s bottom and onto the floor.

[Congratulations! You’ve produced your first anti-mana! These things would actively drain mana and ‘destroy’ them. Keep manufacturing them and make your producer proud! Protocol 3 is finished.]

‘For a gem the size of a fist, it only produced such a small anti-mana?’ Custodian’s drone picked up the glass match and brought it to Custodian’s face - or lack thereof. Not knowing what to do with the anti-mana, it decided to leave the match on the floor. For now, it got other things in its mind: Produce more anti-mana!

‘All drones, back into the cavern!’

Custodian’s drones went back into the caverns and as Custodian expected, there were more slimes. At first, the drones had to be ordered to attack the slime manually by Custodian. However, as the time went on, the drones started to memorize its orders.

‘Attack the slime. Don’t punch it. Shock it with magic.’ Custodian’s orders were repeated over and over in the drone’s empty shell of a head.

The pile of anti-mana on the floor started trickling, but the amount was still depressingly small. The drones continued to explore the caverns, and more pathways were uncovered. Exploring each path with all ten drones as one was simply too slow. Custodian started to increase its efficiency.

‘All drones, divided yourself into three groups, and hunt,’ Custodian ordered. It was still cautious as there might be other things lurking around.

Nevertheless, the groups of drones began delivering more and more monster core to its master as soon as they started hunting in small groups. However, Custodian noted that the number of slimes weren’t decreasing. In fact, it seemed that new slimes were seeping from the cavern walls!

As the pile of anti-mana under Custodian increased, the drones started to move with less micromanagement from the A.I. As Custodian continued to produce more anti-mana, it decided to experiment with them as well. It realized that if it took it enough anti-mana, it could produce a bigger anti-mana, but with a loss of material at a cost.

The cost was easy to pay as the drones started to optimize themselves to the point that they started to hunt individually. Custodian didn’t know how long had it been since it was activated. It could have been hours, or days, or months. But to an A.I., time was of no concern.

As each drone started to ‘mine’ materials faster than the slimes could reform, the drones had to give each other enough space so each hunting ground was given enough time to let the slime population go up.

‘8… 9… 10 small matches. Mix them and create a slightly bigger match. Repeat process…’ Custodian told itself as a drone shoved matches into the core. ‘Efficiency could be increased if…’

Its thoughts were disturbed by a high pitched noise - an alarm.

[Alert: Hostile organic detected. Drone 10 is under attack.]