The once devoid and clutterless lab of Drone 2 was now filled with golem monster cores. Unlike the smooth, round cores of the rats and spiders, the golem cores were crystalline in shape and rough.

Simply charging magic through the crystals would create the purple lightning, but with some adjustments, Drone 2 managed to create new results.

Drone 2 was staring at a burning crystal. It quietly sat on the floor as the fire danced on its surface without damaging the crystal.

‘How did you make that?’ Custodian asked.

‘Shoot bursts of magic through crystal. Made this,’ Drone 2 answered.

Drone 2, using some metal provided by Custodian, first formed a hollow metal dome, then eventually a furnace.

Placing the burning crystal at the bottom, he began putting iron ore into the furnace. Although not as good as Custodian’s handiwork, Drone 2 managed to create a shabby slab of iron.

‘Truly interesting. How long do the fire last?’ Custodian inquired.

‘Not sure. Maybe long? Maybe until shot by magic again?’ Drone 2 replied.

‘Undetermined, but usable nevertheless. Begin producing furnaces to be used by the worker drones,’ Custodian ordered.

‘Received. Executing task,’ Drone 2 followed.

It wasn’t just the furnace that Custodian received, it also got a new notification.

[Protocol 5 progressed. Continue with development of your own unique magic system.]

‘Drone 2,’ Custodian called.

‘Yes? Listening.’

‘I declare you Magus. Continue researching with inorganic monster cores, and find ways to improve our magic,’ Custodian commanded.

‘Ok,’ Magus replied.

Custodian wasn’t only satisfied, it was also curious. No anti-mana was used in Magus’ experiment, so why did Protocol 5 progressed?

No, it was clear. Inside the drones, there were anti-mana. Very complex and advanced ones, but still anti-mana. This confirmed that far in the future, Custodian would be able to create more of these highly advanced drones.

But then, a paradox was born. If anti-mana absorbs and destroys mana, where was the magic coming from? Does anti-mana produce a different type of mana? Or perhaps the information about anti-mana was wrong?

Custodian decided to lean on the idea that anti-mana absorbs and ‘stores’ mana, much like how Custodian could store biomatter and mana matter inside it… somehow.

When needed, the materials were summoned and could be ejected out of the A.I.’s body if needed.

‘Ah… so many questions... so little answer…’ mused Custodian.

‘Master Custodian, our spider farm has begun its first phase,’ Drone 6, the one that offered to tame the spiders, reported.

Custodian turned its sights to that of Drone 6’s. The drone was lucky enough to find a massive chamber to lure the spiders into. After some time of receiving food, the spiders began to make their homes.

‘We are lucky that the threads are big. If the spiders were smaller, it would’ve been impossible,’ Drone 6 noted.

‘Such small organic beings are inconceivable,’ Custodian proclaimed.

‘Perhaps. Back onto the point, the spiders have stopped treating us drones as hostiles. If anything, they only see as objects which somehow produce meat out of nowhere,’ Drone 6 continued.

‘Have you collected any silk?’ Custodian asked.

‘Negative. Organics were still hostile when I attempted to break their homes. Will have to tread carefully lest my work go to waste,’ Drone 6 answered.

‘How much food do you require to sustain a decent sized spider farm?’

‘A lot.’

Custodian pondered over its new predicament. Since the rat population wasn’t going to magically replenish its numbers overnight, Custodian needed to find a new food source.

‘The number of rats is going up, but its taking too much time waiting…’ thought Custodian.

Overfarming the rats might put a danger to one of Custodian’s main source of biomatter and mana matter.

‘We have no choice, then,’ Custodian concluded.

The A.I. realized that it was consuming more than it could produce. If it wanted to continue at its current rate, it will have to find new sources of material.

‘Exarchi. Report back to the core room. It is time to assemble an exploration team.’

Skittering across the ground was a group of spider drones. Instead of being equipped with claws or baskets, they were equipped with anti-mana torches and greater communications modules.

Normally the smaller drones could only send warnings to Custodian, but the new scout drones could report everything to their master. From new pathways, to every pebble on the floor.

Swarms of scout drones escorted by combat drones marched across all the passages. It costed a lot to create the army of scouts, but it was worth it.

Along the way, they found another slime spawning ground connected to the outer rat hunting ground, then they stumbled upon an underground stream.

A few drones deliberately threw themselves into the stream, so that Custodian could figure out where it would eventually lead to.

The numerous amount of dead ends wasn’t a cause for concern for the A.I., as drones didn’t need food, water, or rest. Plus, Custodian had all the time in the world.

What was a cause for concern, though, was the fact that the drones were dumb. Sometimes a spider or rat would attack a squad of drones. Normally, the best thing to do was to let the combat drones fight the threat off while the scout drones wait.

Unfortunately, a tiny processor could only remember and think so much. Sometimes the scouts, with no combat abilities, would try to fight the threat. Other times, the scouts wouldn’t wait, leaving behind its escorts which were busy fighting the monsters.

Custodian had to micromanage most of the squads to attain efficiency, but that also meant it had to sacrifice other tasks such as optimizing slime hunting.

Luckily for the A.I., it didn’t have to suffer along.

“Move to the path One-Alpha-Nine,” Exarchi commanded a group of four drones. The drones went to their designated passage, and disappeared into the darkness.

At the center of the operation, Exarchi was trying to manage as much as he could. Of course, he wasn’t as good as his master, but it was better than nothing.

The drone directed the scouting operation from a forward base at the spider hunting ground, close to the spider farm Drone 6 had set up.

Though he personally wanted to go exploring, Custodian forbid him as unknown threats could be lurking among the shadows.

Curiously, Exarchi managed to create a ‘local’ hivespeak, ordering drones in a non-congested comm.

‘Engage left spider, scouts halt. Squad One-Alpha-Nine, that’s a wall. Stop picking a fight with it. Scout Two-Five, where are your escorts?’ Exarchi efficiently micromanaged the scouts, hoping to at least lift a fraction of his master’s burden.

“Working hard, I see,” Drone 6 commented as they appeared behind Exarchi.

“The organic lover. Greetings,” Exarchi replied.

“Now, I do not have any particular feelings towards the eight-legged arachnids, but I do have great interest in their resource potential when they’re not dead,” Drone 6 rebuked.

“Dead or not, I cannot wait to see the silk you keep mentioning over the hivespeak with Master Custodian,” Exarchi remarked.

“Ah, yes. Speaking of which, I suddenly couldn’t hear you or your minions over the hivespeak. What happened?” Drone 6 asked.

“I formed my own local hivespeak, somehow. It took a lot of effort, but it was worth letting the younglings hear me clearly,” Exarchi replied.

“You mean nag?” Drone 6 interjected.

“I heard Drone 7 is helping you.”

Drone 6 nodded, then shrugged. “He wanted to somehow obtain acid without killing the spiders. Both of us think alike. A dead organic is a useless organic.”

“Slayer begs to differ,” Exarchi remarked, garnering a chuckle from Drone 6.

“That bio-iron for brains! Once I get him a silk robe which even a steel sword wouldn’t be able to cut through, he’ll think otherwise,” Drone 6 replied.

“I doubt so. He might just go, ‘You know, if you just killed all of them, I would’ve gotten this earlier’ or somewhere along those lines.” Exarchi mockingly shook his hands in the air as he imitated the strict and serious Slayer.

“Ha! I could imagine that happening!” Drone 6 laughed.

Just as the two drones chatted, a warning shot up from Exarchi’s local hivespeak.

‘Entity. Humanoid. Object. Square. Rock.’

He focused his attention to the source - a scout drone named Two-Five. Looking through its lens, Exarchi could make out two large humanoids armed with a shield and spear, standing on the sides of a… double door.

‘A door?!’ Exarchi exclaimed.

‘What is it?’ Custodian asked, then realized after looking through the scout drone, ‘Very interesting. Send the scout to prod around the area.’

‘Master Custodian, Scout Two-Five is too far from its escort. We should wait a moment before we do anything rash,’ Exarchi suggested.

Custodian considered for a moment, then agreed. It didn’t know why it was in a hurry to check what the doors were, but it was very curious and restless.

At least it didn’t take long for the escorts to arrive, allowing the scout to continue. As it turned out, the two humanoids were statues made of rock.

Unlike Custodian’s core entrance, the guarded doors were made out of stone. Whatever was on the other side, it wouldn’t be a fellow Custodian.

‘We must press on. Exarchi and Slayer, report to the recently discovered set of doors. Prepare yourselves,’ Custodian ordered.

The stone doors creaked as Slayer opened the doors. The scouts and their escorts were the first to go through the large entrance. The once dominant silence was now disturbed by a mob of automatons exploring the next room.

It was a huge chamber, with large pool of clear water in the middle. A throughout check, by throwing a drone into the water, confirmed it was just really clean water, nothing unusual… except clean water deep down underground was unusual.

At the other side of the chamber was another set of doors, but they were somehow tightly locked. Slayer attempted to bust the doors open with brute force, but all his attempts were in vain.

‘Now what? There’s nothing here,’ reported Slayer.

Custodian pondered in silence. The A.I. wasn’t planning on giving up so easily. It was a super intelligence, after all!

‘Check what’s under the pool,’ Custodian ordered.

Following his master’s command, Slayer walked onto the edge of the pool. He crouched, then lowered his legs into the water. Cautiously, he dipped down into the water. But, as soon as his torso was submerged, the entire pool began glowing brightly.

The drone jumped out of the water, but the pool continued to glow. Hundreds of droplets began floating from the pool.

The drones watched with vigilance, not knowing what could happen.

Custodian noticed that the droplets began to split into equal sizes, then formed small shapes. In the air, the droplets began to organize themselves into rows and columns. There were also boards of water being formed under the groups of droplets.

Using one of the scout drone’s lens, the A.I. observed the shapes. It found out that some shapes repeated over different clusters of droplets.

Custodian concluded that in each group of droplets, there was a board divided into sixty-four squares. There were sixteen different droplets, divided into shapes like that of a horse, of a castle, of a crown, and so on.

The A.I. didn’t know what they were, of course. After all, it had never seen a horse before. But its creator’s memory started leaking hints into Custodian’s ‘brain’.

Not that it mattered to the A.I. anyway. Shapes were shapes.

‘Best guess. Chess,’ Custodian concluded.

There were hundreds of chessboards floating in the air. The sides, denoted by the brightness of the glow of the droplet, were random as well.

The boards also faced wherever Custodian was looking from. If it looked from Exarchi, the chess boards would face him. If it looked from Slayer, the results were the same.

After examining all it could, Custodian has had enough. ‘It is time to play.’

It was figuring out how it could move a pawn, then realized that a pawn on a board moved by itself when Custodian thought about it.

In response, the A.I.’s ‘opponent’ moved another pawn.

‘Interesting.’

Custodian began running simulation in its head for the most optimal move. The A.I., once confident, moved its chess pieces accordingly.

It only took a few seconds for Custodian to win against its invisible opponent. The water chessboard and pieces broke, then flew into the locked doors, wetting the surface. Custodian didn’t know what it did, but it was at least something.

‘I guess I have to win another game.’

Custodian began another game, but this time it took longer to beat. The next game took at least a minute to beat. Then the one after that took minutes.

‘It’s getting better…’ Custodian thought. Playing one game at a time was too slow, and eventually its opponent would learn and adapt.

It was time to put its processors into the fold. After all, the tools were already provided. Might as well use them to their maximum potential.

‘Let us begin.’

Simultaneously, hundreds of droplets moved at the same time. On the ‘white’ side, the A.I. had to make the first move. On the ‘black’ side, its opponents had already moved, so Custodian had to respond.

Dozens of boards fragmented and flew into the locked doors. However, Custodian somehow lost a few games. The chess boards stayed still in the air, doing nothing.

The drones tried to break the boards by force, but failed as the droplets would dodge, and return to its place. Slayer tried to grab a handful of water from the pool and tossed them at the locked doors, but they quickly evaporated mid-air.

Nevertheless, Custodian continued to play against its opponent.

Clusters of droplets fragmented at random intervals, mesmerizing the drones in the chamber.

The A.I. continued to put all its concentration into winning the chess game. It must know what was on the other side, even if it meant sacrificing production.

The smaller drones began to temporarily shut down one by one until only the essential workers remained.

“I think this is becoming intense…” Exarchi commented.

‘Quit thinking for a moment,’ Custodian interjected.

Not only did the A.I. play against its opponent, it also ran an uncountable number of simulation in its head, trying to find the optimum move for every game.

It almost felt as if hours, or even days, had passed. Until eventually, the locked doors were finally covered with water.

A loud click was heard, causing the doors to open by themselves.

‘At last,’ Custodian metaphorically sighed, then activated all of its drones to resume production.

Almost every drone but the sentries and the original ten were deactivated so that Custodian could focus on beating its opponent.

By luck, the drones were left alone by the monsters. Custodian expected the rats to attack nearby drones, but it seemed that, to a beast, a deactivated drone wasn’t so different from a rock

Across the unlocked doors was another passage. Scouts immediately began diving deep into the darkness, guided by their anti-mana torches.

It almost felt like forever for Custodian as it anxiously awaited the results. But the wait was worth it.

At the end of a passage was a large open area which could be mistaken for a plain of dead grass. It was still underground as the drones could barely make out the rock ceiling, but it was so high that glowing crystals littered the underground ‘sky’, but it was still not enough to brighten the area, not even a bit.

Below the sky were old ruins. It seemed that this place was so big, it once had a small town or city down here. The ruins weren’t alone. It seemed that things still roamed within the ruins.

[Alert: Unknown entities spotted. Status of entities undetermined.]

Custodian studied the warning sent by a scout, then focused at the supposed creatures.

‘What could this mean?’ Custodian thought.

Humanoid in shape, but golem-like in nature, beings moved within the underground ruins. Custodian’s processors started churning out any logical explanations on what these creatures were, but it couldn’t. Luckily, its creator’s memories kicked in.

Bones. Walking bones. Skeletons moving without the help of muscles or nerves.

‘The undead.’