Ow! Ssssshhh… Fuck, that smarts. And I thought VR data downloads were uncomfortable but this really takes the cake. Shit. I almost feel like my eyes are watering, causing my sensors to fluctuate oddly. Damnit.

Well, I made my selection and spent the EXP, and this is the result. A whole lot of shit crammed into my brain. Literally just stuffed into my memory all willy-nilly like. Toward the end it got better, but I think whatever system is responsible for this has no clue about computer coding.

It really sucks bad. Shit. If I had a brain it would be pounding right now.

Okay, enough with that. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with pain since I became this damned AI, but it seems that some things just won’t go away. I really need to check my warranty. Heh. Ow.

Before I get to the good stuff though, I have something interesting to share:

[User has consumed a monster part. User has gained 0.1 EXP.]

Yep, that. Remember that goblinoid arm I had thrown into my furnace? Well, apparently it counts toward eating. And eating a monster part gives EXP. Which explains why the natives ate each other, in a way. Cannibalism takes on a whole new meaning when it isn’t solely for survival purposes.

That said, that extra boost really helped. It gave me a total of 9 EXP to spend all at once. And besides the pain, the upgrades are nice~ Check ‘em out!

[User Profile:

Name: Unknown.

Age: Unknown.

Race: (AAI) Ascended Artificial Intelligence.

Racial Rank: D. (1 more EXP spent for D+.)

EXP Available: 0.

External Stats:

Structural Integrity (HP) - 8.0/10. (No damage.)

Movement Speed (Spd) - 0.1. (Immobile.)

Internal Stats:

Focus (CPU) - 20/100. (No problem.)

+1 New World Common Knowledge.

Power Units (pu) - 127/500. (No problem.)

+1 Efficiency. (0.75 pu cost.)

Fuel Load - 156/1000. (Low fuel warning.)

+1 Efficiency. (1.1 fuel value.)

Storage Capacity - 250/1000. (No problem.)

Drones (4 of 4) - 1 Hover Scout Drone (M), 1 Excavator Drone, 2 Rover Drones. (No problem.)

Feats List:

All-Seeing (limited); Ascended; Expandable; Eternal; Accelerated Thought; Crafting Meister; Learned; Otherworlder.

Abilities List:

Hyperfocus II, Energy Domain I.]

Lowering my own personal power consumption while increasing the potency of my available stock of fuel. It’s only a ten percent increase, but that’s a whole pu per ten parts consumed. Really come in handy should anything unexpected happen.

The biggest kicker though is the information I just got downloaded into my nuggin. Most of it doesn’t matter at this point, but knowing the names of things will really come in handy. As well as the basic explanations provided about this universe. And mana.

What I’ve been calling radiation, which it is, is actually unclaimed or ‘free’ mana. All living things in this parallel universe consume it and produce it, in varying amounts. According to the information, the Gods granted mana to all living beings in order to help them rise up and yada yada yada.

Damned religion and their propaganda bullcrap. Sadly this is all common knowledge, so there isn’t any real detail to it. More like stories. I can still extrapolate some truths out of it though.

There are two Pantheons of Gods in this universe. The Light Pantheon and the Dark Pantheon. As to how many gods there are, there’s no information at all. Not even names are included.

The Dark Pantheon doesn’t really care about ‘mortals’. They are in it all for themselves, and harvest life and death to increase their own power. Yeah, the usual crap. The Light Pantheon though tends to establish contacts with powerful groups in order to increase their own prestige and power.

From what I can tell though neither Pantheon goes out of their way to destroy societies. They also don’t care for blatant worship, as there is no ‘church’ based around them. Which tells me they get nothing from worship or faith.

That just makes sense to me though. If these ‘Gods’ are the source of mana, then they must get something in return for providing it. And for setting up this system of growth, consumption, and advancement. Now I’ve never been one for conspiracies, but this all really makes me itch.

Moving on now. There are three different ways to use mana. The first is to use it to generate the special effects caused by Abilities. Everyone can do it this way. Monsters, sentients, doesn’t matter. The second is Magic.

Magic is to use mana to cause effects outside of the body. Flaming blades and gusts of wind, summoning lightning. That sort of pinazz. Anyone who’s ever played a roleplaying game gets the idea. This sort of mana usage is called Outer Manipulation. Easy enough to remember. It’s also very free-form, with only Proficiency-type Abilities generated for it.

Then the third type of mana usage is Inner Manipulation. Also called Prana Cultivation. Which is weird to me, as far as the name goes. Not a lot of information is available about Prana, but the basics are there. Basically Prana is mana that’s circulated within the body, changing its ‘shape’ to fit that body specifically.

And that’s where it gets kind of hinky. A Prana user doesn’t cast mana outside of the body, but instead uses it to reinforce themselves and their equipment. Great bursts of strength, super fast speeds, or armor-like abilities are spawned from using Prana. Prana is most usable by warriors and knight classes.

That said, I’m personally only able to use the first type of mana usage, Abilities. Except all of my abilities thus far cost power units, instead of mana. Which makes sense, given that I’m a not-living being. Or more specifically, non-biological.

Liches, for instance, are still biological beings even though they’re considered ‘dead’ or un-dead, as the case may be. They can still use mana. Me? All I can do is sense it as radiation. I have no way to draw it to myself or use it.

At least for the moment. Hehehehe. Already have plans and plans, if you know what I mean.

That said, there is one last part to mana that should be arriving soon. And oh, speak of the Devil! Heh. Joking. One of my rover drones just rolled up with the object in question.

A little pinky-nail sized crystal dug out of the heart of one of the goblinoids. Oh, and another dismembered limb to feed into my furnace. I plan to ingest an entire body just to analyze the creatures. Anyway!

This little crystal is a mana crystal. It naturally forms in the bodies of living beings that actively use mana. People, monsters, and even some plants count toward that. Animals are creatures that don’t use enough mana to produce a mana crystal, by the way.

A mana crystal is a condensed form of mana. The more mana a being has, the more crystals that will form inside their bodies. Mana crystals can be used as a source of energy, which is their main usage once harvested from monsters and the like. A source of energy I’m quite interested in, as it were.

An example would be using a mana crystal for enchanting or sigil making. Sigils, by the way, are complex symbols that create an effect when activated with mana. Kind of like runes, but much more complex.

[User has consumed a monster part. User has gained 0.05 EXP.]

Huh, eating that limb was quick, but it gave less EXP than last time. Either because the source is already been dead for too long, or it is naturally restricted to keep people from getting too much EXP. Probably both, but I cannot be sure at the moment.

No matter. The next piece is coming up soon. And I really want to see if I can break down that mana crystal… Yeah, I’ll have to test that out later. According to my ‘Common Knowledge’, living beings aren’t supposed to consume mana crystals directly. Bad things can happen. But I’m not a living person, so things should be okay.

I hope.

In any case, there is also a second type of crystal that can be found. Prana Cores. Technically they’re just the same as mana crystals, but have taken on a truly spherical shape due to the refinement of prana. Don’t ask me how that works, cause I have no idea. They work just the same as with regular mana crystals though, at least as far as I can tell.

I doubt any of my dead goblinoids have a prana core though. They’re too primitive to cultivate that way. Most monsters are the same, according to what I now know. They use mana instinctively. Only higher class monsters, like the various species of Orc Warriors, can use primitive ways to cultivate prana.

Still, it lays all of that information out neatly. Already I have to say that my purchase of the Common Knowledge boost really payed off. And I can help the Lt. avoid pitfalls whenever she wakes up. Being useful will no doubt let me avoid being shot. Heh.

Still, good things have to come to an end, and I have to go back to the slog of it all. To that end I have one of my rover drones digging up an area not far from my cave to turn into farmland. The tools I made for it are working just fine, but programming how to actually farm is more than a little annoying at this point. The rover drone was not made to do such work.

My other rover drone is in charge of disassembling the bodies. I’d originally thought about burning them, but after I learned I could gain EXP from ‘eating’ them, why let it all go to waste? It’s not like I have to taste it. And collecting the mana crystals will come in handy.

My digger drone on the other hand I set to a different task. Moving my attention to the sleeping woman in my cave, I just know that this won’t work. For one thing, I simply don’t feel secure with her sleeping so nearby. For another, I know that the woman will want a space for herself. Possible with a bathroom and a real bed.

So I have my digger drone in the process of adding a second room to my cave. Actually, it’s expanding a room it already dug out to get to a copper ore deposit. At the same time I’m putting the carbon and silicate to good use by spinning out thread. Interesting note there, by the way. Plastics, like polyester, which are used as a fabric, are mostly carbon. Processed usually from crude oil, but I can make a facsimile just as easy with the raw ingredients.

And I have a whole bunch. Even though this world is probably eight tenths dead, pure rock by itself is made up of a whole lot of silicate with carbon added to the mix. Even asteroids, which have never seen a living organism in their entire existence, are made up of silicate and carbon. Thus it is very much abundant.

Weaving however is proving to be an interesting concept. I don’t have any templates for doing so in my memory, so instead I’m using a copy of the Lt.’s uniform weaving pattern to do it. The weave itself is very tight and thus impossible to produce by hand anyway. But it has excellent thermal properties, which are needed on this generally cold world.

I may even make her a couple of spare uniforms later, once I get the technique down. Or rather I write a program to do it. Ugh. More bloody coding. The math, the math! Making my head hurt just thinking about it.

Still, biological needs have been something I haven’t thought about in a long while now. The need to eat and water, as well as waste disposal. How the hell did I ever survive as a human with so many things required? Shit. Just really… amusing to think about.

More depressing is the lack of sexual desire. I mean, really. I was an active guy as a human. I enjoyed sex, but here I am able to peek at a woman without her even noticing and I don’t even feel a wiggle. Totally depressing. I’m not even sure if its because of the lack of required parts or because I’m slowly drifting away from biological desires.

Like I said, totally depressing.

Still, it’ll take a little while before my impromptu bedding is complete. Creating a bunk for it on the other hand is really simple. Just a simple hollow steel frame. If I had more rubber I could make an air mattress to go with it, but for the moment this is what I have to work with.

At the same time I have two options when it comes to the water problem. I’ll eventually need water for irrigation as well, so that’s been bumped up on my to-do list. The first option is the small creek flowing through the end of the valley. Sadly it is right at the far end of my current range.

The second is the underground river I picked up on my sensors when I scanned the mountain the other day. That one seems more optimum, if only because it is nearby. It is also totally clean, lacking any sort of contamination from outside sources. I haven’t been able to find where it comes from or where it ends though.

Another thing about the underground river is the fish. Or I think they’re fish. Palm-sized lifeforms that are living within the water. I haven’t bothered to get a detailed image of one of them yet, but I’m not too worried. With what I know now, I know they aren’t monsters, at least.

They don’t give off enough of that mana radiation to be monsters. They may be weird and inedible, but they shouldn’t be dangerous even to my squishy human companion. Heh. Squishy… Yeah, okay, I’m in a morbid mood right now, deal with it.

…

A couple of hours later and many things have been done. For one, the room is complete, and so is the bed. Getting it in there and assembled required both of my rover drones for a little while. Then the second thing is the completion of the farm plot.

It’s a simple area thus far, but the rocks have been removed and the soil turned over after being liberally coated in fertilizer. Fertilizer created from the dead bodies, but hey pickers can’t be choosers. And I have almost no use of complex organic compounds. Most of it is just carbon and nitrogen and other trace elements anyway. Totally not efficient enough for me break down into their atomic parts.

Planting the tubers therefore is easy. Just stick them in the muck and make sure they’re covered up. The estimated growing rate is about a month, but I have a secret weapon. Actually two. Hehe.

The first is the blood of those goblinoids. I have no use for it, and no doubt it’ll shortly start to stick to high heaven. Besides being rich in nutrients, the blood also contains a relatively high level of mana in it. Which will boost the speed in which the tubers grow. It may also cause an interesting mutation or two, although that is much more likely with the second thing.

The second one is the mana crystals. Ground into a fine powder, they’ll release their stored mana slowly into the surroundings. A whole mana crystal leaks very, very slowly, which is why it is usable over the long-term as a power source. Cracked or ground up, it releases it more quickly. Which in turn does the same as the blood.

I plan on using both, to which end I’m already working on constructing a giant sealed vat to act as a tank. Basically just thin metal sheets of quasi-stainless steel welded together. I didn’t even have to make the welder, by the way. That’s already an attachment for the rover drones. Haha.

And sadly it isn’t true stainless steel, given my lack of chromium and other metals. Still, I’ve coated inside of it in a carbon nano-weave, conveniently created due to my testing of weaving techniques while all of this was going on. It should be waterproof enough to keep rust and the like from developing while there’s blood in the tank.

Just got to keep a nosey people out of it. But hey, it isn’t like the blood was going to do anything else, and I’d really hate to be wasteful at this point in time. Everything has its use, no matter my own personal aversion to watching the bloodletting process. Or the idea of it. I’m definitely not going to watch.

In any case, my new companion is already waking up. Her heartbeat just jumped through the roof for a moment, but I’m not going to say anything as she fumbles around. That’d be rude.

“Careful there, hard stone is usually not very nice to elbows and knees.” Okay, so I do make a comment, if only to remind her not to hurt herself. Thankfully the floor is perfectly level and flat, so she isn’t going to bump into anything that’ll bump back.

“Ah, sorry.” The woman sounds like she’s still half asleep, but sitting up now she’s looking around. Or as looking around as she can, given it’s actually dark outside. The only light is coming from my body, mainly from the open panel in the front of a monitor and holographic keyboard.

I never did get around to closing that thing. Ugh. Okay, so maybe I missed the detailed requirements of being able to see with human eyes.

“Uh… sorry as well. I forgot you can’t see in the dark.” I say, sounding a little bit miffed at myself no doubt. “I was never good at remembering the time when I was alive, much less now. I can make up some LED lights real quick.”

Yep, totally awkward there, and my voice shows it. Thankfully I can see her smile, even if she can’t see much of anything at the moment. Now I just need a drone to grab me some stuff real quick…

“It’s alright. It was great being able to sleep without keeping one eye open. Or a hand on my gun…” The Lt. finally says, shaking her head. Still, I get what she’s meaning.

“Yeah, until I got out of the valley, I was constantly looking over my shoulder. Figuratively, at least.” I say, with plenty of aplomb. Which does draw a short laugh from the woman.

“I still can’t imagine. Alive one moment then waking up totally not? Sounds like a bad story to me. Then again nothing has been right since we got to this world…” Oh no, there comes the sobs. Please don’t.

“Ahem… You make it sound like I’ve become a vampire or something. Sadly those monsters are much less good looking than I am.” Yep, total topic changer. But I do have a point. After spending that glorious EXP, my physical condition has improved quite a bit.

Up to the nearest full point, in fact. The same with the drone I upgraded yesterday, by the way. Sadly it didn’t fill my HP up all the way. Going to have to work on that sooner or later.

“Ohh… Sounds like there’s still an ego in that CPU of yours if you ask me. In any case, you deal with the lights, I need to use the little girls room.” She finally says after the sniffles have stopped. At least it worked in shutting off the waterworks, for now.

“Yeah, just follow the drone.” I tell her, sending my hover scout drone flying toward her. It has a small headlight which she can follow out of the cave.

“Be careful of the bodies though.” I call out to her as she moves to the exit. The outside is kind of a mess, which I’ve been working on cleaning up one body at a time.

“Ugh, the smell is horrible!” She calls back to me. I don’t have any way to fix that though, so I promptly ignore it. Perks of not having a nose!

Still, that done I let out a breath of relief and actually take a look around me. The floor of my cave is littered with tools and pails and crap. Not to mention bloodstains. My previously neatly arranged little blocks of resources are also tossed about. Shit, I really need to clean up.

More than that, there’s also a powerline leading outside, and several openings in the walls where my digger drone has been busy. The whole place itself is just getting too small. And I’m definitely going to need more space to build things in. Not to mention storage.

So far I’ve been rather nit-picky with the resources I’ve dug out, but several tons of material can only be compressed to so little a space. At least without spatial warping technology. I do have some of those schematics, but it will take a long long time to get that far up the tech tree, as it were.

On the other hand the sole bedroom in the place is empty except for a bed. And soon a light! But that’s beside the point. Building a shower is going to be a hassle. Ugh.

I already have my digger drone working on reaching that underground river. I’m aiming to a spot above the waterline, given the cave formed by the river is quite big and shows signs of periodic flooding. Don’t want to get my drones washed away!

That would require me to make a water pump and tubing. And laying down waterlines is going to be a hassle. My digger drone can’t dig out spaces that small.

In fact, neither of the excavator drone designs I have will let me dig out small spaces. Medium and large is it. So I’m going to have to make something personally. Hmmm.

Perhaps worms on a leash? Hmhmmm. That’s an interesting idea. Yeah, let me save that so I can get back to it. I don’t want to be sidetracked as my guest comes back. She’s even holding her nose!

“Okay, that’s taken care of.” She says as she finally gets away from the stench. “Now then, there isn’t anything I can do about your ‘condition’. And I’m stuck trusting you in any case. That said, just call me Arlae and I’ll call you Al.”

“Aye aye, Lt.” I cannot help but say with a laugh, even as my hover drone zips over to pull the freshly minted LED light of my guts. I’ve already turned it on, so it flares into nice white light.

About six inches long and two inches wide, the LED light strip is a marvel of lighting technology. With a battery holding 5pu and a lifespan of some 5000 hours, it’s efficiency is even higher than mine. Wifi enabled and rechargeable as well!

Also, I’ve noticed, tied in with my Energy Domain. Which I have been using sparingly all this while. Good to know though, given that I’m making a solid dozen of the lights.

“Oh, thank god.” Arlae doesn’t seem to remember my joke as the light comes on, lighting up my chamber. In the light it no doubt looks even worse than what it does in my sensors though.

“Okay, Arlae. I already have a room carved out for you, with a real bed. Getting plumbing in this place is going to take a while though, so I’m not going to be able to help when it comes to taking a bath. That said I’m already working on weaving you a couple changes of clothing.”

Yep, just let me skip right over the human reaction to having light there. I have my scout drone stick the thing on the ceiling. The glue is made of biological waste from the bodies I’ve been getting rid of slowly but surely. Works like a charm even on rock. Hell, it’d probably even stick to me, but I’m not going that far.

“Heh. I never even thought to worry about clothing, but I guess it would be more comfortable than this dirty rag.” Yep, it seems she gets me, at least on that point. Although that thoughtful look on her face gives me a sense of foreboding for some reason.

“Never thought an engineer would take up weaving as a hobby though.”

Oh no she just didn’t! Damn it all!

Shit, my drone bay doors start to flap in annoyance, producing a clanging sound. They haven’t since I moved in here. But it seems to be the response Arlae wanted, cause she bursts out laughing. Fucking damnit.

“Go ahead, laugh it up while you still can.” Yep, I cannot keep the grievance out of my voice at all. An engineer, taking up weaving as a hobby! Shit. If that was said back on the Clarke, I’d have never heard the end of it!

“Sorry, sorry! I just couldn’t help it. Really…” Yep, it seems being all stress free has really loosened her up. I just really want to give her a stink eye. Or a middle finger…

“Bah! Whatever. You’ll have to go find a way to start a fire if you want to eat though.” Hah! That’ll teach her.

Or not. She had me use the welding tool on one of my rover drones to start a fire for her. And a metal grill to cook on. And bloody oil, made from more of that biological waste. And salt! Shit.

“Ugh. I’m going to have to stock up on cooking supplies and salt for you now…” I cannot help but mumble out loud, showing off some of my frustration. I haven’t thought about salt since I got here. Nor any other spices for that matter.

The oil on the other hand is easy enough. Even I need some grease and oiling in my mechanical parts, so I have several different schematics to choose from there. It’s all really simple, and having biological materials to make it from is even easier. Cooking oil comes from amino acids though, which is a bit different but similar to my industrial oils.

Same source but different results. In any case Arlae gets right to cooking, and a casual scan of her body shows that she is malnourished right now. Probably hasn’t eaten well in days.

“Damn, these tubers are just as bland as potatoes…” She cannot help but say after biting into one of them. And yep, I already figured they were. Thankfully I don’t to eat them myself.

“I can try to make something like butter, but you really don’t want to know where it comes from.” I end up telling her, which causes her to spit the potato-tuber out. Going to have to either learn its name or make up one for it. I’m not even phased by the glare she shoots my way.

“That said, I’ve already started a small farm plot for the tubers. You have enough to eat for the next three weeks, and by then the first crop should be done.” I tell her then, drawing the topic back to something more palatable. “Once I get a biology lab up and running, I can try to make them taste better. I’m not a geneticist, but I do have all the software for analysis and genetic decoding.”

“Yeah, that might be required in the long run. And I’m going to need more than tubers to eat though.” It doesn’t stop her from talking with her mouth full however.

“Noted. Sadly the options are quite scarce here. This world is apparently on the ‘dead’ side, as far as this universe goes. The basic ecosystem here has maybe two or three more vegetable food stuffs, some limited tree-like plants, grass, and monstres. Oh, and some fish-like thing in the underground river I’m digging towards now.” Yep, I can’t really offer a whole lot of options, and I tell her as such.

“This world? How do you know that?” Oh, she picked up on that quite quickly. Good.

“I spent my EXP while you were sleeping. I’ll have to walk you through that.” I tell her, not even bothering to hide the amusement in my voice. I’d be grinning right now if I could. Heh heh.