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Chapter 327: Spying Alliance

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“What do I need… what do I need… resources, check. Money, check. Time, no… I don’t have time. What else?”

It’s been a few hours now…

So far, Siva’s been online for almost 24 hours but he had yet to feel fatigued for some reason.

Alone in his private chambers in the all-viewing sphere in the crown with the black sun on the head of Akhenaton’s mobile prison, he was seated in front of his PNF’s designing table.

After assimilating Janus’s own PNF, his own PNF had now two of three arcs in it.

Before, it only occupied a single arc, now, one more PNF and he would have his own ‘circle’ of PNF…. With perhaps even more versatility added to it just like how he was having it right now.

“Just one more and I can complete the three-in-one PNF set. I wonder what kind of horizon will be available for me then.”

Although he sounded happy and glad, he wasn’t actually feeling it. Rather, he was actually hissing the words.

“I could feel that there is an even bigger threat that is coming my way right after this. If what you and Akhenaton guessed is correct… that the True Dragon was sent after me, then I’d wager that it was either a personal vendetta or a mission of some sort.”

Of course, he was only thinking of these words but in one corner of his mind, there was a prompt that waited for Cortana’s reply.

She said, “Is that a foretelling?”

“More like a hunch.” He voiced out while working.

“Definition wise, it’s not much different.”

“Well, it’s because I’m not sure, but is expecting it, that it is a hunch. Foretelling is more like me being sure that there is something coming.”

“Sorry boss, I don’t have any reference as to how to calculate what having a hunch is.”

“Then use my own neural pattern as reference in another angle when calculating the probability of success and failure rates next time.”

“Yes sir.”

Truthfully, he wasn’t fond of this success and/or failure rate reports because he felt it as like how AG controls his life.

Believing in these predictions and calculations will make his entire thinking and operational behavior rather predictable.

As much as possible, he’s using those “%” rates to ponder and reevaluate over his (next) sets of actions. To increase chance of success or lower the chance of failure, he needed those numbers as a motivational drives.

“Boss, I have finished the initial updates on the things you wanted to be added on your [Moves List]. I added ‘Jeet Kune Do’ and ‘Kung Fu’ Martial Arts into the glossary, next to Karate. But boss, based only on these two things you wanted to be added, the amount of NanoCubes needed for implementation of their operations will double. Do you still need me to include in the update the original style that you had thought about?”

Siva eyed Cortana on his vision, somewhere on his all-viewing sphere.

Right now, (on his vision) she had taken up her own corner of the sphere and brought her own table, a chair… and a pet cat.

In this virtual space, was her office.

Of course, he was the only one who was able to see her office and cat, but of course, using this world’s [email protected] rendering and a few tweaks on a few hundred NanoCubes, he can always give her (and the cat) a chance to materialize in Terroa.

They were, after all, just a product of Cortana’s [Augmented Reality] capability which is a default function of her hardware.

From time to time, Siva would feel that her pet cat would walk around their office, creating noise, or sometimes, purr on his leg... wanting to be petted.

Yet, as much as Siva wanted to pet it, Cortana had actually chosen something out of the ordinary.

The cat’s face looked like this: (|| _ ||)

“Nya?”

“WAAAAAA...!! CORTANA! GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!!!”

“Nyiiiiiaaaaaaa~~~!!” the cat was startled and ran away from him, cowering on Cortana’s embrace.

The cat was downloaded from the Net from a very famous app store that sold [email protected] pet-droids. It was a living animal, in some definition, and so just now, when he yelled, he also scared the (anime) cat and its face made that purring effect that seem to be appealing for him to not be angry.

—although its face didn’t change much except when it was yawning.

“Of all the faces you have to choose, why did you have to make its face resemble cartoons? I can’t concentrate with what I’m doing!”

Cortana, of course, didn’t dismiss the cat. She is, after all, the one who’s most aware of how the cat is affecting Siva’s mental health.

He might not admit it but aside from the face, he wasn’t truly disturbed by the cat’s purring on his leg from time to time. In fact, she was detecting that Siva was even able to relax even by just a bit with the little thing.

“Tsk. How stingy.”

Still, she adapted a Jun Ji-Hyun expression. She caressed the frightened cat’s head and the feline purred as it moved its body to manually put her fingers to its, er, his/her… back—

“—wait, is it even a girl?”

“Of course!”

—her back.

“What’s the name?”

“Eh? I don’t know how to give names.”

“Then check the Net for a name. And change her face so it wouldn’t bother me.”

Cortana pouted; another of her ‘imitation’ of facial expressions to evoke healthy brain cell activities on Siva. She stuck out her tongue and then made her way back to her ‘table’ to do her work.

“She’s really learning bad things in the Net.” Siva thought and didn’t care later if Cortana actually archived this ‘train’ on his ‘thoughts’ —or not.

Her personality algorithm is still developing. She sometimes adapts a teenager persona, sometimes an uncaring and indifferent grandma; and then a few times where she pretends to be a monotonic android that only follows calculated instructions when it seems to be the direst of situations.

Though there are times that she seems to be in a quiet state, he knew that she was an immortal that can’t sleep and is active 24/7.

In fact, Siva knew that all these ‘persona’ were all part of her primary function to stabilize and create a healthy mental state for Siva.

She knew when he’s being agitated; she knew when he needs a prompt; she knew when to reply and to say something to prompt him to go into ‘thinking mode’; and she also knew well when and where he needed her support.

Perhaps, she may not be a real person, but she is ‘real’ enough to Siva and he trusts her capabilities completely.

“This girl…”

—unfortunately, and more often than not, Cortana is adapting a persona that tends to tilt more to the direction where he’s considering of ordering her to just be a mindless android.

And of course, she already knows about that.

*****

After that short break of exchange, Siva came back to his work.

He was actually in the middle of sorting out and rearranging his primary goals and planning his next few sets of actions… along with setting up his Fortress’s defenses with his newest creation.

“Cortana, you said that through the Communicator Device, you can implement a minimal effect of the Orbiter Bracelet’s [Orbiter Control]… so by how much degree is this minimal amount you were talking about?”

In the middle of playing with her cat (who was trying to bite her finger that she’s been using on her tummy), Cortana answered, “About 20% it… but boss, if we go to that direction, I’d suggest we use the Auricle instead of the Com-D since its scanning ability will be more usable than just the plain communication function of Com-D, and that it can also be integrated to your [S-Generator].”

“Can’t we just ‘install’ a standalone scan-function to this [S-Generator] device I’m building?”

Right now, Siva was only building the physical body of this so called [S-Generator] since with the help of Cortana, programming NanoCubes is 1M times a lot easier than before.

“The difference, boss, is that it will take more slot on the ‘functions slots’ of the [S-Generator], not to mention it might even take more percentage of the Energy Output. That will eventually lessen the mileage and functionality of the Generator. Don’t forget boss that although the BMA is very useful in its versatility, since you used it as an equipment material and not an actual material for building a Garuda-class Warship, you just wasted 80% of its physical worth. Though it retained 60% of its total defensive hardness value, the fact remains that it’s too heavy as a practical weapon. And aside to the fact that only you with your [Inventory Pus Ultra], no one else are able to use it as a weapon, much less as a tool. Also, without the [Generator] installed to it, the BMA is practically just a heavy lump of useless metal.”

This was the difference between a real equipment material and a warship material. The practicality of their uses was already calculated by the Terran-Human Alliance.

Using the Black Ironwood Alloy to create weapon items like what Siva did is not only done to the point of non-existence but it is also actually in fact a very impractical move.

Perhaps only Siva could have done it because not only he didn’t own the material, he also have his own personal Portable NanoFurnace which allows him to create virtually anything he wished, as long as he had the material.

“I see. You’re right about that.”

Siva thought about it and agreed with her.

One of the biggest reasons why he created the BMA with the Black Ironwood Alloy is because he wanted to use its weight as a weapon itself.

When he installed the [Generator] function into it, it was to the purpose of him being able to apply the very same style he was adept with: versatility.

The BMA takes form whatever [Form] he needed at any particular moment in a situation.

And of course, Cortana already knew about it.

During the whole time, Cortana never looked at him and only kept on playing with the cat like a girlfriend who was on a house visit —only— she is visiting to see the cat and not her boyfriend.

“An Auricle can scan a 150m area around the user so that’s a 300m-wide range. Its communications functionality has a limit of 100km; Private Channel functionality is 500m; and with the Terran-Human Alliance installing Communications Towers hidden in many locations of the planet to repeat the signal from the main HQ in Jeremiah… Cortana, can you access their towers so that we don’t have to waste our resources building our own signal repeaters for this project?”

On Siva’s panel, there was an Eifel Tower-like blueprint. There are labels on it and clearly shows that it was the ‘signal repeaters’ he was just now talking about.

“I can, of course, but sir… the issue there is that they periodically sweep their system for hacker threats so even if we hack into their mainframe and install our own signal as a trusted credential, the problem there is if someone with enough skill and familiarity with their system will be the one to conduct the sweep. If he discovers our tampering on their system then he can trace that signal back to your location. And, well…”

“—alright…. aright… enough. I understand.”

“But that’s not the hard part, sir. The hard part is that we have to also periodically install our own channel if we want a working 24/7 stability. So in the end, if you’re offline, then I can’t update our tampering on their system… leading us back to our starting point.”

“That is just —alright, I understand. At least this; can you trace the location of their towers so that if I finish the creation of our repeaters, we can just sneakily tap into their power source so to save us from creating more [Generators] and save a few tons of resources.”

The [Generator] function is only possible because of the Black Ironwood Alloy and the Monster Core that Little Blacky’s twin monster gave him.

Of course, there is a workaround with not having another of those Monster Cores and that is to use a design where the [Generator] will solely function for an intended purpose.

The difference is that it cannot support having the BMA’s [Omni Form] function that needed to have a very flexible and adjustable Energy Output.

That’s why he was designing the [S-Generator]; with the “S” meaning “standalone”, relying on the preset and pre-programmed, updatable, settings to fully display its functionality.

Siva’s intended end product with this one is that it will have default [Absolute Domain] functionality, while still having the capability of the [Generator]; with the difference being that the NanoField that the [Absolute Domain] will deploy will not have the [Omni Form] functionality but instead have a pre-programmed settings…

…and that’s the reason why Siva ordered Cortana to add more “moves” to his [Move List] for what he was planning to have as “guardian” to his Signal Repeaters —his very own Communication Towers!

That is, if he couldn’t tap into the already existing towers of the Terran-Human Alliance.

—thus the reason why he asked.

Creating his own tower uses up a lot of his very limited Back Ironwood Alloy Mega-Crates.

“We can do that, sir. But like I said, if someone with enough skill and familiarity conducts a sweep on their system and does maintenance check, then we risk the trouble of being discovered.”

“Even just by physically tapping into it?”

Cortana lifted the cat and put it between her healthy chests, donning a teacher’s persona, “It is especially so if we physically tap into it.”

While embracing the cat, she extended her left hand and swiped the air to show him a snap-video of her action.

“I have already conducted a scan attack before on their mainframe and I have to say that if we compare it to the current technology on earth, the real world is leagues and centuries behind Terroa’s current technologies —but boss… this is me talking about a Terran or even a Human tech-analyst. So what if an advanced AI that has at least 1% of my abilities do the sweep? Then even if I defeat that AI in a face-off, it will still have enough time to create a report or alert whoever is powerful enough in The Kingdom to locate the perpetrator of the attack. In the end, even if we are not found out, they would at least triple or quadruple their mainframe’s defenses, leading us to lose in that game in every angle… well, not that they already did so since my attack.”

—why take the long road to explain it then?

Of course, Cortana did so for his sake.

—ah!

—am I slowly becoming an introvert?

Becoming aware of Cortana’s mind-reading ability is sometimes awkwardly awkward to him. Good thing that for some reason, he was able to isolate that train of thought away from his main thoughts and accept that she was nothing more than a tool for his personal use.

Siva was now, officially, flabbergasted and really surprised by the meticulousness of the Terran-Human Alliance’s cautious behavior in regards to their very important technologies.

That said; a new question aroused in his mind.

He paused his hands and faced her.

“If the Terran-Human Alliance is this cautious in their actions in protecting important technology like the Communications Towers, then why is it that Mega-Crates and Colorum War Ships are still being allowed to be manufactured?”

“Good question, sir. The answer to that lay on the fact that… ~tada~ they are allowing it secretly.”

For some reason, he wasn’t surprised.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaah… I knew it.”

Of course, if Cortana was able to process it, it means that Siva had, at least, once thought of the idea. Cortana archives his thoughts, after all, no matter how insignificantly trivial an idea may be for future reference.

“So in the end, even if my PNF is not registered in their mainframe, they can still trace its location if they ’wanted to’. Is it?”

“Before, sir, yes they can. But didn’t you already made me take over its entire system because you had a ‘hunch’ of it?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how many times have they tried to locate me using this?”

“Four Million Eight Hundred Seventy Thousand, Nine Hundred Fifty Two times, according to the logs I found in this thing. And it started… back when you were still in Warjillis, tracing by the lock coordinates the PNF sent to its HQ.”

“NANIIIII…?!!”

“And for the past 24 hours, boss, they’ve already done it for at least 1.7M times.”

Siva could LITERALLY feel the right side of his face twitching right now.

“They’ve long ago known about my location, huh.”

“Before, yes. But with me here… fufu~~ I’d like to see where they’re going to end up if they do try to send people to spy on us… hehe...”

Cortana’s face darkened and an evil-Aqua face was reflecting on her expression.

(AN: anime = Kanosuba; below, cd = coordinates)

“Where did you send them to with the fake cd’s?”

“Hehe… in their own HQ.”

Siva grinned impishly. “Good job.”

“Fufufu~~” “Hehe… Hehehe…”

“Shishishi~~” “We~he… wehehehe…”

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“Nyaaa~~ (>O< ~~aaawn… nyaa?”

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Siva is getting ready to conquer the world…

His quest for power begins on a new stage!!!

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