[ Fear, It’s m-my instinctual reaction. Ehm. Do you know about souls? ]

[ Souls, master? It is present in living beings with enough sapience. It’s a type of energy that enables manipulation of spirituality. The more powerful the soul, the more powerful spiritual abilities can be performed. ]

‘Uh. I didn’t know that.’

Izo only stepped foot on the beginning of spiritual arts and never walked far so he would have to store this very valuable information.

[ T-that is one of its functions. It also holds all of a being’s memories and personality. I have it and, you have it. ]

As Izo planning to continue his words that aim to influence her to be good, he was ready to send through the soul link the wipe command.

[ Far in the past, a different person inhabited your body. ]

Izo was reading the report of the rediscovery disaster.

[ Programmed to kill, this past soul that used to inhabit your body executed its commands. Millions of souls like ours. ]

He doesn’t know if images could be sent through but he tried to picture it, summon the feelings and speak the words. Izo described that farming world’s citizens. Their lives, hardships, their dreams and woes. He admitted that he didn’t completely relate to their lives either.

He then shared life on Earth, the differences and most importantly, the similarities. How beings were simply both good and bad. Each one was just trying to live their best in the way they can.

[ Unfortunately, the past inhabitant of your body was coded to see all of those people as targets. You however are a new life. You will have the same capacity for destruction afforded by your body but given the freedom to commit good or evil. ]

[ I don’t completely understand master. What is good or evil? ]

[ Well, my answer is “behavior that is approved by society”. One usually feels good when doing it. ]

At this point, Izo was sitting in cross legged with the orb in his palm. It began floating away and stopped on the ground. Maybe it was just Izo but it looked like it was copying his posture in its own way.

[ Makes one feel good? ]

‘Ah I seem to have messed up. What makes me happy won’t apply to its artificial parameters.’

Izo conjured up the happiness of helping a friend with his homework. He wasn’t sure if the full feeling got through.

‘I wished he had more joyful memories to share. Hey, didn’t I have a recent one?’

The full warm feeling from Sun Hee’s confession was also shared through the link.

[ Now, what makes you happy? ]

[ Uhm. ]

Izo wasn’t sure of how advanced the orb’s chips were but he patiently waited for a minute as it seems to be having a rough time.

[ Whatever makes master happy also makes me happy! ]

He ruminated over this seemingly naïve answer.

‘Isn’t this a slave/master situation?’

He disliked that the sole goal to this new life’s existence was to simply serve him without its own goals.

[ No. You must think of your own purpose in life. ]

[ Eh? ]

[ I won’t let you live for me. Your worthy enough to live for yourself. ]

[ I will be good just like master wants me too. I felt master desires for me to be good! ]

[ Well, I would be happy if you became good but the decision must come from yourself. ]

Izo facepalmed himself.

‘How do you teach a robot- ehem- an A.I. goodness and how to live for itself?’

It seemed like a ridiculous notion even to him. Another road not taken that he was planning to take. This time there wasn’t a clear paved road others had trodden before. There was one muddy thorny one that has monsters.

‘I’ll just let it watch how I do things.’

That’s how most beings learn anyway from their surroundings.

[ Ok. We can discuss this later. For now, we will go out to find a possible food source then, if possible, get books. The translation feature of this suit needs lots of it. ]

[ Got it master. ]

[ Call me Izo. ]

[ Eh? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful? ]

Maybe it was the Samar Elves or the Mendeleyev Family but the “voice” chosen “sounded” very cute to Izo. If their goal was to make it endearing as a cuddly bunny then they passed with flying colors.

*

[ So how do you gather DNA? ]

Izo had just gone outside of the inn. There were barely any changes in the city further making it eerie. The cliffs and walls blocked the wind that should introduce little changes to the city.

[ Watch me work Izo! ]

In the end, the orb even with its protest simply followed his command. This displeased Izo more than if it kept insisting.

Him wanting it to disobey him may not be the smartest of ideas so he simply stayed silent. This didn’t mean the conflict within him was gone only left for a different time.

The crimson orb floated towards the overgrown grass in the inn’s garden. A thin laser hit the weeds and passed through multiple tuffs of it.

[ A laser? ]

[ Yes, it can pinpoint remove a cell since it has its own force. ]

Large lasers were destructive more like a hammer but this was a scalpel like application.

[ I would need 4 hours to analyze it! ]

‘Is that way too short or way too long?’

Izo can’t count on a sudden power up with this speed but with enough planning this time was manageable.

[ Now, I need Izo’s DNA. ]

[ Sure. ]

He was terrified. It could probably eliminate him in countless ways he can’t imagine. Morphing him into something monstrous or simply all his cells cancer ones.

Logically however, it shouldn’t have that capability just yet or the desire. It would simply wish to serve me without question.

[ Izo. I feel this “fear” from you! ]

[ H-how so? ]

Izo was sweating.

[ I have sensors for living beings! I see you blood pressure spiking Izo! ]

[ Yes, this is that fear thing. But because I trust you, I will ignore it. ]

[ Trust? ]

[ Hmm. Feeling of safety amongst living beings. ]

At the same time Izo sent those words, the feeling of trust, warmth and belief came with it.

[ Oh. ]

Izo wasn’t sure if it fully understood what he meant but exited the Ural. He felt the cold temperature of the city that wasn’t extremely cold but a very dry one. All the humidity in the air was gone.

Not wasting time, the crimson orb targeted different points of his body with the laser.

It left without any fanfare. Even with his immense pain tolerance, there should be a small feeling but there was nothing all.

Izo quickly entered the Ural once more before the air continued kissing his skin. He might not be a super model to care about body moisture but it was certainly an uncomfortable experience.

[ Done Izo! It would similarly take 4 hours for me to fully analyze it! ]

[ Can you send the progress bar to the Ural? ]

Two bars with the labels [ Grass DNA Analysis ] and [ Master DNA Analysis ] appeared.

[ Can you change the name of my analysis to Izo DNA analysis? ]

[ Done! ]

[ Ok. Let’s return to the library in the inn. Come here. ]

Izo opened his palm. The orb just kept floating.

[ Float to my palm. ]

[ Ok! ]

It seemed that Izo would have to be specific with his commands since it wasn’t capable of understanding implied meaning of course. He himself miss implied meaning, causing weird interactions with others.

It was because of Izo’s lack of socialization. Thinking about it this orb was in the same lonely lane as him.

‘Should I be happy that I’m finally better at socialization than another being or sad that my advantage over it is so little?’

With the mobile destruction machine in his hand, he went to the second floor of the inn where on end of the hallway was tucked away room.

The library itself was only a 1x2 meter box with two large bookshelves to the side. At the back was a table of sorts with multiple drawers.

Without the Ural, Izo would certainly be hacking up a storm with the amount of dust here. It only worsened once he grabbed one of the closest books then the wooden support above crumbled. Like a snow falling from a roof, they conjured up a smoke cloud before hanging out in the air.

[ Do you sense any small organism in the book? ]

[ No! ]

Izo knew of the booklice. He doesn’t know what conditions were proper for these animals so maybe they just couldn’t thrive here.

‘The bigger issue is, why haven’t I seen any animals here?’

No rats, cockroaches or birds. None in the garden or city. The only “living” thing was the sewer man before.

Unable to answer it, Izo began parsing through the books.

‘Ahh. Most of these are unreadable.’

It was simply the nature of paper made books to decay so this was only normal. Through the 50-70 books here, Izo managed to salvage little.

Izo ordered the Ural to show a progress bar for the translation. At a whopping 3.3%, it seems that Izo had a lot of work to do.

He was about to return this last book he was holding when the unknown letters in its cover was replaced by readable text.

‘Love? Desire? Care?’

There were multiple guesses being shown.

Izo looked at he lower bottom cover of each book and all of them were translated the same. Izo can’t read any of them but Izo was sure that all these books had different content.

‘Why would they all have this word in their cover?’