Chapter 9

After I was done taking a shower I checked the progress of my swarm.

Time: 1,623

Resource points: 162,904,855

Nano Cores: 522

Nano Drones: 349,287

Nano Fabricators: 522

Nano Factories: 1

Purchase Swarm Mental Connection (100,000,000,000 Resource Points Required)

I was still less than one percent of the way to purchasing the mental connection upgrade. Still I had five times as many resources as when I had fallen asleep. Faye was right that it was just a matter of time before I was able to purchase the mental connection.

Picking up the core factory I decided to go find Faye. I was a bit surprised when I found her waiting for me. I had honestly been expecting that it would take her a while to get ready. In my experience it often took women longer to get ready than men. It kind of made me feel bad that I hadn’t hurried to get ready myself.

“Let me carry that for you my lord.” Faye said, reaching for the core factory.

“It’s not that heavy. I’ll carry it.” I said to her.

Faye frowned and I realized she thought I wasn’t letting her carry the core factory because I didn’t trust her. “My parents would have a fit if I made a girl carry something instead of carrying it myself.” I said slightly chagrined since I already knew what she was going to say.

“I’m one of your servants. It’s my job to do things like carry stuff for you.” Faye said with a shake of her head.

“You’re my mistress, not my servant. I’ll carry it until we find another servant that I can order to carry it.” I said in what I hoped was a firm tone of voice.

“If we ever go shopping are you going to carry my shopping bags also?” Faye said. Luckily she sounded frustrated with me rather than angry.

I grinned and acted like I was thinking about my answer for a moment. “I think it would be easier to just order a few servants to come with us to carry things. That or have whatever you purchase delivered. But if you want me to carry your bags I’d be happy to.” I said teasing her.

Faye just shook her head in aggravation. I couldn’t help but think she was cute when angry with me. “Fine, you can carry your own core factory as long as you hand it over to the first servant we run into.” She said compromising.

“First male servant.” I said with an apologetic shrug. Faye rolled her eyes but nodded. I knew that my insistence wasn’t exactly reasonable. It was the way I was raised by my parents though. Some may think it was a bit sexist but it wasn’t like I was going to change after multiple decades. Besides I hadn’t been exaggerating about how my parents would react.

Luckily there were a handful of servants sitting on the benches in the corridor. As I walked out of the suite they all stood up. Clearly they were waiting on me. Which explained what the benches were for. All of them were dressed in the familiar grey robes that I had gotten used to seeing everyone dressed in. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was some type of uniform.

Before Faye could say anything I passed the core factory over to the closest male servant. “If possible I’d like to meet with the assembly master.” I said to him.

“Of course my lord. Please follow me.” The servant holding the core factory said.

Around half the other servants followed us. The rest stayed in the corridor. I had no idea how they decided who followed and who stayed. It didn’t really matter to me though.

A few minutes later we arrived at the office. The assembly master was inside sitting at a desk covered in stacks of odd looking papers. It took me a moment to realize the reason I thought it was odd looking. There wasn’t any standard paper size and the color wasn’t quite the bleached white that I was familiar with.

When the assembly master saw me he stood up and walked around the desk. “How is the test going my lord?” He asked, glancing at the core factory that the servant was carrying.

“Go ahead and take a look.” I gestured to the core factory.

As the assembly master looked at the screen he nodded with a happy smile. “You have made a great deal of progress. At this point it’s not a question of whether you will pass the test. It’s just a matter of time. Take a seat.” He gestured to a couple of chairs in front of the desk before sitting back down.

Sitting down I noticed that Faye and the other servants remained standing. She noticed my look and then gave me a slight shake of her head. Glancing at the assembly master I realized that for appearance’s sake it was probably better if she remained standing with the rest of the servants.

“I finished reviewing your file last night.” The assembly master said. “I must admit the world you come from is fascinating. They have achieved things that many of us had thought impossible without magic. However, it puts us in a difficult situation.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling a bit concerned. I no longer had any doubts that this was real life and not a game. Now that I knew just how important and powerful swarm knights were I was concerned about losing my chance to become one.

“Usually new swarm knights are assigned to whichever baron rules over their world. Earth hasn’t been assigned to a Baron. Which means we are trying to figure out where to assign you after you create your mental connection.” He explained.

“Why not just assign me to Earth? I assume eventually you will be assigning a Baron to the planet?” I asked.

The assembly master grimaced. “Unfortunately the planet is under interdiction right now. It’s rare for planets to lose integration. Although usually a Duke or Count can fix the problem. If they can’t then a Swarm King may be called in to reinitialize the entire planetary swarm. Even then it usually only takes a couple days. There have been a few cases where the swarm lords in charge of the planet neglected their duty, or even purposely caused the planet to lose integration. But even then I couldn’t find any planets that lost integration for more than a couple decades. None of them came close to approaching the length Earth has spent unintegrated.”

I nodded. “Like I said yesterday we have records of history for the last few thousand years, but I’ve never heard about any swarm knights or lords. What’s the problem though? Can’t you just reintegrate Earth like those other planets?”

The assembly master shook his head. “It’s theorized that trying to reintegrate the planet right now would kill most of the population. The population is higher than the average world and none of them are trained mages. In addition a number of banned weapons have been created on the planet. Which is why the planet is under interdiction.”

“Any estimate on when Earth will be integrated?” I couldn’t help but ask. Hopefully it won't be too long. Otherwise my family and friends were going to get worried about me disappearing.

“The current estimate is that it will take a few years to educate the population. The Koravar VR helmets and Ravarok game are actually the first step in that process. After that a team of swarm knights and lords will need to be sent to the planet. It’s going to take tens of thousands of knights just to keep the population from starving during the first few days. It’s going to take even more to secure and destroy all the weapons and knowledge of how to create them. But at least they aren’t still talking about purging the population.” He explained.

My eyes widened at that last part. “Purging the population? Why?” I said slightly shocked that something like that would even be proposed by anyone.

The assembly master hesitated for a few moments before answering. “Multiple reasons. The swarm doesn’t have many laws, but the penalty for violating them is death. Most of them involve non-swarm weapons. Especially nuclear and biological weapons. Just knowing how to create either of those will get you killed.”

“That seems a bit extreme.” I said.

“Not if you understand the reason why. Swarm lords are protected from nearly any danger by their swarms. Besides for a higher talented swarm lord there are only a few exceptions. For instance anything that can shred matter at an atomic level, like a nuke, can damage the swarm. Which means it can hurt or kill a swarm lord.” He said.

“So if someone dropped a nuke on a swarm lord they would probably die?” I said for clarification.

The assembly master nodded. “Exactly. And your planet has thousands of nukes. Biological weapons are banned for the opposite reason. The swarm offers complete protection from any chemical or biological weapon. But biological weapons represent a serious threat to the general population. Especially due to the portal network. They were banned after a deadly disease escaped containment from a lab and killed most of the population in a few hundred galaxies.”

I couldn’t even imagine how many people must have lived in hundreds of galaxies. It certainly helped me understand why purging earth had been considered. In fact it would have been foolish not to consider such drastic measures.