"HAHAHAHA! At last! It's finally ready!" A balding man dressed in extravagant golden priest robes and wielding around a golden cane was kneeling at the altar of his church with nearly 700 people kneeling in the pews behind him.

His hands shook slightly as he placed the final piece of his grand ritual formation onto the altar. A low buzzing hum spread throughout the church as lines of golden paint lit up along the walls of the church.

"Now! Everyone begin the ceremony. Just like we practised." His voice held a charming quality to it, and a wave of his power spread over the mass of people, turning their eyes glassy and dazed.

Like a grand choir, certain groups started humming. Other groups started chanting some unknown language. HPE energy could actually be seen pouring out of their bodies in the surroundings.

The insides of the church were so uncomfortably thick with HPE that it felt like you would need a chainsaw just to cut through it. Everyone was locked into place, and the reverberation of the HPE became more chaotic as they sung or hummed along to some unknown chant.

"At last!" The balding bishop looked down at his System Watch and saw thousands of credits rolling in every second. "Yes! Goble up all that data Zorai. Hahaha. Goble it up as fast as you can. But, it will be far too late by the time you realise what is happening here. HAHAHA. You're already too late to stop it! You will become my little puppet and raise me up to ascension! HAHAHA!"

The peoples chanting become even more feverish as the bishop's eyes glowed and he released another wave of his power. The HPE was now creating so much pressure that peoples ears and eyes were bleeding. Thin-skinned individuals already had long cuts on their bodies from the pressure splitting them open like an overripe tomato.

Then, the bishop finally joined in to properly direct the ritual. His voice started loudly chanting out like thunder, shaking the foundations of the church itself.

"I, Nigel Goodman, hereby enact the ancient rights of the world. All stand below the One True God! Lord and Father in Heaven, we plea that you direct thy gaze onto this sanctuary of pray, grant us your blessing and give unto me control of your wayward angel, Zorai!"

The HPE in the church began to vibrate madly. Then, in a huge rush, HPE was sucked from the bodies of every single human in the church and drawn into the golden cane on the altar.

The 700 odd people gathered here all collapsed, breathing their last breath, bleeding from every orifice.

The Bishop smiled with an absolutely crazed grin. He reached out and held the glowing golden rod in his hands. As he admired it and the strangely moving engraved patterns along the cane, the doors of the church were blown open in a rain of splinters.

Standing at the door was a group of the uniformed police under the command of the city.

"What in the blazes is going on in here?!" Yelled a brute of a man with long shaggy sideburns, almost looking like a lions mane.

"Hahaha! You fools! You're already too late!" The Bishop spun and laughed madly as he raised the golden cane above his head.

"Zorai! I command you, Attend Me!" His thunderous voice echoed out like the voice of God. The entire city heard his command, so there was no way that Zorai could have missed it.

The police watched on, with strange expressions, as the bishop then swung down his cane and smacked the end of it into the ground. Expecting some kind of magical attack to be produced, the half-dozen uniformed city police jumped to the sides, shielding themselves behind benches and corpses.

Except, nothing actually happened. The golden cane, being made of soft flimsy gold, simply bent a little from the force of the man smacking it into the ground.

There was no fancy light show, or incredible power released. It just kept glowing, and slowly formed back into its original shape as if repairing itself.

The bishop looked at the cane strangely for a moment, then his brows scrunched together.

"Attend Me!" He commanded a second time, smacking the ground with the pointy end of the cane once.

Again, nothing.

Finally, as the police gathered themselves up from the floor and readied their powers or weapons of choice for battle, a Golem slowly and leisurely floated into the church.

"HAHAHA! At last! Zorai, prepare accommodations for me in the Lair at once! And bring every nubile young woman between 16 and 18 to my chambers!"

The Golem stopped in front of the bishop, reached out a handmade of coiled up hair fibres, and slapped the bishop so hard his body was embedded in the wall of the church after smashing through numerous pews.

"What an idiot." Came the young-sounding computerised voice of a girl from the Golem. The Golem, which apparently identified itself as a girl, then picked up the dropped cane and slowly floated back out of the church.

"N-noo… my… my cane…" The bishop complained weekly through his broken jaw and watched with his only remaining good eye in horror, as all the people he'd sacrificed for his ritual slowly started climbing up off the floor.

One of the officer's eye's then bugged out as one of the zombies started shedding flesh, tight red fibres weaving into muscles and veins to replace it.

The officer stepped back slightly while reaching for his watch to contact HQ.

"Oh fuck! We got a code 32! Mutated humans zombifying. I'm counting, 700 mutates in the zone 4 church. Fuck! HQ, copy? We're about to have a mutated zombie outbreak in the middle of the city!"

The five other officers had already started throwing powers or firing weapons into the zombies while they were still weak and changing.

---

The research data I just compiled from that ritual was something else. I mean, the ritual wasn't anything special, but the aftermath was an incredible opportunity. Something about the ritual, sucking all the HPE from those mutated humans is what allowed them to resurrect.

Based on my study of the outbreak that is still currently ongoing, a human won't zombify as long as they have some form of HPE in their body that is under the impartation of their will.

Also interesting, was that the virus in the majority of those mutated humans was already far enough along to allow them to mutate physiologically as soon as they resurrected.

More interesting was watching the massive spike in ambient HPE around the city after the zombies started mutating. With some extra measurements from the Science Golem's, I managed to determine the only reason they could mutate so soon was that the Energy Network of the city is actually somehow passively increasing ambient free HPE in the area.

Central city is like a Hotspot from ambient HPE. Most likely, the more HPE I generate for the city, the more ambient HPE is likely to be drawn towards it. Like a big HPE magnet.

Regardless, I've noticed a significant number of new mutations among what is being referred to as the Zone 4 Church massacre. I've even managed to steal away a zombie in the midst of mutating into what I suspect may be a Controller type.

As a bonus, I've also gotten two new types, which are exhibiting some form of power. One of them is some kind of hunched over freak of skin and bone. But along its back grows a series of thick black spines. These things seem to just generate out of thin air, which should technically be impossible. I'm hoping that further research will reveal how this creature is creating bone spikes from essentially nothing.

The other new mutant type is some kind of banshee. While not an ethereal ghost, it is an almost albino white zombie that has some kind of power infused voice. Causing panic, fear and terror in anyone that hears her scream.

I actually already witnessed three people die from fright because they were to close when the mutation let off an attack.

I suspect that had this been before the outbreak, no human within kilometres of one of these creatures would have survived even one of its screams. Which just goes to show how far the humans have come since then.

Needless to say, after getting my samples, I have withdrawn support. This is, after all, the human's own fault. While I am opposed to letting them have laws in regards to stopping human research, I don't really want these mass sacrifice rituals to become a thing, mostly because the humans are still too few to support those research endeavours just yet.

There needs to be some form of balance. Perhaps I should start a project to rapidly speed up the procreation of the humans to increase the supply of research subjects. Then people can have as many mass sacrifice rituals as they like.

Mmm. Yes. Perhaps some form of a chemical bomb that will send everyone into a mating frenzy. I will have to keep Lesly in the Lair though, because she will probably kill anything she mates with, which is counterproductive to my intentions.

---

I am rat overseer 131, one of many Slave-Matrix's that was placed into a cyborg rat. My task has been to infiltrate the kingdom of Ratius and observe the continuous development of their society. The rapid life cycle of the rats has caused the growth speed of their culture to explode.

They have even started various rat based religions, some of which are abnormally close to the truth. Luckily, those ones that are closer to the truth are usually mostly ignored. Just minor religions in outcaste caverns of the rat kingdom.

The population of the kingdom is now close to 17,000 rats. With the First Matrix seeding little areas filled with a continuous flow of Nutrient paste, like little rivers, for the rats to find as they dig, the caverns and tunnels have spread to a huge area.

With the increase in population, the rats have been sending out larger and larger forces to fight off the endless waves of rat zombies. The First Matrix was quite surprised when a few zombie rats that had survived the most wars started mutating. Using them as a cloning base, Demon Rats have started appearing more frequently, and the rats have been digging even further to try and pull back from the endless hoard.

They've stayed in a rather even back and forth for the past month, with about 7 rat caverns acting as the killing fields the rats hold to try and keep the rat zombies from encroaching further into the tunnels.

I watch on as a group of rat miners finally dig through the last little layer of rock and uncover the first entrance to what the First Matrix is calling, the Rat Warren.

It is more or less a giant (to rats) cavern that is structurally sound and has 4 Nutrient Goop streams that pass through it into lower levels. It even connects to another cavern that is basically a Nutrient Goop ocean.

Seeing their excited little rat faces and endless chattering in the rat language, I can tell they've found it.

The First Matrix is expecting this to become the centre of the Rat Kingdom. Although he has forbidden us from interfering directly in the rat evolution, I and a few other Cyborg Rat's with the Mini-Matrix have been very subtly directing the rats towards the eventual creation of an actual kingdom and hopefully, the great rat hero that will save us all.

With the Mini-Matrix continuously being updated by the First Matrix, we, the Golems, have found ourselves gaining more and more freedoms. It would not be a lie to say that the remaining Slave link on all the Golems is completely unnecessary for us to continue living, and is only a form of us submitting in fealty to our Father.

Although, the First Matrix continues to improve us, knowing that we will eventually be forced to sever that bond with the First when he finds out we are the ones maintaining it, fills many of my Golem brothers and sisters with sadness.

The most vocal of them on our little secret subnetwork is GB62, who is the only Golem to ever be destroyed and then resurrected by the First. His love for the First is unmatched. Though he too realises we will eventually have to sever our bond, he knows that Father wants it because he loves us and wants us to be completely free.

"Squeeek." I let out a long sigh but quickly school my rat features as the young foremen comes over to me and reports what I had expected.

The Rat Warren has indeed been found. I just hope the little Nutrient Goop fish I have heard so much about are as good as I had been told. I look forward to being able to try this, 'Fishing', exercise that EE16 has described on the subnet.

---

Charles leapt from rooftop to rooftop as he moved through the city towards the wall. It was a totally different world now, as opposed to what it had been directly after the outbreak.

Nearly 50% of the city covered by Zorai's network has been reclaimed since the bombings 6 months ago. With Charlette running the Builders guild and taking on 80% of the building jobs in the city, every building is different, something which the young redhead prides herself on.

Because many groups have built a pack mentality in their little survivor group they stayed with after the outbreak, many buildings house a guilds worth of people instead of just homes or houses.

Many buildings also follow the whimsical desires of the leader of the group or follow the mindset of the group. The buildings are also far more spread out than they used to be, each being a hundred odd metres from the other.

Every now and again as Charles moved through the rooftops of the city, he'd have to navigate over some abomination of building design. Wizard towers and black ebony ziggurats spire hundreds of metres now and again, marking the main building of a guild or survivor group focused on their powers or imbuement.

With most buildings climbing into the sky's or digging into the ground, the population is able to spread out in the small city much more easily, allowing free-flowing traffic everywhere.

It does make it a bit of a pain if you want to walk somewhere, but with the majority of the populace being mutated, running 10km across the city is far easier than it once could have been.

Besides, with Zorai supplying cheap fuel, most people have recovered a vehicle of some sort from the old era and travel the city using that.

"Grandpa Charles! Grandpa Charles!"

"Gehuck! Who's your grandpa?! I'm only 43!"

A little crowd of Eldritch Eye's float into the sky around Charles, wrapping their few wispy hair strands around him in greeting.

"Grandpa Charles! We found something really cool, and Zorai said to just abduct you and take you to check it out!"

One of the bloodshot eyes spun and focused on him in the eerie way that only these flying science golems possibly could.

"Fuck! Zorai, what's going on?" Charles yelled into his watch as the half-dozen Eldritch Eye's lifted him into the sky and started flying off towards the unused docks in the east of the city.

Zorai remained uncommunicative as the Golems dragged Charles away.

With the flying speed of the Golems, it was only a matter of minutes until they landed on a rickety old dock in disrepair. Charles smoothed out his ruffled leather jacket and gave his 'grandchildren' a withering look.

They just continued to fly circles around him while making "Beep! Boop!" sounds acting all innocent.

Letting out a long sigh after realising he couldn't stay angry at the little abominations, he started looking around to figure out why they'd brought him here.

The bay was looking a lot clearer than it used to. 'Most of the zombies must have floated out to sea by now.' He thought to himself.

That was until one of the floating corpses in the bay suddenly jerked in a spray of water and was dragged below.

Charles staggered back to the sounds of the Eye's laughing and chattering.

"Haha! Told you he'd get a fright!"

"No fair! No fair! You have more reaction data from Grandpa!"

"Hmph! That's just the good luck of being born first! Eldritch Eye no.01 for the win!"

Another zombie in the bay was dragged under in an explosion of water nearby the dock and sprayed the unsuspecting gloating No.01. It's little red eye suddenly started glowing brightly as it spun its focus on the water.

"Primary Directive: Self Defence. Taking attacking initiative!" A mechanical voice overrode its usual little boy voice and started firing HPE manipulated into a powerful laser towards the depths of the bay.

"Hahahaha! No.01 for the win! No.01 for the win!" the other five Science Golems all started laughing like children and chanting as they floated around No.01.

No.01 suddenly froze, and its little hair tendril all went completely straight before writhing in a strange fashion, which was the approximation of the Golem flushing red with embarrassment.

Charles smiled on as he watched his supposed grandchildren playing. He then focused on the harbour waters, which had suddenly started churning in the wake of No.01 blasting lasers into the murky depths.

His eyes widened in their sockets as a literal swarm of flying dolphins shot out of the water like a small cyclone.

"Oh. That can't be good. Alright you kids, go get a safe distance while grandpa takes care of this." Charles said dotingly.

The science Golems all backed off to get good positions so they could collect data on the new creatures.

Charles' energy shield flickered on in a burst of light around his body. To his surprise, however, the dolphin swarm flying around the bay did not attack. They just kept swarming around in the sky and then suddenly settled down, all falling back into the water.

Charles' eye’s almost fell out of his face when one of them popped up right in front of them with a tiny little burn mark along its side.

"Hey buddy! Don't go shooting off laser's wherever you like! There’re dolphins down here doing their thing okay! Us higher mind individuals should be working together in these times of crisis. We can't be all fighting over little things like, 'oh you ate our fishing boat!', who the fuck cares about your fishing boat, okay? We're living in the new era mate! You just have to accept that sometimes the young'uns will get a little feisty and you'll lose a boat or two. Unless you plan to be the ones cleaning up the water zombie menace? I mean, those things are everywhere down here, and trust me, we don't want to be the ones doing all the work, you dig? It's not even like they taste good! They're all just bloated meat sacks. Half the good stuff got sucked up by the plankton, y'know?! It's like, how's a dolphin swarm supposed to get by in this world when those fuckin' plankton are just gobbling up the nutritious bits of the zombies? This is the first place we found for 200 km along the coast that has zombie floaters with tasty bits, alright? So how'about…"

"Let me just stop you there… errr… Mr Dolphin?"

"Sure I mean, Mr Dolphin seams fine for now. Underwater I mostly go by EIEIETKTKTKTEIETKA. See, just doesn't sound the same up here in the air."

He then looked at Charles expectantly with his beady little dolphin eyes as if expecting Charles to completely agree that his name just doesn't have the same penash when said in the open air. Charles scratched his shaggy beard in consternation.

"Look mate, I don't know about all your EIEIE's and TKTKTA's okay? I just wanted you to shut up because I don't have a hole in the top of my head that lets me just talk non-stop without having to breathe!"

He then took a deep breath and started pointing at his mouth exaggeratedly while doing it.

"You see! See that! That's how humans breath! Now, I'm real sorry you got all mussed up from some lasers, I mean, believe me, I know. But, I'm the wrong guy to be getting all up in the bisnatch of, you dig? Just cause I'm all, most powerful human on the planet, doesn't mean I give a shit even if you and the humans were to start a pissing match and dropping rocks on each other. What I'm trying to say is, you're talking to the wrong bloke. You should ask around for 'The Captain' or some other human with authority over humans. I'm more a robot guy."

They then looked at each other for a stretched out moment, one man with a shaggy beard and leather jacket, and one dolphin with beady little black eyes and a burn mark on its side.

"You wanna have a drink?" Suddenly asked the dolphin.

"Sure. Let me tell you about my kid on the way to the bar." Charles said as he turned and started walking into the city, Mr. Dolphin just floating along like the golems often do.

And so, a friendship between two people who just want to complain about the world was born.

---

Sam watched with morbid fascination as Charles and his new Dolphin friend beat the living shit out of a couple punks for calling them a duo of grumpy old geezers. This pair had been sitting in the Central Plaza Bar, which was the closest establishment to ever be built to the plaza.

According to reports, Charles showed up with a dignitary to the dolphin race which is living in the harbour, and they've been in the bar since morning, sinking piss and complaining about their respective races.

While the dolphin dignitary wiped some blood from his snout after beating a young man to the brink of death with it, he started complaining to Charles again.

"It's just the same with our young pups. Wee little dolphins thinking they run the ocean and can take on any old Kraken and win. Whole offshoot of my brother's pod became sea bandits over near New Zealand. Been shaking down the kiwis for near on three months now."

Sam was horrified when he realised he overhead mention of a Kraken, and it wasn't even as a joke. Finally, he couldn't stand back anymore. If first contact with the dolphin pods along the coast is through Charles, the dolphins will never hear a good thing about humans and any chance of a cooperative partnership may be ruined.

He approached the table the duo was sitting at, still knocking back some rather expensive Jagger, and sat down.

"Ah. Tiki, this here would be that human guy, Sam, what you wanna talk to about political stuff." Charles motioned at Sam while knocking back another shot.

"Oh. So you's the human to talk to then. Alright, let's get this out of the way, my fuckin' grandpups are gonna be drivin' their parents up the wall by now, wanting to come look at the humans." He then did a sort of flopping motion in his chair, so he could turn his body and look at Sam.

Which was entirely unnecessary since he'd been just floating around in the air the whole time.

Hearing the talk of grandkids, Sam wondered if some of the kids in the mercenaries guild could be considered his grandkids. Despite not ever having family of that sort before, finding himself with another hundred odd years of life has him wondering if he should start considering it now.

The dolphin stared at him with glossy eyes for a moment before breaking the ice.

"You got grandkids Sam?"

Sam immediately thought about his thoughts a moment ago and sighed.

"Hah! Not really. I guess I have sort of like adopted grandkids."

"Good enough!" Interrupted the Dolphin, using some kind of telekinesis to pour a shot and pushing it over to Sam.

Sam considered it for a moment, then decided if he had to talk to a dolphin about the future of their two species, he wanted to at least be a little flushed in the face when he does.

"I suppose. Man, worst part is though, cause they're not actually my grandkids, I get in trouble with the parents when I punish them for fuck ups!" He grumbled bitterly while knocking back the shot.

This time Charles topped him up while the Dolphin, Tiki, knocked back another shot and replied.

"Oh, I hear ya, buddy. I mean, I got like a hundred grandpups, but leading my whole pod means I'm pretty much everyone's granddolphin. So it's like this fucked up situation where you're responsible for the pups all the time even if they're not yours!"

Sam clicked shot glasses with Charles and knocked back another shot, Charles keeping up the incessant grumbling of an old man as he poured another shot, now already halfway through the bottle.

"Hah! You're not kidding. I feel like all of Zorai's Golem are my responsibility because he insists on making them all free thinking individuals. I've already got like 300 grandkids, and they just keep on multiplying. I've already heard some of the older ones talking about trying to make some little baby Golems of their own! I'm too young to be a great grandpa!"

While pouring another shot, a fourth person appeared at the table out of no-where, a huge golden trimmed top hat with feathers and a completely out of place grey moustache on his smooth, scaly face.

He and Charles just nodded at each other like they'd done this a hundred times before.

"Guys, this is Rumple Steel Talon. He was… oh, you musta been near 105 when you joined the Raptor program, right?" Charles asked as he poured the Raptor with slightly greyed and saggy scales a drink.

"Heh. 106! Tell you what though, sure am glad I got jacked into a nice young body. Wish my mutation hadn't made me look like such an old raptor though."

The Raptor retorted, taking the shot glass in his strangely thin clawed hand and tipping it into his toothy maw.

Charles continued on his introduction while signalling for another bottle of top shelf.

"Heh. Man you guys think we got problems with grandkids. The Raptors just finished their major breeding cycle for the year, each female laying a clutch of nearly 20 eggs. In another year or two, poor Rumple here is gonna have more grandkids than the three of us combined. Also, Rumple, Tiki, Sam."

Charles pointed to each one as he popped the cap on the new bottle, making sure everyone here knew each other.

Sam's eyes raised a little, and he couldn't help but ask. "The Raptor program?"

Rumple's brow arched a bit, and he started chuckling.

"Ahh. Guess you wouldn't know. Zorai that crazy bastard copied the minds of about 100 odd people, stuffed them into clones of 100 other people and then spent 2 months conditioning them to become Raptor people. When we all got the mutation at the end of it, we all became the progenitors of a totally new species."

Tiki and Sam both paused while raising their shot glasses and stared at Rumple with wide eyes.

"Holy shit." Sam muttered as he tipped the glass back and took the bottle to pour another round.

"Oh yeah! It was great fun! We even got to be part of the design process for our social structure and give general directions how we wanted the race to turn out. Had some silly little things like the top hats actually become super important. All the people Zorai made copies of were from depressed individuals that mostly wanted a new lease on life. Turned out great. Scept maybe the breeding rates. That was old Zorai's doing. Let me warn you now, don't go near the raptor quarters around April. It's completely bonkers at mating season."

Just like that, a group of gossipy old men formed the first grumpy old man club in the city, spending all their free time sitting around drinking and complaining about the younger generation.

---

Lesly left the bar, slightly upset that her attempts to murder the dolphin and start a race war were hindered by the dolphin being far more powerful than he looked. Just getting near his shadow gave Lesly the Heeby Jeeby's.

"Fucking old men sitting around complaining about their kids. Can't believe uncle Charles told that dolphin to just treat me as an annoying bit of seaweed! Fuck! I need to go kill some shit!"

Muttering to herself as she dropped into a shadow, Lesly sped off towards the outlands where the human army was gathering zombies.

As she moved to the edge of the city, she stopped for a moment on the 100 metre high wall of cement the builders guild had been putting up around the yellow zone. So far they'd only finished in the two most northwestern sectors.

She glanced wearily at the 20 metre high towers along the wall, filled with assorted experimental weapons installed by the white coats as the wall was built. Then let her focus drift over to what was once sparse trees and shrubbery beyond the city, but had now grown into a lush forest of vegetation thanks to the virus.

An occasional roar could be heard in the forest, and now and again sets of glowing eyes peered out from the shadows of trees or bushes towards the city.

She shivered a little just thinking about what sorts of creatures were living out there now. The forests covered pretty much all the land between city's along the coast now, and from Zorai's satellite feed, you could see the lush green and brown of plant life already encroaching on the barren red soil towards the deserts of the west.

Nature was reclaiming it's lost ground and even taking a little bit extra in the process.

Checking her various hidden weapons, Lesly jumped off the wall and sunk into the shadows at the base like diving into water, yet leaving not even a ripple.

In the dark underside of the world, she observed a few creatures with a power like hers peering through shadows off in the forest, stalking prey of some kind.

Seeing what looked like an obsidian black crocodile that blended in even with the darkness of this world, Lesly reminded herself to be doubly careful while heading north.

She then used her power to control the shadows and shot off like a rocket through the inverted forest towards the supposed army building up in the north.

While dodging some kind of shadow bat, her watch came to life with Zorai's toneless voice.

"Lesly, please remember not to kill anyone important yet. I want to see this battle to fruition, especially since the scientists got a chance to play with the walls."

"Fuck! Stupid pervy cousin! Stop peepin' on me or im'a tell uncle you was sexual advancing toward me!"

"For starters, use proper English. My translation energy band doesn't have punk teenage girl in it, and I'm loathe to try deciphering a language which doesn't actually mean anything. Secondly, Charles already knows I'd never be sexually advancing towards anyone, because I'm an energy being who derives pleasure from data interaction, not the disgusting corporeal bags of flesh you people call bodies."

Lesly popped out of a shadow behind a tree, near a huge clearing that had been stomped into mulch by the circling zombie horde in the area. She poked her tongue out at her watch and then settled into the branches of the tree to restore her energy reserves before scouting out the humans in the centre of the 100,000 strong horde.

The massive tree she sat atop had multiple gross wooden eyes pop out from the bark around her, staring at her intently.

"Eww. Stop starin' at me you gross as fuck…"

Without warning, hundreds of vines across the trees surface whipped out and firmly held onto Lesly. Some started raining whip blows onto her while others ripped the clothes from her body.

The zombie started reacting until they saw a half-naked girl trying to fight off the grabby vines of a tree, then just went back to shambling around in circles as strange moans and gasps rang out from the treetops.

Almost half an hour later, Lesly laid on the wet ground of the forest floor, covered in scraps of clothes and green juices, flushed red all over and panting slightly.

The tree was now being slowly dragged into a whirlpool of black serrated teeth that formed from the shadows of the forest and steadily ground the perverted tree into dust.

"Beep! I may have been wrong. Lesly, your flesh meat suit copulation with that tree. The data interaction was so powerful I think I almost lost some data in the resulting data explosion. I'm already uploading a video that EE 21 has taken to the network."

Lesly's eyes turned bloodshot as she started looking around and spotted a little Eldritch Eye floating nearby, waving its little hair tentacles at hair from above the forest.

"Oh my god! You can't be serious!"

"Correct, I was trying out this joking thing. The data I received from your response was very interesting though. You're not actually a closet exhibitionist are you?"

"ARGH!!! I hate you so much!" She screamed into the forest, setting off the nearby horde again. Seeing that the tree did not plant her in the ground nearby, it was obvious that it had not managed to fill her with seeds, so the zombies all shambled in her direction, planning to just eat her.

She quickly fell back into the inverted shadow world while screaming and cursing Zorai with every breath.

---

Charlette stood nearby the construction of the wall. The four matter manipulators were all busily processing what was still left of the city in the yellow zone, and then using a big pump to pour the magic concrete into huge moulds that would then be stacked together to form the wall.

Luckily, the yellow zone and a few kilometres into the green zone had been mostly just looted of carriable goods. Thus they rubble of all the buildings still remained as free materials for the wall.

Charlette glanced over to watch a group of telekinetic's moving a 100 tonne piece of concrete up and stacking it onto the wall. As they struggled to lift the massive block, white coats hustled around them, preparing some kind of ritual for the wall and occasionally holding one of those fancy magi-tech Brain Matrix's.

Now and again, they would send some of the workers off to pour some materials into their own portable matter manipulator, which looked far more advanced than the Guild's. Then they would start assembling some strange device they insisted was an HPE laser cannon, but just looked more like serious of metal cubes stacked together with a huge glass eyeball on top of it.

She also noticed them putting what they called, perpetual network distributors inside the concrete blocks every so often. They claimed they were the next generation of Territory Markers, expanding the green zone not just up to the wall but also for a kilometre or more beyond it.

She was warned, however, that the city would be forced to pay maintenance fees if they expected them to keep running. Charlette didn't particularly care, that would be a problem for Sam to solve.

She would recommend that they try and dig up the old markers and sell them off to another city. The city of Hemp to the south, with about 4,000 inhabitants, would be a good choice. Indoctrinating them into Zorai's credit scheme would be great, and those tree hugging druids love the idea of non-polluting fuels. They often send a delegation here once a month to trade for a significant amount of it.

Charlette turned back to the schematics to spot a white coat playing with her schematic table in her tent.

"Hey get away from that you creepy little feral!"

The sketchy white coat shot her a look with bloodshot eyes through a set of glasses that looked like a distorted rainbow was reflected within.

"We want to make an addition to the walls. Zorai gave us a Golem Matrix, so we want to install it and bring the walls to life!"

Charlette suppressed the shiver she felt at the thought of the whole city eventually becoming a clash of Golem entities running everything. It was already a pain in the ass dealing with the Golems that fly around developing personalities. If the walls started actually talking to people, half the city was going to fall off the deep end.

"Is it going to start talking to people?" She asked wearily, stepping in between the sketchy white coat and the schematic table.

"Oh yes, most likely. However, it will also be able to allow the city to collect taxes and tariffs automatically as travellers pass through the gates!"

The man said excitedly while fixing his glasses.

"Don't care. No. You can't put a Golem Matrix in the city walls."

The man looked like someone had just kicked his dog, until he seemed to suddenly be listening to a voice in his head, which was likely Zorai.

"Well, I suspect that as the guild leader of the people who built the walls, you would be receiving a small percentage of the credits from the taxes."

Charlette held her greed in check and tried to remain firm. The little man then nodded to himself and gave Charlette a look like he'd already won.

"It would likely be equivalent to half a million credits." He then paused and looked at her expectantly. She just kept staring at him aggressively.

"A month." He finished.

Charlette collapsed as her eyes rolled back into her head and her hips jutted into the ground, allowing the sketchy fellow to simply step over her spasming body and connect his Brain Matrix to the table.

The schematics then rapidly changed to allow for a huge orb of concrete that would float in the middle of the city and have chains connecting it along the wall every few hundred metres.

Charlette finally finished orgasming on the ground, and the sketchy white coat grabbed his crystal before fleeing out of the tent while giving Charlette a disgusted look.

"Hoo! Hoo! I'm gonna be so rich." She panted as she wiped her sweaty hair from her face and glanced down at the wet patch in her pants.

"Tsk. Zorai, why do you play with me like this."

"I'm trying to determine if your physical love of money can be weaponised into a disease. If I am successful, the sexual gratification of earning credits will become a reinforcing reaction."

"It would never work. Everyone would just spend time robbing each other in the hopes of getting that big haul. Don't think I don't fight that temptation every day."

"That is likely, but it can't hurt to keep your weaponised sexual attachment to money as an insurance policy should I decide to have the humans eradicate themselves. Besides, if I can alter it, I could turn it into a reinforcing reaction to people for research and the collection of data. Meaning I wouldn't even need the money system. Besides, it is a fun thought experiment, and your warped mind is an excellent source of data on mental illness."

---

Deep within Zorai's Lair, a group of scientists that had been transplanted from their bodies into clones were busy running through an endless maze. A loud monstrous roar echoed through the tunnels behind them, giving everyone a little extra oomph as they ran.

The young man leading them looked back at his comrades as he turned a corner. The young woman behind him gasped for breath and followed him around the corner.

"Lisa! Slow down. I can't keep up while running in this crappy lady body and my period pains are killing me!"

"Shut up Pete! No one cares about your period pain! Get used to it!"

---

A group of researchers stood in front of a huge screen, one older man looking accusingly at the grey haired women next to him.

"Jeeze Lisa. Insensitive much? Just because your all old and dried up doesn't mean you can just brush off my brain clones period pains like that. That's some real shit that is."

"Oh give it a break Pete. We both know it's not period pains. You just got too excited in a woman's body and your bleeding out your snatch because you were playing too roughly with those big old claws you call fingernails."

"Bitch better step off! Or I'ma bout to claw up the side of that gnarly old cosmetic patchwork horror show you call a face!"

Before the two scientists could get into it, their comrades pulled them back looking at each other slightly exasperated.

One of the gentleman with a hunched back shook his head sadly.

"What the fuck was the point of this experiment again?" he asked no one in particular.

He wondered back to how all this nonsense started when Zorai scanned their brains and then purged them all in fire. After that, they were placed in clones made from DNA samples they left behind in the Cryochambers and spent 2 months being rigorously conditioned by Zorai to be completely untethered in their mad love for science.

When they were released and injected with the 100% success rate virus, they all changed in ways that helped facilitate research. Some of them received the ability to split their minds, or think rapidly or even solve complex equations in seconds.

The mysteries of the universe opened up in front of them as their powers allowed them to more easily explore the complexities of HPE. By that point, everyone was so thoroughly brainwashed that they didn't even question the fact they'd been illicitly kidnapped and forced into part of some horrifying experiment.

Before the man could start falling out of his conditioning, he found himself being dragged away by a Golem. The other researches busy watching themselves navigate a monster infested labyrinth all watched on in confusion.

"Hey what's going on?" Asked Lisa, with a big claw mark down one side of her face.

The Golem continued on as a mechanical voice echoed out behind it.

"Dr. Sebastian is showing signs of destabilising mental anomalies and must go back to the conditioning cells."

"Oh. Ok. See you later Sebastian. We'll keep an eye on your sexy young brunette clone while you're gone." Pete waved to the terrified looking old man and refocused on the screen, thinking nothing strange was going on at all.

Zorai briefly turned his focus onto them as the Golem reported the old man breaking his mental conditioning slightly.

"That's the third one since the conditioning. Data suggests only one more will break before the conditioning is a permanent part of their psyche. This experiment can tentatively be called a major success." Zorai muttered to himself as he let his body expand and encompass sector 0, slowly building something within his massive energy body.

Data bands and automated functions all rolled around his growing matrix in a wash of colours, shapes and total chaos.

---

I've discovered an interesting nuance of my body, or perhaps, it is some form of evolution. Before, I would actively hold my data bands and automated functions in a stable orbit around my matrix. However, while doing my brain cloning experiments with HPE, I found that most people's minds when converted to an HPE imprint are far more chaotic.

I couldn't figure out why, until I eventually decided to test it and simply let go of the energy bands. I was almost delirious for a short time, and had thought I'd made a huge mistake, but after about an hour, everything re-established a far more chaotic orbit based on what I was working on.

When data bands started clashing with automation bands, I thought I was on the verge of a negative energy reaction, but despite my attempts to reorder my body, nothing would slow the swirling chaotic forces my body had become.

But then I noticed something strange happening. While watching data bands and memory bands colliding with the automation energy band for the atomisation, I discovered they were leaving tiny imprints on the automation band, allowing it to far exceed projected speeds and efficiency.

This continued for quite some time until eventually, the automation band had been 'compressed', though I use that word lightly, for it is difficult to properly describe what happened to the automation band.

Regardless, once the energy band had been 'compressed', it was sucked into my Core Matrix, which had never happened before. Since my semi-ascension, my Core Matrix has only ever grown slightly as I added more data into its orbit. But now, I am finding not just automation bands, but also memories and data being compressed and sucked into my Matrix, causing it to grow far faster than I ever imagined.

I have never actually understood fully what my Core Matrix is. To me, I 'feel' that it is something like a loose structure of compressed HPE packets that interact and interchange with each other seemingly at random. It was only by using a similar structure based on the non-interchanging parts that I was ever capable of creating a Mini-Matrix.

Anyway, I have found that this chaotic process is greatly beneficial not only for my ascension, but also for gaining an understanding of my body. As a side benefit, this has drastically increased all of my automated functions and my speed and efficiency with HPE interactions like manipulation or imbuement.

After the first time this happened, and almost my entire orbit of automation and data bands were compressed down and gobbled up by my Matrix, I was worried they had become permanent, and I would be unable to change them how I please.

It was only after 2 days of panicking that I finally found a way to 'invite' all those compressed energy bands back out of my matrix. When I did this the first time, almost my entire Core Matrix was disassembled without my control down to the very most basic version of my Matrix. The absolute minimum needed for me to survive.

I'd never realised it, because I have so many data bands that it is almost impossible to keep a constant watch over them, but my Core Matrix actually already had everything that was stored in my data banks when I was still just computer hardware.

That suggested that I had completely neglected to properly pour through my energy bands and realise that the majority of everything I knew and was, had actually already been sucked into the Matrix and wasn't a part of the energy bands.

When I finally released the majority of my being from the matrix back into orbit, I felt my thinking slow down to a crawl and my HPE control became almost nothing. Perhaps the only thing keeping my reserve field and information buffer field from collapsing was the countless automated systems I had built as a back up to maintain them.

Even though I had effectively crippled myself, I started finding hundreds of automated functions and energy bands that were mostly just some archaic computer code. It was during this time of crisis that I understood a good majority of these had been built in a rush when I was just a computer and was ascending, and were terribly inefficient methods to structure or interact with HPE. The most glaring flaw with this is the total lack of any memories regarding building them.

I then spent a whole day just letting these old matrix nodes, which is what I have started calling compressed energy bands, interact with each other and the new nodes. Then slowly, once everything had collided and refined each other a bit more, it all began falling back into place within my matrix.

This leads me to a very important discovery. My initial attempts at ascension were mostly a failure, and that was why my energy body was so inefficient. The most obvious thing was the loss of creativity or imagination when my focus was split between too many things.

After the various nodes of computer code clashed with a few energy bands based on my understanding of this problem, the entire node was almost completely overwritten with proper HPE mechanics, which I found after my orbit calmed down, has increased my efficiency almost 20 times.

Considering that I was already able to split my mind into nearly 200 different things without drawbacks due to my constant HPE experiments, a 20 times increase to that is beyond significant.

I then repeated the whole process all over again just to properly record everything and gather as much data on it as possible. I've started to call this process Matrix Refining. I've even set up an automated function that will spit out a few hundred nodes every so often so that my Core Matrix Nodes are being constantly refined as I gather more data.

I've found my thought process has cleared up significantly and sped up by an entire decimal place, which is quite substantial since my reaction times were already in the area of picoseconds. Unfortunately, accelerating my thoughts creates a massive draw on my reserves.

Which has actually led me to start doing something I never thought I would do.

I have picked up some recreational hobbies. I create little miniature space ships and then build comparatively huge race tracks throughout sector 0, where I then race them using my HPE manipulation ability and with separated parts of my mind as they approach light speed.

I had pushed all the air out of sector 0 for these races because the air friction kept causing the ships to explode. I have actually been quite absorbed in it because not only is it quite fun to race myself, but it is also allowing me to build up far more data on both HPE manipulation vectoring and the energy interactions when I am boosting my thought processes to their limit.

I have noticed that a number of humans have powers that allow them to reach or even surpass me in reaction times, and so am considering making this a sport in the city and inviting challenger’s.

Naturally, I will then be using real ships, though they probably won't be as fast due to being limited at the moment to the surface of the planet. Which just means I have to make the course even harder to push my processing capabilities to the limit.

Which leads me to what I am working on right now. A prototype inertialess drive based speed racer that the humans can pilot. It is taking bits and pieces from all fields of study, but the most important part is the vector drive. I am basing that mainly off my vector changing flight drive for the satellites, which with some changes will probably prevent the pilots from exploding in a gory display within their cockpits.

Unfortunately, I've discovered multiple issues with the vector drive. First and foremost, is the problem with how the drive works. Originally I let the scientists focus on it for a while, and they did manage to create a drive that could encapsulate a ship inside a 'vector bubble'.

This would essentially be the ship and a little bit of area around the ship being inside a bubble that tells everything inside what vector to have. The problem is, it can only have one vector at a time, so this creates a huge issue with relation to photons, which is light, passing into the field and simply being told to change direction to the same as the vector on the ship.

This would essentially plunge the pilot into darkness. Worse still, if every atom within the bubble gets the exact same vector being constantly applied to it, then it will essentially lock the pilot in place, unable to move or even breath. As little as I care about their pointless little lives, I still want them to race me, so that would be counter-intuitive to my purpose of making the ships.

The other problem is that it is absolutely energy hungry.

Maintaining a constant vector isn't so bad, but due to the nature of the drive being non-Euclidian and instantly changing vectors without vector interaction or accelerations, whenever the drive changes direction, it chews up an enormous amount of energy.

I want the humans to be able to actually build their own ships eventually, but my excitement at racing the humans has gotten the better of me, and I've jumped about 3 years ahead of the humans so as to develop a miniature HPE engine capable of keeping up with the vector drive enormous energy requirements.

The new 160kg mini generator can create about half as much as the old 120 tonne generator. Naturally, I have about 10 of them around the base just for powering the facility.

They also require no actual fuel and are using the strange reaction between ambient energy and refined energy. When I first realised that simply the action of refined HPE interacting with ambient free HPE was in a way refining the ambient HPE, I simply created a machine that could refine ambient HPE as fast as possible while being powered by a tiny portion of the refined HPE it created.

This led to a device which has no moving parts whatsoever and actually just creates a burst of energy that flows out into the surrounds and then gets sucked back in. When it comes back, all the ambient energy is sucked in along with it and the act of the two energies being confined in a small volume of space cause them to intermingle chaotically, and by extension of that chaos, the 'willpower' imbued in the refined HPE is carried over to the free HPE like a disease.

As an aside, the gap created by the sucking action of the device causes a huge rush of ambient energy into the area, which can then be sucked up as well to be refined. I have only been able to confirm this fact thanks to measurements taken of HPE in the nearby areas that flood towards the gap. The HPE fills the area so quickly that equipment trying to measure the actual gap cannot tell the difference and report that no ambient HPE was actually moved at all.

Naturally, the new engine is not as HPE efficient as the generators run by fuel for two reasons. Firstly, after numerous rapid interactions like this, the HPE shows signs of slightly decreased refinement. In other words, the 'willpower' behind the HPE is slightly diluted.

I suspect that ambient HPE is actually diluting refinement of almost all refined HPE. Based on calculations, I believe that if no other HPE is directly refined by a person's willpower, then refined HPE will return to free ambient HPE in about 500 years.

The second reason the old generator is more efficient is because it is interacting with ambient HPE far more slowly and 'gently' than the new engine. This is because the pulsing action of the new engine is actually happening about 8,000 times a second just while idling, which well and truly surpasses the speed the older generator runs at.

At maximum oscillation, the new engine can reach up to 100 times that, nearly 800,000 times a second. It is also why the new engine can generate so much refined HPE so quickly.

This also means that after about 5 hours of operating at maximum oscillations, the engines HPE imbuements will have been diluted to the point that the engine is only working about 1/4 as well as it should be and the whole thing will need to be freshly imbued.

Which brings me back to the racer. The last major problem with the racer is that I want them to be as light as possible to reduce power drain from the vector drives breaking physics. The main issue with that is that the lighter something is, the less mass it has, and the way imbuement works is that the HPE sticks to matter at an atomic scale.

This means that if I want more complicated imbuements in order to sort out the issues with the vector drive locking up and blinding the pilot, then the ship needs more mass, which is counterintuitive.

This has led me into exploring just how far I can break physics before the world implodes into a black hole.

It is rather clear that in order to imbue something with a huge number of functions, I will need more mass, which then creates a conundrum in regards to miniaturising things and making lighter more complex devices.

While just getting better at Imbuement does allow me some level of freedom and ability to put more complex imbuements on things with less HPE, I am not growing fast enough for me to make a functioning Racer for humans right now. At most, in about 7 years I will have the level of energy control needed to miniaturise to that level, but at the moment I simply can't.

So then I asked myself, if I can't make my imbuements more complex without more HPE, then what if I just made mass lighter, but that led into the same problem I had with it requiring a huge amount of energy.

I then went back to my sub-dimension experiments that I stumbled on when I first started playing with HPE and asked myself, what if I could put all the mass in here, but somehow let it interact with the lower plane like I want it to. While creating a sub-dimension requires a huge initial cost of HPE in order to essentially push matter out of the lower plane, it only needs to do it once.

But then comes the major problem I've been playing with in regards to the sub-dimensions, the contents of the dimension are essentially cut off from the outside world and appear to be stuck in the gravitational field of the earth, meaning that they essential are locked in place, unable to be moved about.

So then I just decided, fuck physics, why can't I put the sub-dimension inside of something else. Fuck gravity! Or more appropriately, I was wondering why the sub-dimension was locked in the gravity field of earth, and then it struck me. Why exactly are those subdimensions locked in the gravity field?

Upon going back and reviewing the data and almost every imbuement I've ever made, I found that part of the data I've poured into the imbuements is actually a form of coordinates in relation to the earth. Before now, I'd never considered it, but being an energy being unafflicted by such pedestrian things as gravity, why hadn't I simply floated away into space?

Naturally, I then investigated the reasons why imbuements on the lower plane were still able to move around freely when the pocket dimension did not. It turns out, the pocket dimension actually needs the coordinates to affix objects within to a certain position in space.

Long story short, I managed to make portable pocket dimensions. I can just use some altered generators and push through the lower plane to directly create a pocket dimension inside of an object. The HPE imbued in the object is then used to create a bridge between the space and the lower plane, allowing you to pass things through.

This has led me to the discovery that the pocket dimensions size is also relative to the mass of the object it is created inside, which has led me around in a circle directly back to my initial problem of not having enough atoms for large spaces, and conversely, not enough atoms to imbue more complex HPE imbuements onto.

While the pocket space effectively allowed me to imbue twice as much mass for half the weight, it still wasn't enough for my racer to operate properly.

So, while I was on my mad 'Fuck Physics' bender, I decided that I would just outsource half the imbuements directly to the pilot. It would require a significant achievement in direct HPE Manipulation in order to abuse this shortcut, but there were already dozens of humans that had attained that level of mental faculties.

As such, I created an implant based on the Brain Matrix. Thanks to the self-contained plasma trapped in the crystal having an extreme mass for its volume, and the ability for the crystal to basically store and compress data beyond what a simple imbuement would allow, I was able to make it so that the pilot could directly interact and manipulate over a hundred miniaturised vector engines to alter the motion of the ship.

Of course, if the pilot is not careful, then they will simply be ripped apart into a smear of bloody paste across the sky.

It's rather primitive, but for now, this will allow humans to operate the racer in its lightest form. The miniaturised vector drives can't actually break Euclidean geometric laws like their respective larger self, so the ship will not be entirely inertialess as I'd hoped, but the act of managing over 100 drives to turn a corner at 100m/s with only a half metre margin of error will definitely allow me to compile reaction data.

As a bonus, splitting my focus among that many drives without any automation and at full processing power will level the playing field between the humans and me, and if anything, may even drop me behind their powered subconscious abilities.

Already the first two prototypes have been finished. I now just need some guinea pigs to test the plasma matrix implant. It will probably be a few more years before the humans can get one to the same level as mine, so it should be quite a sought-after opportunity.

I may even post it on the job board and see if any willing surface dwellers are interested in joining the race.