Upon entering the upper area, it was eerily quiet.
One reason was that nobles saw the fighting in the lower area, and shut themselves inside their sturdy homes.
“Beast people detected.”
Qualia spotted a group of beast people in the empty streets.
Among them was Mind, the beast person Qualia saved before.
“Request explanation, Mind. What kind of activities are you performing here?”
“Tch, a knight found… Us…?”
Mind turned around, and his eyes opened wide.
“You… You’re the one who saved me, Qualia… Why are you here?”
“It’s just like we’ve been ordered, right? We need to silence knights and…!”
“Wait! Don’t touch him!”
A beast person ran towards Qualia while holding up a big sword, but was stopped by Mind.
“But…”
“Keep doing your ‘job’. I’ll handle this.”
The beast people looked bewildered, but advanced further through the street.
Mind on the other hand, stood still, as if blocking it.
“You did say you were a knight… Dammit, is this fate or something…”
Mind smacked his lips and looked at Qualia with a bitter expression.
“Get away from here… As far as you can! Those chivalric orders and this country are all trash… But I don’t want you to get rolled up into it.”
“Request explanation. Why are you designating actions to Qualia?”
“…”
Mind could not answer. He twisted his face bitterly, as Qualia continued.
“Are you with Azure Skies, performing actions that negatively impact a lot of humans?”
“…What if I am?”
“You have a high degree of trust. It was unexpected for you to take this sort of wrong action.”
Despite the clumsy way he was saying it, Qualia was clearly saying he held mind in high regard.
Mind understood this as well, and clenched his fists, looking anguished.
“…I can’t accept this society you humans created.”
“Error. There is a high chance that taking this sort of action will have negative effects in the continuation of your vital activity.”
“You’re human… You don’t get it. If we beast people don’t do this, we won’t be able to live unless we serve someone.”
“Type SWORD.”
Qualia created a fake sword with his 5D printer.
“Request that you put a stop to Azure Skies’ activities. If you don’t comply, you will be designated a threat… And neutralized.”
Incapacitation was the optimal solution for both Qualia and Mind.
But there was some static. Some resistance to hurting someone with a high degree of trust ran through Qualia’s circuits.
“Dammit.”
Mind groaned.
The same words thrown at the knights of Troy to protect Mind, were now being directed at him.
The feeling of sadness that brought ripped through his chest.
“…In the end I really have to turn against someone I owe a debt to… Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit!! Dammit!! Dammit!!”
Mind continuously screamed with indignant anger, until finally moving.
Qualia calculated his optimal solution while he watched him, which would lead him to shake his brain to neutralize him.
“Error.”
But his body did not follow his optimal solution. He stood still as though he were frozen, and collapsed.
“…Fatal, abnormality, in mobility, of hardware.”
Even his tongue did not move as he wished, affecting his voice.
“Analyzing… Situation.”
All Mind did was raise his right arm and manifest a green magic circle.
It seemed he was going to attack with magic, but Qualia’s optimal solutions should have been able to deal with it.
But all Mind unleashed was a harmless breeze, and the moment Qualia inhaled it, the abnormality appeared in his body.
“This is, not wind, magic.”
Qualia analyzed Mind as his vision became blurry.
In the sleeve of the arm he raised to execute wind magic, there was a small bottle that served to spray liquid.
Qualia associated the small bottle with a certain fiendish advanced technology.
“Request, explanation. What kind, of virus, nano, weapon, did you, release from, your sleeve?”
There was a brutal category of weapon called nano weapon, that at times surpassed photon weapons.
These weapons were destructive, but small enough to be invisible to the naked eye. Some broke things down at an atomic level, and some caused immediate decay of their targets via modified bacteria.
What Mind used was closer to the latter. To be more precise, it was very similar to when artificial intelligence was tracked by a virus.
“Nano weapon…? I don’t know what that is, but I’m guessing you’ve never been poisoned before.”
“E-error. Poison, not, registered. Is this, poison?”
“Sorry for acting weak before. I couldn’t let them see through me. Beast people are pretty good at pretending to be beaten.”
Mind was already sure of his victory, as he showed the many small bottles he had hidden in his coat.
All had mysterious liquids and fine powders, and they were all poison.
“I’m actually a mercenary that specializes in poison. What’s great about poison is that it works on any human, no matter how powerful they are.”
Mind stood next to Qualia, who was still facing down and not moving, and looked down at him.
But there was no killing intent in his eyes.
“I sprayed you with a paralyzing drug. You’re not going to die… I’ll get you out of the capital.”
Mind tried to extend his hand to Qualia.
This perfectly matched the idea of ‘kindness’, but to Qualia, there was a definitive lack of ‘tasty’.
“Activating emergency maintenance with 5D printer.”
“!?”
Mind jumped back.
The light activated from the 5D printer in Qualia’s right hand pierced his own body.
The spasms in Qualia’s body subsided everywhere the light passed. It was clear it was nullifying the paralysis.
“W-w-what!?”
It took only a few seconds for the light to go over his whole body.
And then, Qualia got up. He did so very naturally, as though that abnormality was never there to begin with.
“Checking hardware repair… Zero issues remaining.”
“Why… The paralyzing drug was supposed to have propagated through your whole body… Didn’t you take a full breath of it!?”
“The 5D printer overwrote the cells affected by the poison with regular cells. Additionally, Qualia is done learning your poison.”
“Learning… W-what do you mean… Dammit!”
Mind used wind magic to shoot out another poison.
“No prediction revisions.”
But nothing happened. Qualia did not fall to the ground numb again.
“Why… Didn’t it work?”
“Your poison is expected.”
“It’s a different poison!”
“Based on your poison, two hundred sixty thousand harmful components that could harm Qualia in the future have been calculated. During maintenance with the 5D printer, the cells were rewritten to expel these components automatically from the hardware.”
Meaning, Qualia updated his hardware to withstand all kinds of poisons.
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Qualia’ solution to hardware problems: modify hardware so that the problem can not occur. Wow!
loving this so far, keep up the good work!
Advanced Science can match Magic.
I remember seeing a quote similar to that ‘to the untrained eye, advanced science is no different than magic’ or something like that.
I don’t feel like erasing what I already put, bit the actual quote is “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” -Arthur C Clarke.