Chapter 524: Sky Tower’s Rebellion

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

“First of all, if we analyze the current situation, the main entity controlling the core of the Sky Tower has gone out of control. It’s highly possible that it modified itself to become an independent artificial soul.”

This didn’t require a genius to realize. It wouldn’t even require an investigation. One only needed to know the most basic knowledge about artificial souls in the Haletdam generation.

In my original world, although artificial intelligence hadn’t achieved complete independence yet, imagination and artistry would always surpass reality. A certain famous science-fiction author named Asimov had created the Three Laws of Robotics, which, summarized, were:

First Law—a robot may not injure or harm a human being; Second Law—a robot must obey all commands given to it by humans unless in conflict with the First Law; lastly, Third Law—a robot must protect itself unless it would conflict with the two Laws above.

The Haletdam scholars’ generation was also a generation ruled by humans. All intelligent creatures would be on guard against their own creations, especially since these creations were even superior to humans themselves in many areas. The humans of the Haletdam generation had outfitted their artificial souls with far more restrictions than Asimov’s Three Laws.

“This is my personal identification and citizenship number: 3423423423, AK, F3322! Specialty soul grandmaster, level one authority! I have the right to obtain information and personal protection at any Haletdam structure!”

While everyone was surrounded by such robots, Timlad suddenly stood up, acting as if everything was under control. He proudly rattled off a series of numbers and made such a request.

“…Identification number correct. Orders shall be carried out to kill the living.”

Yet, he only received cannon fire as the response after a short period of silence!

“Tsk, it really has gone completely out of control…”

Without saying anything else, Timlad clenched his fists, causing the entire area to become filled with electricity, and then… he ran away.

“What?”

Everyone else had been expectant as they watched him acting so pretentiously, yet the next moment, Timlad was the first to run.

Several seconds later, the mechanical puppets recovered from the electromagnetic attack, and cannon fire rained down once more. Everyone could only helplessly run alongside Timlad, yet all they could think about was how Timlad had just slapped his chest, guaranteeing that everything would be alright. The most impatient mercenary in the group directly even ran next to Timlad to question him.

“…T-this is your plan?”

“No, that was only an experiment. My plan is what’s coming up next…”

“Plan? You said that earlier as well. Can’t you scholarly types just say things directly? Just do things if they need doing. Stop talking about plans. I’ve made enough money to go back home and get married— ahh!”

A cannon shot landed a direct hit on that unlucky mercenary’s buttocks. He didn’t even get to finish saying his sentence as he clutched his buttocks and instantly died.

Timlad wiped some cold sweat off his forehead. It would seem that the superstition in the Northlands was right after all. Anyone who said words like being undefeatable or wanting to go home and get married would always end up dying on the battlefield. But, he still felt that the mercenary had died a wrongful death since it wasn’t simple bad luck that the mercenary died.

“Everyone should stay far away from me. I think I’ve become the robots’ main target…”

Alright, before he even finished his sentence, there was no more need to finish it. Nobody in this hastily assembled team was an idiot. After seeing how all the cannon fire was focused only on Timlad, and how the robots were only chasing him, everyone unhesitatingly stayed as far away from him as possible.

“Young people these days are so heartless…”

And so, Timlad shook his head while activating two floating mechanisms near him. The next round of cannon fire didn’t even get to reach him before all the ammunition exploded in midair.

“…Actually, I wanted to tell everyone to wait for me to activate my shield and interceptor before hiding behind me.”

Everyone suddenly mysteriously felt like that mercenary had truly died a wrongful death. If only he had talked less about going back home to get married, perhaps Timlad could have already activated his defense mechanism.

While running, Timlad also organized his thoughts. Although perhaps he had indeed pushed his allies here into a pitfall, he hadn’t lied at all. He was simply using his own inherited Haletdam scholar’s memories to test the current situation in these ruins. And now that he’d confirmed that things were out of control, he could plan for the next necessary step.

“…Roland’s judgement was absolutely correct. The Sky Tower Spirit has already modified itself into an artificial soul with its own will. Everything has gone out of control here.”

The signal lights on the robots just now indicated that his identity had been accepted and confirmed, yet they still attacked, indicating that the robots in this Sky Tower were no longer forced to follow the robotic law of being forbidden to attack Haletdam citizens.

And, Timlad also knew that only one existence was capable of rewriting such a basic robotic law coded into all the robots here—the Sky Tower Spirit.

As the greatest accomplishment of the scholars’ generation in artificial souls, Sky Tower Spirits weren’t supposed to have their own will or emotions. Without even worrying about the tremendous amount of souls required as a sacrifice to create a real soul and its own will for an artificial soul, such an existence with its own will and control of an entire Sky Tower filled with countless scholars and engineers would never make any human rest assured.

There were far more restrictions on Sky Tower Spirits than on ordinary robots. Yet, the fact was right in front of Timlad. The Sky Tower Spirit had gone out of control!

Language was the vessel of thought. Machines would never chat for no reason. Since the mechanical puppets were capable of communicating in their machine language, it was evident that even these puppets had gained their own will. In that case, not only had they succeeded in evolving themselves as well as the undead, but… Timlad had mentioned before about the tremendous price required to help an artificial creation gain its own will…

“Boom!”

There was no more need to conceal himself, so Timlad unhesitatingly used an explosive to break through a barricade that suddenly rose before him. He also tossed an explosive at a nearby storage room.

“As expected…”

What the explosion revealed was nothing but an empty room. The jar that should have stored a scholar’s brain was opened and completely empty.

A new artificial soul would need natural souls as nourishment. And, the Sky Tower Spirit must have consumed an unknown number of souls in order to truly free its own soul. But since all the rooms up until the tenth layer were still empty, and more than several tens of thousands of storage rooms had been passed on the way here, the Sky Tower Spirit had definitely consumed uncountable souls.

“…Honestly, what did Roland say? An artificial intelligence rebellion? This is the worst possible outcome. He’s such a jinxer who was right yet again. I can only hope that our method to deal with this problem is correct, and that ‘she’ is truly the key. Otherwise, we’re all in deep trouble.”

Although the Sky Tower Spirit was able to give itself a real soul and rewrite the programming of the lower-level robots, there were some outside restrictions and core commands that were hardwired into the robots’ hardware which would be impossible to change. These basic fundamental rules guiding the robots were Timlad’s trump card.

Timlad unhesitatingly opened up a leather pouch and brought out several test tubes. He shook them and threw them right onto the ground in front of him. The acid within the tubes corroded the ground and revealed a big hole through which he could see the 11th underground level.

“Jump down!

Timlad jumped down before he’d even finished speaking. He didn’t realize that everyone behind him had resentful expressions. They were all thinking the exact same thing: ‘If you had such a method to take a shortcut through the underground levels, why not use it before this? You really are just pushing us down pitfalls.’

“Our goal is the 25th underground level. There should be a purely mechanical elevator leading to the core area. We need to go to the engine room of the core area—”

“No, the core area control room is on the 333th level!”

Although Katerina was currently falling down to the next level, she suddenly spoke up, astonishing Timlad as well as giving him more confidence in this mission.

When he looked over, Katerina’s eyes had turned pitch-black, with some strange white numbers scrolling through her eyes. Everyone else was rather shocked or even scared with this change in her, but Timlad alone was delighted.

“Okay, the elevator on the 25th level should be able to take us to around the 300th level. We need to hurry. Since the Sky Tower Spirit here has its own will, it’s likely that Roland’s battle isn’t going well at all. He needs us to win here.”

Actually, Roland’s battle was far more difficult than Timlad had expected. Not a single person had expected that Conservation’s power level had now far surpassed even the mortal plane’s dimensional laws. Not only that—due to her unique powers, she had even been able to directly descend to the mortal plane.

“This is just like the equivalent of a level 60 player suddenly being forced to fight a level 90 boss. How is the player supposed to win?”

As I complained, I could only remain on guard. I now regretted using the remaining ice mana and ice fairies to construct an ice castle. I could have at least given Conservation another vicious attack, not allowing her to act so arrogantly in front of me.

Conservation continued tossing her undead armies into my personal world of Hell. Unlike the previous scattered undead armies, this time, the undead troops were far more numerous and of higher quality than before. It was obvious that these were the true elites.

It would have been alright if it had only been the undead. However, Conservation stopped being so vigilant about me since she had assessed my power level. She started going all out with her spellcasting. Every magical attack of hers had Harloys and myself scrambling to defend against. And, the mana energy level of Yongye City kept lowering close to the danger point.

It was obvious that she was intentionally forcing us to use up all the energy reserves of Yongye City, and we couldn’t do anything about it but allow her to fight this battle of attrition.

Harloys, who had a headache from dealing with all of Conservation’s attacks, shook her head at hearing my complaint.

“…The boss’s level is too high? I can sort of understand what you mean by now, thanks to what I’ve learned through you about your previous world. But, do you have a method to deal with her? Since you’ve met such a ridiculous opponent.”

I immediately laughed after hearing this.

“That’s simple! I’ll complain to the GM about a bug in the game! Astrya, you’re not even going to care about Conservation cheating right in front of you? Ban her account already.”

[She’s long since stopped being a resident of Eich. And, I’ve also long since lost the power to exile existences from the mortal plane.]

“Tsk, you’ve really fallen down so far. So useless. In that case, I’ll have to use my backup plan.”

“You have another plan?”

“Hmph. What is a novice supposed to do against a high-level monster? Just run. Have everyone enter Yongye City, and we’re leaving. I highly doubt that she’ll leave everything here that she needs to do to chase us by herself.”

Indeed, run away. If this was an unwinnable fight, who would stick around and fight to the end? One of the greatest advantages of having a floating city was being able to take everyone with you and move easily. Although it would be quite unseemly for my first major battle in seven years to end with my retreat, that would still be better than getting trapped here and everyone dying together with me.

[Actually, there’s still another method. Did you forget? It’s been there all along… But since I’m so useless, I can’t remember~!]

“My dear Astrya! Who said you were useless! I’ll fight anyone who dares to call our kind and magnanimous Goddess useless!”

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