V2C41: Automatons and Avatars

A figure moved through the tunnels, lightning their path with a single drop of vibrant and pure sunlight that illuminated several metres ahead of them in pure iridescence. Their long crimson hair glistened in the light, and their silver eyes stared intently forward.

‘I’m definitely heading towards something, though I don’t have even the slightest clue what it is,’ she thought, making the drop of True Ascendant energy floating above her hand bob up and down for little more than her personal amusement and to distract any potential invisible observers and confuse them with the indeterminate purpose behind her actions, ‘At the very least, I can tell that the number of creatures travelling through here is higher than it was at the entrance, and that there has, once again, been more care put into this area than into the beginning…’

So far, she had spent slightly less than an hour and a half in the caves since her entrance, but there was still no-one and nothing around her.

She recalled her previous conversation with the tailor that created the tight clothing she currently wore, and so far as she could tell, nothing about her caused that woman to retreat from her or to display any other kind of unusual behaviours, so she had no reason to assume that other hatred automatons, intelligent or otherwise, would demonstrate any kind of oddity.

‘Thus, it shouldn’t be that I am scaring them away, but that they don’t often travel through this area, meaning that the footsteps they left behind took significantly longer to make than I initially assumed. This makes me wonder how long this prison realm has existed for. Did it originate before the time of the Master of Yi City, perhaps? If it did, then has the rate of time remained constant all of this time? Could the Master of Yi City currently be spending his time in a similar realm with an inversed rate of time, allowing him to survive to this day by slowing down each outside year to a single internal day?’ she shook her head, ‘No, even if that’s true, that’s really not what I should be thinking about.’

At that moment, she suddenly heard the skittering of feet ahead of her, prompting her to stop in place and utilise her various stealth methods to prevent herself from being noticed instantly by whatever was approaching her, also revoking the drop of physique energy.

For several tense seconds, all that she could hear was the skittering.

When she finally saw the source, she witnessed a set of five bright ruby eyes glowing in the dark, three on the right and two on the left, a wide open mouth below them and the body of an insane amalgamation of creatures, resulting in it resembling some kind of beetle, a hard shell covering its back and with a total of six limbs that she was able to see.

This was, without a doubt, a hatred automaton, being driven by killing intent and with a body of sickly crimson flesh and black bones sticking out of two of the six limbs.

It looked around, its mandibles clicking in a constant pattern without any clear meaning, then continued moving forward, its feet stepping into the exact same indentations in the ground as they must have done many times before. There was no immediate way to tell whether every single step and glance that it took had any true meaning, or whether this was something that it was simply replicating endlessly due to retaining some fragments of their past memories, but so far, it did not appear to have noticed Wei Yi.

‘Now, the question is whether this thing is in any way intelligent. If it is, killing it out of nowhere would be unnecessary, especially if it is related to the people of Automaton Point,’ she considered, not wanting to kill someone for no reason, as she took a quiet step back to ensure that she didn’t get in the way of the amalgam automaton, ‘Based on the energy inside it, this creature doesn’t appear to be too powerful, so I know the best way to check this…’

Wei Yi dispelled her stealth methods and jumped into the creature’s path, watching it carefully.

Its reaction was delayed by several lengthy seconds, but when its five eyes locked onto her, the very first thing that it attempted to do was leapt onto her with an open maw.

‘Whatever this is, I couldn’t be blamed just for fighting back!’ she silently thanked the creature for clearly attacking her and condensed a spiritual concentration blade within her right hand. As it flew towards her, she stabbed the blade into its open mouth using Sweeping Inferno with the intention of obliterating it into small pieces.

The surface of the spiritual blade expanded as many small spikes grew out of it, breaking off and bursting into raw power, tearing apart the amalgam automaton’s insides in an instant. It let out a weak noise, almost like an ordinary creature might cry out from pain, and fell to the ground.

Although the creature proved more resilient against her attack than she had intended, as there were almost no external wounds on its body despite her not holding back with her strike, she had still achieved what she had initially intended, prompting her to sit down beside the amalgam automaton and begin dismantling its body. It was a tough creature, certainly more than the other hatred automatons she had passed on her way here, but with the assistance of the Bone of the Beast, White Echo and the spiritual concentration blade allowed her to make fast work of it.

Within just a few minutes, she had removed the bones from the creature – tossing them to the side once she was able to confirm that they merely resembled the Beast’s bone structure, rather than matching it – and separated the various kinds of meat depending on their toughness and appearance. Some were entirely unsuitable for consumption, no matter how much poison and toxicity she was able to ignore via physique energy, while others merely needed a little time to be cooked and prepared.

Fortunately, storing these pieces of flesh did not require anything beside empty space and a bag, as they were as dry as any kind of meat could possibly be.

‘I have both a bag and an incredible amount of spare strength which I can invest into carrying this stuff, so that isn’t a problem. What I am somewhat concerned about is that there are bound to be more of these things around here… Should I seek them out, or is it better to assume that anything that lives down here would be as far away from these amalgam automatons as possible?’ she used the pause during her contemplation to cook one of the mediocre pieces of meat and consume it in order to recover some of the energy that she had expended, ‘Still tasteless, but with a lot of energy… I guess it must be the former, then.’

She stood up, hid away the rest of the gathered food, and set out.

It only took her fourteen more minutes of wandering beneath the ground before she encountered another amalgam automaton, which she promptly slayed with a similar method to the last insectoid creature.

This time, however, it was not the only one. Without any warning, several automatons burst out of the ground and walls around her, with the latter group of four landing on the ground with various levels of capability. In total, seven insectoid creatures suddenly surrounded her, although one of the ones that came out of the walls also landed on its back, rendering it entirely useless as it failed to flip itself while the other amalgam automatons paid no attention to it.

They jumped at her at roughly the same time, showing no ability to coordinate their movements whatsoever as another pair of automatons crashed into one another and entirely wasted their time.

Even if they had not been so inept, there was so much vertical space above Wei Yi’s position that she was able to easily leap into the air as the remaining insectoids hit one another at the spot where she stood seconds prior.

While she was still in the air, she used the fact that they were attempting to attack her and absorbed the incoming force before throwing it right back at them in the form of killing intent that channelled the Trapped Animal palm. The powerful wave of crimson struck the heads of these amalgam automatons and dented, if not outright crushed, their insect-like heads, damaging or destroying most of their eyes in one go. What remained of each insectoid creature was thrown backwards, providing Wei Yi with enough space to land.

‘Tough, somehow capable of hiding in stone even from spiritual perception, but incredibly stupid,’ she did not voice her assessment of these creatures, merely creating another Concentrated Blade with which to deal with them, when the battle changed again. A strange sensation passed through her and the entire tunnel, resembling killing intent in most ways, causing her whole body to become tense.

However, the target clearly wasn’t her but the amalgam automatons around her.

All of a sudden, their eyes, acting as unblinking lanterns in the dark up until now, opened and shut, with the light within them remaining similar yet changing entirely.

Every one of the automatons that could still move changed their positions slightly, with the one that was on its back being righted by another while the two that had previously crashed into one another instead changed their positions as to minimise the chances of that happening again. Some of the others also climbed onto the walls or otherwise prepared to act with a different timing to the rest of the automatons.

In short, whereas they were mindless creatures, they now acted with proper consideration.

That, combined with the aforementioned energy, made a single conclusion so obvious that Wei Yi didn’t need to consider any other possibility – there was a true intelligence, either a living human or someone akin to the automaton tailor of Beast’s Rest, that was assisting the amalgam automatons in some way. The most significant question was whether they could understand her words.

To find out, she looked at one of the insectoid creatures and said, “If you tolerate outsiders, I wish to speak with you. If not, I can leave without further confrontation.”

While there was no immediate reply, the fact that the amalgam automatons did not attack her immediately was enough of an answer for her. Regardless of the method used to influence or control the automatons, the one doing it did have some understanding of the concept of speech at the very least and could hear it through the connection they had to the amalgam automatons themselves. After this, even if they proved to not know the common language of the Planar Continents, there was still room for avoiding a confrontation.

Naturally, Wei Yi wasn’t attempting to avoid the battle out of some fear – so long as the amalgam automatons did not have the ability to use one or more of an otherworldly demon’s techniques, they would do little but slow her down even with proper tactics – but she did not want to accidentally worsen her relations with some unknown faction, possibly the very Automaton Point that she was seeking, just due to some random desire for conflict.

Several more seconds passed before the intelligence behind them came to a decision, which they relayed to her by making the amalgam automatons stand down but surround her, with the insectoid creature with the most eyes turning away to face the direction in which Wei Yi was already going.

‘They want to direct me somewhere? Alright then, I’m not objecting to this, especially since almost all methods of confusing my sense of direction can be countered with the combination of my various mental methods,’ she thought, following the creatures without any objections, ‘They don’t seem capable of speaking, neither on their own nor for their master.’

Her guess about their intentions was correct, for she soon found them leading her through various passages on a route so nonsensical and complex that anyone without everything available to her would have gotten confused about the layout of the caves and had given up on mapping them to any degree. Frankly, even with the Augur’s Library to keep track of things for her, she was tempted to turn to one of the amalgam automatons and ask them to simply bring her where she needed to be instead of delaying the journey for so long, but as she didn’t want to aggravate them for no good reason, she chose to remain silent.

‘I get the feeling that they’re just fucking with me now. How many more times are we going to go past the exact same location? I hope it isn’t twenty-eight…’ as she was tempted to reconsider her previous decision, she finally felt something with her spiritual perception that stood out amidst the monotonous passages and tunnels, and it happened exactly as they walked on a path that they had not previously stepped on.

Furthermore, they were no longer meandering through the tunnels, meaning that she had only a little longer to wait before finally arriving at her destination.

When said destination finally came into view, Wei Yi found her sight drawn towards it. It was by no means regal nor astounding in terms of the architecture or design, but the simple visual that it resulted in would catch the eyes of any newcomer.

Within a great cavern, tall enough for several dozen people to stand on one another’s shoulders and still not reach the top, a great settlement was constructed on the walls and various outcroppings in the stone. Countless structures, long strips of cloth and various random objects were strewn all over the cave, a large rope and dried wood bridge connecting most of these structures to the other side of the cave.

The entire area was lit by green lanterns, covering everything in an eerie glow that contrasted greatly with the typical colour scheme of the rest of the prison realm. Whenever distant figures covered in crimson walked past them, the mixture of green and red created a peculiar sight.

Right on the edge of their side of the bridge, a humanoid hatred automaton stood with his or her hands together by their crotch, though they wore nothing and had nothing to conceal.

Based on the energy flowing from them and towards the amalgam automatons, this had to be the same one that allowed them to act so much more like an intelligent entity, which was instantly confirmed the second that they took a step towards her and spoke.

“Human… you have come here… why?”

“Exploration and the desire to form some alliances. Is this settlement full of people like you?” Wei Yi asked.

“Like me… yes…” the automaton nodded, “Is that… an issue?”

“Not really. If you don’t mind me asking, what do you lot call yourselves? I’ve met someone a lot like you, but they had no clue what they were. Are you hatred automatons, or have you decided on some different identity for yourselves?”

“We… I wouldn’t be… the best one… to explain… But first… you must-”

Before they could open their mouth again, a voice came from the distance, soft yet far-reaching, “Lao Kai, who has come to our front door? Are they an issue?”

‘This one’s definitely a guy,’ Wei Yi concluded, glancing towards the uncertain automaton.

“No… But she… might be a threat…”

“Hm… She seems interesting. I will judge her, so, if you would, let her in.”

“Understood…” Lao Kai turned back to her and, through whatever technique that permitted him to control the amalgam automatons, made the insectoid creatures return towards the tunnels while he stepped to the side, “Cause… no… trouble…”

She nodded and stepped onto the bridge, finding it to be strangely stable despite the overall appearance of the structure. Even in the very middle, closest to the abyss below, it barely shook with her steps, and that was even with the additional gravity from the training equipment that had somehow survived on her body this entire time.

‘A training set that will soon become entirely useless at suppressing my strength, at which point I might as well destroy it with my physique energy… unless there is more to it than meets the eye…’ Wei Yi thought as she crossed the bridge, glancing at the metal band around one of her arms, ‘There is bound to be something of interest in relation to these, considering the fact that the twins had gotten away from the Greats in time. However, I should figure out how to get them off and create my own set that isn’t so difficult to remove.’

For now, they did not appear to get in the way, so she returned her focus to the settlement on the other side, which she reached with one final step.

If she needed to get to any other part of the area, she would have had no clue whatsoever on how to get there, but since the voice seemed to belong to someone of great importance, she automatically concluded that it had to originate from the enormous passageway lit by the greatest quantity of green lamps, and thus headed there.

Her guess was confirmed the second that she entered the great doorway as the strange voice was heard in her ears, “You are going down the correct route. Please do not disturb the rest of us before we can converse.”

None of that needed to be made explicit to her, so she quietly rolled her eyes and continued onwards.

That large passageway slowly narrowed down to a tunnel that was only sufficient for three people to walk alongside one another at most. It ended at a set of double doors with no clear lock on either side, as far as she could tell with her spiritual perception. Given that the voice had given her the permission to continue, she did, opening one of the doors slowly and quietly as to follow his second instruction and not bother anyone else that might be on that side of the doors.

As it turned out, such fears were entirely pointless. These doors led directly to a bedroom, with a large king-size bed standing at the back and in the very middle of the wall, surrounded by translucent silks and other unnecessarily luxurious materials. Several pieces of random furniture were strewn around the room in a less orderly fashion, and all of them stood out amidst the plain stone walls of the room which were only ornamented by a single tattered banner stuck onto one of the walls. The source of the voice seemed to be sitting in the corner within a comfortable reclining chair that obscured most of his body.

“Greetings. Am I still speaking to the same person?”

“Indeed, you are. Welcome, outsider. It has been some time since the last time someone of your kind has stumbled into our domain through the route that you had taken.”

“There aren’t many cave tunnels that go up to the surface, so unless others decided to randomly break through the ground, they wouldn’t come down here,” she responded, “So, since you referred to me as a particular kind, I suppose that you are different? Are you also a hatred automaton?”

“Not quite…” he did not immediately explain himself, instead standing up slowly and turning towards her.

Like the guard at the bridge, he did not wear clothing, but his physical appearance made that fact significantly more noticeable. His skin and flesh appeared to be ordinary in colour and appearance, matching that of a typical human man, and so did the vast majority of his physical features. Perhaps the only exceptions were the two small ruptures near his ribs and in his left arm that exposed his black bones. Every other part of his physiology, including the minor parts like his genitalia, were perfectly intact, albeit a little paler than would have been healthy for the average person.

He noticed her gaze and asked, “Does my state of undress bother you?”

“No, not at all. I was just curious upon seeing someone so complete despite your nature.”

“Ah. On that topic, let me clarify one thing. We and the automatons differ in one place – although we are still animated by the Beast’s eternal hatred, we retain our knowledge, identity, perhaps even our sanity. For this reason, we do not believe that we are their kind,” the man said, “They are automatons, and we call ourselves avatars.”

“Hatred avatars?”

“Precisely,” he nodded, returning to his seat.

Wei Yi glanced around the room again and found a chair placed against the wall close to her, deciding to sit down and get a break from the long journey here before looking back towards the hatred avatar, “By the way, before we continue, may I know your name?”

“Fen Fang. What about yours?”

“Wei Yi. So, as hatred avatars, you have an ability to control the less intelligent automatons?”

“It is something that we had discovered. There is a resonance between us and them, one that can be used to link ourselves with them and influence their actions. Although it is important to avoid entering any automaton too deeply, so that our sanity and identity remains, it allows us to guard our lands without risking the integrity of our bodies,” Fen Fang explained, “I do not know if your kind can sense our resonance, but it exists between all automatons and avatars.”

“The resonance you speak of appears to be some form of killing intent, and the majority of cultivators on the surface and in this half of the prison realm use killing intent as their primary form of power. I suspect that if you spent more time up there, some groups might even approach you to attempt to understand this power and use it themselves.”

He nodded, “That is possible. However, there is little that they could learn. Several of your kind had been here, and none could understand.”

“Perhaps those people were simply incompetent. I haven’t met them, so I couldn’t say anything definitively… Nonetheless, I wish to ask if you are the leader of this underground settlement, whether there is more to it in other places, and if your collective has some kind of name?”

“I am the closest to a leader that you will find. I have the clearest voice, so it is easiest for me to resolve disagreements. I have little power beside that. There are some more areas that we inhabit, and one is even near the ground, but I will not share them with you. Our lands… It is my duty to keep them all safe, and I do not yet know whether you are someone that will take advantage of our hospitality. However, we have no name for the settlement. We have no need of it.”

“Oh, I see. On the outside, some (only me, really) have decided to call this area Automaton Point, as several automaton-like individuals had been spotted above these caves. Would you object to such a name?”

“There is little difference to us. Since there are more automatons than avatars here, it is not entirely inaccurate,” he shrugged, “You spoke about forming alliances at the bridge, did you not? As far as we are aware, the people of the surface are very particular about their factions and tend to remain in neutrality or opposition to one another. Does your presence mean that this will change?”

“It very well might. The leader of Beast’s Rest – a settlement to the east, as close to the central storm wall as this place is to the external one – desires to claim more lands and unite them so that when the prison realm is finally breached, we will all be able to leave together and fight back against the greats,” Wei Yi explained, ignoring the fact that she was this very leader and that she was effectively throwing out propaganda for herself with a straight face, “That leader is rather capable, and I am inclined to believe that she has a high chance of success. For this reason, I had to head out to investigate whether rumours about you were true, and if it would be possible to get your aid.”

“Interesting, but even if I wished to get involved, I could do little to convince the rest of us. To begin with, why should we be interested- no, would that leader be able to guarantee that we will survive?”

“Your survival… You believe that you might perish when you exit the dense killing intent that animates you? Certainly, that’s a worthwhile concern, and one that neither I nor she can address immediately. If you do not mind me performing some experiments, I could investigate and see whether it is possible to sustain your life in the Planar Continents.”

“And why would we have any interest in leaving?”

“When the Greats are defeated, or when a safe haven from them is created, you can freely come and go wherever you like. If you wish to return to the places that your ancestors came from, or if you want to remain here, then that leader would have no reason to prevent this.”

“Hm… We can speak about this later, once you’ve had your opportunity to experiment and once I have had some time to think and discuss the matter with other hatred avatars. You will have to convince the others yourself if you wish to test anything on them, but remember that if you kill anyone, even if they knew that it was a possibility, we will not look upon you as kindly as we currently do. Don’t make any stupid mistakes.”

“Naturally. Would you object to me finding some place to reside and eating the automatons I had slain?”

“The automatons are mindless, like cattle to your kind. Do not slay too many and we shall not object. As for residence, you can find several empty homes built onto the walls of the cave structure. To us, homes are mostly for decoration and entertainment, so if you find one that lacks all semblances of furniture, feel free to occupy it.”

“Thank you, Fen Fang. I will do my best not to aggravate your people.”

She stood up and bowed lightly to him, exiting the room quietly. After she shut the door behind herself, she remained in place for a second before she looked at the braid resting on her shoulder.

‘Well, there’s my attempt at acting like some common physique cultivator… Oh well. At the very least I can correct my style now that I’m here and return to looking like a reasonable person,’ Wei Yi thought, sighing as she departed.