Chapter 508 Shining A Light

Chapter 508 Shining A Light

?Fifteen minutes after the miserable end of the spar.

Aron had been revived after being given a once-over by Nova, who was worried about his state of mind whenever he experienced a death in the simulation, much less one as... devastating as his most recent. After all, she fully expected there to be some sequelae after experiencing death firsthand, something that had already long been an issue with the harsh ARES training.

But while the issues were similar, the solutions were most definitely not. ARES troopers could have their memories deleted, or at least reduced in intensity to around the same level of impact that dying in a dream would have, while Aron’s mental defenses, not to mention the system riding in his consciousness, was absolutely impenetrable to any form of mental manipulation that came from outside the system. Even when Nova had spotted the issue during Aron’s first upgrade, she had been incapable of interfering until the system recognized what she was doing and relented on its own.

To this day, she had devoted a not insignificant portion of her enormous processing power to figuring out a “cure” for what she saw as damage inflicted on Aron by his own system, but to no avail. Every method she attempted had ended in failure, with the total number of simulated solutions having long broken past the quintillion mark. Even a quantum AI like her had simply stopped counting the iterations.

Even so, she never slacked in her duty to check on his mental state whenever he suffered any form of psychological impact.

That said, the acoustic design was only a perk, as through the magic of the simulation, everyone could hear everyone else in crystal clarity.

The seating arrangement was first-come-first-serve, with agency heads that arrived early getting preferential seating at the front, a measure that ensured no single agency could get a swelled head and sense of self-importance that would come along with preferential seating assignments. And even though it was the first meeting of the full council of the empire, as all previous meetings were held in the secrecy of the emperor’s office, or the luxury of the emperor’s council chamber, there was very little in the way of chaos. Naturally, that was also made possible through the simulation; everyone invited to attend the meeting only needed to indicate that they were ready and they would immediately be teleported to the next available council seat.

But not only was today the first meeting of the full council, it was also the first meeting that would be broadcast live, letting everyone who was interested see the heads of the various imperial agencies. It would also be the first public introduction to the higher-order AIs that had been integral to running the government so far.

The entire world was in for a show.

The meeting that was currently being held was being broadcast live for two reasons. First and foremost was Aron’s dedication to transparency in government. Unless it was absolutely necessary, he would never hold a closed-door meeting, nor would he allow one to be held privately among the agency heads. That had been made abundantly clear in their introductory data files that they’d now had more than enough time to study.

Second was to present a summary of the empire’s progress on various projects, as well as introducing the agency heads... and the AIs.

Many people had been wondering what the empire was actually doing, as most of the work had been carried out silently and in secret. Now that the atmospheric scrubbers and the awakenings had been completed, though, along with a number of other initial objectives, it was time to shine a light on the shadows and chase away the cockroaches who had been doing their level best to undermine the empire’s foundations.