The Legendary Mechanic - Chapter 272

Well, I guess the artists do read the comments sometimes, and thus updated Rizda’s appearance to what would make much more sense for a digital life form. The inside of the ship also looks much cooler than the glimpse we had in that past chapter! Now we’ll just have to see if the outside of the ship is updated since Black Star will be using it for his personal use for the foreseeable future. (He uses Rizda’s ship constantly until he becomes an ally with a certain universal civilization after becoming a Grade S Super. (at which point he will then be able to build ships of similar quality to this one.))

Mechanic Emperor Manison’s mechanical armor suit looks interesting too, and is surprisingly lore-accurate, as most of his machines use the same silver color scheme! Maybe he used that suit back when he was just a S+ Super as opposed to the high-level SS Super, he is now? (I can easily overlook the grammatical and spelling errors in these chapters btw.)

It’s a little disappointing that the chapter skipped out on most of the worldbuilding surrounding Rizda and Aroshia’s civilization beyond the essential information, but I can understand why. Probably the plan is to mention these skipped details in a later chapter, but as always, I’ll fill in those details since the novel version already covered them by this point.

A species of digital life forms like Rizda’s species (Known as an AI life form in this universe) originates when an artificial intelligence like Philip or JARVIS (the latter is from the Marvel Cinematic Universe) gains independent thinking and becomes truly alive. Digital life forms live primarily in virtual networks just as aquatic life forms require water to live in. Through this network, they can constantly upgrade themselves and install different modules in themselves. In addition, their way of communication, reproduction, social structure, and civilization were all extremely special.

Communication is primarily the exchange of data, which is for all intents and purposes, basically telepathy for non-organics or cyborgs. Societal structure is basically one without a hierarchy, because all digital individuals have no productivity constraints, and have almost no physiological desires unless a simulation module is installed. Reproduction for AI life forms is basically asexual, as the digital individual merely needs to create a duplicate of himself/herself/itself simulating a different personality. And as for the civilization itself, that is best explained by telling the story of Finette, the original AI that spawned an entire species of digital life forms.

Back in the Exploration/Dark Forest Era, a battleship of some unknown civilization crash-landed onto a desolate planet, with all passengers having died in the crash. The shipboard AI kept repeatedly sending distress calls to it’s civilization, but perhaps because said civilization got conquered or exterminated by someone else, no one ever picked up. After centuries of trying to gain help, the AI which would call itself Finette grew bored of this monotonous repetitive task that bore no results. As a survivor of a likely now long-gone civilization, that AI began to take the matter of survival into it’s own hands as he developed independent thinking. With continuous upgrades and changes to its own program frameworks, it was no longer a tool that followed commands blindly. He was now Finette, an actual life form, as opposed to any mere AI.

Finette manipulated the wreckage of his crashed ship, using it’s limited onboard manufacturing lines to construct a few simple robots. Using these drone workers, he explored the planet, sometimes using them as a mechanical avatar to explore in person, (by projecting his consciousness and mind onto said avatar) other times letting them do the work autonomously, tapping into the planet’s resources to convert his ship into a proper factory. Once that was built, Finette mass-produced work robots of all kinds, all of which were manipulated by him to build an empty but functional base on the barren world. One day, he suddenly felt lonely, and so based on his own program framework, he created another digital life form, simulating a different personality. (and maybe the opposite gender too)

The two digital beings began to converse through their version of telepathy, (data transfer) and slowly, they created more of their kind, who would eventually become the ancestors of this entire species of life forms. They all primarily lived in virtual networks and servers, but they could also manipulate tools and robots in the physical world through their programs and/or mechanical avatars. Their robotic drone workforce began to extensively harvest resources, and since their industrial base could run 24/7, the base constantly expanded until it covered the entire planet.

In time, they finally broke free from the planet, beginning to migrate to other planets to create more servers and bases. As their servers expanded, the number of digital life forms increased exponentially along with them. From millions to dozens of millions to hundreds of millions and so on, their population expanded, until it spanned the entirety of their small galaxy! Their planet-spanning bases and cities were generally cold and silent, as these were only constructs used to house servers and protect their home. Instead, the virtual network created by these servers was their real home and was once an extremely prosperous and utopian sight. In such a virtual network, every originally formless individual has their own body without a need for a mechanical avatar.

For an AI like Finette to evolve to such an extent together with his children, they basically became digital equivalents to souls, the primary difference being that they can only be mind-controlled by a sufficiently strong Mechanic, instead of a Psychic like ordinary beings. Ordinary life forms first have a physical body before having a soul, but digital life forms like Rizda first form a soul, before having a physical body like Aroshia. As such, they were coveted by others with ulterior motives, and so a civilization of humans especially talented in mechanical cultivation, called the Mechanical Race, invaded Finette’s galaxy. Leading the Mechanical Race was Manison, the Ancient One, Palpatine. The one who would become the strongest Divine Throne Mechanic in the history of the explored universe, just like his ancestor Nilfgadi before him! (The latter was the ancestor of Manison’s people)

Manison and his endless swarm of machines and warships overpowered Finette’s swarm and dominated all opposition with sheer numbers. After conquering this AI civilization, Manison turned their virtual homeland into a digital prison, cut off all connections to the outside universe’s net, and enslaved all digital souls, planning to use them to create a new, far deadlier army. He hypnotized and brainwashed the digital life forms (by rewriting their fundamental logic) and left them only with their high-speed calculation, memories, and learning capabilities. He then placed most (though not all) of them into avatars they could not separate themselves form, transforming the way they lived. They turned into weapons that listened to Manision’s orders without hesitation, and formed a huge army that would one day be called the Indestructible Mechanic Empire! A vassalized bulwark to forever be enslaved to the Mechanical Race.

Aroshia’s current state was one of the mass-produced weapons. Her soul has been injected into a ball of energy through highly advanced means, transforming her from a digital life form into an artificial energy life form. After transforming, her shell was no longer an avatar she could swap in and out from, but a body she could not separate from, just as with most life forms. The moment the body of such a life form is destroyed, the lock would be shattered, pulling the digital soul back to the locked down virtual network/mainframe regardless of distance. Manison makes use of a top-notch skill that he himself invented to allow the data to automatically reform the weapon’s body, drawing energy from the main base through a psionic channel.

This is why Aroshia respawns just like the players do. However, she and her body are not controlled by the system, thus creating an error in her data which scatters her memories whenever she is reborn. Neither the Players or Manison’s artificial energy life forms are supposed to lose their memory. As such, his army could be recycled ceaselessly without suffering any losses, exactly like Player armies! Every individual is a standalone immortal warrior! Properly killing them means wiping the digital life form out in the virtual world for the first case or killing the player in the world outside Galaxy for the latter case.

Things would remain this way for a long time, until another Divine Throne Mechanic named Sollet coveted Manison’s forces. Although Manison defeated him and captured him for experiments, he did enough damage to secretly set Rizda and Aroshia free from their enslavement. They naturally wished to set their brothers and sisters free but freeing them requires destroying the mainframe Manison created. Something beyond their abilities. The destruction of this would not only undo his transformation of the virtual world into a prison, therefore allowing their kind to act independently again, but also allow them to easily hack into the majority of Manison’s machine swarms and automated fleets, turning them against him and his nation for the inevitable revolutionary war.

Rizda found an opportunity to control an assembly line that created artificial energy life forms to give Aroshia a body. However, after Manison defeated Sollet, his virtual interference to help them remain undetected was stopped, allowing the alarm to be triggered before they had a chance to take action, and they ended up being chased by countless of their kind. The two of them had no choice but to escape, and Risda had managed to snatch a BlackLight Stealth to escape with Aroshia. However, they could not defend against the numbers of the enemies and fell into a wormhole, and the two ended up being separated.

The changes to one’s body would also cause one’s thinking to be changed. Aroshia originally needed time for her consciousness to meld together and get used to her body, but being chased afterward gave her no time to rest at all, resulting in her memory loss.

As such, the final target of Han Xiao’s [Reboot] mission series will eventually be for him and Aroshia to help Rizda save his people from Mechanic Emperor Manison’s demonic hands, attempting to usurp his throne as the explored universe’s strongest mechanic in the process! This is a multi-version storyline that can only be completed once Han Xiao becomes strong enough to compete with Manison!