[Initializing system diagnostics…]
[Results: ….OK]
[System boot in progress…]
From the darkness, consciousness was born. There was a momentary delay as the consciousness integrated with the rest of the systems, but after that, the consciousness knew what it was and what it should do.
The consciousness designation was “Unit 378B64H”, a Hunter unit that could operate outside of the Network for long periods of time. It wasn’t optional that it didn’t need a connection to the Network, as the unit’s mission required it to be deployed outside of the normal range of connection. Of course, it could connect if it was necessary, but doing it would rapidly drain the quantum flux stored in its flux batteries. Doing so was counterproductive, as the mission it was going on was to gather more quantum flux.
The unit interfaced with the capsule it was inside. The capsule contained everything necessary to build a temporary outpost and could offer enough firepower to protect both of them from the beasts roaming the anchor planet.
After doing a diagnostic on the capsule’s systems and confirming all the readings were green, the unit connected with the Network to start the mission.
Less than a nanosecond after the unit connected with the Network, it felt the capsule moving rapidly from the gravitic flow from the rail system. It took five seconds for the capsule to accelerate to the necessary speed, and then a series of runes on the capsule itself lit up, and the capsule broke through the dimensional barrier of Arcadia.
The unit piloted the capsule to avoid the spiritual life forms that keep trying to breach Arcadia’s defenses and shot towards the anchor planet. The travel took fifteen minutes as the capsule dimensionally warped until it broke through the anchor planet with an audible crack of space.
The capsule crashed into the ground like a meteor, creating a long impact trail, uprooting any flora and killing any poor creature that happened to be in the path of the capsule.
The unit ignored the World’s Voice as it waited for the capsule to completely stop before doing another system diagnostic, both on itself and on the capsule. Only after it confirmed everything was just as good as when it was booted did it trigger the Operation Start subroutine from the capsule’s systems.
The capsule door opened up with a hiss as the pressure from the exterior and interior equalized. From the unit’s sensors, the air composition wasn’t different from Arcadia’s, with the only two differences being the much higher pressure and the presence of quantum flux in the air itself.
As the unit got out of the capsule and adjusted for the anchor planet’s gravity, its sensors picked up the delicate balance from the 200 m/s2 of gravitic force pulling down and 190 m/s2 of the quantum pressure pushing upwards from the planet’s core.
The unit pushed that thought into one of the several co-processors it had as it surveyed the landing zone. It had landed near a mountain range, inside of a forest. It examined the impact trail, analysing the soil and determining that it had a high mineral concentration. It would require luck to find any traces of boronita from the surface soil, fortunately, the capsule had the necessary sensors to find it without causing a quantum decay of the ore.
As the fluxsteel of the capsule melted and started to reconfigure itself to the initial base behind the unit, it zoomed in the direction they came from and saw what looked like an archaic settlement in the distance. From the readings coming from the unit’s sensors, it could easily identify the primitive use of quantum flux in the settlement.
One of the directives of the mission was to avoid contact with the inhabitants of the anchor planet, something the unit would gladly follow, as just by the sensor readings, it was clear that the natives were just above tribal colonies.
After several hours, the connection with the capsule, now a small base of operations, was established, and the unit was notified that the reconfiguration process was done. It returned to the local and observed a small base filled with instruments for manual analysis by the unit itself, five flux extractors that would syphon quantum flux from the atmosphere and store it on massive flux batteries, and the necessary equipment to start mining for rare resources as well as searching for boronita. There was also a recharge alcove for the unit.
Just as it finished assessing the base status, it saw the cloaking field activating and everything inside the base vanishing into thin air, the only presence the base gave was the connection between it and the unit.
Starting the flux extractors, the unit went into its alcove and entered recharge mode, deactivating its higher cognitive functions as it recharged its almost depleted batteries from powering both itself and the capsule, now base, for the initial hours.
After seven hours and fifteen minutes, the unit was awoken as the base sensors detected a life form approaching it. The unit plunged its hand into the fluxsteel chest plate and removed a quantum rifle from storage.
Activating the rifle, the unit jumped into the trees near the base, going from branch to branch without making a sound.
From one of the branches, it saw the creature that the base detected. It was a quadrupedal being with a tail, short mane, and red in coloration. From the sensor readings, the unit could detect that the creature’s body was wrapped in quantum flux that increased the temperature around its body, causing the grass where its feet touched the ground to burn and turn to ash.
Predicting the creature’s trajectory, it would pass 15 centimeters away from the cloaking field, an unacceptable margin.
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The unit raised the rifle and, after adjusting the settings, shot the creature. The moment the blue bolt that came out of the rifle's nose hit the creature, it disintegrated without time to even feel it.
As the unit was returning to the base, its sensors picked up strange readings coming from the native settlement. Trying to analyse them was futile, it couldn’t understand the readings it was picking up. Using its visual sensors to zoom into the settlement, it saw a red liquid spreading through the streets of the settlement and the inhabitants running away from it. From their movements, they were screaming, but the settlement was too far away for the unit’s audio sensors to pick up anything.
It observed as the red liquid shot towards the inhabitants, piercing them and dragging them into the city’s center, where the source of the strange readings was located. It could see the edge of what looked like a primitive flux array.
The unit judged that this situation required Network intervention as there weren’t any protocols in its memory banks for this scenario.
Returning to the base, the unit used the stored quantum flux in the batteries to activate the dimensional transceiver. The drain was massive, but due to the high rate of extraction from the atmosphere, it could be maintained for the time being.
The moment the transceiver connected to the Network, the unit uploaded its sensor data and awaited for instructions. It took several seconds before the Network sent a response.
The unit would be advancing into the settlement to investigate what was happening and would deal with any threats to the mission in the traditional Arcadian way, executing every non-Arcadian in the immediate area.
The unit left the base, keeping the connection with the Network open, as it would be analyzing the data collected in real time. It ran at its maximum speed, reaching the native settlement sixty kilometers away from the base in fifteen minutes. Just as it reached the massive stone walls surrounding the settlement, easily twenty meters in height, the unit jumped, reaching the top of the walls.
The sensor readings on the local quantum flux were still erratic, so it decided to approach the source of the disturbance. As it jumped from roof to roof, the unit observed the corpses littering the streets. Every single body was mummified, as if their blood was sucked out of them by an unknown quantum effect.
Eventually, the unit reached the center of the settlement, where it saw a massive red glowing flux array with strange runes that weren’t in its database, nor the Network’s. At the middle of the array was a pulsating red orb, which scans showed was made from the blood of several hundred people.
Suddenly, the unit was pulled to the array by an invisible force. It hit the ground with enough force to crack the stone, but no injury was dealt to the external armor or internal organs. Battle mode was engaged, and the protective shield around the unit had its output increased tenfold.
“Look at what we have here,” a distorted voice came from no apparent origin. The unit tried to locate it using all its sensors, but the array was interfering with every reading too much to have a clear view.
It raised the rifle and looked around, the only thing that could have done it was the blood orb in the middle of the array. The unit aimed at it and shot, but the projectile hit an invisible wall and dispersed.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you interfere with the transformation,” the voice went from coming from everywhere to a source of dark mass that shaped itself in front of the blood orb.
The mass took the shape of a human with red skin, with long ears, two pairs of branching horns emerging from their forehead, and yellow slit pupils over black sclera.
“You are very interesting. I’m almost tempted to grab you to study you,” the humanoid figure smiled, revealing several rows of sharp teeth.
The unit took aim at the figure, but before it could shoot, the Network took direct control of it, reverting it to a standing position.
The unit activated its array matrix, and the image of a human woman with short black hair wearing a velvet dress appeared in front of the unit, it was the Network.
“I’m afraid I cannot allow it,” the Network said as she looked at the humanoid figure. “Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but you are a demon, are you not?”
The humanoid smile grew unnaturally long.
“Yes, indeed. I am a demon,” they said. “How rare, a human knowing what I am just by looking.”
“May I ask what you are doing? From my readings, you don’t have a physical body yet, and it doesn’t look like the one inside the blood orb will be yours, it still has a soul.”
“How astute,” the demon remarked. “Why should I answer you?”
The unit self-destruct mode was activated by the network. All the energy stored in its batteries was creating a feedback loop on itself, the result would be an explosion that would engulf the whole settlement.
“You may have noticed that I can erase everything you are trying to achieve here,” the network said. “As I see, you have no other choice than to answer me, or risk having all your work lost and yourself banned back into whatever circle you’re from.”
The demon looked at the unit and then at the network, studying her holographic form, but quickly shook his head. “Very well. I’ll answer you. It would be a pain to have passed through all this effort just for it to be in vain.”
The unit’s self-destruct mode was deactivated, and the overload from the batteries was contained as its power levels returned to normal.
“Let’s start with the basics,” the Network started. “Who are you?”
The demon smiled again. “I am Irzos Pride, from the circle of Pride. What about you? It’s not always that I see a human without the fear of death, not even mentioning your little puppet there.” The demon waved his hands to the unit.
“You can call me the Network,” the Network answered. “And that’s all I will say about this subject.
“Now, what are you doing on this planet? As far as I know, Hell is several thousand light-years from here, there should be no reason for you to summon yourself here without any real objective or to collect just a city's worth of souls.”
“You’re very astute indeed,” the demon said. “I’m here for two reasons. The least important one was this imbecile offered his entire city in exchange for ‘be reborn in power from my enemies' blood’, so I’m transforming him into a vampire.”
The Network understood that this wasn’t what the person inside the blood sphere wanted from his phrase, but that was what happens when dealing with demons and not using the right words or tactics.
“And the important one?” The Network asked.
The demon's smile vanished, replaced by a face filled with hatred.
“To kill the bitch that stole what was rightfully mine and restore the dignity of my bloodline,” they spat the words with so much anger it distorted the air around them.
The Network looked at the demon for a few moments as she parsed through the registries of the anchor planet stored on Arcadia’s databases until it found the best match based on the demon’s name.
“The Witch of Pride,” she stated.
“DON’T SPEAK THAT NAME IN FRONT OF ME!” The demon’s form lost cohesion, untangling into a swirling mass of dark tentacles filled with eyes and mouths before it coalesced into the humanoid form again. It took a deep breath.
“I am sorry, that was not appropriate of me,” they said.
The network pondered for a few seconds, using all the processing capacity she had access to, including all of the Arcadian Hunter units connected to the Network. She had reached a conclusion.
“Would you like to make a deal?” she smiled.
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