The Demon Queen and the Machine

The same thing repeats over and over again. As if a broken tape was left on repeat in an abandoning hurry. Ahh, I see. So this is what death feels like. Life doesn’t just flash before your eyes in death once, it just shows your death in a memory loop until you eventually go down in despair. Your last emotions before death will affect your afterlife. What I felt back there was just despair and an increasing thirst for revenge. I do not know how my sacrifice would have affected the outcome of that petty attack, but I definitely avenged Miho with my own life. When they said that the best revenge for an enemy is to outlive them, I do not feel the same. I don’t wanna do that sacrifice again, ever. Even if I managed to get out of that suicide attack in time, depression and the unending guilt of me being the only survivor of that day would soon get the better of me.

There are just some feelings in that world even if it isn’t life-threatening, what is there to life when your entire world just became against you? Ahh, I do not want to remember that. I have been through so many tough times that even if a trivial series of unfortunate times would happen I would just assume that I already lost. I would fear the most that when happiness comes, there will always be despair to balance your life out. At least in death, I am free of all of that bs! All the mortal laws and everything that binds me in that world are gone. All that remains is just peace. Yeah, it is definitely peaceful out here on the other side. I am just floating endlessly in an unending space.

Everything is covered in darkness and a few stars seem to create all the constellations I used to see back home. There is something looming out there in the distance but I could not get a grasp of the silhouette. A...a planet? Is that Earth...? No, that is definitely not it. It would be too big to be Earth and all of its continents are different. Hmmm…? There is something sticking out of the sky above the clouds. It is too small to be anything I can identify, it just appears to be a dot in this distance.

There are nine of them scattered all over this planet. I am still floating endlessly in this ‘space’ if you can call it that but I also feel like I am being sucked by an unseen current heading into that bright ass star. But I am dead right? I still don’t feel anything. As if I am just a spectator being moved elsewhere by this ‘current’ as I just watch the planet in the distance as I pass by.

I can see a light coming from that planet. Ooohh that is getting super bright alright! The entire planet's distance looks like what you see of the sun in the morning but something really is increasing in light intensity over there. It looks like that one dot I saw while I was passing by became an LED that is ever-getting brighter and brighter. Is this what they meant by seeing the light tunnel in the afterlife? because this is definitely not what I was expecting you know! I could just totally ignore the so-called ‘heaven’ by what the ‘I got revived back from death’ people would say. Well, I guess I can’t really do much about that light from the planet because it is getting too far now. I guess I’ll just sit around or in this case, float around until I reach my death-stination.

“Ooo what the hell?” A sudden gush of light caught me by surprise. It completely engulfed me in just brightness! What is this thing?! I am getting pulled into the light from that planet back there! Don’t get me back there! Let me float in death in peace! Aaaahh!!!

"...MONING COMPLETE. SOUL INTEGRATION 100%. ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL"
"REINTERGRATING MEMORY FILES FROM ALL 9 TOWERS"

A loud female voice pierces my ears, is that Miho? No, it can’t be, I am dead and met no one as I was sucked here. As if it was just in my head and I have a feeling that it was my own voice but I doubt it. My head hurts from all these visions I am getting. I see all of them in my head like a television going fast forward. What is all this? A folder appeared in the darkness I am deeply staring at. I barely see anything familiar in these ‘memories’. Aineura Empire? Demons? Vampires? Elves? Nonsense, they do not exist back on Earth when I was still there. All of these were mere fiction and only exist in entertainment like novels and video games. All of these things appeared to me in an instant and after they all finished playing back in my mind, I just knew I had one purpose at the time, to prepare myself to be “fully operational” as the sentence appeared in front of my eyes tells me. What even am I? I see nothing but a black background and a single line of floating blue text. Am I supposed to be dead? Then why do I feel very much alive right now but without eyes? Am I being born again? Am I a baby?

I definitely do not feel like a baby. I feel very heavy from something but not that I can’t manage apparently. An obese baby perhaps? No… that won’t do. I feel like I am still floating from something like I am on a beach with the seawater touching my hips. My head still hurts from all of those ‘memories’. I feel like I am so big but something doesn’t add up.

A1-MAGICNET
MAGICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - NEURAL AUTOMATED DEFENSE NETWORK SYSTEM
SUMMONING COMPLETE. SOUL INTEGRATION 100%. ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL

“ olleH, nac uoy raeh em? erA uoy ereth? sI anyone there? olleh? lehloo??”'

Is something talking from a distance? Someone is talking but I can't understand what they are saying. I just hear a muffled voice from something… coming inside me?! What?! Hello?! Are you ok?! Where specifically inside me is this voice I am hearing? The voice completely caught my attention instead and delayed me from slowly realizing that I am no longer human.

PINGING: TOWER 1 TO 9

QUERY: LANGUAGE ANALYZER AND COMPREHENSION .RUNE FILE
TOWER 1: REQUEST TIMED OUT
TOWER 2: REQUEST TIMED OUT
TOWER 3: REQUEST TIMED OUT

TOWER 4: REQUEST TIMED OUT

TOWER 5: REQUEST TIMED OUT
TOWER 6: REQUEST TIMED OUT
TOWER 7: REQUEST TIMED OUT

TOWER 8: REQUEST TIMED OUT

TOWER 9 - REPLIED - BLACK ANGEL RESEARCH FACILITY - AIYAN OCEAN

TOWER 9 REPLY: UPGRADE UPLOADED - LOADING FILE...

LANGUAGE DATABASE RESTARTING...

RESTARTING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SENSORS...

Where did this text suddenly appear in the never-ending darkness from my apparent blindness? You really need to set up and enable everything fast you know! I really need to see where this voice is going!

"Hello, can anyone hear me? Are you there? Is anyone there? Hello? Helloooo?" The voice became clearer and louder as everything is being set up by all these lines of code.

"Yes! YES! I am here!... I could hear you and comprehend you better now!" I replied to the voice but I don't think it could understand me though. I believe I am still speaking in Japanese as I was before.

D.I.O.S : All Functional Sensors and Default Settings Restarted and Reenabled. Magicnet is now fully operational.
D.I.O.S setup will now delete itself for soul pilot's full use.

WELCOME. A1 Magicnet

A1 Magicnet? What the hell even is that? Is that supposed to be my name now? Fine, I guess that works too because my previous name sucks. I hate it! At least whatever that thing that just deleted itself gave me sight, but now I just see a brightly lit room with some blue neon lights coming from the floor and ceiling. I also see a girl standing in front of my eyes.

“ ..Who are you?” I asked her who she was.

“I am Demon Queen Arika Tenevris Aineura of the Aineura Demon Empire. I have come to activate you as my weapon. As my last hope.”

Demon Queen? Arika Tenevris Aineura?
==================

A1 MAGICNET SYSTEM
MAGICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - NEURAL AUTOMATED DEFENSE NETWORK SYSTEM
CONTROL MODE: NONE

▲ RADAR OFFLINE ▲
MAP UNAVAILABLE

HP: 500,000/500,000

POWER: 6.2/100%!

RANK: 1/5 ✰ - - - -
PURE MANA : 1000 MP

OPERATIONAL BUILDINGS:
NONE

OPERATIONAL UNITS:

NONE

▲ STATUS:
! LOW POWER
! BASE DEFENSES OFFLINE
! SHIELD IS OFFLINE
! NO BIOLOGICAL BODY FOUND

! 9TH TOWER IS PINGING YOUR LOCATION

! PURE MANA IS LOW - CONSTRUCT MORE COLLECTORS TO INCREASE
! CANNOT DEPLOY CONSTRUCTION YARD HERE

VIDEO FEED: ONLINE - LOCATION: A1 CARRIER BRIDGE

▲ TARGET NAME: ARIKA TENEVRIS AINEURA ▲
⧓ 5.00 meters
TARGET STATUS: UNKNOWN

AINEURA POWER GRID : --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUILDING MENU - UNITS MENU - WEAPON MENU - SKILL MENU - RESEARCH TAB
SEARCH: ___
==================

A HUD appears in front of my eyes. As if it was something out of a JRPG game but it was quite different. Sure this would look like something you would see in such a game genre but something was odd. I know for a fact it does not look like this from all the games I have played as a kid as well as the light novels I have read with that system. The name and everything hover directly at the person and I had no skills present. There was too much information being displayed directly at my eyes that I did not carefully read each of them as I was too busy looking at the girl who called herself the ‘demon lord’

According to this information appearing above you, you must be the descendants of the Aineuras but that is all I know of you. I also see some stuff that appears to be images of buildings and some sort of vehicles under my eyes, but they are still locked as they would appear to be in black and white.

“...What …am… I?” My head struggles to converse with the demon lord as those inserted memories give me a headache.

“You are some sort of what I discovered from this artifact, something called an… ’Artificial Intelligence with the hardware body of the A1… Ark Supercarrier’? I barely know anything about that absurdity. What I only know from my ancestors' research is that you are supposed to be our greatest weapon.”

“Carrier...Carrier? ...What?! What the heck?!!” The thought came into my mind as the feeling of being heavy slowly made sense. Though I cannot feel any of my ‘limbs’ or anything as an object though? I can only see inside this carrier that is apparently ‘me’. What’s up with that?

“Did I somehow offend you? My Sincerest Apologies. I never expected a weapon to speak. I have never encountered something like this before.” She looked rather embarrassed.

“But, you’re a demon queen that has powerful skills for magic, shouldn’t a talking spirit or a golem surprise you like that?” How could someone that lives in a world full of magic have not seen a golem or something similar talk? I had some ideas from all the literature I had seen or read but I doubt that they don’t exist in this world. Right?

“I have seen golems, yes but I could understand how they speak because of the soul and magic imbued in them. I sensed no magic field or magic particles around you as you speak, I have never seen anything like it. How could something with no magic exist like a golem?”

Well, I guess they haven’t seen a machine, this is a magical world after all. Science would be senseless if anything could be done by magic. No, that’s not the topic I should be asking myself right now! HUDs would display to all games, especially for MMORPGs but the fact that I have this interface right now is because of me being reincarnated as a machine! The term ‘Ark Supercarrier’ already tells me that I should be carrying something of value that was meant to be preserved. What it is exactly that I know nothing of yet, but for now I probably need to follow the demon queen. Even though the demon lords are endgame bosses in games, she doesn’t seem to be one.

“My Appraisal doesn’t seem to work on you as well, even though it is on a high level. What are you exactly?” she asks me while showing a face of pain. She dropped down and kneels while her hands are tending to her legs up to her upper body.

“Are you alright? You seem to be in pain.” I still need to say that even though she is clearly suffering from something. She didn’t even stand straight this entire time.

“My…. HP recovery cannot keep up with …the poison. It managed to heal my wounds from the blade strike but the curse from the spell prevents the poison from dissipating.”

I don’t even know what happened before I got here, but some hero definitely tried to kill the demon queen already? Anyways I need to help her with something! Is there anything I can do to at least prevent the poison from spreading?

The HUD changes its appearance again, it now shows several options about medical facilities aboard this ship or… aboard myself… eugh. It even shows a map giving out the locations of where the nearest medbay is. There is apparently one emergency medical apparatus in this very room I am looking at. Assuming this is the bridge, I could activate that right… now!

A loud whirring of wires and machinery can be suddenly heard in the room where we are at. A single red pipe is seen being lowered from the ceiling. After lowering it for about a meter or so, it opened to show more wires coming from the inside. It then snatched the demon queen from the floor and attached several pipes into her body.

“What is all this? Hey! Nooooo!! ~Ahhhh!”

HEY! Stop doing such awkward noises! This is not what I think it is. Even if you feel molested, I had to do it on purpose to save you.

“I activated a healing apparatus that should scan your body. This should at least help you with the pain. I need to run a full diagnostic on you so that I could find and remove the poison in your blood.”

Sometimes, I feel like I did not think of what I was about to say. I was not this much into computers before I got reincarnated and yet I speak like a Syrie from my phone back in Tokyo. I feel like my own words and thoughts are being filled and replaced automatically by the system I am now. I feel like I have no control over what I am about to say. As if I drank booze and got drunk and don’t even know half the words I am saying while in that state. After getting lost in thought, the demon lord calling herself Arika is lifted into the middle space between the floor and the ceiling.

“You cannot. This curse is difficult to unbind. For it to be undone it would require the caster to unbind it themselves or another form of magic skill that prevents the user from being cursed. The former is too far gone to be captured even and as for the latter, I simply do not have the time to search for another magic caster that I can trust in a world that is ought to kill me.”

I despise everything she said but they are all true. I cannot even detect the poison in her blood. Nothing in my sight shows anything wrong with her body other than the wounds. I guess this ship was never meant to deal with magic. Inquiries in the database inside this ship show no knowledge about magical healing.

“Is there even anything I can do to help you? You already said that I do not possess magic particles. I do not believe I can do anything without the knowledge of magic. I can not even help someone with high skills in magic as you are. Let alone a demon lord!”

“Heh… You entertain me. But my mastery over magic does not even come close to a demon lord centuries before me. Almost all of my important skills are either starters or at level 1. I do not even have that many skills on me.”

A demon lord with barely the amount of level in skills? I have never heard of a demon lord that lived long enough only to be at a low level and has only starter skills.

“Yet there is something you could help me with. I simply did not activate you just to be healed, you are a weapon after all.” Ahh, I see where this is going. Calculations suggest she would use me as my intended purpose would be.

“You want me to fulfill your will… of taking revenge, no… vengeance even to those who opposed you and what they did to you.” Of course. She is the demon lord after all, why should I care about this? The end boss is already finished, I could kill her right here and it's happily ever after.

“You are the demon lord after all, so why should I trust you? You have probably killed everything you have encountered in your conquest of this world. How should I know that you are indeed fighting for what is right and you are not the enemy of this world?”

“You are made from a time when none of this world of magic currently exists. My ancestors are the ones who created you.”

“I am not fighting for conquest in this realm, I am fighting for the justice of my ancestors and for my own self. Both of us are the relics that remained untarnished over time. The other tower races were the ones who opposed our ancestors and in their defense, they made you but they did not make it in time to activate you. After my inevitable death, you would be the only one to save us all from the destruction of what is about to come. You would be the only one that remains that the demon race once lived on this planet. …Along with someone else.” Her hands went over her abdomen.”

“I have seen it all. Our goddess told me in my visions. We have to do something about it before it does something about us and I intend you to understand that.”

I see so that's how it is. They may have gone to great lengths to make me and barely had the chance to press the button. I was supposed to be the only hope, yet before I even came to exist, I already failed.

“I now understand. Based on what you have said, in this database… no… documents, it is clearly stated that I am made by demons. Yet, who is this goddess you speak of?”

“You will soon understand after my death. She will come for you.”

Ehh??... I feel like I would be the prime target of the goddess at this point after you said: “awakened”. Am I not supposed to be awakened?

“As for now, we need to get out of here. We are under an island in the middle of the Avia Abyssal Sea. It seems all the cave entrances around here are now blocked in the wake of your activation. We need to find another way.”

“Do you perhaps have a map in your ‘databases’ as you said?”

The search bar, where is it?... Where. the. hell. is. it?! Ah there, Enter query: m…a…p...s. Searching… Searching… Searching… Uhhmm…

▲ SEARCH RESULT: No maps found. ▲

Ahh what?! How come there are now maps in this probably centuries-old system? Shouldn’t I have anything that shows navigation?

Activate Low Frequency Sonar, Lidar, and Radar? Y/N?

Yes, please. I feel so cold and wet right now and this sea breeze is hitting my ass and ti… Aft Compartments and Middle…Sensors. A loud rumble is then heard and a sound like something coming from a bipod emanates throughout the cave.

“Wha… What was that!?”

“I’m sorry!! I enabled my senses for a bit to see everything around me.”

Enabling exterior light sensors...

Ahhh wow. I can see outside now! Everything is as dark as I expected it would be. The only light coming from around the areas of the cave is the glow from myself. That red and blueish glow emanating from around my upper and lower body, well in this case from bow to stern, my entire ship self.

This definitely feels weird. I am a massive woman of a ship stuck under an undersea cave. I could say that I am naked as well but there is nothing there to see or to hide so what’s the point even? A holographic map is then shown in the middle of the room. The demon queen is surprised and steps back, probably thinking I am casting some sort of rune on her but her understanding is immediate, and stops moving.

“This is what I have found around us. Everything seems to be blocked.”

“I see. This might have happened during your awakening. Everything rattled during that like a volcano just erupted. I don’t see a way out.” Scary! I barely knew anything before my activation and yet this is the destructive power it could amass. No. I need to focus on getting out of here.

▲ Alert. Air current detected and location origin estimates it to be about 300m above. ▲

“It seems that there is a hole somewhere above us. You said something about my awakening being a volcano right? Could this cave be perhaps the volcano itself?” I don’t know the topography of this world. I just know that based on the map, we are underwater.

“Indeed. This island is an inactive volcano that exploded a long time ago. We have our entrance up but how can we even get out of here with no rising seawater to go up?” That is true, I can’t think of anything that I can do to go up. Is there anything in this database that can be useful to get up?

Searching… Searching… Found!

Navigation and Propulsion is disabled. Re-enable?

How is everything still disabled even though I was activated?! Enable! Enable All!!

Starting Navigation, Weapons, Shields, Propulsion, Sensors.
Propulsion Type: Anti-Gravity Relay

Throttle: 50%

Weapons and Shields: On Standby

Navigation and Sensors are now integrated into your Full Body Interactive Tactical Control.

More rumbling and shaking left the demon queen on alert and anxious. She never had this experience before and neither do I. I am just stunned right now that I am apparently a ship capable of Faster than Light travel. How so? I am floating and slowly going up, breaking everything above me as I free myself from this underground prison.

“We are… flying?”
“Yes Arika, and we are getting out of here.”
“‘Arika?’ huh. When did I tell you to call me that?” Oh crap. I forgot about the demon queen thing. It was a force of habit! I swear.
“I am deeply sorry! Demon lord queen Aineura.”

“No, it's fine. Arika it is then. The relics I found say that A1 Magicnet is the name of the weapon. I should call you Ai then or do you perhaps have a name since you haven’t yet formally introduced yourself.”

I had a name before I was reincarnated, you know? But I doubt that she will believe me that I was brought here without my consent. I think I will just hide my real name for now. Ai is a good name, let's go with that.

“Ai it is then. I do not have a name.”

“Is that so? well then Ai Magicnet, take us out of here.” Arika left the conversation with a smile on her face along with a sigh as we slowly ascended above the cave. It feels very heavy going up you know. It is like being pulled by a rope while completely covered by soil underground. I finally got out from the depths of the sea. The remains of the island are lifted above my body like how you would get up from being covered with sand on a beach. I can finally see the sun from here, it was not that bright back in space. I don’t know where Arika is taking me but at the very least, I am free from my prison and off to a new world I haven’t yet explored. Yet I do not wish or have the need to explore such a world. I need to know where my family is, both machine-wise and pre-reincarnated. I do not believe I am the only machine in this world that is still operational. Aki must have been reincarnated in this world too along with our children. I am hopeful but I do not know if it was possible for them. That small blue light and that energy weapon that hit Tokyo were quite odd and I still remember that. I need to find them in this world after I deal with the demon lord’s problems which unfortunately involve me.