Chapter 291: 291

Chapter 291: Vol4 Ch16: The face of God and Artificial Unintelligence

The reason that humanity’s personalities and willpower seemed foolish and inferior was due to an issue with their perspective.

From the eyes of higher entities, Negary’s current actions might also seem foolish and inferior.

But that didn’t mean that humanity had no redeeming qualities, there would always be elites in a group, and even if they weren’t elites, there would be those who desired to better themselves.

This was how Negary was born, he had and would always continue to grow towards perfection, he would discard everything useless to continuously improve and continuously change himself. He embodied the will that desired betterment in all living lifeforms, an entity originally born from a human.

For this reason, Negary was above humankind. When that idealistic consciousness infected Negary and created a new personality, Negary granted it a portion of his virus’ control and allowed it to observe humanity from above them, this obsolete personality was naturally replaced by a better one, ultimately becoming a part of Negary.

The idealistic consciousness created by the fried rice was easily dealt with, but this gave Negary inspiration. Using this same principle on how the anomaly infected him, he could modify and greatly improve it, which gave him even more ideas on how to spread his will.

After Negary’s virus infect the bodies of other living beings, the information contained within the virus could stimulate that living lifeform to create a Negary personality of their own. However, they had to be infected by the virus first to manifest the personality; or they must first obtain information about Negary and touch Negary’s existence for Negary to actively infect them, thus manifesting the Negary personality.

〖 However, I can instead take advantage of certain characteristics to induce other living lifeforms into manifesting their corresponding personalities; that wouldn’t be an infection, but rather an inspiration 〗

Negary’s thoughts quickly turned, soon perfecting this idea inspired by a bowl of fried rice, and immediately brought it into practice.

When observing the complete information of Negary, living lifeforms had the choice to not comprehend or touch his existence, perhaps even resisting it; but just like how people would feel drawn to good things and naturally hate disgusting things, they would react to it.

People naturally reacted to everything in their surroundings, and Negary had now slightly altered his own form of existence using his vast knowledge of axle rituals combined with the inspiration from the fried rice.

Now, whenever other living lifeforms observed Negary’s existence for a prolonged period of time, they would naturally react to him.

Everyone had an aspect of themselves that wished to pursue a better ‘self’, those who observed Negary’s existence would have that aspect of themselves awoken, then grow closer to Negary of their own accord, or manifest a similar personality. By using their knowledge of the axle rituals, these personalities would also grow increasingly closer to Negary.

In reality, this was already something many creatures could and actively do. For humans in particular whenever people see other upstanding individuals, they would unconsciously imitate those individuals in one way or another, in an attempt to be closer to that ‘upstanding’ level. Essentially, this was seeing a worthy man and feeling inspired to follow them.

Negary had now simply used these characteristics to further his own end, greatly amplifying them. Anyone who laid eyes upon Negary would now feel inspired by him, to explain it another way, Negary now had the face of God.

Shu… shu…

Negary’s body slightly changed, causing the anomalies who were fighting Negary to feel that he was becoming increasingly charming, a charm that went beyond the normal human understanding of beauty and ugliness.

“A stronger self, the capability to challenge even greater challenges” while spinning his hammer around, Bennett Foddy’s heart was moved. This small hint of being moved infiltrated deep into his soul, slowly beginning to change it; if he were to follow this change, he would become inspired by Negary, if he resisted, a second personality that worshipped Negary might manifest in him.

The ‘I wanna’ mini-man was similarly affected. His body was incredibly weak, even the tiniest bit of damage could cause him to die, while he had no choice but to continuously brave the pain and suffering of death, continuously reviving himself to accomplish his tough mission, how could a person like this not want to become stronger?

The Collector wasn’t inspired by this, but something had also managed to invade his psyche. Most likely in no time at all, the Collector would also begin to change.

For a split second, the Armor who felt indifferent towards everything but the thought of returning ‘Home’ also felt his icy cold mentality slightly moved: it was a wish.

He was currently limited due to being an armor, and he would continue to be the same in the future. The one who created him only gave him the goal of returning ‘Home’, he had no room to grow, and would never see a better himself, this was why he felt a wish as he looked upon Negary.

However, the Armor quickly snapped out of it, he swung his claymore and shouted to the others: “Reaffirm your beliefs, you are being influenced by him!”

On the other side, Victor was the same. He was the one who poured the fried rice onto the writhing flesh, only to see that it just moved around a bit more without betraying Negary. This act of ‘seeing’ caused Victor’s desire to become stronger in his heart to be triggered.

He was originally a loser, a person to be scorned and laughed at by others. How could he not feel frustrated? How could he not wish to become a better self? But due to his own lack of resolution and various restrictions, he had no choice but to continue enduring his failures.

But now, he had seen the path to becoming better. He began to accept this modification, thus actively growing closer to Negary, his appearance also began to change to be similar to Negary.

…

“Hurry up and interrupt this change! If we let this continue, not only would the story break apart, C-4-28-2 would also be able to reverse infect S-2-1”

In front of the computer, having witnessed Victor’s change, the SCR Foundation hurriedly wrote the next part of the story. If they truly allowed Victor to turn into Negary’s worshipper or even his clone, the Compelling Storyteller Machine would be stolen away by Negary.

“Let him observe A-1-9 and lower his IQ, this way, he wouldn’t care about becoming stronger” the method of resolving this was quickly devised and written onto the storyteller machine.

A smartphone suddenly lit up by itself within the ‘canteen of desires’ and began to show a video clip.

[Hai, doumo!] a pretty young girl wearing a heart-shaped pink ribbon appeared on the screen. Her outfit was a primarily white sailor suit and short pants with pink accents, with black lace at the ends of her sleeves as well as high boots.

As soon as he saw the girl in the video, Victor felt his mental capacities heavily attacked, causing him to forget the notion of becoming better.

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A-1-9: Artificial Unintelligence. In the beginning, she was a virtual entity on a certain popular video site, an Artificial Intelligence, but not too long after her appearance, everyone who viewed her videos began to show signs of being mentally handicapped, thus she was taken into containment as the Artificial Unintelligence.

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While Victor’s mental handicap managed to resolve Negary’s initial inspiration, the other side of the battlefield wasn’t quite as lucky.

Both Bennett Foddy and the ‘I wanna’ mini-man were in a state of being inspired, this was a voluntary change from the depths of their hearts, completely unrelated to whether or not their will powers were firm. If not for the restraints of the Unusual Assembling Order that was forcing them to eliminate Negary, they might have already switched sides.