The place Kaden found himself in was strange. Distances seemed different from what one might estimate simply by eye. The platform in the distance was suddenly just a some steps away. Kaden looked back and saw the entrance now at similar distance.

“Could it be an effect of space mana afterall?” Kaden muttered to himself and looked around him. It seemed unreal. “This place seems much smaller than it actually appears.”

Kaden had his spatial bag. That was the only object he knew for sure to have spatial mana used in its creation. While it was probably very small amount and he could not detect such mana, its effects were something he was able to see. It seemed different.

There was no way for him to confirm the matter, though. Perhaps it was just another kind of effect such mana could cause?

Kaden decided to put the matter aside. He watched Emina handle the machines on the platform. They appeared completely functional.

If one was going to ever explore remnants, one should study language of the ancients. Since it was last used thousands of years ago and, even if current language humans used originated from it, it was very different, there were difficulties in completely translating it. There were also concepts used that current language didn’t even have equivalent terms for. Kaden himself knew some, but he surely was not a scholar of old languages.

It seemed Emina was at least better at it than Kaden. The strange woman seemed to be able to slowly operate the ancient machine.

“What is it that you are looking for?” Kaden decided to ask. “You came here for a reason.”

Emina stopped what she was doing.

“Information”, Emina replied.

“About what?” Kaden continued questioning, but received no answer.

Kaden could understand enough of the language visible on the screens that he could guess Emina was looking for locations. There were images of maps ancients maps that roughly matched current ones, if you ignored some changes that could have happened over time. This information was being collected by Emina into crystals likely for later viewing.

Maps were not only thing Emina was looking for. She was clearly also looking for information of events. History. The stored information was, as already previously noted, ancient. Obviously information became very scarce beyond certain point. This was when ancients and their civilization had fallen due to the Cataclysm. This was the information that seemed to interest Emina most.

This was also information that church wanted to not be freely available.

“What is she doing?” Kaden continued to think. “Is she planning on giving this to the church later? If not, she might not want it to be known that she has such interests.”

That is to say, if Emina was browsing for information from the ancients and their still somehow existing network about Cataclysm and planning on smuggling it out, the church would not look at it kindly. That Kaden knew she was doing such a thing would mean Emina would likely try to silence him.

“I guess I’ll have to kill her, if it comes to that”, Kaden thought to himself calmly. “Not that I have anything against her actions. Anything against the churches and gods is perfectly fine. I cannot simply tell that to her, though. At least not until I can trust her to keep quiet.”

Kaden instead stood by one of the machines that Emina wasn’t using and started to look for information. He knew some keywords he could search for. Translating everything he saw would be too slow so he used same method as Emina and gathered all the information gained with the keywords into crystals. Hopefully there would be something useful by the time he could translate it.

What Kaden was interested was somewhat different from Emina. He looked for knowledge that ancients had, but would be rare or nonexisted at current date. That is physics. Materials. Weapons.

While ancients had no mana, understanding the underlying physics told quite a bit of how certain concepts worked. This could allow Kaden to increase his understanding of mana and concepts available. Materials could be imitated and so would weapons.

As for the forbidden information. He was thinking of picking that up from Emina’s corpse later once the woman attacked him. Afterwards he could look himself what was so interesting that Emina was willing to go against church. Obviously, if such chance did not come by, there would also be the option of murder. He could report she was killed by the robot and suffer no consequences.

Kaden’s benefits were pretty easy to gain. He did not have the time to check, if he had anything useful since he just took everything he found. Emina, however, seemed to have more problems. From her behavior and appearance, it seemed she wasn't finding whatever she wanted.

“Well, at least for me, this is acceptable”, Kaden thought as he put away his crystals filled with knowledge. “I did not plan any of this and even having this chance is merely due to luck.”

Emina eventually decided she had had enough.

“We should leave”, Emina said to Kaden.

“I agree”, Kaden replied. “That robot is going to be here soon.”

Kaden turned to face towards the entrance. Then he felt what he had been expecting. He quickly moved to the side and avoided a blast that exploded on the ground a bit further.

“Hehe”, Kaden laughed a bit and prepare to fight and released his core. “You should have concealed what you searched for. I for sure wouldn’t risk loose ends being found by church somehow.”

After saying that Kaden charged at Emina, fully intending to eviscerate her. Yet, the woman wasn’t an easy target. She merely played the instrument in her hands and with a kind of screeching sound, a protective bubble appeared around her and was able to block Kaden’s retaliation strike and even knocking him back.

Kaden and Emina exchanged attacks for some time. They both seemed to perfectly dodge or otherwise avoid all of the attacks. There were quite a few close calls, but Kaden started to feel weird. Both were completely unaffected.

“This is taking too long”, Kaden thought. "Something is odd."

He had expected to kill Emina rather quickly. Kaden’s worries became a greater concern around the time he started hearing the robot shouts is usual nonsense outside of the strange area. Emina also noticed it.

“Heh, neither of us will live, if we continued to fight”, Kaden told Emina.

Emina frowned, but put away her quitar.

Kaden was thinking of ways to get around the robot. Perhaps, if it chose to kill Emina first, he could go past it. That would mean loss of information that Emina had collected, though. Life was far more valuable than that so Kaden was going to just accept the it.

Around at this time the robot appeared at the entrance doorway. It stopped there for a moment, but then continued inside.

Kaden was planning on concentrating every bit of strength he could muster into his movement technique. It wasn’t much considering the entire area was completely open with basically no hiding place that Kaden could think of being able to protect him, if the robot started to shoot at him.

Emina seemed to have similar thoughts, but she instead kept playing some tune to keep up that shield Kaden had already ran into. While that, she was also moving to position to get around both Kaden and the robot.

Despite the clear and obvious lack of defense, the robot decided not to take advantage of it. It merely walked forward seemingly not even having chosen a target.

“There is something strange going on here”, Kaden thought to himself.

Suddenly the entire situation changed and Kaden had no more time to think of things.

“PLEASE TRY OUR BEAUTY PRODUCTS!” The robot shouted.

Immediately afterwards the area simply… froze. The world inside just stopped. Kaden could still move his body, but no matter how much he tried, he would not actually move anywhere from the spot he was at. Emina was having similar problem. Only the robot seemed to be able to move without any problems.

“Shit”, Kaden cursed. “Was this a trap?”

What was worse that Kaden still couldn’t even identify what had happened. If he didn’t know that, there was no way to even think of a way to attempt escape. He was going to rule out spatial manipulation due to the fact that he was still able to move his own body. Pretty much the only good thing was that the robot seemed more interested of Emina and thus gave him more time to think.

“Not that I can do much”, Kaden lamented. “I still cannot find a way to escape this… whatever this is.”

Around at this time the robot had reached Emina who was furiously trying to get away, but nothing she did worked. The robot extended its arm at Emina’s head. Kaden had seen this before. The robot seemed to like opening people’s heads and crushing their brains.

Yet, instead of opening Emina’s head, the robots arm simply passed through her skull. As far as Kaden could determine there was no harm involved nor pain. The area where it should have touched only shimmered in a strange way.

“Error! Unit’s neural structure faulty! Attempting to repair. Possible solution found. Interfacing...”, the robot announced, this time with far more normal voice. “Scanning subject brain structure… 1% …. 23% … 55% … 74% … 100%. Brain scan complete. No anomalies detected. Simulating new neural network based on sample.”

Then moments after the robot pulled out its hand and simply stood still. Then it seemed to shut down Whatever had forced Kaden and Emina to stay still also disapeared. Emina took a few shaky steps away from the robot. She was entirely fine, but she was likely suffered a shock.

Then the robot started moving again.

“System restart complete!” The robot said and continued its report of its status. “Updated neural structure functional. No errors detected. Adaption to unknown energy acquired. Initiating personality.” At this point the robot stopped acting in machinelike manner and instead seemed to look around in more natural way. “Hello, my name is 7RU-MC, 7th Refitted Unit – Machine Cannon. It seems I have recovered from an error! Hmmm, my internal timer shows strange readings. I detect no error."

"What are you?" Emina asked.

"My database has detoriated over time", 7RU-MC replied. "If my internal time is correct, I should not even be functional anymore. I will investigate this. As for my function. Some kind of catastrophe occured thousands of years ago, assuming my clock is indeed correct. My original function was a simple mannequin robot, but my parts were repurposed with lack of materials to create protector units. I believe I ceased functioning soon after. As for how I have become functional again, I cannot answer. With my new neural network, I have regained control of myself again."

"Well that would explain the crazy stuff it shouted all the time", Kaden thought and stepped closer. "Maybe I can take advantage of this."

7RU-MC turned to face approaching Kaden.

"Hmmm, mutated invidual detected", 7RU-MC said and leaned towards Kaden a bit. "My records suggest the unknown energy altered both living and innanimate matter. Surviving population may have had to adjust to survive under such effects. Greetings, I would ask questions."

"If you aid me, I can share information", Kaden replied.

Emina frowned.

"I can do so too!" Emina added. There was no way she would let Kaden to be only one useful to the robot.

"How wonderful!" 7RU-MC replied happily and then looked around. "This VR room seems affected by the strange energy. I request we do not remain here any longer than neccessary. Perhaps other rooms contain clothing for me. I would so much prefer a beutiful dress."