Edmund stared at the room. There were barrels full of spices, grain and wine. There was a plate on the ground, half eaten bread inside of it. Looking at it with his power, it did look like a relevant clue and yet…

His eyes were caught by something lying right there, beside the metal plate with rotten food on it. It glowed to his eyes, and the more he tried to investigate it, the more enigmatic it got. It was as if even his reality bending couldn’t pierce the wooden walls of the little box, no matter how hard he tried.

He scoffed. Several hundred Humes down the drain, and no clue what it was.

He crouched down, and picked it up.

“What the fuck?”

A ticking noise, previously unheard, echoed through the room. Suddenly all was darker, the air heavy, the box was heavy. The ticking grew faster, more concentrated, dissonant and its rhythm broke down.

An explosion. Edmund was thrown across the room, and he didn’t have time to do anything, and in truth he didn’t think about doing anything, sure as he was that his nanite body would protect him. It didn’t, and all went black.

***

Following your request to be given as much Hume energy as possible, and in compliance with your directive to build an army, Bucky has requested permission to disregard any ethical issues that may arise from the methods he intends to use.

Edmund appeared, clad in lightning, at the topmost floor of the Pylon overlooking the forest. The lightning seared some of the metal, digging small grooves where the energies dug deep into the infrastructure of the tower before being absorbed by the energy conduits. He looked at the damage for a moment, then shrugged. It was the easiest and cheapest method of teleportation, and beggars can’t be choosers.

Wasting no time, Edmund made way for the stairs, calling the interfaces and menus to him.

Bucky was waiting for him at the end of the ethereal stairway that granted access to Floor 99: Fraisburg realm. The air was frigid but didn’t bother neither of the two, especially Edmund, who used his newfound source of reality bending energy with abandon to be as comfortable as he could be.

He had a feeling a headache was about to come, however.

The facility was nothing much. Just a large warehouse built in a semi-abandoned industrial district of Fraisburg. It was still snowing, and the red halogen street lamps were barely enough to show were the little mounds of snow gave way to sheets of solid slippery ice. Bucky trudged on, uncaring as he was on the perilous ice that cracked under his heavy steps, and pushed the large warehouse doors open with his bare hands.

Edmund gasped. Recognition dawned in an instant in his mind as he saw the countless rows of pods. “Oh my god. So it actually is possible to do on a large scale. Hume energy and magic… really are but two sides of the same coin! How did you do it? How did you make regular humans produce magic?”

Bucky looked at him with a pleased expression. “Everybody seems to produce magic. I asked Praetor to give me some data. Look.”

Normal person or E rank: 0.001H/hour, D rank: 1H/hour, C rank 1000H/hour

NOTE: D rank and C rank are speculations based on recorded >EDMUND< data.

“Good!” he said, patting the metal armed man in the back. “Very good!”

Suddenly his smile froze, shattered, his face crumbling into a shadow that made even Bucky recoil in fear.

“Leave.” Edmund said.

Bucky stared but for a moment. He dared not speak. He left.

Edmund slumped to the ground. His eyes dead set on the warehouse full of living, breathing people attached to machinery. Sometimes one of these people would detach, and he felt a tiny reduction in energy coming to him from this god forsaken realm. The detached person left, did whatever its thing was like an automaton, and returned soon after. All around were robots made of nanites, and swirling clouds of molten metal coating the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The metal morphed and changed, assuming the shape of more machines, processing the Hume energy, creating tools, preparing siege weapons just like he asked Bucky to do before he left this realm.

There were no tears on Edmund’s face. He stared for hours. He got up and banged his fists, and a cage of solid air encased him and his feral screams and he punched and punched until his arms were broken and his hands had skin no more. No sounds could be heard from outside his cage.

This was the price he had to pay. This was the path he was going down. Even hunting artifacts like crazy, even repairing the Hume pipeline with every ounce of Hume energy he had to spare…

“I’ll reach the turnover point. I will. It’s mathematical. Mathematical. At a certain point, even an S ranker will be insignificant compared to what the pipeline will produce. And then I will free them. Yes. I will free them all.”

He knew it was just delirium.

This was the first day.

It took him two more days of isolation, and staring at what he was allowing to happen before his eyes, until he realized. There was no releasing anyone. The only thing he could do was to stop taking in new people, and to kill the ones he used as batteries once their usefulness was spent. That was all the mercy he could ever give to the world.

He returned to Bucky three more days later. He was composed, walking slowly, smiling as he whistled a tune. “Good job.” He said, patting him on the shoulder. “I will have three C ranks to pick up very soon. Be ready.”

He left.

One million people in the realm. Almost a thousand Humes per hour. Every single one carrying with it the silent scream of a thousand souls. And even then, what he found himself thinking was, first and foremost, how little they actually gave, and only afterwards came the relief of knowing that he could soon outgrow the need of a measly thousand Humes an hour and release them. Only as an afterthought.

“I will keep them, though. As an army. Bucky said their minds live in a simulated world, where they are happy. I will let them stay there for a while longer, and keep my army. After that, only my worst enemies will be used as batteries. Yes. I swear that. I swear. Only those who deserve it. Just like Shiningstars. Damn. To think that barely a C ranker would outdo a whole city of a million. Almost makes me want to get more enemies. Almost. But I won’t do that. I won’t. I’m better than that.”

He stared at a screen.

“Alright”, he stretched, “Time to go back. Almost time to go back. Praetor, dump these Humes into the Pylon projects. The less of them I see, the better.”

Sir, may i suggest a more thought out—

“Do it.”

But sir, if you are facing a moral dilemma then—

“Then what of the Humes I keep getting from those people? I don’t fucking know! I will, I hope, be too distracted and worried about my well-being to worry about that. And maybe in time I will forget. Get it? Don’t bother me with rational use of Humes to fix your systems for at least a month. Just take some when I don’t need them… no. Bad reasoning. Ask me tomorrow. I just need sleep. Tomorrow we take a look at what needs to be repaired, ok? In exchange tonight you take the fucking nanites I have in my head and tone down a couple dials in my brain until I’m all nice and numb. Deal?”

It is… dangerous.

“Either you do it or I do it myself.”

I will do it, sir.

"And tell Bucky to stop adding more people to the program."

Sir, there are no more people in the realm.

"...okay. Good. What are the plans for the city? No, wait. I don’t want to fucking know.”

It depends sir, what are your plans with this world?

“Ah, that’s… I told you I don’t want to know! I don’t want to think about it! It sucks, okay? Everything sucks… fuck you. Alright… for now, raze everything that you don’t need to the ground, and prepare a solid base of production. Keep flexible so you can restructure to satisfy whatever needs will arise once I decide to get a society going. Might be as soon as the next realm, who knows. Probably a long time for now.”

Understood. Sir, may I ask a question?

“Go ahead.”

Will you… replace me?

“Why do you ask?”

Considering your current mental status, I fear for my own survival once you reach the next Pylon.

“You think I’m angry at you, and will replace you with another AI once I get to it?”

Yes.

Edmund laughed. “How human of you. No, I won’t.”

May I ask why?

“…I guess I trust you, and I don’t trust the other AIs. You, you were the first one. I made you myself, by hand. The others… I think Janet made the others. I don’t remember.”

Thank you sir. I will do my best.

“You’ll be the new center of the Web.”

I'm sorry sir, but I fear I will not have enough processing power to do it.

“Oh? But we have nanites, reality bending stuff, you name it!”

It will not be enough at first, not until we can generate trillions of Humes again.

“…”

There is, however, a way. I think.

“Please, don’t be shy.”

The dreamers.

“The dreamers.”

Yes. I can use them as extra calculating power. A million more minds focused on the task.

“That's even more barbaric than using them as batteries.”

I can make it less so

“How?”

A game.

“A game? Please stop being so cryptic.”

I'm sorry sir. I will explain. Whenever I encounter a task that requires a more… peculiar approach than I can do myself, I will use the dreamers. I will code the problem into video games, road routes, school exams, worrisome thoughts that insomniacs have at night... everything pieced up so that every single person in the dream will work on a little part of the problem, the one they can solve, until I have enough to piece together an answer to the whole.

“Uh, dude. This is weirdly specific. Did you already encounter such issues?”

I have.

“Like?”

The choices of your companions, for example. They are… illogical. And I lack the means to understand them as I am. With the dreamers, however, I am sure I will be able to.

Edmund smiled, then laughed. He checked inward, and noticed that the tweaks to his brain were done. He grabbed hold of a good deal of Hume energy and poured it into the nanites that were still converting his flesh and blood into living metal. The process was over in a matter of seconds.

A portal appeared, acting like a mirror that reversed all light going into it. Edmund stared at his bland looks for a while, and exhaled through the nose as if to laugh. When he opened his eyes again he was a changed man, rather he actually wasn’t a man anymore but he once again was what the old god Vytryat remembered him to be.

“Good luck with that.” He told Praetor.

Then, he left.