S4: Kal Zhang was my previous host!

Aria: Previous ho... The one that turned into the Zombie King?!

S4: Yep! That's the one.

Aria: The one I killed?

S4: ... yes.

Aria: F* me. What is he doing here???

S4: ... he was kidnapped... and people wanted him to sign some papers...

Aria: Okay! I got it. We were all there.

S4: (You asked.)

Aria: How did he die- the first time.

S4: It was in the 2nd year of the ZA and he was the fearless leader of one of the best teams at Base ZF. He was the president of the Kinetic Corporation. His quick actions (with my help) helped save the majority of the people in his company. He rounded them up into a huge convoy and escaped City CC and eventually made it to Base ZF.

After some time, they ran out of food so he went out with half the team to several cities over to collect supplies. They were soon surrounded by higher level zombies and to make sure his people safely escaped with the food, he was injured. He escaped by himself but was already infected.

He was then captured by the town and used as punishment to those that opposed the town's management style. This went on for months until he somehow remembered how to summon. He summoned a group of zombies and they quickly overtook the town. Then the next and the next...

Aria: Okay. Good summary.

S4: Oooh! Keep that ring! The town's person who ended up taking that ring from his finger was the only one he allowed to stay alive. That ring is highly sentimental to him.

Aria looked down at the special ring and looked up at the handsome man. It's hard to imagine that this was the same man that turned into such a huge and crazily powerful zombie king.

Maybe if he was more prepared, then he wouldn't have risked so much to collect food for his troops. Or if he was stronger too.

Deciding to prevent a potential zombie king from coming to being, Aria decided to give him a space storage ring in return. As for the stones, the two abilities should help him from being injured while fighting. She knew he has a mental ability which is one of the most draining of the abilities out there, so his usual attacks would be regular hand or weapon combat.

He would greatly benefit from the wind ability too. She lasted almost 6 years with it so she might be a bit biased.

Before taking the ring out, she got Eros to place two CDP machines inside. One to process food and the other to process water. If he's smart, he would leave the machines inside the storage space and buy enough raw materials for it. If he's smarter, he would start processing food himself and keep the finished products in his storage space until the ZA.

——

Aria drove the SUV down the road passing by a Tang Pharmacy. That reminded her of Sherrie and Sonny- if that relationship stayed together or broke up. Sending Eros into the pharmacy, Aria asked S3 what happened to the 2 parties after she left Country C.

S3: Sherrie had to serve 6 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter and 18 months of community service. The Tang refused to drop the charges on Sonny and the Su family. After extensive search, no signs of the stolen pharmaceuticals can be found so the charges had to be dropped. But the Tang were suspicious of the Su family to the point of obsession. They had all their people followed and investigated.

Just recently they found evidence of corruption within the state's government. The Tang was like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go of what little signs of corruption they can see. They couldn't get their hands on Sonny so they figured they wouldn't let the Su family go. They released the corruption to the public, the scandal's effect trickling through the government system and the Su head was asked to step down.

Needless to say the Tang and Su family broke off Sherrie's and Sonny's engagement.

Aria: What about the Li family?

S3: The Li family went quiet after losing a majority of their inventory and wealth when you were there. They still don't know who did it. They have shifted their business to the other two cities. Although low scale, the business looks promising.

Aria: What about Lily?

S3: Lily's situation did not change. She still resides in the Li family residence.

No changes. It looks like Lily's life is still good even after the robbery. Aria hasn't been paying attention to Lily ever since she was reborn. But being imprisoned by Lily for over a year because she's just evil, Aria is unsure if she can do the same in return.

So she planned to sabotage Lily's relationship with the Li family and have them completely break ties with her. Without the family backing, her life should be miserable before the ZA and less protected by everyone after.

Which means Aria will have to hit the other two locations when Lily is there at the same time.

Aria: S3, keep an eye on when they have a family gathering at any of the two places. We'll make a detour over there to take care of Lily and wipe out the remaining inventory they have. See if they can bounce back from that.

S3: Will do.

Aria finished driving all over City CC robbing the pharmacies before checking in at the hot spring which is her red location target for this city.

City CC is well known for their hot springs. After Eros found the energy source of the hot spring, Aria left directly to the next city and continued to wipe that city's pharmacies and stopped for some food.

Jumping into the G Space, Aria decided to start training with the mech machine. After hooking it up to the solar power set up outside the warehouse, Aria called Art out.

Aria: Art, how does this work?

——

The machine has a large mech cabin suspended inside for the pilot to step into. Following Art's instructions, Aria strapped her body into the exoskeleton of the cabin. As soon as everything is strapped in, Aria put on the VR headset. Immediately the training cabin asked for Aria's identity.

Slightly annoyed, Aria made Art come up with something that's not already taken.

Training voice: "Welcome, Artemis. There are 38,600 training simulations. If you know which one you want, just state the simulation number. Otherwise, simulation #1 will be initiated in 15 seconds. If you would like to cancel, say 'Cancel'."

Aria had no idea what to expect so she waited for the simulation to start.

Training voice: "Simulation #1: Walking and Balance. Please follow the instructions to learn how to keep your balance and walk around. One step involves the rotation of the pelvis, knee, and ankle between the two legs as well as the controlled energy distributed to balance the whole body efficiently on the mech."

But these movements translate to macro muscle activation and slight movements from the mech pilot.

After watching the instructions looped 3 times, Aria made her first attempt to move her right feet forward.

Her body abruptly toppled forward inside the cabin, and inside the simulation the mech fell over.

Aria: ...

Art: Hehe.

Aria: Very Good.

The VR display showed a black bar that says, "Fail". Underneath there were two options: Restart/ Quit

Aria chose to "Restart".

Lifting the knee and heel then pushing slightly with the balls of her feet- she tripped.

"Restart."

Lifting the knee then pushing upward with the muscle of her balls of - she lost her balance.

"Restart."

Lifting the knee, lean forward by pushing against the balls of her feet- she lunged forward.

"Restart."

"Restart."

"Restart."

...

3 hours later, Aria was dripping with sweat and her right leg's muscles all ached. The training was a failure for simulation #1. She unstrapped herself and almost fell on the ground.

Clutching onto the straps, she placed her weight on her left leg and hopped awkwardly away from the mech training machine.

Art: Sister Aria. There is a training massage machine you should use. Mech and other types of training are very taxing on the muscles so it requires the appropriate type of treatment to soothe the muscles and help encourage healing.

Aria: Which machine is it? Ughs my leg hurts.

Art: It's that one behind this one. Remove your outer clothes and lay inside. State your identity and the machine data would sync up with the various training simulations machines you just did, the duration of your training, the success or failure level, and the amount of times certain muscles were activated. Then the massager will optimize a treatment accordingly.

Aria almost cried during the massage. If she knew binding with the mech system involves this type of training, she would have thought twice. She couldn't even take one step inside the very first training simulation!

She thought controlling it would be super simple, super sci fi where the brain waves would be connected to the mech itself, making the mech's body movements seamless to the pilot's own movements. This obviously was not the case.

Her body is supposed to be much more enhanced than a regular person but that doesn't mean she'll be able to master the muscle control needed to pilot a mech right off the bat. Not everyone has what it's made to make it as a mech pilot.

Art: Sister Aria, it seems like your body's balance is off. Perhaps we should also try training you in martial arts. Pilots who had prior experience in gymnastics, dance, or martial arts picked up the control of the muscle movements a lot quicker.

The training machine next to this one is the hand to hand combat as well as the weapons mastery training simulation. Maybe we should start with that before training on the mech again?

Aria: Alright. Just add those three training to our daily schedule on top of the mech training. Ughs. Why is learning to walk so hard??? How much harder will it be to learn how to fight with weapons?

Art: You can always study under someone. There are master pilots who will have training recordings available for rookies like you to learn from or they will offer one-on-one training for a set amount of time. But those are very rare since no one really has time for that.

Aria: Can you try to find a live trainer for me? I'm just not making much progress with the AI here. I don't care about the price, just find someone good.

Art: Okay, I'll look into it right away.

Poor Aria. So far everything pretty much has been going well for her. Collecting supplies, infiltrating highly secured places without getting caught, has a pretty sweet place where she can grow stuff and escape too. She even got the Xing Plants!

Earlier she'd encountered some unusual issues with her air/wind ability where it's not working as it's supposed to from her memory. And now she is stuck on practically level 1 of this mech training thing...

Lol.