Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)-Chapter 969. A Dangerous Development

Heavy was the crown atop Frost’s head. The Crowned brought vile memories of the last two times she had brought it out from her Collection.

She strode around the flattened battlefield, kicking away scraps of steel to unearth survivors. She gave them a mournful look before her face morphed into a warm smile.

Not one person was left behind, and she would occasionally smile over her shoulder. Few instinctively reached towards her back, to which she’d assure them with a wave.

“Why show gratitude to those whose only existence is to be thrown into the Great Race?”

That hollow voice came from the Heart at her hip. The Core of the Mother. It was a higher Impuritas, akin to the Memory Bistro who were associated with the Crimson Hunger Complex Hearts.

Only that it did not possess a hive mind, nor did it seem to carry a semblance of what Frost could comfortably call intelligence.

Furthermore, it could not communicate with a greater intelligence to relay what was happening here.

“Surprising that even on the brink of death you’re still able to talk. I wonder if there’s an organ in there responsible for it. Tell me, will I find blood if I split your heart open along the floor?”

It was a solid, grey piece of steel that was beaten into the shape of a crude heart.

Clearly, it’s shape was something else when it was born.

But it believed itself to carry a fragment of humanity by the virtue of its shape. Its blueprint was not a soul, but a belief: an obsession: that attached itself to humanity like a rot.

Frost snapped her fingers, tapping on its surface as she used her other free hand to purify those inflicted with Silicon Rot. Crystal fragments that were lodged into the catatonic denizens dispersed into the air before vanishing without a trace.

There were some who came from Epiderma Layer, and even fewer who seemed to recognize Frost as the coveted Black Dove.

But they didn’t say this out loud. Frost could only infer this information from the look in their eyes, and the tears that tumbled down their cheeks. There were also two colors of their hearts. The core which told her of their emotions. It was a deep black, but with some sparks of white and gold.

Then, there was the flame surrounding it.

This was their intention.

It was pale, meaning they had no ill intent towards her.

“The False Progeny affixed to the empathy of humanity.”

“Could be useful. Next of kin will be augmented with an empathetic mechanism.”

“Empathy… must be the sparing of experiences. Direct incisions into medulla of humatazoas is empathy… we will all feel the same way.”

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“Mother will cradle your body, human. Come closer. Let me snip that medulla. Give you a Lung of Iron. A Heart of Steel. A Spleen of interwoven Cobalt.”

“The False Progeny cannot provide dialysis to replace those bean-shaped filters.”

[Aspirating Aspirations]: a Passive Skill of the Heart of Ours did not work on mechanical beings. But she mentally argued that being of Qoph would probably be affected by it.

If anything, this thing did not desire humanity.

As Lailah put it, desire fell into two categories. Aspiration and desperation. Neither were the machines aspiring for humanity, nor were they desperate for it: no matter how it looked.

Frost would have called it nonsense.

But there was another Affinity that described them better than Desire ever could.

Attachment: Attachment born from the lack of it. Or was it attachment born from meaning put into meaningless processes? Aspects that were obsessively fixated on despite having no real purpose, or even understanding its process?

< Attachment is the Affinity of self-imposed meaning, be it subjective or objective >

< It’s open to interpretation. But I can see it being a core fundamental part of what it means to be who you are >

< The body is attached to the blueprint of the soul. It is beholden to it. Every helical structure in your body is dictated purely by the shape of your soul >

< But what of those who lack it? >

“Hm. Whose meaning or attachment is determined by what’s imparted onto them as well. Like the sentimental objects we saw.” Frost spoke in a somber tone before flicking the metal heart on her hip. “The idea of believing what you are, despite being something else huh? But taken to a fu…”

“Malga?”

“… Screwed up level.”

She had enough restraint to stop herself from cursing in front of Joy. The girl genuinely didn’t know what was wrong with these people. She looked at them strangely as golden branches appeared above them, revealing fragments of their past.

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There was no visual feedback. Just darkness what looked to be white, fluctuating threads that resembled static.

But the way Jury’s ear flaps stiffened was enough to tell her exactly what she needed to know.

“Nav.” Jury bit her bottom lip. “Ensure no Healers are involved in the treatment of these people. Greater Healers are welcome once they pass a psychological assessment with a Luna or Luner Haruspex… We’re not equipped to deal with this level of mental trauma just yet. Not at a large scale. There’s three hundred people here. That’s enough to overwhelm my Hora Therapeutic Department already.”

Jury heat patted a worried Joy, linking tails with her.

“No one ever is ready.” Horus murmured. “Takes real guts to save what aren’t that different from Shells. Grey hair and grey eyes. Didn’t know they were using Luminal Synchrony’s tech. Experimenting bastards.”

“I’ve heard of Luminal Synchrony before. [Nex Conversion Procedure]. Iscario had a ring that utilized their technology.”

Frost remembered it like it was yesterday. It was a stolen Atelier tech that allowed him to convert Nex into a Light-like form. It wasn’t Light per say, but was close to it given it was a construct of Nex.

That was what allowed him to use the False Lance of Annihilation.

“Then this tech. The Nex Refinery. Does this belong to Oboros Infinitas or Luminal Synchrony?”

Frost flared her mantle as she strode towards the dangling machine. Dark clouds of Qliphoth-based waste dripped into the pit beneath. She reached out towards it and Analyzed the great pale machine.

Nex Refinery

< Made during an unknown era. Process collective aspects of cognition into a blank slate >

“The blank slate being Liquid Nex. Uncontaminated Nex for Beholder and Atelier consumption.” Frost murmured to herself.

One hundred hands reached towards the machine. It groaned before it was torn from its anchor point. A flurry of unrefined Liquid Nex gushed into the bottomless pit as she guided the thirty-meter machine through the air as though it was weightless.

Hundreds of eyes gazed upon it an amplified version of [Starlight Barrier]: [Heliospheric Repulsion] ensured that debris would not rain upon them.

“It comes back to cognition. There are Gods of Cognition, huh. Those that reign over Nex-based phenomena.”

“Gods…? Amalgam. There is no other but you.” Morgause spoke.

She had lived for hundreds of years. No one came close to the level of divinity as Frost. Even the most powerful Beholders were plagued with rot and were unfit to be called Gods. But the world paraded them as such anyway by the law of might alone.

“The blue light’s one. The Voice From Beyond the Void is a second. Frost is a definite third.” Horus began listing them. “But, that Overseer from G-Z7 might be a contender for being a true God. Then you get the more well-known ones like Abraxas. The Golden Dawn loves their allusion to that light-bearing god.”

“I’m still human as far as I’m concerned.” Frost assured them, despite pulling a feat only a deity could perform. “But yes. I fall under the definition of a God of Cognition. Luminal Synchrony must’ve tried to play god but were taken down by the Stars of the Nexus.”

* * *

Very little was known about Luminal Synchrony. Like Midas Company, it was ankle-deep: no, head-deep in conspiracy. Its ultimate reason for being targeted for Liquidation was because they had angered the Stars.

The reason was ill known. The story would end there. But Frost was the Head of the Nexus.

Her Stars only answered to her.

< Treason. The attempt to recreate the same light that the Nexus grants its Stars >

Luminal Synchrony was an Atelier that specialized in the formation of powerful materials and magical phenomena. None of which were particularly eye-catching enough for Ateliers like Caldera Industries to source their materials from, but enough for CogitO to have partnered with to create the Reality Replicators (material-creating black holes).

The Golden Dawn worked in partnership with them to create the Pathways: a false version of the Mana Channels that were experimented on countless souls.

Deiman was one of these victims, hence the unhealable Mana Channels that ran through his body and the permanent markings on his back.

But their most prized possession was their breakthrough in Nex refinery.

The purification of Nex.

Beholders once relied on unrefined Nex which only accelerated their corrosion.

But since the advent of refined Liquid Nex, the process has slowed down considerably. They were a cornerstone of the Nexus until twenty-five years ago when most of its existence was scrubbed from history.

< Inflow Direct sent Liquidators five years following the Liquidation Wars waged against Midas Company to collect their technology >

< This war never had a name >

< Because it was the Stars who had waged that war on the behalf of the Nexus >

< They deemed it necessary >

The destruction of a Cornerstone should have sent the Nexus into disarray.

But their tech was all the Nexus needed of them.

And just like that: Luminal Synchrony was hacked off like a rotting limb and was replaced.

* * *

“Homunculi.” Horus murmured, scrubbing the heads of one of the children. “Atelier-grown people. No surprise why there’s such a massive population down there in the Subderma Layer when you got these things breeding like rabbits.”

“… What the fuck?” Frost murmured. “They have Light. So how can Infecta Rot not create machines with Light or a Soul? Is that hardwired into humans, no matter how they’re created?”

“You tell me Amalgam.” Horus shrugged. “They don’t seem like they’re high quality either.”

“Lab-grown humans?” Jury held the hands of one sorrowfully. “… Were they born just to be used as products?”

“Likely.” Morgause said. “Luminal Synchrony’s Lighthouses would glow during the Witching Hours. It was when they’d be put into a giant glass dome and shaken. I’ve seen the schematics of a device called a lightbulb. It works by using their combined suffering to generate Nex. Hence, the lightbulb turns. Its luminosity fluctuates depending on how much Nex is transmitted from their living batteries.”

Frost wanted to hurl.

“But Homunculi don’t produce as much Nex. With how saturated the Subderma Layer is with them; it is no wonder Impuritas tend to target the cognitively-rich people of the Epiderma. These iterations certainly come from a generation so far gone that they now lack apparent emotion. Perhaps it still remains latent in them.” Morgause plainly put it. “White Midnight’s practices are influenced by them. One of the main reasons the Golden Dawn ended up splitting.”

She wished she hadn’t learned this.

“There’s still one more layer. White Midnight are still in the Seventh Floor.” Frost panted like an exhausted beast. “How long have they been doing this for? All this just to gain a fraction of what I can grant without all this suffering?”

Frost hurled the machine across the room like a spear, and she chased it. She clawed at it, gnawed, bit, chewed, and used [Voracity] to vent her rage. She burrowed through it like a termite, her one hundred arms wiggling through a hundred holes as she devoured the machine.

“AND FOR WHAT!?”

She collided with the earth, creating a ten-meter-wide crater that was filled with debris and residual Liquid Nex.

She slurped it up, stuffing her mouth with all one hundred hands.

Suddenly, a voice spoke from behind her.

“A worrying sight to be greeted with. O’ Amalgam. Do you remember the quest for the perfect rose?”

Dark Memoria introduced herself with a series of airy footsteps.

A God of Cognition had come to join them.

“With enough souls and a vessel strong enough to contain it, one such rose may spring into existence. But their approach is no different from the Great Race. Only one of billions will qualify. The fatal flaw is that they are not all equal in their opportunity. Ergo, the Light of a Homunculus is imperfect. But does it matter to those who chose to cherry pick aspects of humanity and discard the rest?”

Dark Memoria despised them.

After all: She was the Aberration of Elysia that closely resonated with the Affinity of Attachment.

“Machines should learn to be bound to what they are than to obsess over what they cannot reach. But alas, they are not bound to the past, nor do they care of the present. They are beings that can only strive for the future, no matter what the cost of the present is.”

“… You’re here.” Frost murmured, staring down at the remains of the machine before her knees. “… What are we up against?”

Frost was more than enough to face nearly every conceivable threat thrown her way. She had thought she had come to collect the Unite Us, Everlasting.

But Moons and Stars could do that for her through Hyperwarping it into the Nexus.

Thus, she concluded that Dark Memoria was here for another purpose.

“There is an abnormal concentration of Qliphoth in this Site. I’m not taking any chances when it comes to you, Amalgam.”

Indeed.

She was here to fight.

* * *

< UNIQUE ABILITY GAINED >

< ABILITY: Nex Refinement >

(Aspect of Technology | Luminal Synchrony)

< EFFECT: Refine environmental or internal Nex and create Refined Nex. Increase the efficiency of Nex-based Skills by 100%. You may create Liquid Nex containing your Specific Nex at will >

//////// < EXTREME WARNING > ////////

< When used on an Aspect of Technology with an existing Star… >

< Unknown >