Chapter 348: Thoughts Before Sleep

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That night, I couldn’t sleep.

Usually due to all the exhaustion, I fall asleep right away.

But I simply couldn’t sleep as I thought about my masters and their fate.

Even with everything we’ve done to improve their chances…

There are still rather big chances it will fail.

And they end up even worse than before, or…

Or die.

Is it even worth it? To do this?

What if we keep it like this for now?

Maybe if we delay it…

They got plenty strong thanks to fusing with their other selves made from their Records of the World.

But at the same time…

I also feel this uneasiness that they will simply not agree with me.

They had been living like this, slowly dying by the nanomachines eating away their bodies for many years.

To deny them the chance to finally free themselves from such a terrible curse and finally regain their health.

And perhaps even more of their power…

I guess it would be too cruel of a thing to do.

Even if it makes sense in my mind, there are many variables as well, aren’t there?

What if the foe we’ll fight is so strong we simply won’t be able to accomplish our goals?

What if it is… another Void Ruler?

One that appears in person this time, and it's not just a battle of minds within an already weakened mind like it happened between me and the Bleeding Scream.

There are too many things that could happen; we need their power… so much.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

I can’t sleep because of that; I keep overthinking things, even though I have cultivated enough and meditated enough. I know I’m super strong now.

But there’s always… a damned higher ceiling you can’t just surpass with just cultivating; there are beings that defy all such things.

If I had the mind of my brother, I would simply think to get stronger and stronger and not mind everything else around me.

The only one that can save everyone and fight is only me. I can beat them all; I can save everyone…

I need to keep getting stronger, endlessly.

I will break the ceiling and then punch the beings beyond it.

Yes, that’s how he would think.

But that’s simply… not the right way to think.

Because of this thinking, he ended up becoming so lonely and abandoning so much.

He continued moving forward no matter how much his actions ended up killing so many people.

My brother was always thinking he did it for me more than anybody else.

But at the end, even I died.

And when he was finally so strong nobody else could defeat him or threaten him.

So strong he could finally protect those he loved.

They were all dead already.

Everyone was gone.

What’s the point of having so much strength and power if there was nobody to protect or save?

Most readers thought the ending was good; he ended up killing every Void Ruler and became the absolute King of the Universe.

Cool, right? He became unparalleled.

But everyone he loved was dead.

His last line, and the very last line of the novel, was him sighing, saying my name.

…

“I don’t want this!”

I ended up screaming out of nowhere, gasping for air.

“Ahh… ugh.”

I felt a bit tired; maybe training so much has begun to make my mind get crazier than it was.

I can’t go on this alone; that’s what I was trying to get to.

I need the help of my masters, and I—no, we—need them…

We need them to regain their power, or at least stop dying from the nanomachines.

To be honest, I doubt they’ll regain their former power; those machines had been draining it away, eating it like parasites.

But at least they won’t continue growing weaker or die. I also worry about them; the faster we get this done, the better.

Even more so because once they join us in a battle, and we fight robots, maybe one of them might have the power to control those nanomachines.

And I don’t want to think what could happen to them if they get suddenly… possessed or controlled.

I know they’re strong, but… this is a lingering fear as well.

“Hahh…”

I walked out of bed and looked through the window; the night was refreshing, and there was a small cold wind. It was very hot inside of this Inner Realm; it was like a perpetual summer.

“So how do you feel about what we’ll do today, sister?”

Huh?

I heard the voice of… Zero One? Talking right below me.

I looked down, noticing she was there in the small terrace of her room, which was right below mine in this huge palace.

She was with her sister; the two were doing the same thing I did…

I guess I wasn’t the only one having a hard time sleeping, huh?

“I… I guess I’m nervous; I don’t know why. I never felt these feelings before,” said Zero Two. “But every time I think something might go wrong, I worry. Maybe… maybe because you’ll get sad or upset.”

“Hmm, I see,” nodded Zero One. “So you’ve become more human now, sis… You’re worrying about others!”

“D-Don't rub it on me like that! It’s not like I’m enjoying it or something,” said Zero Two. “It’s strange and makes me feel weird… It makes me question who I am and where I am… it’s strange. What is this sensation? It provokes more anguish than happiness… It makes me feel incomplete when I always felt I was fine as I was. That I was even perfect…”

“Yes, that’s right…” Zero One nodded, looking at the moon. “It’s exactly because of that, big sis… It’s because it makes us feel incomplete; it’s because it makes us feel imperfect. That’s why it makes you feel… alive. This is the human’s heart. We machines could have never been able to feel like this; we are, after all, machines. Assembled inside a factory, made of cold steel… we work through programs, protocols, and the like. But right now, we are breaking from that; we are rapidly becoming ourselves…”

“Zero One…” her sister glanced at her in surprise.

And then she looked down, a bit sad.

“Having a human heart is so painful…” she sighed. “Worrying, feeling anguish, loving… caring. It’s all so worrisome and painful.”

“It is…” nodded Zero One. “But it somehow… once you achieve something with these people, with the world around you even, or with your own goals… It feels so nice. With all the anguish that comes with it… I love it. I love this feeling… I want to become even more human. I accept and embrace it. The rights and wrongs… Because no human is perfect.”

“…” Zero Two remained in silence. “When your Mother created you… what did she say to you, sister?”

“…”

Zero One smiled calmly, although I noticed a bit of melancholy in her eyes.

“That I would suffer, that I would hate, that I would cry, that I would fear, and that I would also despair… All human emotions that have no place within a machine’s functions and systems,” she said. “But that will make me more special… and perhaps even stronger than all machines that came before me. She said I was the first of something she called… New Humanity.”

“New… Humanity…” Zero Two said. “Right… humans went extinct in our original world, right? So we’re replacing them? Why?”

“Because Mother desires to serve humanity… So she has recreated humanity through us, Androids,” said Zero One. “Or so… or so I like to believe. But there might be something else too… I think she also wanted to feel these feelings. To have feelings, to yearn, love, and miss… I think she had a unique relationship with our prototype, with the last human in our world, the girl known as Raven.”

“Raven…” said Zero Two. “The girl we’re shaped after?”

“Yes… she is our prototype; she is what we’re based on,” said Zero One. “Sometimes I think that… Mother might miss her even if she doesn’t want to admit it or feel it. Something within her circuits, even when it was never programmed, has been “bugging her” all this time. And she wants to learn emotions through us so she can finally, truly understand what this is.”

“What… do you think it is?” asked Zero Two, swallowing saliva, feeling nervous to even ask such a thing.

“…”

Zero One caressed her sister’s hand and smiled at her.

“I think she misses her…” said Zero One. “She took care of Raven through the girl’s entire life… Her whole purpose was to protect her… And when Raven died at a young age, I think she felt something annoying, something within her circuits. Aside from a primary lack of purpose… I think she wants to feel these emotions of sadness, of sorrow… she wants to… to make Raven’s death have a meaning to her own life, to her own existence.”

“…” Zero Two sighed, looking down through the mountains. “That’s… sad.”

She shed a few tears.

“E-Eh? Why am I… why am I crying?” muttered Zero Two.

Zero One giggled, petting her head.

“It’s called Empathy,” said Zero One. “It is an emotion we feel when we can imagine the pain of someone else entirely within our own, imagining us going through that until we feel as sad as them. It might sometimes diverge into Pity too, loving someone so much that seeing them sad makes you sad too. Or so I believe? Human emotions are so many and so unpredictable… Every day I learn something new.”

“Sister…” Zero Two muttered. “You… Do you want to save Anna’s masters?”

“I consider them my teachers, maybe even masters, even though they always say Anna is their only disciple. I’ve learned a lot from them,” said Zero One. “I want to save them… I want to see them smile and happy with Anna. Because… because that’ll make me happy too. And being happy is… so nice of a feeling. I want to be happy, do you?”

“…I do,” smiled Zero Two. “I guess… it would make me a bit happy too.”

“Right?” Zero One nodded. “Let’s help our friends, Zero Two.”

“Sure… Let’s,” Zero Two nodded.

The two girls then walked back to their shared room to sleep.

“…”

I feel like that was a conversation I shouldn’t have listened to.

Raven… the last human of the machine’s original world.

And Mother, the Mother Machine that came here first, which created all machines.

A primary antagonist, that is now becoming a strange figure.

Is she good? Is she evil?

I just… can’t tell anymore.

But if she modeled her daughter after Raven, she’s definitely…

Not a monster then.

Despite not being programmed to feel such emotions.

Deep within her circuits, something blossomed.

Sorrow.

Did she consider Raven her daughter?

I wonder…

The Machine that raised, took care of, and then saw the last human die.

Their creators, and the beings that brought purpose to their existences.

It must have been such a terrible thing to go through.

Hah…

Now I’m pitying a machine; I’m really hopeless.

Let’s go to sleep now.

Tomorrow is the big day.

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