Early Morning - Early Fall : The Forest of Giants | Temnota

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  - Eve Altera ~

  "Now, Eve, come grab your dinner." *Vwoop* Watching Evren pull out a large chunk of black flesh before dangling it in front of me, my expression morphed with disgust.

  -D..Dinner..?- Looking at the piece of meat ooze a slimy black liquid, my stomach churned. As I turned to Bella for solace though, I only found a smug look written across her black-furred face.

  One I wanted to snuff.

  But Evren addressed it long before I could.

  "Haha," *Pat* Aggressively patting Bella's head, Evren let out a playful chuckle that instantly struck fear into me. "Don't think you're getting away scot-free either."

  -Huh?-

  "What do you-" *Splat* Before Bella could even finish speaking, a clump of viscous black flesh splattered on the inside of her mouth before promptly oozing into her body.

  Watching the flesh sink into a series of metal arms and hydraulics in her throat, I was honestly at a loss for words.. just like Bella...

  But after a moment, the shock settled and turned into panic. -AH!- "EVREN!" Rushing up to Bella, I set my hand on her side. "Bella, open your maintenance hatch! That nasty stuff will definitely mess with your electronics!"

  However, as I felt around where the edge of the door should have been, and used my aura to look around, I found nothing. -Shit, is this the wrong side?-

  But before I could check her other side, she somewhat awkwardly stepped back. "A-About that..." Giving me an odd look, she spoke hesitantly. "That isn't something I can do anymore... Not only have I completely lost the system directories that should have been for maintenance mode and the lock on the hatch, but I seem to have also lost the ability to freely change my form, or even just adjust traits about myself like the color of my fur or eyes..."

  "What?" My face instantly warped with confusion. "How does that work?" Looking up at Evren, I squinted my eyes a bit. "Can you block stuff like that in your system?"

  She immediately nodded. "But this isn't that." Quickly opening up her system, likely to check, she appeared to scroll through something before her expression turned troubled. "Well.. I at least could before..."

  Getting anxious at the sight of her uncertainty, anxiety found its way onto my face. "W..what do you mean?"

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  - Evren Lestir ~

  "Well, it actually seems like a lot of the programming and behavior-related settings are gone now." Scrolling through the mana mechanics tab, viewing all the available permissions that were bound to Bella, I found a list of only about a hundred exceedingly generic rules I recognized in a heartbeat. -So even the system finds her odd...-

  They were the permissions I only ever knew to be set on companion animals.

  Compared to companion robotics, companion animals couldn't be bound to nearly as specific of a degree. To give an example, a single robotic companion could have up to four hundred million permissions, letting the user set whatever they wanted on it, but living companions were limited to ninety-six which were statically set by the system.

  The reason for this was the idea of free will. Even mana robotics were still robots, machines that could be programmed however the owner wished. -Yet somehow Bella is different...- And while it made me wonder if perhaps the system update changed what I knew of mana robotics, even the system didn't seem to know how to classify her, saying she was a 'mana-robotic' in the main companion tab while giving her the permissions of a companion animal.

  It was truly odd. -But this only reinforces what I already thought...- Looking down at Bella, I gave her a slightly judgemental look before relaxing my gaze and speaking more normally. "Bella, open your mouth again."

  Quickly turning away from Eve, she sat down and opened wide.

  And just like before, I dropped a mushy piece of flesh into her mouth. *Splat*

  It clearly made both her and Eve uncomfortable, but it was all part of an experiment. One that I was eager to see the results of...

  -I can't rush things though...- Turning to Eve, my more entertaining prey, my smile finally returned. "Anyway, Eve." *Vwoop* Pulling out a much more solid piece of meat that smelled like clotted blood and oozed black slime, I playfully dangled it in front of her. "Put a bit of this on your tongue and see if it's too poisonous for you."

  Her face instantly scrunched with disgust.

  But disgust was a feeling she needed to learn to suppress.

  *SNAP* Flicking the side of the meat, a tiny piece of slimy flesh zipped through a small opening in her mouth before slamming into the back of her throat.

  "HUEK-" Instantly gagging, she bent over to throw it up.

  But I was quick to squat down in front of her with what likely appeared as a threatening look. "It's not actually poisonous, so swallow it. If you throw it up, I'm just going to give you more."

  Her cheeks instantly expanded, but instead of letting it all out, she held her hand over her mouth, grimaced, and swallowed it back down with a grimace.

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  "Good." Straightening up, I tossed the rest of the meat back into my inventory. "From now on, this will be your daily snack." Smiling, I innocently tilted my head. "Just because you don't need to eat in order to survive doesn't mean you don't need nutrients to grow."

  Giving me a stressed, dark stare for a moment, she painfully closed her eyes and lowered her head.

  -Perfect.- She wasn't happy about it, but in the future, she would thank me for it. -It's just a matter of time before she realizes how good it is for her...-

  And so, over the next few days, we found a new routine, spending our time exploring the forest through the canopy while snacking on some smelly drake meat and training with my mana.

  At first, Eve's body reacted quite poorly to the meat, so we didn't manage to cover much ground, but as time went on, her condition rapidly improved.

  After about a week, we managed to cover a couple thousand kilometers, crossing over several thin creeks and sneaking around a few large lakes while keeping our distance from more troublesome monsters.

  But after exploring for a while, we eventually bumped into something that caught Eve's eye. "Huh? What is that?"

  It was an old stone wall, only a few hundred meters tall, that had been completely overtaken by the vegetation beneath us.

  To me, it was nothing special, but to Eve.. that wasn't so much the case. "People used to live in this world?" Clearly wanting to go down and get a closer look, she used a spell composed of a series of runes to bend the light coming toward her like the lens of a huge magnifying glass. *Vwoom*

  And it wasn't like it was a bad idea. -I highly doubt any clues on the assassination target will be in such ancient ruins, but maybe...- "You want to go check it out?"

  Her ears immediately twitched as she turned to me, the same as Bella.

  "Haha," -I'll take that as a yes.- "It shouldn't take long. These ruins are pretty old." Walking over and picking up Bella under my arm, I walked to the edge of the branch before hopping off without wasting a breath, using my aura to soften my landing as I reached the top of the wall.

  *WooOOSH* *Vwoom-Tap-Tap* -Oh, it's sturdier than I imagined...- Setting down Bella as we landed atop the ivy-covered, dilapidated wall, I glanced up at Eve to make sure she was coming before looking back at the city inside the wall.

  It was in complete ruin, filled with so much vegetation that the only man-made things you could see were the spires of old cathedrals or what looked like light towers, huge spires meant to spread light over the surrounding city.

  But unlike in the past, I didn't just have just one set of eyes.

  As my aura permeated the foliage on the ground, an incredible image of a city lost to time filled my mind, and my eyes went wide. -Woah...- The city was covered in scratches, broken weapons, shredded armor, and so many skeletons of humans and monsters alike that it looked more like a mass grave than a city.

  But the sight itself wasn't what took me aback.

  It was the fact that with just a single look at my aura, I could uncover things that would have traditionally taken days in order to find. -In the past, I would've had to burn the foliage away in cities like this.. but with my aura...- It was even simpler than looking around with my eyes.

  I could see everything I could ever want to.. all at once.

  It wasn't long before Eve got down and used her aura to look around as well though.

  And, suffice to say, she didn't react as calmly as I did. *Vwoom-Tap-Tap* The moment she landed, she simply froze, staring at her own feet while her eyes grew wider and wider. "What.. happened to this place..." Finally looking up, her gaze fell on the foliage-covered city.

  But in her mind, she saw something else. In her mind, countless scenes played out.

  In one area, she could see a man fighting to fend off a monster in the entrance of his home, wishing only to protect his children before his sternum was crushed, and in another, she could see a place where a noble knight, wishing only to protect his brothers fended off hundreds of monsters on his own, only for the city to fall behind him.

  They were scenes from the day the city fell, painted out with dismembered and destroyed skeletons, laying with their weapon in hand, or embracing a loved one.

  To me, such scenes were meaningless.

  But to Eve, she saw Earth's future in them. "I thought you said this world wouldn't have any people..."

  Shrugging, I leaned out through one of the wall's many crenels. "It doesn't. The odds of a single human being alive here are zero." Pausing while I looked out over the city, I finally turned around to face her. "Finding destroyed civilizations is as easy as finding monsters on most of the worlds I go to. Only a handful of worlds that get up to this level have never had any humanoid species, and even then, most of those just had non-humanoid sentient civilizations."

  Breaking into a cold sweat, she walked up to the crenel next to me before hopping up onto it. "So.. outside of what you would consider low-level worlds.. how many actually had sentient life that survived..?"

  -Hm...- Giving it a moment of thought, I stared off into the distance. "Depends what you consider low level, but I'd say probably.. fifty?"

  "Fifty percent?"

  Shaking my head, I looked back up at her. "Of the all worlds I visited, I only found around fifty worlds with active civilizations that were stronger than your home world." In terms of percent, it was something closer to 0.02%. -But if I exclude the thousand worlds I went to after Eve's, that number plummets even more...-

  To the extent that I could count the remaining worlds on one hand, and after taking away another thousand, it dropped to one, and then none.

  But I wasn't going to tell Eve that.

  After all, in her mind, these worlds were the future of Earth. Telling her the survival rate of civilizations in worlds at this level was statistically zero would be like reminding her of the inevitability of death, something she likely believed she could escape.

  Fate wasn't something I believed in though. "Don't let it get to you. I don't plan on letting Earth fall like the rest have."

  That statement though, while I said it to try and be reassuring, fell on deaf ears.

  Turning around with a fear-ridden expression, Eve spoke anxiously. "But what if you get summoned to a world like this..? What if you can't make it back in time..?"

  Scoffing, I quickly lowered my gaze. "You want to lean on me that bad?" Speaking somewhat sarcastically, I turned to look back up into the towering tree canopy. "I would've thought that Michael's hands-off method of raising Earth would make you all more independent."

  Not understanding what I was saying, her expression instantly morphed with a mix of confusion and anger.

  But she needed to learn the lesson I was trying to teach eventually. "Eve, if you think the world can survive as it is with just my help, you are sorely mistaken. Earth has some hardships coming, and while I do plan on helping all that I can, if people lean on me too much, I will not be able to stop the collapse." So, to combat humanity's inevitable laziness upon being granted a protector, I planned to make it clear that they couldn't lean on me.

  Even if that meant letting millions die that I could have otherwise saved.

  "If Earth's people become spoiled, they will die." Because even if I had my old system, my old robotics, items, and upgrades, Earth's civilizations would inevitably fall.

  Not from the monsters...

  But from System Mercenaries.

  Even if I could get rid of every monster that would come to Earth as it rose through the ranks, similar to the monsters, more and more mercenaries would appear as well, and upon realizing the colossal gap in strength between them and humanity, damages I couldn't preemptively prevent would inevitably happen, and over time, would accumulate.

  "I believe Earth has the potential to grow into one of the strongest worlds in the System, especially with my help, but to make that happen, I need the cooperation of the administrators and the people." Watching Eve sink into thought as her expression darkened, I took a deep breath of the damp, thick air and decided to pull out another seed. "Earth's civilization needs to adapt and grow with the planet, and to do that, the civilization has to act as one."

  It was a simple phrase I set in her mind like the seed of an oak, expecting it to take its time to sprout and grow.

  But little did I know, that seed sprouted leaves as soon as it was laid in the soil.

  Like her Mother, Eve wasn't going to let her own worldview blind her from what needed to be done.

  She wasn't one to be blinded by confidence or arrogance.

  At the time though, I couldn't have imagined the havoc that seed would wreak.

  Even if it was necessary.

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