- New Berlin. Capital of the European Central Association with over 200,000,000 inhabitants and cultural center of Europe. As well as part of the "Great Five", together with Paris, Lyon, London and Warsaw.
In the middle of the Celestia district is the large cathedral of the Church of St. Mary with the associated monastery. The Church of St. Mary emerged in the late 2050s as a counter-movement to the increasingly open Catholic Church. The CsM is an almost extremist organization dedicated to protecting traditional values and the purity of people. Over the last 2 decades, the church has received a massive increase in adherents. In particular, immigrants who fled the NUSA after the collapse of the U.S. in 2099 have embraced the movement. Due to the high financial and political power of the CsM, it has been virtually untouchable for several years. Various Mega Corps have already teamed up with her to benefit from each other.
One of the most controversial practices of this church is the "Young Holy Program". ?Children between the ages of 5 and 9 are purchased from children's homes, not adopted, mind you, but bought in the truest sense of the word to become the future priests and nuns of the Church. Up to the age of 18, the children are trained in one of the many monasteries, manipulated and made into the most loyal members. One of these children is 17-year-old Marcus. Since the age of 6 he has been in the monastery in Celestia and studies the ways of the saints. Unlike most others, however, he is not yet a faithful member of the faith, but is waiting to escape from the church. To do so, he has to play a dangerous game, because the so-called incorrigibles are locked up in the dungeons to work under the monastery in the underground factory. To avoid this fate, Marcus played the good young priest until he reached the age of 18. Because as soon as a boy is ordained a priest and made a full-fledged priest, he has the opportunity to leave the monastery to proselytize. This will be his chance. Only 3 years left.
Marcus sits in biology class, where there was almost no real biology, but only church babble about God, how he created animals and plants. Everyone around him seemed to follow the talk spellbound. I wonder if others were just pretending? It was unlikely, but he hadn't been brainwashed, so why not others. "Marcus, what tools did God use to recreate the animals of this world in his imagination and provide them with intelligence?" How Marcus hated that name. He. Marcus hated that too. To herself, she was a she, and her damn name wasn't Marcus, but Aurelia. Aurelia stood up as requested by the students and answered: "He invented DNA so that the animals could not all be created by hand, but to take care of the planning and creation of humanity." "Correct" Aurelia sat down again and put on her feigned attentive face again. The lessons continued, but she hardly listened. How much she wished to finally be out of here. Aurelia glanced furtively at the young nuns, who were sitting separately from the young priests, and looked at their habits. In contrast to those of the old Catholic Church, they were significantly more provocative and narrowly cut, which was primarily used in the early years of the church to recruit members. Over the years, it developed into a
Tradition of redesigning the robes every 10 years and usually they became no less provocative. How much Aurelia would like to have a habit too. However, the church was very much in favor of the traditional roles of man and woman and strictly refused to adapt to the modern world, which had already decided in the 2040s to accept that there were more than just two genders. Another reason to flee from here.
The rest of this Tuesday went as usual, after biology came theology for 3 hours and then politics for the remaining 5 hours of the day, to eat afterwards and have to go to the chambers to study and sleep. The next day, the ordeal began again. Aurelia stayed away from most other young priests. She only spoke to Charles from time to time. She felt comfortable enough around him not to have to be constantly afraid of exposing herself as an incorrigible. To call him a friend would be too much, rather a good acquaintance. But the hours in the convent went by a little faster when she could joke with him from time to time. 15:00 Time for today's theology lessons, which would be as useless as yesterday and all the weeks, months and years before. After Aurelia, Charles and the rest of the class had gathered in the classroom and sat down, it made a deafening blow and the whole building seemed to shake. Some of the students hid under their desks, while some others ran to the windows to see what had happened. Aurelia remained seated and imagined how an accident in the convent would distract everyone to give her the chance to escape. She would sneak out of the class in the chaos of the people, go into the nuns' compartment to steal a habit for herself, and then climb out of one of the windows and run away. What nonsense, she said to herself in her head. I've never been so lucky and I probably never will - Another blow. This time louder, and identifiable as an explosion. The building shook even more, and through the windows you could see stones from the monastery flying around. Now there were many more hiding under her tables, while the nun who teaches today left the room and ran in the direction of the explosion. "Marcus, go hide, come down here!" Charles called. But Aurelia did not think of it. She rose to rush to the door. She had hesitated often enough in her life. Not this time. Never again! The door sprang open with a kick inwards and flew off its hinges and directly into Aurelia's face. A short moment of blackness later, she felt the heavy wooden door lying on top of her and heard one loud bang after another. Rifle fire? This thought only came to her after some nonsense such as fireworks or thrown stones. She looked in the direction of the door and saw two soldiers shooting into the crowd of students with their kinetic rifles, as used by most PMCs. Blood soaked the floor and Aurelia was frozen in shock. That was probably the only thing that saved her, as she escaped the attention of the soldiers. After the two soldiers fired a few more shots to make sure that all the children were dead, they moved on, presumably to another classroom. After the sound of gunfire became quieter, Aurelia summoned up all her courage and strength to heave the door away from her and leave the room. The door was heavier than expected and her aching left arm didn't exactly help. It took Aurelia just under 5 minutes to push the door far enough to the side for her to crawl out. She had to move slowly because the floor was slippery from the blood of her classmates. They were all dead. She really felt sorry for Charles and felt a slight twinge of pain in her chest, but for everyone else there was only emptiness. She fled the room and saw that the hallway outside was a battlefield.
Bullet holes, blown up walls, dead holy and dead soldiers everywhere. Apparently, the priests and nuns had fought back with everything they had. There were some kinetic rifles of the soldiers and also energy weapons, which probably came from the saints. Why did a monastery have such sophisticated and lethal weapons? And how could they use it well enough to kill so many soldiers who were apparently well equipped and armed. These questions had to wait now, Aurelia had to get out of here first. She sprinted to the teaching wing exit, but it was completely destroyed. She couldn't get out of here. Then into the main wing and through the main exit. She walked, now a little slower, so as not to be so loud and not to slip on the blood that was scattered all over the floor. The large metal door to the main wing was torn off its hinges and lay bent in the hallway. Behind them were almost 40 to 50 soldiers in a merciless battle with 13 nuns and 5 priests. Aurelia wanted to go back immediately, but the battle captivated her. Many of the saints were equipped with state-of-the-art cyberware, she saw metal arms and legs, blades that came out of hands and arms studded with weapons that came out from under the shoulder blades. So that was why so few saints could stop these soldiers. The question of why nuns and priests had military augmentations came to her, but now was not the right moment to ponder it. She turned back into the hallway of the teaching wing and ran to a ventilation shaft that had often been used as a hiding place for her as a child. She was actually too big to fit through, but the situation forced her to squeeze through the narrow opening with momentum. Fortunately, there was enough space behind the opening for her to crawl. For the first time in her life, Aurelia was glad not to be a biological woman with breasts. That would have made the situation more difficult. She closed the ventilation opening behind her and crawled far enough to be out of sight through the slits of the grating and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. However, she only gave herself 5 minutes for it, because she knew that every minute that she stayed longer in the monastery, the chances of ending up like the others increased. Aurelia knew that the shaft she was in led deep into the lower floors. However, she did not know whether she could get away from there. But if she could figure out through the shaft system through which way the materials came in and the products of the factories came out, she could use that to her advantage.
Aurelia had to be in the 4th or 5th basement by now, how deep did this damn monastery go?! Then she heard gunshots. Kinetic. No energy weapons that returned fire. Either all the saints were dead or the soldiers had sneaked through to here. Aurelia crawled up to an opening gate to look through it. The shaft ran above an industrial-looking corridor. 5 soldiers opened doors, shot in and moved on. They looked different from the others above. They were equipped with cyberware, helmets through which their faces could not be seen and had larger weapons with them. Maybe a special commando that had a mission here, while the others upstairs provided a distraction. Aurelia tried to crawl on as quietly as possible. She came to a dead end one floor below. What now? She asked herself. She sat quietly for a few seconds before she decided to leave the shaft. Fortunately, the openings to the shafts were much larger down here and it was much easier for her to climb out than to climb in at the top. She let herself fall into the hallway and immediately regretted it when she felt the unbearable pain in her injured leg. Aurelia pulled herself together and limped down the hallway to a large door held shut by a massive electromechanical lock. "Damn," she cursed before she could hold back.
She heard footsteps coming towards this door at high speed. In a panic, she hid behind one of the boxes that stood at the edge, not a good hiding place, but she hoped that the soldiers didn't expect to find a little nun in Priest's Habit here. The footsteps became louder and louder until the small squad of soldiers with the cyberware came around the corner and stuck a device with many displays and cables to the door. They took a few steps back and waited. It took just under 10 minutes for all the displays to turn green and for the door to open all by itself. The soldiers went in, and Aurelia looked after them furtively. The room was not big and almost completely empty. Only in the middle was a kind of terminal with a spherical closure at the upper end. The soldiers tried to use the terminal, but they did not seem to succeed. Aurelia continued to look around the room and saw another door that could be opened manually from the inside. If she could make it undetected until then unnoticed, she could open the door and escape. She just had to hope that the terminal was interesting enough for the soldiers not to notice such a massive door as it opened. You've had better ideas before, Aurelia said to herself. Then maybe the way back. It was possible that these soldiers were the only ones here so deep down. With a loud beep, the terminal's spherical cap opened and a glowing orb became visible. One of the soldiers tries to grab it, but the orb dodged, hovered on the spot for a moment and then shot out of the room directly towards Aurelia. Her last thought was, not in the face again. Then it went black. When she opened her eyes again, she moved as if by remote control. "Oh wonderful. You're awake. Then I'll give you back control. Please keep running away, the soldiers are not far behind you and not in a very good mood." Aurelia stumbled and fell when she was able to move on her own again. "Fuck, what's going on here?!" she snapped at the air around her before she heard the footsteps of the soldiers behind her. She picked herself up and began to sprint. "That's good, Aurelia. Take the 3rd door on the left, I will open it far away and close it behind you," this voice came back out of nowhere. Not sure why she listened to this voice, she sprinted through the 3rd door on the left and heard it close and a large lock locked the door. "Where to Ghost now?" she asked, "I am not a Ghost. I am a millennia-old extraterrestrial artificial intelligence that has connected to your central nervous system and brain stem. And go through the corridor to your right and follow it to the lock into the production facility. Aurelia followed the directions and said "When I'm no longer hunted by killer cyborgs, you'll have a lot of questions to answer for me!" "Gladly" came out of nowhere. The voice led her across the factory back up to the Jung Priester grand piano. "The side door of this wing is mostly undamaged and the least guarded." "Ok, but first I need something," Aurelia answered. She made a small detour to the supervisory room, where she was looking for a female replacement habit for the overseer. She found it in a closet and then went to the side exit. The voice answered again while Aurelia saw that the exit was really free. "Keep your body low and move along the hedge. Carefully, but not slowly." Aurelia followed the instructions again, so far the voice had served her well, so she would probably follow her for a while, at least until she was far enough away from the monastery.
Barely 500 meters from the monastery building was the wall that separates the church from the outside world. Aurelia only had to walk a few hundred meters along the wall until she came to a destroyed gate, no soldiers far and wide. So she decided to try it and sprinted through the gate to the nearest side street without many people, in the distance she could already hear the sirens of the local police. When she arrived in the alley, she leaned against the graffiti-smeared wall behind a garbage container. For the first time since she had the blackout, she looked down at herself. Horror and shock rose in her. At least 15 or 20 bullet holes had literally shredded her body, her leg looked even worse than before and should not be able to carry her anymore. Strangely enough, no blood came out of the many open wounds. "Aurelia," the voice said matter-of-factly, "you have been hit 21 times by 5.56 caliber and you have a leg that cannot continue to do its job without help. You're only functioning right now because of 3 different types of stims that I gave you while I was taking over your body." Aurelia was too shocked to answer anything and continued to stare at her wounds. "Aurelia. If you don't take care of your injuries, you're going to die. I can only purchase and use aids myself to a limited extent. You have to do this. And quickly." That damned voice was so matter-of-fact and cold that it was downright absurd what it said to Aurelia. Before Aurelia could reply, she saw a kind of menu open in front of her. It wasn't a hologram, it seemed like she always imagined Augen Augs to have the small menus appear with which you could do all kinds of things. The menu was set up like a shop in an online game, Aurelia had never been able to play one herself, but other children, who were acquired later in their lives, sometimes told me that the orphanage had a community PC with internet access and what you could do there. In the upper corner she saw a number 140. "Hey voice, what is that and how can I make myself whole again?!" Aurelia asked in a weak voice. The wounds didn't hurt, not even her leg, which almost drove her crazy before, but she felt very exhausted. "My name is Raya. And you have a number that is still 140 for you. You started with 200, but I already had to spend 20 coins each for the three stims. Select the Nano Clasp Unit from your Basic Menu for 100 Coins. You then have to apply it to yourself. It will allow you to survive, but it will not heal you completely." Aurelia was confused and looked around the menu for the unit mentioned. There. In a submenu called "Basic Utility" was the Nano Clasp unit she was looking for, she selected it and saw the coins drop to 40. Directly in front of Aurelia it lit up briefly and a box appeared. She closed the menu and picked up the box. It was made of a thin plastic-like material with a closure at the front, when Aurelia opened it discovered a fist-thick elongated syringe with a flexible tube and a frighteningly large needle. "Insert the needle into a part of your body that is not yet wounded and inject the contents of the syringe completely into it," came from the voice. Was she insane?! How could she voluntarily ram something like that into her body?! "Aurelia. Your time is getting shorter and shorter. In addition, you won't feel anything because the Pain Reducing Stim is still active." "But take a look at this thing!" "You have about 3 minutes left before you collapse and die. This is neither beneficial for you nor for me. So please." The coldness of the voice disappeared minimally and there was a slight intensity to be heard. "Fuck. Okay. Ok." Aurelia took the syringe and the tube with the needle, closed her eyes and put the needle in her forearm. In fact. No pain, no feeling at all, to be exact.
She stared at the syringe for a moment until she remembered that she still had to press the contents into her arm. The thick gray-brown mass flowed into her with unpleasant ease. Within a few seconds, she saw in the destroyed parts of her body how the mass spread over blood vessels, organs and muscles and closed the injured body parts, but without closing the skin. "Well done Aurelia. Even if unnecessarily dramatic." came from the voice. "Snout...... You'll answer a few questions for me now," Aurelia answered bitingly. "Gladly" it came back. "What are you?!" came as the first question. "I'm Raya. An artificial intelligence created by a species called Stargazers several thousand years ago. The stargazers have helped humanity as well as 7498 other intelligences in different galaxies to build a society. I am a form of emergency aid designed to connect with specific individuals of each species and help them defend their civilization." "And then why were you under a damn monastery?!" asked Aurelia. "I and my brothers and sisters were in action in the year 2078, and the warriors, whom you call Sentinels, continued until the year 2085, when the threat was defeated. We AIs left the Sentinels and were put into a hibernation state, as we were before. However, the KhM managed to intercept and imprison me. Outside of a Sentinel, we AIs are little more than a moving LED lamp." “2078? The attacks by the Ovv'alti, the aliens?! I always thought that people developed the technology for the Sentinels and kept them under wraps ever since. At least explains why the Sentinels could do such blatant shit. Ok, next question. What the hell happened down there?" "Unusual choice of words for a nun. Basically, through the light I radiated, you were spotted by the soldiers, who immediately started firing. I provided you with three stims and took over your body. We then fled until you woke up again and took control yourself." I'm not a real nun and that's all?" "Yes." Aurelia bit her lip as she kept looking down at her body. "What do I need to get my body back to normal?" "You need access to Category 1 Medicine. 100 coins. From this category you need the Nano Healing Unit 100 Coins. You also need access to Category 1 Cybernetic Augmentation 100 Coins to buy a Cybernetic Leg. I'm afraid even a Category 2 Nano Healing Unit wouldn't be able to save your leg. These Cybernetic Legs cost between 50 and 300 coins." Aurelia groaned. "And how am I supposed to earn coins? Is there some kind of instruction or something?" "The coins are usually obtained by killing enemies of humanity and protecting innocents. However, since there is no invasion, you will probably settle for the latter. Unless you find a way to track down humanity's current enemies," Raya answered. Aurelia thought about it. Weren't these soldiers enemies in a certain way? After all, they apparently wanted Raya to use for themselves. But the saints of the Church could also be regarded as enemies. After all, they did everything they could to prevent the social progress of the world and the improvement of living conditions for non-members. Oh, and the whole thing of enslaving young children to indoctrinate them or make them toil in a factory. "Hey, tell Raya. If I kill one of the soldiers or saints, will I get points for it?"
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Raya was silent for a moment, but then replied, "This is a moral gray area. However, it would be quite possible. Depending on how exactly the stargazers have defined what counts as the 'enemy of humanity'. We're welcome to try it out, but you'll have to steal a weapon because you don't have the coins to buy one yourself." "Then let's test it, I should be reasonably stable again now, right?" "Wrong. However, you probably won't find any other opportunity to get many coins in the near future. Provided your plan works." Aurelia got up and prayed that the Stims would last a while, she took off her priest habit and threw on the nun's habit. Damn it looked good. But she was able to admire herself later. She crouched down, checked the street to see if there were soldiers and found that the entrance was full of policemen., "Damn, how do I get in there now?" "You can use the emergency exit in the cathedral, there should be fewer people there at the moment," Raya answered.
She was right. Most of the people were standing in the direction of the monastery, so Aurelia could steal into the cathedral. Once inside, Raya gave her the description of the emergency exit of the monastery and hacked into the system to open the door. Impressed by the ease with which Raya circumvented the church's security system, she walked through the corridor that led into the corridor of the priest's wing. Dozens of dead soldiers lay on the ground, with individual priests who had fallen during the defense. "How do you use such a thing anyway?" Aurelia asked as she picked up one of the Kinetic Rifles. "There is a switch on the left side of the handle, this secures the rifle, it has to point upwards to unlock the rifle. Then you have to aim through the sight and shoot with the trigger. Aurelia tried it out and found out that she really wasn't good at aiming. For the moment, however, it would certainly be enough, she encouraged herself. She took some magazines with her and crept towards the main hall. Countless dead, nuns, priests, soldiers, policemen lay on the formerly white marble of the hall. Aurelia saw some who seemed to be still alive and shot at their heads, albeit with many shots missed. With each enemy killed, she saw how 10 coins were added to her account. Morally reprehensible, but simple. Just the way she liked it.
She moved through the corridors with her rifle, to which she was slowly getting used to, and collected coins. It was now at 230. As it turned out, both the soldiers and the saints scored points. She didn't shoot at the policemen, they were just doing their job. With some of the soldiers, however, she did not receive any points. Probably the soldiers who did not stand wholeheartedly behind their PMC. However, these were only a few. She was just entering the dining hall when Raya said "Back". Aurelia jumped back a bit, just before several shots went into the doorway. "You can now gain your first combat experience," Raya said, Aurelia got ready, held the rifle at the ready and asked Raya, "What's the best way to do that now?" "I'll tell you the moment when it's best to lean out of cover and fire. Wait" It took what felt like years, but it was actually only 25 seconds before she said "Now". Aurelia leaned around the corner at the moment when the two soldiers were facing each other to argue about who was at the door. Aurelia missed more than at her opponents, but luckily the magazine was big enough.
After 19 shots, the two soldiers were dead and Aurelia had two new bullet holes in her, one in her left side and the other just below her left knee, which was barely recognizable as such from her previous injury. "Damn. Can't you help me with aiming Raya somehow?" "Of course," Raya said, "for 100 coins you can buy access to the Category 1 weapon systems. Aim aids can be found in it." "Ok, then I'll get the access, and the one for the leg," Aurelia said a little out of breath. "Category 1 Weapon Systems. Gain access. Category 1 Cybernetic Augmentations. Gain access. Remaining coins: 50" "And now something to help me aim" "Gladly. May I recommend the Auros Mark 2, a system that is used in combination with Augen Augs to show the user directly where the projectile will hit. To do this, a Cybernetic Eye must first be acquired. I recommend a basic model for 25 coins. That will be enough for the beginning. The Auros Mark 2 also costs 25" "Yes, yes ok, come on, otherwise I'll run out of ammunition too quickly" Aurelia said while picking up magazines from the two dead soldiers. "Cybernetic Eye Basic has been acquired. Auros Mark 2 targeting system has been acquired. Remaining coins: 0" Two boxes appeared in front of Aurelia, one small and one slightly larger. In the larger one was an eye, in the smaller one a chip. "Should I tear out an eye now, or what?!" Aurelia snapped at Raya. "I can also teleport it into your eye, it will cause severe pain for a moment, while your current eye will be destroyed. However, you should hardly feel anything through the stim. The chip will then go into the slot that will be at the bottom of the eye." Aurelia only thought for a moment, teleporting sounded much better than cutting out her own eye and then replacing it with the new one by hand. "Ok. Do it like this!". Part of her vision darkened for a moment before it showed her environment in a resolution that was significantly better than her other biological eye. Aurelia would have to get used to the differences in resolution. She looked down and saw that the box in which the eye was was now empty. She took the second box and took out the chip. It fit perfectly into the slot under her eye, which, as Aurelia had to admit, was not so easy to reach because she couldn't see it. After a few attempts, she finally succeeded and a red dot appeared in front of her new eye when she picked up the rifle again. As Raya had said, it pointed exactly where the bullet of the rifle would hit, Aurelia tried it with 3 shots. That would make it easier to aim. Hopefully. She looked in all directions and then asked, "Hey Raya, where are the other soldiers?" "The security cameras of the monastery show that most of the soldiers are in the area of the factory. They are probably on their way to the products to plunder them." Aurelia took one of the dead woman's pistols and put it in the side of the habit. "Good, then that's where we'll go next." As at the beginning of the attack, Aurelia used the shafts that ran through the monastery. She found a small group of soldiers who were apparently supposed to make sure that no one would follow the others. She opened the grating of the opening quietly and aimed her rifle. Despite the help of her eye, about half of the shots missed. But it was a significant improvement on before. The soldiers died before they could really process what had happened. She dropped out of the shaft and reloaded her rifle, which, as she only realized later, she should have done in the shaft in case there were more soldiers here. She was lucky this time, but she had to be more forward-looking for the future. The hallway in which she was now standing was well lit, so Aurelia decided on speed instead of secrecy.
In no time at all, she ran to a door that looked as if it had been opened with explosives. She looked furtively to see if there were any soldiers behind it, but it seemed as if there were. All other soldiers are already deeper in the factory. Aurelia walked past production sites where children and adults were chained in place so that they did not try to escape while working. They were all dead. Most of them shot individually in the head, but some were downright mutilated. "Apparently there's someone who likes to chop people up," Aurelia murmured softly. "In fact, the feeds of the security cameras show that it is a single soldier equipped with a machete." "Hey tell me Raya, can you find out if there are still people down here who are innocent?" Aurelia asked and after less than a second Raya answered: "Yes. I'll send you the room numbers. They were apparently too remote for the soldiers." Aurelia looked at the numbers. There were 6 rooms, all in a side hallway. It didn't take long to get there and when she walked through the door to the hallway, she immediately noticed that there were really never any soldiers here. There was no blood, corpses or bullet casings on the ground, you could almost think everything was normal. She went to the first room and opened the door. A piece of metal flew towards her and caught her in the head. "Damn it, why always in the face?!" Aurelia exclaimed as she walked backwards out of the room in case there was more garbage thrown at her. "Hey guys, I'm here to save your ass, I'm neither from the monastery nor from the soldiers who attack," she shouted into the room and waited. After some time of no reaction, and no garbage, she slowly dared to enter. The children in it were all a maximum of 13, completely frightened and some of them armed with tools and metal waste. They didn't seem to trust Aurelia completely because of her habit, so she walked very slowly and raised the rifle high above her head to show that she was not a danger. "I have to set you free, is there a terminal here that can be used to open the locks, or is there some kind of key?" she asked the group of slave laborers. One who seemed to make a particularly courageous impression said: "Under the overseer's table. But we don't know the code" Aurelia turned directly to the table and walked towards him. Under the tabletop was a small display that was secured with an 8-digit code, before she could do anything or ask Raya for help, the code entered itself and a menu could be seen with a large red field "Open". She pressed it and almost at the same moment she heard the clacking of locks opening and saw the children tear their chains off and leave their workstations. "Thank you, Raya," Aurelia murmured softly. There was no reason to show the children that she was talking to someone. In the end, she would still have to explain herself. "No problem, Aurelia. The code was stored in several databases of the server. Someone would have to explain to the IT team that this is a beginner's mistake." came coldly from Raya. Aurelia smiled slightly and tried to keep the children in a group, but some fled the room before she could do anything about it. "Wait!" she called after them, but to no avail. "Hey. The rest of you please stay here! I can't protect you if you run away!" she said to the others. "There are more like you down here, I'm going to free them too and we're going to go out of here as a group. Do you understand that?" the answer was an uneven "YES". Aurelia hoped that this rescue operation would be as simple as she imagined.
"Raya." "Yes?" "Do you keep an eye on the cameras so that no soldiers or saints cut off our way out?" "Of course." Aurelia turned and walked out the door. "You're waiting here," she said to the group and then went to the next room. The next two rooms were just like the first, while the last three consisted entirely of adults. It was so much easier to talk to adults. It took them much less time to get these groups under control and only one escaped. After some time of coordination, all the groups were united and Aurelia sat down at the front. To the mentally most stable adult, a man of about 25 with long unkempt hair, she gave the sidearm she had previously taken from one of the soldiers and placed it at the back of the group. Carefully and with Raya's help, the group walked the long way up until they were in the monastery and were able to escape through the cathedral. At the sight of the outside world, almost everyone ran straight away, without continuing to follow Aurelia's instructions. Outside, they were quickly discovered and stopped by police officers. Aurelia remained standing in the huge door of the cathedral while the last slaves of the church went to the police, who in the meantime distributed emergency blankets and called in the paramedics of the hospital shuttles standing around. "Receive new coins. Current coin as of 1320." came from Raya. Aurelia needed a moment to process this number. That was a lot of coins. She retreated deeper into the cathedral and asked Raya, "What should I get first?" "Access to Category 1 Medicine and Cybernetic Augmentations 1, including the Nano Healing Unit and one of the Available Legs. I recommend the B.E. 12, it has the strongest servos of the legs in this category. In total, everything would cost 600 coins." Aurelia thought for a moment. That was really damn expensive. But she knew exactly that her stims wouldn't last forever and then she wouldn't be able to use her leg at all and her body would probably thank her if she would fix it. "Well, ok" "Purchase confirmed." Two boxes appeared in front of her. One that was no bigger than a lunchbox and one that was the size of a rifle case. She opened her leg first. It was dark gray with plates on the outside and barely visible hoses and servos behind it. It was hard. Really heavy, she could hardly lift it out of the box. "Hey Raya, a little help with that?" she barely managed to get out. "Of course. I will use the same technique as I did with your eye." The leg dissolved into light and she saw out of the corner of her eye how her destroyed leg began to glow. After about 4 seconds, the glow stopped and her biological leg was a few centimeters away from her new mechanical one. When the leg activated, it began to glow very slightly purple between the plates. She tried to move it and although it was a very unfamiliar feeling, it was not uncomfortable. She stood up with wobbly legs and moved a few steps. She turned her new leg left and right and bent it several times. She would have to get used to that. "Don't forget your other purchase" came from Raya, Aurelia rolled her eyes and walked slowly and carefully to the small box. Another syringe. This time with a slightly lighter content and generally much smaller. Fortunately, the needle on the flexible tip was also small. Without giving herself time to think about it, she stabbed the syringe in her arm and emptied it.
It didn't take as long as the other syringe, the mass spread over all the wounds she had and began to close them without leaving a scar. Fascinated, she watched the process until the end. "Wow. How does that work?" she asked Raya. "The content consists of nanoparticles that have been created in such a way that they can adapt to the body and act similarly to stem cells and change into the necessary cells." It felt like normal skin, were these really alien parts? Aurelia turned to the door of the cathedral to make sure no one could get in. "Ok, but how does that work?" "Aurelia. The species that developed me and this technology is so far ahead that it is almost nine thousand years ahead of humanity. There is much more impressive tech than that. With more coins, you'll be able to acquire them as well." Aurelia would have liked to look Raya in the eye with an annoyed look. Which was unfortunately difficult, because she was hiding somewhere in her head. "Oh sorry I've never seen anything like this Ms. Alien robot" "I'm not a robot, I'm an artificial intelligence machine." Aurelia rested her hands on her hips. "Aha. So Ms. Alien machine, what cool stuff is there that I can still buy?" Raya replied with "I recommend having your own weapon so that you don't have to use this primitive rifle anymore. Access to Category 1 Kinetic Weapons costs 100, as well as Energy Weapons 1 and Star Gazer Weapons 1." Aurelia thought for a moment and finally said, "What's in the star thingy?" "First and foremost, they are weapons that are conceptually completely different from human weapons. Railguns, Teleport Weapons, Electronic Weapons and many more. Would you like to purchase this category?" Raya answered. Aurelia thought for a moment. Sure, energy weapons were dangerous, especially if you could handle them, but half of the city has such weapons. "Ok. I'll take the category!" she finally answered. "Acquired. I recommend the Blender and one of the weaker railguns, I recommend The Exodus." "I don't know what the first one is, but I'll take it!" Aurelia said shortly before two boxes appeared. The Blender turned out to be a kind of pistol with a rectangular barrel without a barrel opening. "This weapon teleports small cylindrical projectiles into the enemy being targeted, opens to extend the 10 blades hidden within, and then begins to spin at 2000 revolutions per minute. This weapon is particularly effective against heavily armored opponents," Raya explained. She urgently needed to find a victim to try the thing. The other box contained the railgun. It looked like an old-fashioned rifle, where the barrel had been replaced with a metal rail with many small blocks on the sides. The magazine was quite small, but she suspected that you wouldn't need many shots if you hit with it. Which, she thought, could be a problem with her current abilities. That means she will have to practice with it. "New Coin Stand 140" came from Raya and Aurelia decided to save the remaining coins in case she needed them for something specific at a later date. The rifle had a thin black strap, so Aurelia could wrap the gun around her shoulder while using one of the rails on her new leg to hold her blender in place. Stowed away with her new equipment, Aurelia turned to the exit of the cathedral, looked cautiously out and saw only two people looking straight in the approximate direction. With the decision that the two would probably not stop her if they saw her, Aurelia set off, away from the monastery grounds in the direction of the city center.