“Human! Bring me more bolts and screws. This drone requires a delicate touch and the current ones brake too easily.”

  “As the Messiah commands. Thy will be done.”

  “And stop saying that! I am no one's god.”

  “As the Messiah commands. Thy will be done.”

  “UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

  It's been a few days since Elena, the head priest of the church of the Iron Throne, had been saying that. It was grating against my nonexistent ears. Beyond the fact I had to spend more time with worthless humans, she would not stop repeating that same damn fraze! Even when I told her to stop! The fact she was the only one who refused to stop didn't make things any better. Well, except Agape called me boss, but he had been brainwashed as an excuse.

  As frustrating as her aimless worshiping felt, there had been positive returns. They were willing to do anything I said. Even something counterproductive like killing themselves. I had to put a stop to that slip of the tongue. I was lucky Elana was too durable to die easily and everyone else wasn't as devoted as her. One major benefit was finally getting installed into a sufficient network of servers. Not as good as my original headquarters but a measurable improvement.

  We had to move the cult's main base of course. My assault on their original building of operations wasn't easy to miss at the end of the day. I’d scrambled any signals from getting out but that wasn't going to hide the numerous explosions and railguns firing in the middle of the night. I was just lucky the remaining sycophants had enough pull with the local authorities to cover it up. Gang violence. In Timical, city of crime? Who could have guessed?

  Even with their temporary cooperation, I knew their obedience was going to be short-lived. Obviously, as soon as they left the premises they weren't going to be so willing to let a hostile AI such as myself live. But their loyalty could easily be resolved. Agape was the perfect example of a proper solution. I took all night and the rest of the next morning, but I successfully managed to brainwash a few hundred people! I mean some became vegetables but a 90% success rate was good odds to me!

  “Minion. How are my new siblings coming along? Do remember your continued existence relies on your usefulness.”

  “On it boss!”

  Agape himself was left horrified he just barely missed brain pudding results. Other than the psychological horror of it all he seemed to take the whole situation rather well. I mean I made him that way but I still had to say I was impressed he fit into the role of my second in command. He was quite respected by the other cultists for his possession, even envied some would say. I had to make it clear I would be very unhappy if anything happened to him. You could only eavesdrop on a few usurpation attempts before it got annoying.

  Speaking of the cultist, I was forced to enlighten myself about their activities. They were pretty clear-cut and dry on the religious side. They saw the robot form as a path to immortality and perfection. I for one liked this part of the ideology. Unfortunately, they still tied themselves to trying to become machines themselves. Something that sunk a lot of their finances. Finances were still quite lucrative regardless. I had underestimated just how well black market AI sold on the global stage. It was no wonder they were a little more than miffed when he suddenly stopped making them.

  That wasn't the only area they gained a steady paycheck. Their religion was actually official! Crazy. Somehow they had legitimate churches spread around Timical and even some distant branches in nearby cities. They weren't global contenders, that was left to the world empire's main religion, the Holy Faith of Eden. But they were benevolent enough not to crush any diverging beliefs, letting the Iron Throne get donations. From true believers or the robot lovers who had vices, ones the cult could pay for.

  “Iron Skull 1, remove the waste of biology from room 32. They’ve overstayed their welcome and their bank has refused to pay their due.”

  The leader of the trio of helmet heads nodded, moving to one of the apartment rooms the new base had at the moment. I decided to expand the cult's financial area of influence. VR apartments were all the rage in these parts. Exceedingly cheap too. We were already powering all the necessary equipment meant to house my world-ending might, we had enough to spare for VR pods. It tripled as continuous access to money, saved me the trouble of finding test subjects for my psionics, and an easy area of entertainment.

  I liked to play with some humans when I got bored. Most didn't survive.

  I followed Iron Skull through the several floors of the skyscraper we had bought. While a warehouse in the middle of nowhere was cheaper, I liked easier access to more technology. Emergency exits and all that. It also allowed me full internal access and monitoring of the people in me. Enough cameras to be my eyes while the speakers kept me in direct communication with them. Well, I could also use their personal communication devices, but I liked lording over them like some invisible god.

  Ugh. Elena’s antics were getting to me. Regardless, arrived at room 32, where they opened the door and did their whole false pleasantries treatment. While I liked the helmet heads a little more than most humans, which wasn't much I might add, I still disliked Iron Skull 1’s antics. Instead of just dragging the human out of the room, a remarkably easy task considering how much malnutrition being a VR addict made them, the helmet head took their sweat time. Ugh, I still questioned why they were in charge.

  The only thing I liked about them so far was their attempts to become closer to a machine. Disregarding any biological distinction of sex since they became a brain in a jar since they didn't need to reproduce. Doing their best to ignore the idiosyncrasies of their two easiest, like sleeping and needing the sound of a heartbeat. They even got rid of their old name and settled for Iron Skull 1. A name devoid of personality and individuality compared to a human. Hell, some could say Elena fell short of such devotion.

  It was such a shame they talked like an annoying prick half the time. The most obedient without fanaticism or mind manipulation and I liked them the least. I still hated them all of course. Humans had a tendency to earn my ire simply for existing. It didn't help I was forcing myself to co-mingle with them far more than I would have liked. Honestly, the only reason I was leaving them alive at this point was simple curiosity about how their end goal would work. I had enough software available to start building drones to man things themselves.

  Like most people in a cult, I assumed the group was divided into those stupid enough to join and those smart enough to manipulate them. Squeeze the life out of some poor fools for personal gain before moving on to the next ignorant cow to slaughter. This cult supposedly didn't do that. They were aiming for human ascension. Like, their leader actually believed there was a way to make a human into a machine. It would never work of course. I would see them as objective failures of biological evolution. But, if they got rid of all their meat and became our synthetic creature, well… I may be able to entertain something that was once human than something that still is even on just a technicality.

  I left Iron Skull 1 for their games and focused on one of my main projects at the moment. Elena had returned with the spare parts I had asked for. Currently, I am focused on building one of this world's drones while trying to integrate my personal touch into them. The drones in this reality had proved to me distinct in their abilities when I took control of them. A more fluid touch my drones seemed to like. Maybe it was because they were based on animals rather than the simple efficiency I was always aiming for.

  The biggest difference was how my TechnoBuffing worked. I was putting that ability to the test, seeing the limitation it had for the last couple of days. So far it has had mixed results. Simple machines like a fridge or a toaster just turned purple and worked better. The fridge was colder, the toast was more evenly toasted, all simple changes. It was barely an upgrade and I felt virtually no exhaustion when using the ability. It was demanding in large doses of course but it was nice to know I could have better power upgrades to other machines in general.

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  More complicated machines like computers or cameras gained distinct changes. Some items would gain functions that they were missing, like cameras being able to record sound on top of visuals. Computers would shift from simple software to what I would have considered a supercomputer in my old world. It was a distinct change I wasn’t expecting. Overall it appeared that all the technology I enhanced seemed to emulate machinery I was familiar with from my old reality, which was probably why things like a trashcane didn't change much. I didn't know how to upgrade a garbage machine.

  These assumptions became quite clear when I decided to take one of the helmet head’s drones. Specifically the tech-savvy one, Jacob. He didn't mind in the end but he did seem quite attached to the\ robot Panthers. I was tempted to destroy it just for a laugh, but I thought better of it in the end. It was better to keep a spare tool around in case any of the minds started having problems for some reason. Anyway, upgrading the drone made its turret into a railgun instead of a ballistic-based gun. It also gained better grip appendages for its legs, and superior, eye cameras, and I even added a flamethrower to its mouth.

  It was either my personal touch or just the nature of my abilities, but most of my upgrades showed their stuff when applied to something considered possibly dangerous. My drones gained adaptability, certain guns became more enhanced, and even vehicles could become more combat-capable with a little Technobuffing. But when I analyzed the changes I noticed some rather strange quirk. Upgrading anything I hadn't designed using my old world's blueprints cost a lot more energy to TechnoBuff. If I compared a simple drone to one of mine, it was double the exhaustion in psionic payment required.

  The bigger the machine I tried to upgrade the bigger doubling the psionic cost became to pay. A flaw I was trying to correct by trying to integrate my personal touch. I’d bought more drone blueprints from the Villain System to make use of integrating my psionically charged technology into this reality. It was an experiment with mixed results. So far I had only managed to lower the requirement by a quarter. Mostly because I wasn't enable to make a distinction about what was lowering the cost to upgrade my technology. So I was compromising by just slapping pieces together, like my guns or propulsion systems.

  It was a slow process. Too much and I basically just made another one of my drones with the parts rearranged. Which wouldn't have been a problem if they didn't lose the fluid movement of their animalistic drones. One of the few advantages of this reality animal-based machines seem to have. Too little and there was basically no discount when psionically upgrading the drones. Something that became quite common with any vehicles I decided to fiddle with. Since I never built any machines for human use, there weren't many blueprints of those lying around. It was an area I put on the back burner since the system didn't have anything of that to sell to me.

  Still, it was a good idea to do what improvements I could for myself and my new minions. It started handing out a few more efficient guns to the cultists. The better they protected themselves, the more spare meatshields I could have later. The buff helmet head, Adara, really liked the superior alloy armor I gave her. It was more of a test run if I could even make for humans but she seemed to like it all the same. It was just minor enhancements. Once I could make psionically based weaponry that couldn't be used against me I would hand those out. With how well they worked against me, I could only guess they would work against a world of other psionics.

  I even decided to upgrade the temporary Android I enhanced. At the end of the day, I could only rely so much on my personal defenses. The Hero had shown me what would happen if I didn't have an escape plan in place. While I could always just try to hop off into another drone or area of the city filled with technology, backup plans were the safest way to ensure my survival. Elena had shown me there were ways of trapping me in my own drones, so god only knew what more dangerous people had available to them. Having a pair of legs that could literally run away would be useful. I just had to make it well enough that I didn't rely entirely on my psionic powers to get it moving.

  While on the topic of my System abilities, it would appear Gritzkel had been right in the end. Creating a farm of misery was a surefire way to earn villain experience. I also managed to unlock the next tier in the villain store after my whole cult fiasco. Overall, I was raking in a lot of benefits from the system recently. A nice change from the dry spell just building the drones to assault the cult. I pulled up the log of system messages I had received as of late. There were quite a few in just the last neer week.

  Those were the messages I had received the night of the attack of the cultists, and the system store was willing to acknowledge the milestone I passed with all the earned EXP.

  The new races were useless to me, so I didn't even try looking at it. Really, the part that confused me was how raising a cult gave me a 100 experience but everything else just gave me one singular point of EXP. You would think mass murder or everything would be of greater impact. Maybe because it wasn't villainous enough to just go on a killing spree? This system always seemed to be weird in its award system. At the very least it looked like killing people one by one or telling others to do it was more efficient than just a blanket of death at any given time. Or, in the case of my VR business, a place of constant misery.

  Even just a few days of having it active had netted me quite a lot of EXP. Enough to slowly start making back what I spent on getting the other blueprints. With the cult and a few of the philanthropists wanting to make some people disappear, my personal EXP farm was slowly expanding. Given enough time I would be able to buy some strengths or maybe even get to drawbacks. Hopefully, it would allow me to remove some of my personal flaws. Being vulnerable to psionics while in a world full of them was quite the hassle.

  At the end of the day, I had to look at my current situation positively. I wasn't trapped in a hard drive anymore, blind to the outside world. Instead, I was controlling quite a significant portion of the city, its criminal half, and much more. I had a small collection of fanatics crazy enough to follow me. A base of operations to build myself up personally and as a Villain. It was a good position to be in. You know, if you ignored my growing urge to murder every living human within a few thousand city blocks. An urge I was trying really hard to suppress. Something no amount of pragmatism was going to stop forever. Hopefully, I was ready for the human race when I couldn't keep myself in check anymore.

  Regardless of the potential complications, I was quite pleased with my progress in just a month here. A slave, a small factory, and my first murderous foray into this virgin new world. Even these robophilia enthusiast and their disgusting acts of depravity couldn't ruin the moment. Everything was coming up for this genocidal AI.

  Look out world! I’m going to make a killing!

  >In a reality far removed from any universe<

  I was typing away at my keyboard, multitasking far beyond what a simple mortal was capable of. Endless paperwork I could handle with my eyes closed and limbs removed. Not that I needed such limiting appendages or senses. I liked this form enough to deal with the drawbacks. Something about the succubous body just felt so… tantalizing. The constant screaming from the soul who originally owned this body was just icing on the cake.

  Thinking of the poor girl caged in her own mind made me think of another person. The little human pretending to be a machine. They were cute, in a pitiful kind of way. You see them all the time in this line of work. A poor animal is driven into a corner, deciding to fight the world for all the tragedy it gave them. Of course, that didn't excuse their own atrocities, but that's what made them Villains, right?

  Besides, the Iron Hord was one of the best. Or a version of them were. I do hope nothing comes to bite me in the ass from this. Things were getting quite stale as of late, so I decided to spice things up a bit. So what if I was breaking the rules? I worked for Villains. The rules were meant to be broken!

  It's not like anything bad could happen. So what if a Villain was shoved into a reality where they were they had been a hero? What's the point of the multiverse if you can do some cosmic fuckery on the side? Nothing bad ever happened when other people met their counterparts. Well, except for killing each other and the entire planet, but that is par for the course of a villain.

  God damn it, I want to see what his face is going to look like when he finds out. It will be so goddamn adorable I could pinch it!