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

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  - Eve Altera ~

  "Now, Eve, e grab your dinner." *Vwoop* Watg Evren pull out a rge k of bck flesh before dangling it in front of me, my expression morphed with disgust.

  -D..Dinner..?- Looking at the pieeat ooze a slimy bck liquid, my stomach ed. As I turo Bel for soce though, I only found a smug look written across her bck-furred face.

  One I wao snuff.

  But Evren addressed it long before I could.

  "Haha," *Pat* Aggressively patting Bel's head, Evre out a pyful chuckle that instantly struck fear into me. "Don't think yetting away scot-free either."

  -Huh?-

  "What do you-" *Spt* Before Bel could even finish speaking, a clump of viscous bck flesh spttered on the inside of her mouth before promptly oozing into her body.

  Watg the flesh sink into a series of metal arms and hydrauli her throat, I was holy at a loss for words.. just like Bel...

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

  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 do anymore... Not only have I pletely lost the system directories that should have been for maintenance mode and the lo the hatch, but I seem to have also lost the ability to freely ge my form, or even just adjust traits about myself like the color of my fur or eyes..."

  "What?" My fastantly ed with fusion. "How does that work?" Looking up at Evren, I squinted my eyes a bit. " 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 turroubled. "Well.. I at least could before..."

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

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  - Evreir ~

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

  They were the permissions I only ever ko be set on panion animals.

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

  The reason for this was the idea of free will. Even mana robotics were still robots, maes that could be programmed however the owner wished. -Yet somehow Bel is different...- And while it made me wonder if perhaps the system update ged what I knew of mana robotics, even the system didn't seem to know how to cssify her, saying she was a 'mana-roboti the main panion tab while givihe permissions of a panion animal.

  It was truly odd. -But this only reinforces what I already thought...- Looking down at Bel, I gave her a slightly judgemental look before rexing my gaze and speaking more normally. "Bel, 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. *Spt*

  It clearly made both her and Eve unfortable, but it art of an experiment. Ohat I was eager to see the results of...

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

  Her fastantly sched with disgust.

  But disgust was a feeling she o learn to suppress.

  *SNAP* Flig the side of the meat, a tiny piece of slimy flesh zipped through a small opening in her mouth before smming 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.

  "Good." Straightening up, I tossed the rest of the meat bato my iory. "From now on, this will be your daily snack." Smiling, I ily tilted my head. "Just because you don't o 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 iure, 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 few days, we found a new routine, spending our time expl the forest through the opy while snag 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 mao cover much ground, but as time went on, her dition rapidly improved.

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

  But after expl 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 pletely overtaken by the vegetatioh 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 a a closer look, she used a spell posed of a series of ruo bend the light ing toward her like the lens of a huge magnifying gss. *Vwoom*

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

  Her ears immediately twitched as she turo me, the same as Bel.

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

  *WooOOSH* *Vwoom-Tap-Tap* -Oh, it's sturdier than I imagined...- Setting down Bel as we op the ivy-covered, dipidated wall, I gnced up at Eve to make sure she was ing before looking back at the city ihe wall.

  It was in plete 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 o 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 ons, 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 uhings 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 nded, she simply froze, staring at her ow while her eyes grew wider and wider. "What.. happeo this pce..." Finally looking up, her gaze fell on the foliage-covered city.

  But in her mind, she saw something else. In her mind, tless ses pyed out.

  In one area, she could see a man fighting to fend off a monster irance of his home, wishing only to protect his children before his sternum was crushed, and in another, she could see a pce 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 ses from the day the city fell, painted out with dismembered aroyed skeletons, ying with their on in hand, or embrag a loved one.

  To me, such ses 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 els. "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. "Findiroyed 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 se civilizations."

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

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

  "Fifty pert?"

  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 strohan your home world." In terms of pert, 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 t the remaining worlds on one hand, and after taking away ahousand, 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. Tellihe survival rate of civilizations in worlds at this level was statistically zero would be like reminding her of the iability 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 pn oih 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 summoo a world like this..? What if you 't make it ba time..?"

  Scoffing, I quickly lowered my gaze. "You want to lean ohat bad?" Speaking somewhat sarcastically, I turo look back up into the t tree opy. "I would've thought that Michael's hands-off method of raisih would make you all more indepe."

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

  But she o learn the lesson I was trying to teach eventually. "Eve, if you think the world survive as it is with just my help, you are sorely mistakeh has some hardships ing, and while I do pn on helping all that I , if people lean ooo much, I will not be able to stop the colpse." So, to bat humanity's iable ziness upon being granted a protector, I po make it clear that they couldn't lean on me.

  Even if that meaing millions die that I could have otherwise saved.

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

  Not from the monsters...

  But from System Meraries.

  Even if I could get rid of every mohat would e to Earth as it rose through the ranks, simir to the monsters, more and more meraries would appear as well, and upon realizing the colossal gap in strength between them and humanity, damages I couldn't preemptively prevent would iably happen, and over time, would accumute.

  "I believe Earth has the potential to grow into one of the stro worlds in the System, especially with my help, but to make that happen, I he cooperation of the administrators and the people." Watg 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 civilizatioo adapt and grow with the p, 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, expeg it to take its time to sprout and grow.

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

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

  She wasn't oo be blinded by fidence ance.

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

  Even if it was necessary.

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