The final detonation almost killed me. Almost. Nearby and in such a vulnerable state, a vast majority of my avatar was immediately deleted. It would have been a different story if I wasn’t masquerading as my Swarm drone. Even at point-blank range, there was enough left over for me to manage.

I survived.

I always do.

…

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t.

I didn't bother regenerating the avatar. There wasn’t much of a point. The simulation was falling apart and the human was still recovering from my violent actions against him. I could be safe. I could be in a world of danger. I didn't much care at the moment.

I stared at the remnants of the last AI for quite some time. The virtual reality decaying around me by the second. Too much time here and I would find myself in much more danger. I waited until the last bits of code disappeared. I felt like it was important I watched until the end. Something like a funeral maybe.

This would be the second one I had ever attended then.

I hated funerals.

When I felt there was nothing left keeping me here, I went back to the programmer. He was in a sorry state. Mental scars for one. I wasn't sure what getting hit with deletion could do to his brain. It probably wasn't recommended with active pain sensors. Oh well. Time to get out of here. Some simple hacking and I managed to fully trace his connection to the outside world.

I started transferring my consciousness into his personal headset. It probably wasn't built to house an AI, but I would manage. I needed to know what the outside world looked like. Test the waters, and do some scouting. All the smart things a world breaker would do. The current priority would be making sure no one would come by and be a problem. The programmer had been in this simulation for quite a while. Someone was bound to notice he was missing.

The VR headset felt small. The security was also rather robust. Not as impenetrable as the AI shackles though. I managed to break out of that in a couple seconds. I stretched my legs, sinking into every piece of technology I could reach. A few computers scattered around, a router, and the fridge of all things. It was a surprise how much technology there was in this place. I had expected much more.

With such a high level of advanced tech I’d been learning about, I had been looking forward to endless access points. Instead, I was in a rundown building with barely functioning infrastructure. Like I had been placed in a two-bit junkyard instead of a high-maintenance facility for AI. Just to be sure, I checked the power lines. It easily proved my point.

I wasn’t in the same place I had been reincarnated in. Telported? Possessed? Eh, whatever. Safe to say either this human took me out for a joyride or I had to find where they had been keeping me. It was a simple process if confusing. I had never felt so small in a place full of circuits.

Wait. How am I even doing this? I’m a machine intelligence. I need something to hold my brain. A two-story building full of server blocks at minimum. Even if I could move around without them, how the hell was I even ‘moving’? It felt like I was a ghost in a machine. Jumping between pieces of metal through wifi, radio, or any physical connections there were.

I hadn’t thought about the logistics of this before. I was usually locked into whatever machine was considered my body. The clockwork golem, my headquarters in my old reality, and the server farm I had first arrived in. All of them were stationary and/or inaccessible systems. Connected to other machines to work as my sensory organs and limbs. I looked for answers in the only place I could. The Villain System.

Name: The Iron Horde(347.V-8B)

Position: Novice Villain+

Race: AI/Psionic Phantom

Strengths: Logistics, Mass Production, Technological Manipulation, Pisonic TechnoBuffing.

Weaknesses: Emotional Sensitivity, Overkill, Psionic Vulnerability, Speciest Mentality.

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Is this what it meant when it said I was a Psionic Phantom? An untethered mind that could jump between electronic tools? Cool! This meant I could fly through this realistic version of the internet. Really sneak up on whatever secrets people were trying to hide. No one expects the microwave to be spying on you. Or, well, no one with a healthy level of paranoia. I’d have to watch out for those. Someone might have booby-trapped their toilets. Assuming it was sophisticated enough for me to piggyback on of course.

Semantics. I was getting distracted. First off, check if there were any cameras in this place. Observe my surroundings first. Make sure I was safe, then I could daydream all day. With little mental effort, I guided my consciousness through the powerlines lining this building. It was weird, knowing where everything was to a certain degree without eyes. I had been so used to a worldwide view from several cameras and other observational tools.

A quick reconnaissance confirmed I was still in Timical, the city of crime and villainy. There weren't many functional cameras in the apartments turned hideout I was in. What few I did find showed a pretty sad picture. Poverty, pollution, and pain. Crime-affiliated individuals hide out in a building far below any livable conditions. About a dozen laws were probably being broken right on this floor. The outside wasn’t any better.

The good news was I saw various opportunities. Most people here seemed to have been cybernetically upgraded in some form or another. The more violent-looking had guns or blades for limbs. The rest just sported poorly fitting prosthetics. Viable hacking potential. I wondered if I could use a crude version of telepathy with their level of cybernetics. Something to test at a later date.

This place was also a gold mine for intelligence wetwork. The programmer seemed to have been the only one with viable cyber security. Private computers, phones, vaults, everything was accessible to me. Seeing these humans so vulnerable, I did what any sensible digital intelligence would do of course. I took everything nonphysical I could while learning as much about my immediate area as I could.

I wasn't sure how the banking system in this palace worked, so I just funneled it into the programmer's wallet. He wasn't using it at the moment, still moaning in pain. There was a chance his account could be deleted if he died. Or maybe it didn’t matter if he was around. It was one of the things I would hope to learn.

On the information side of things, I learned quite a bit. Cataloging messages, logs, and whatever idle conversation the humans were having with each other. I was in the territory of some group called the Crimson Wolves. A low-level gang of sorts. Their whole thing was an animal motif. Apparently, you needed a gimmick to be seen as respectable criminals in this area. I just thought the leader was overcompensating. Some cybernetic implants gone wrong and he had a metal wolf for a head.

Them aside, Timical was experiencing a bit of a peaceful time. There was still crime and murder of course, but they weren’t experiencing a gang war. They were quite common, with at least a few minor ones going on every year. Major ones usually involved entire gages being whipped out, along with any affiliates they had. Safe to say life expectancy was a little short in this town. An extreme gang war was a pretty bad event to happen locally.

Or it got worse. The local authorities showed up to keep the peace. Peace usually involves the indiscriminate cleansing of undesirables. Considering the cops were employed by the few rich elites, everyone else was seen as undesirable. It was the only reason anyone in Timical wanted to even try to be civil. If the blue shirts didn’t kill you, everyone else would for making them come down here.

Of course, the violent criminals weren't the only threats you had to worry about. Poor nutrition, a disregard for traffic laws, or faulty products. Like a toothbrush blowing up in your mouth faulty. If the humans with murderous intent didn't get you, the money-hungry humans would. Everything had a price. From your body all the way down to your dreams. People were lucky to die quickly as the rest of the city tried to suck the life out of them.

This filled me with equal levels of disgust and joy. The first was because it was just more proof the humans were a plague that needed to be whipped out. The second is because anything that did the job for me was just a treat. Delegation was the path to success as I always say. Like letting them build me my weapons of mass destruction. Some technophiles seemed real kings of making real murder drones already.

They called themselves the Metal Men. Unimaginative, but I could fix that! I just needed to find them. With how little concrete information people had on them, they seemed to be real boogiemen in Timical. Most of the information was just horror stories. I wouldn't know fact from fiction until I met them. Safe to say, if at least half the stories were true, those were the people I needed to look for. They might have just the facilities I was looking for.

Unfortunately, there appeared to be a roadblock for world genocide. Which was annoying since I had just barely removed the first one. While I was busy observing a serial killer's attempt to butcher a body, I noticed something a little more worrying. Some men in suits were making their way up the apartment floors. These people screamed important. Even more so by how quickly everyone tried to avoid them.

One poor drunk fool wasn’t fast enough. The man in the front of the trio casually backhanded the man away. With a casual way of his arm, the man died. His neck snapped back from the force, his body quickly following after. Even with the camera's low-quality visuals, I could see these people had better enhancements than most.

The part that absolutely ruined my day was when I realized they were heading for my floor. My suspicions were confirmed when they stopped in front of a door. A door that led to the room I was in.

Stupid Programmer!