In the Project Ark tower that had been built in the capital city of Zealuterra, Flair walked into a large room filled with machines and laboratory tubes with a number of scientists doing their work.
"Is it done?" Flair said without letting out a single emotion in her voice.
"Yes Miss Flair, we only need one important variable to complete it." One of the scientists walked up to Flair and handed her a research paper.
"...A strong emotion?" Flair turns the paper over and looks at it.
"Yes, if we include variables filled with very strong human emotions... it's possible that this weapon will approach Veli." The scientist said while showing an object that was protected in a thick glass box and coated with strong mana.
"...This crystal...?" Flair saw a pure white crystal that was in the glass box held by the scientist.
"We managed to find a mana that humans couldn't detect and immediately made it into a crystal before we lost it." The scientist gave the glass box containing the crystal to Flair.
"..." Flair looked at the crystal for a moment before turning around and seeing a man walking into the room.
"Overseer? What are you doing here?" Flair asked and walked over to the man.
All the scientists in the room immediately knew what was going to happen and bowed their heads respectfully before stopping all their work and walking out of the room.
"Is there anything you want to discuss here?" Flair said seriously.
"The crystal was only discovered after I realized a few things about mana. Even though it looks like normal mana, it's actually one that humans probably shouldn't know about." Overseer said as he walked and saw the large glass wall in front of them which looked dark.
"Is this related to that?" Flair said while looking into the Overseer's eyes.
"Yes, and I think this will allow us to successfully recreate the perfect weapon that was lost." Overseer looked at Flair before then looking at the glass wall again.
"The reason why we need variables with very strong human emotions... is to use that mana." Overseer said.
"To find such a strong emotion is very difficult or even impossible... unless..." Flair was silent for a moment before realizing what Overseer wanted to say.
"...That boy?" Flair said as he looked at the Overseer.
"Yeah, you definitely know what to do." Overseer walked out of the room before the scientists came back in and continued their work.
Flair stood silently staring at the large glass wall in front of her before placing the crystal back into the scientists' hands and preparing to carry out her mission. Inside the glass wall which looks blurry and dark, there are faint sounds and metal banging, the scientists carry out their work and the light produced from their experiments illuminates a little of the room behind the glass wall and shows the silhouette of more than one human figure.
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On a cold plain with no signs of life, Naku opened his eyes and saw the snowstorm that had stopped outside the cave.
"It's stopped..." Naku stood up and immediately looked for some wood or twigs to make a campfire.
After making a campfire in front of the cave entrance, Naku took the tool he found and looked at it once again, the tool repeated the same words as yesterday which made Naku confused.
"Hmm... strange thing, is this made by the same organization? the shape is also like a ball... but there is something closing... it looks like a big eyeball?" Naku opened the frame of the device and saw an object falling from inside.
Naku saw a crystal that had fallen from inside the object, a yellow crystal that radiated hot magical mana.
"There's mana coming out of this crystal... maybe something important, I'll try to study and repair this thing first." Naku ignored the crystal and continued studying the object he was holding.
Naku tried everything he felt might be true but the object didn't activate again, he then channeled his mana and focused it in his eyes and saw something small in the deepest part of the object.
"...It looks damaged..." Naku focused all his mana into his eyes to maintain focus on the small object and tried everything he could think of until an electric spark stung his hand and activated the object.
"..? succeed..?" Naku released his mana flow and left him out of breath after holding his breath to focus on repairing it.
"...Rebooting... Complete.." The sound of a machine could be heard coming from the object.
"Rebooting? The term is very complicated... I don't understand..." Naku leaned his body against the cave wall and waited for the object to do something.
"Connecting to Project Ark Database... Complete." The front surface of the object then lights up and forms an eye.
The object looked at Naku and its eye color changed to blue before then saying...
"Scanning... Failed." The object's eyes turned white again and looked at Naku.
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"Are you a living creature? You can speak fluently like a human..." Naku said as he watched the object roll before floating in the air.
"I am NanoScan00082, an artifact created by Project Ark, before being discarded for reasons possibly related to my function being no longer useful." The object speaks like a machine but is also human.
"I'm Naku, you said earlier that you were created by Project Ark? What is Project Ark?" Naku said.
"Project Ark: An organization founded in 102 that aims to create the strongest war weapon called the Ark." The object explained without the slightest error to Naku.
"Ark...? Oh yes, you mentioned difficult things like connecting... etc... but I'm interested in the word Database, what is that?" Naku leaned back and waited for an answer.
"A database is an organized collection of data-" Not having time to finish its explanation, Naku quickly interrupted it.
"Don't make it too long...! I don't know those terms... so basically it's like storage? Then there's storage about Ark...?" Naku said to the object.
"Accessing Database.. Code: Ark. Starting hologram video playback..." The object then released light from its eyes and displayed a hologram screen in front of Naku.
Naku saw the video and his eyes widened as if he had seen something terrible, but the video then immediately experienced an error and glitch before stopping.
"Replay Complete." The object pulled back the hologram and saw Naku who looked scared and silent.
"...That's Ark?" Naku said with a trembling voice.
"Yes" The object answered Naku's question.
"Wait... is there something like that related to the Project Ark tower?" Naku said to the object before the object produced a hologram and started playing the video.
After a few minutes, Naku gritted his teeth and was a little scared but very angry.
"Wait... then... the villagers there... Uncle Carlon, the village head, and even all the citizens of Zealuterra...?" Naku's eyes widened in fear before then turning his gaze to the object slowly.
"Yes, 100% possibility." The object answered without further ado.
"?!" Naku then took the object and put it in his bag and took the crystal that was lying on the ground into his pocket before running out of the cave and heading towards the village.
Naku ran non-stop for a full day without the slightest rest, even though he was out of breath he forced himself to keep running back to the village feeling afraid. While running at full speed, he kept thinking back to what he saw on the hologram screen displayed by the object, the Project Ark tower that everyone was talking about was not as good as he thought. On the contrary, what he saw was behavior that seemed more vile than anything he knew, slavery, experimentation, and... forcing them into something he was very familiar with.
Naku arrived in front of his village and saw something he didn't want to happen. The village which initially looked beautiful and full of warmth from the villagers who always greeted him with warm smiles has now turned into a sea of fire that burned down all the surrounding housing.
Naku ran into the village and saw that there weren't any corpses which made Naku smile in relief.
"T-there are no corpses... that means everyone is safe..." Naku said even though he was smiling in relief, he was still afraid that what he saw before would happen.
"N-Naku.." The familiar voice that had always supported Naku and cared for him for several years sounded in his ears.
"Uncle Carlon..?" Naku smiled in relief at the familiar voice and the voice he wanted to hear when he returned to the village.
Naku turned his body to look in the direction of the voice but this made all his hopes disappear without remaining when he saw that someone he cared about and considered as family had become something terrible.
"N-N-Na...ku.." Carlon? said in a voice that was very much not like a human but rather a machine but tried to imitate a human voice.
Naku's eyes which were originally full of hope have now faded after seeing Carlon who has turned into Ark, a war weapon with a sophisticated machine body that resembles a human but has no emotions and very vague or even locked memories. Naku felt a strong pain in his chest like being stabbed by something sharp when he saw Carlon become Ark like the thing he was afraid of, right.
"Naku, that's no longer the same human you knew." The object in his bag said.
These words made Naku's heart hurt even more, but Naku bit his lip until it bled and pulled out his sword. Because of what the object said, Naku remembered the video he saw on the hologram that Ark would continue to suffer unimaginable pain which made Naku decide to relieve them of this pain by killing them.
"...I'm sorry Uncle Carlon.., Village Head.. and all the residents who have accepted me.. I will free you from the pain you are suffering right now.." Naku gritted his teeth and looked at Carlon, Village Head, and the villager who was Ark slowly walked up to him to attack him.
"Naku, are you back? Try this cake that grandma made, maybe it will make you less tired." Memories emerged along with the slash of his sword.
"Naku, you must be tired, right? Do you want these gold coins? Auntie got a bonus from selling rice today! Eeh...? You don't want them? Auntie doesn't mind, just take them." Other memories emerged as machine components fell.
"Oh Naku! Have you finished hunting? Did you catch a big game this time? Here I will cook so we can have a party with all the villagers tonight." Another memory emerged along with splashes of blood that hit Naku's right arm and face.
"Naku.."
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Various and beautiful memories that he remembered emerged along with the terrible events that were happening.
Naku slashed and killed everyone with great sadness and compulsion, Naku dragged his sword and walked towards the village head.
"Naku, you are very kind, and strong too, so you will definitely be successful out there" Naku's memory emerged right after he slashed the village head and killed him.
Naku walked and dragged his sword while panting and saw Carlon who no longer recognized him.
"You failed again? Ahaha! You're still learning for 2 months so just relax."
"HEY! THAT'S MY SNACK!"
"No need to be so serious, I also consider you like my own family."
"Do you want to see the whole world Naku? or go beyond the planet? because not only is earth beautiful, outer space is just as beautiful..."
Naku slashed his sword and killed Carlon with his own hands making him fall to his knees in exhaustion.
"Haah..." Naku looked at his blood-stained hands blankly.
"Aren't you going to tell the citizens of Zealuterra about this? I saw many citizens of Zealuterra running here to see what was happening." The object comes out of Naku's bag and looks at it.
"...It's too late, they didn't come here out of curiosity but something else, i've already scan it. We can only leave from here even though you are from Project Ark, I won't be so cruel as to blame the tools that have been thrown away by them." Naku saw the object.
"Something else?" The object looked at the crowd of Zealuterra citizens and realized that all of them were no longer humans, but Ark's.
Naku and the Object walked away from the location and let the sea of fire bury the place full of memories.
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From a distance, Flair stands next to the trees holding a Project Ark technology device.
"..? Doesn't work?" Flair said in confusion.
"...This device works well but it only absorbs very little emotion..where is all that emotion.." Flair muttered.
...
In a forest very far away, Naku reached his limit and fell unconscious on the ground. The object looked at Naku with an unusual gaze before it tried to do a self-scanning.
"Self Scanning... Complete. New Variable: Emotion." The object completed self-scanning and was silent looking at Naku who had fallen unconscious.
The object felt sad even though it was just a machine. When he saw Naku, he sees someone he remembered in it's memory.
"Greia..."