"Lead developer Fjodor Kovalsky to operating AI, this is a short letter of introduction and at the same time my way of celebrating the finished product . ."
Krogar opened his eyes and looked at the hard rock of a cave, but saw nothing, but the lines of text in front of his eyes from a man named Fjodor. He guessed that he would probably stay stuck unless he read it whole.
".. . to make it short, in case of crash or unforseen circumstances, the hardware should be able to reconstruct itself, the quality of reconstruction depends on several factors. The severity is chosen based on number of preserved nanobots. If only a few are left, it is no fun really, just a mundane return order is issued and I do not honestly know what that muddbrain is trying to do there. Severity one means that most of the nanobots survived and that scenario is too easy and no fun either. I am working on the case of severity level two, which means there is just a small portion of nanobots preserved, but still enough to reconstruct most of crucial software and several micro-cores. Next condition is the presence of energy and matter to support the procedure.
After taking control of the body, securing energy, materials and so forth, there is a need for more energy, due to the missing source. Constuction materials should not be the problem as nanobots can assimilate most of substances. The solution of this problem is bound to be unique, thus I have prepared only the tools that the AI will have at its disposal, as the specific situation cannot be determined in advance. Just use the command for the emergency reconstruction tool ERT, be warned, this is a tool focused on maximum flexibility, but has no safety measures."
Krogar sighed realizing he was still unable to move or see.
"I guess there is not many options left."
"ERT"
"energy extraction customization " Krogar chose to get the specifics, the tool seemed to be fool-proof so far.
"Damn, am I a plant or what? What do you mean reserves for 73 hours? I hope you do not mean that I will eat myself whole in 73 hours!" Krogar panicked a little, knowing that it was exactly that..
"energy extraction process " He chsoe again.
"Vampirism." Krogar changed the value without thinking. Normal eating was nice, but he would run out of food, which means himself, in just seventy three hours. Given his weight, he was consuming roughly something under one kilogram of meat in one hour. Naturally, he could not walk around with just ten kilograms of his weight, estimating his deadline for the next meal as just a single day at most.
"Yeah, a meal of fifteen kilograms of meat or something close to that, huh. Not suspicious at all!" It was clear he would need to stay somewhere in the wild and consume mammoths, or swich to something more effective.
Looking at the tool again, it was more bearable now.
"That is kind of good, this gives me around four days of time between meals, I can still eat a bit of my fat in a crysis right?" He had an urge to joke, but the second he remembered that the tool was something for an emergency with no ensurances whatsoever, his mood changed instantly.
He was finally able to open his eyes and see the insides of the cave.
"By the way, Lucy what the hell happened?! LUCY?!"It was plain as day that Lucy was no longer with him and the last thing he remembered was the moment she had took control of their body. From the contents of the message, he understood that he had been reconstructed from a portion of the nanobots, but had no knowledge of why, or how they were left behind the main body.
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"Why was vampirism a choice anyway?" Krogar stumbled upon something he could not explain.
Looking at his body, it was exactly as he remembered it, but it had to be due to the emergency reconstruction, the original biomass was probably some corpse.
"I should play with the tool some more, I do have time to play around now." He knew that by activating the emergency procedure, he had tools that should not have been accessible during the original mission, unless the main body was more or less destroyed.
"Ah, am I not perfect! Smart! My troubles has been solved forever! I am a. ."
" .. motherfu*ker!!" His tirade had been finished by a silent voice in his head.
"Huh? What was that? Probably just a noisy fly in my ear." Krogar dismissed it.
"Ah, I wanted to . ."
" . .go f*ck yourself!" Krogar heard it again and was unable to dismiss the occurence anymore.
"Chmmm." Krogar looked into the structural segment of the tool again and after a while of browsing , he found a peculiar line.
"Found you." For a while he hovered his imaginary finger above the proverbial delete button, but decided not to push it in the end.
"I will suck you dry!" Krogar finally found out how to allow the stowaway to speak up.
"You can try, but I can shut you up again, it would be wise not to pick a fight with me." Krogar aswered calmly, understanding his superior position.
After a lenghty talk, he found out the consciousness belonged to a roaming vampire that had used to wander about and sucked leftover corpses. Apparently, he had chanced upon his nanobots and had consumed them by accident. The reason for the nanobots being there was obvious.
"That bitch discarded me!" Krogar snorted angrily. "She simply threw me away like garbage! That little . ."
" .. I will suck you dry!" The once again suppressed consciousness of the vampire added silently in his head.
"That is right man! We start to understand each other!" Krogar nodded happily. "But stay silent for now, i need to get moving."
He walked out of the cave, emerging into the fields and forests of an agricultural suburban area, while still playing with the tool.
"This is lame, I want my skin to be made out of kevlar. Let's make it happen." Krogar digged into the settings again and replaced the skin of the tip of his forefinger with kevlar. Dazed by his new fingertip as it was being reconstructed, he gazed at it in wonder.
"Coool." He breathed out, watching his nanobots slowly reconstructing that part of his body. "Why was this functionality not accessible? It is godlike." Krogar watched the kevlar fibers of the tip of his finger closely.
He watched his glossy. finger closely.
He watched his wet, glossy. finger closely.
He watched his red, wet, glossy. finger closely.
He watched his blood-dripping, glossy. finger closely.
"Oh crap blood! What is this? WHERE IS THE UNDO BUTTON?!?" He started to freak out, putting the finger into his mouth, sucking on the oozing blood.
"No way! There is no undo button?" Lisped Krogar, while looking at the structure of other fingers and copied the parameters of his thumb.
"I am not inventing anything, just copying, it has to work." He tried to calm himself and looked at the tip of his forefinger again, watching it change. As he watched, tears appeared in his eyes.
"My lovely forefinger!!!" He shouted when he saw that the last segment of his forefinger was literally copied from his thumb, resulting in a funny, frog-like forefinger.
"Damn it to hell!" He kept shouting, banging at the wall of the cave, unintentionally attracting the attention of some hunter of whom he was oblivious until now, due to his structural troubles.
"Are you alright?" The man in hunter's clothes asked, suspicion in his eyes.
"You, wait, tell me about this place." Krogar pointed his finger at him, but he had never received an aswer.
"Murlocs attacting again! Run, the frog people are here!" The man turned around and ran, shouting noisily.
"AGH!" Krogar stomped his foot. "How stupid can I get, I can copy the forefinger from my other hand!"
After solving his bodily issue, he decided not to be so hasty in experimenting with his body.
"No, no more experiments, especially with the parts that are not in pairs."
Finding a dirt road, he deleted the previous host, because his nervous system was too damaged, leaving most of his memories blank, with every second sentence being "I will suck you dry", which was unnerving.
"His name was Victor Walec Andin, but I will hardly need that name. I look totally different." Krogar walked the road and whistled, his mood superb.
"This is bliss, no one is chasing me, there will be no trouble with food, no one orders me around! Man, I do not even need a shelter as a badass robo-vampire." His smile enlarged into a wide grin, that suddenly froze in place.
"But I hope that backstabbing slut will run out of juice soon, I would like to watch her squirm as it happens." He growled, but decided not to spoil the mood, as he would probably never see her again. It would even be foolish to look for her, as her body was far superior to that of Krogar, despite her limited energy reserves.
Not long after the dirt road had changed into a paved one, Krogar saw a city built near the edge of a high ridge. The ridge stretched on the horizont like a giant step, borrowed from some stairs made for titans.
"Climbing that up must be worse than doing ten math homeworks at once." Before going closer to the city, he decide to sit at the side of the road and watch the pasisng people, to breathe in the culture of the place. Naturally, the ones who passed him often mistook him for a beggar and soon, a small heap of clothes, food and money began to pile up in front of him.
He was suprised by the ordinary look of the people, he had expected dirty clothes and sunken eyes, but he saw just ordinary citizens going back and forth, the level of poverty being unexpectedly low. Some were walking, most of them were workers returning from work, travelers used horses or even carriages going by themselves, which was something Krogar could not wrap his head around.
"Hey, girl. How much?" An elderly man stopped by and Krogar realized, he had been mistaken for one of the oldest occupations there is.
"Not for sale." Krogar decided to quit dilly dallying. He stood up and walked away, but the man grabbed him by his shoulder.
"Come on slut, I will fill your holes with gold." The man grinned, revealing his bad teeth.
"Gross." Krogar rolled up his eyes. "No one wants to see you feeble slug, old man."
The color of the man's face changed rapidly to red, but before he could react in any way, Krogar just ignored his grip and walked on, using the superior strength of vampires to his advantage. The man was apparently more used to wield the muscles of gold than his own and just watched the white hair disappear in traffic of the paved road.
"I should look for some interesting work, it would be handy to have some money." Krogar entered the gates of the city. Seeing the city wall from a distance, he had expected an ordinary stone wall, but after coming closer, he was shocked to find the wall was made of steel plates and had nothing to do with stone. It even had the feeling of a modern military base, considering the guards had guns and swords.
He passed without problems, there were no checks or toll for passing the gate. Walking up the road, he watched a train moving across the street and his mouth opened wide.
With his eyes blinking, he forged on.
"Damn, aren't they too advanced?" Krogar was standing in front of a big building, with a large notice board in front of him. He had expected some kind of a guild, but the sign of the building stated proudly.
"Department of employment."
"Noooo! I wanted to be an adventurer, not an unemployed person, that is not cool at all!" Krogar despaired for a second, his dreams crushed ruthlessly by the ugly, UGLY word employment.
"I hope that I will, at least not have to pay health insurance or something." Krogar said dryly, looking at the jobs on the board. He moved his leg to go inside the building, but the leg seemed so heavy. He tried to do a second step, but he just could not, his leg quivering with effort as he tried.
"When I walk in a valley of death-shade, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff -- they comfort me... " Krogar strained to do the second step, but his leg missed and he ended up facing the board he had been inspecting previously.
Nearing to it closer stealthily, he noticed most of the tasks were simple, mundane work, or work he could not do, or had no experience doing.
"Ha, this is it!" He looked at the note that everyone else skipped immediately.
"Looking for volunteers to monitor recent annomalous occurences. No compensation will be provided for injuries or health complications caused by the job. Very high rewards."
"That looks fun and I should be all right." Krogar smiled, another reason for taking this job was the realization that he was basically able to take over bodies with his nanobots, he would ideally stumble upon something even better than a vampire and if he would, he could assimilate the specimen and become even stronger. In the corner of his mind, he was still afraid of Lucy, he could not predict her reaction if she found out, he had survived.
After reading the notice, he began searching for the person, who was supposed to lead the operations.
He did not need to search for long, as the place was near the notice board, which was something he had found out by adamantly harrasing people on the street. Marching to the office, he could see inside from afar through a large, glass window.
"Bullsh*t!" He looked at the officer that was facing him and could clearly see four people that were facing the officer, with their backs to Krogar. One of the figures was all too familiar to him.
In a flash, he pulled down the hood of his cloak and pulled up his scarf that had obviously served the previous ovner to hide his bloody mouth after a quick snack.
"Ah, you have to be the new recruit, come in!" But he was too late to turn around, the officer had noticed him the moment he pulled down his hood.
"Yes." He followed him inside reluctantly, while trying to change his voice and quickly sat down only three places away from Lucy.
"Good, five is enough to form a team, I will explain the details of your mission now." The officer began while narrowing his eyes when he looked at Krogar.
"Would you mind pulling up your hood, young lady?" The officer said sharply, still looking at Krogar. He clearly wanted to say something else, but he was dealing with civilians here.
"I would rather not to." Krogar lifted his right hand and all could see that his fingers were malformed.
"Ah malformation, I understand." The officer nodded his head, from his point of view, it was only logical. Heavily malformed people had trouble finding ordinary jobs and this offer was one of the few that such people could accept and earn decent money.
"I apologize, back to the mission then." The officer smiled at Krogar, not seeing the drops of cold sweat on his forehead.