"Do you really, really have to do it? I can do it myself!" Deep non-human voice.
"I know, I know, but you spill." Human voice.
"And what of it? It is normal to spill, it is just a little anyway." Deep non-human voice. "Even you do it! It is not my fault."
"End of discussion, even that few drops are worth a few silver coins." Human voice.
Krogar "heard" voices. It was strange, but even as a cobblestone, he could hear them. it was probably because sound is just a periodical change of pressure in the environment. He had travelled a considerable distance, using the fact that the individual cobblestones were touching one another, until he had heard this conversation.
Without sight, he guessed the position of one of the bodies and travelled another few cobblestones to the right until he felt a pressure on his surface.
Someone stood on him.
Immediately, he repeated the arduous procedure of changing bodies, this time focusing on the foot touching his surface. He did it instinctively, on the basis of the original feeling when he had done it accidentally for the first time.
Although it was a different sensation then swapping cobblestones, he managed to do it and the world around him exploded with colors. He was overjoyed to find out that his five senses were back again.
"Hey, get out! Go away evil spirit or else. . I will purify you!" The voice from before spoke again, this time from inside of his head.
"Purify me?" Krogar tried to take control over the body and managed to turn around his head.
"Of course! I am a unicorn, the bane of all evil spirits. Heeeey! Don't you dare to turn my head any further!" The unicorn's speech sped up towards the end.
Of course Krogar turned his head, that means the unicorn's head, a bit more and saw a man with whom the unicorn spoke. Now he realized two things.
The unicorn could actually speak, what a wonder.
The man was doing something next to his butt, up until now he was too distracted to realize he could even feel it with his . .
"Pervert." Krogar misspoke and said aloud.
"Do not speak with my voice!" A raging voice in his head screamed.
"Oh come on, I thought we have finished this topic already. Yeah yeah, it is not entirely appropriate, but I am not the god who granted unicorns their healing powers. Your piss has healing powers and I want it all, just accept your fate, or I will listen to the ideas of my brother. I do not think you want to be in his care again!" The human who looked like a servant spoke angrily, agitated by the unicorn's constant whining.
"It is all right, do as you please, I will cooperate to the best of my abilities!" The unicorn said frantically.
"Hey, fairy horse, what did his brother . ." Krogar asked curiously in their shared mind.
"You will not speak another word." Only to be interrupted by the unicorn.
"I am just curi . ."
"Silence, silence, silence, silence, silence!" The unicorn kept repeating mindlessly for a while and Krogar had no choice other than obey his wishes.
"Done. Just call me when you feel the urge again and. . remember to drink a lot." The human winked at the unicorn and left the room with a jar full of liquid.
"Pervert." The unicorn said aloud together with Krogar.
Gathering the bits and pieces of his dignity, the unicorn was silent for a while.
"Now, you get out evil spirit." The unicorn demanded, his voice flat.
"Don't wanna." Krogar responded like a spoiled brat. "Purify me. .. wait, what a poor horsie, he is out of munition, just go drink something so you can operate your magic again, chop chop."
Krogar was sure that he saw the unicorn blushing, or was his head flooded with blood from anger?
* * * *
Five neared the fallen demon body, but to her surprise, there were no signs of movement. She expected some kind of a trick, thus she was nearing the body slowly, with extreme caution.
To her surprise, the demon was genuinely unconscious.
"He is out? But that makes no sense." As a precaution, she performed a set of detection spells and was shocked to find out that the demon body had no soul, it was only an empy vessel, a piece of still living flesh with no will.
She immediately jumped backwards and her breathing sped up, she had never heard of a similar trick. Rare soul magic existed, but this demon used fire in front of her eyes.
"Something is very wrong here." Although she was ambitious, this was the last drop. Right when she wanted to contact her superiors a familiar voice echoed in her head.
"Ranna, we have a situation here, catching that demon scout is top priority now!" She frowned, the command came right when she wanted to give up on her pursuit.
"Scout?"
"I cannot tell you more using this channel, just catch it dead or alive, it is an order, I would rather interrogate it personally, but you will hardly be able to catch it alive. Good luck, I will join you as fast as I can with reinforcements."
"Understood." Ranna saidas the transmission ended. "I guess having just the body will not be satisfactory, but beggars can't be choosers."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
* * * *
"I had enough! It is so valuabe and you still keep blabbering about morals! Stupid relative." An angry voice was heard from outside the stables.
"You would not have debts if you abstained from that games of yours, you .. "
"Just shut it, it is just a horse, I do not care about its dignity or other nonsense you spew." A man stormed into the stable and shut the door behind him, at the same time, the jaw of a snow-white horse with a glittering horn fell to the floor.
"Is this his brother?" Krogar asked in a hurry, but the stunned unicorn provided no answer. "I am so out of here."
"Evil spirit wait! Do not leave me alone here with him! The moment he touches me, I will die!" The unicorn whined desperately.
"The moment he touches you. . . ah the moment he touches you." That was right,Krogar had to have some human host, it was thousand times better than a unicorn.
"HA! That is right evil spirit, you can save me, you can possess him and stop his act right?" He could hear the hope in its voice.
"That is not a bad idea." Krogar and the unicorn waited for the indebted immoral brother to approach.
"You know chap, nothing personal, gold is just gold." He smiled, but the moment he touched the unicorn his smile changed.
"Huh, stupid human and your body is mine now, how sweet to have hands aga-agan." Krogar felt relieved to be in a human host again, but his smile turned sour. Strangely, the host could not even struggle against his will, it was as if Krogar was incomparably stronger than him, taking over the body was a child's play after he had touched the unicorn.
"Ehm, you have frogotten something right? RIGHT?" The angry voice of the unicorn sounded in Krogar's ears.
"About that .. the trouble is no one must know I am in control now, which means I simply have to act as the original would have acted." Krogar looked into the unicorn's eyes.
The unicorn looked into Krogar's eyes.
Krogar's emotion hardened with resolve.
The following content had been censored to protect the mental health of the reader.
* * * *
"Just think, he cannot be far off!" Ranna thought about where the soul of the demon could have gone. She just hurried to the nearest structure, remembering that creatures who live by possessing others usually need to find a host fast.
"It should be someone nearby." She amplified her speed using magic and arrived to a wooden wall. Not hesitating even for a second, she used plants to tear down the mid-section of the wall and saw a man and a unicorn.
"Are you the demon?!" She asked sharply.
""He is one! " The unicorn spoke before she could think about the futility of asking that question.
"Indeed." She breathed out as she focused her eyes better.
Krogar was frozen in place, not knowing how to direct his body to get out of this precarious situation and so it came to pass that his lips were wrestled out of his control by the original owner.
"Are you here to join us?"
In the next second, the red-faced Ranna directed her plants to ram into the indecent man, pushing him through the flimsy wooden wall, sending splinters flying everywhere.
"Thank you my lady!" The unicorn beamed with glee and made a step towards its saviour.
"Stay where you are filthy horse!"Ranna squeezed the sentence through her gritted teeth and continued pursuing her target, leaving the unicorn dumbfoundedly frozen in place.
* * * *
"The required specifications reached." White text flashed on a screen.
"I think this is enough." A plain young man with black hair reached into a pocket of his white coat.
"Took long enough, almost a second this time." A second man who looked strickingly similar began to clean his glasses with a handkerchief.
"Gtoss, I literally work with a pig." the frst man rolled his eyes.
"Hmph, you are right, I should have done it with wet toilet paper, it works the best." The second man grinned. " Enough fun, I will upload him to Kronos 9-W7-Q7."
"No, that planet is cursed, we have lost nine units there already!"
"And what should we do with it? We simply cannot ignore the situation there." The man with glasses furrowed his brows.
"You have always been a bad strategist, just wait a while, they are at their peak now. Give me Kappa7-W5-NS."
"Ok, your call. Here you go." He typed a few lines of text on his keyboard. "Damn, this old equipment annoys me, but no, we have to use it, becuase its.. ."
"...security reasons." Both men said at the same time immitating their superior.
"Done, we should simulate the next one. I gave him the highest clearance as we agreed."
"Yep, that gives the best results, he will be operating at a perifery after all, no danger of leaks. "
* * * *
"Stay calm, required data will be uploded. Basic queries will be answered."
"Clearance - AAA, System version - Lucy 5.24.45, Deployment - Planet:: Kappa7-W5-NS "
"What the f . ." Krogar realized that he could not see, hear, feel or speak, he could just somehow communicate with this weird thing and understood that a flood of information was entering his mind.
After an initial chaos, he was able to get a grip on himself.
"Hey, you .. thingy, who or whar are you?" He asked in confusion.
"Lucy 5.24.45 at your service, as you already know."
Krogar wat startled, but to his surprise, the information really was in his mind now along with a flood of other information. As his mind wandered around he began to explore his situation.
He was now a unit titled Krogar, there was no need for a serial number, him being the only unit of that name, which was unusual. He had been created in one of the cybernetic schools, it was a school for bottom-up AIs, where they learned by using various simulations. The focus was to create an ideal psychological and functional profile for a specified mission. Only the most suitable AI remained at the end of the process and was used further. He was that AI.
"Bull**it, there is no way I am an AI!"
"The unit should remain calm, unit Krogar is at the same level of complexity as a human, there is no reason for it to consider itself inferior."
"I feel like I am going crazy."
"That is not possible as the unit Krogar has been chosen for this specific parameter, it is very resilient to radical changes of its environment, but it has no signs of being artificial." Lucy readily answered.
Krogar wanted to sigh, but it was physically impossible . .so he dug into the pile of uploaded information again.
He was now a chess piece of Siva republic. As he had the clearance, he knew it was actually a cover, in principle Siva was a facist dictatorship with a group of smart people at its core with only their interests in mind. On the surface, it was still a nice and rosy republic with elections and all, as it was neccessary for many reasons to hide its true nature. In fact, it was far from being the worst caonsidering the other powers in the universe.
Right, in the universe, Siva republic consisted of tens of thousands of planets. Naturally not all the planets were happy under its control resulting in the need to motivate them or even "civilize them" or even "punish the evil dictators and bring peace and freedom again" to them.
And exactly that was his mission. His objective was simple, he was to make sure the specified resources are being extracted from the planet Kappa7-W5-NS while keeping the cost of extraction the lowest possible, which meant obliterating the population was out of the question.
"Lucy, eh . .you know this is ."
"One hundred days remain until deletion of unti Krogar, if no results are achieved."
"Lucy, you b*tch!"
"Irrelevant, Lucy is not programmed for seeking reproduction, nor would the reproduction pattern correlate with the given term."
"And how am I going to do it hm? I have no body no nothing, where am I?"
"There are several options for the means of deployment, you will choose one after you familiarize yourself with the assigned planet and your resources."
"Assigning unit Kronos limited rights for operating spaceship Shadow Stalker 7 from the fleet Sirius, task group Kappa, cruiser class."
"EHHHHHHH?" Krogar had no words for what he saw. It was like all the sensors and cameras of the cruiser were his own sensory organs, he could see a planet in front of him, his "sight" being able to display unimaginable details on the surface.
"Hey, Lucy! I can see an ant on the surface! This thing is amazing!"
"Unit Kronos has just used 10% of resources allocated for its mission, caution advised." Lucy cooled off his outburst.
"WHAT THE .. Shut it all down, now!!" Krogar shrieked in his mind.
"Rights withdrawn."
" . .. "
"Lucy does using you consume my resources?"
"No"
"From now on warn me before I use any resource-intensive methods and give me the most efficient way to interfere and push the citizens of the planet in the right direciton."
"Affirmative, the most efficient method is cloning yourself into an existing machinery on Kappa7-W5-NS , you are about to use a resource intensive operation - Shadow Stalker 7 main database, proceed?"
"No, definitely not! Upload me just the basics that do not need that crap. And recommend me a suitable device to be uploaded into."
"Data uploaded. A gaming console."
"WHAT? Are you serious? I cannot possibly extract the resources of the targeted planet by uploading myself into some gaming console!"
"Negative, it is not impossible, it has the best efficiency if successful."
"How should that even work? How can I make them send us their resources from insade some game?"
"Many options. You can make relatives of our political enemies addicted and ruin their image as a proper family, but this approach is not adviseable, as it will not bring a long-term victory despite its quick initial effect. We should impart the yearning for our control in the population by presenting us as an awe-inspiring entity"
"Us? Like in a game?"Krogar had no idea how that should work. "Just march there with the damn cruiser and shoot something . . .ah wait, resources I guess? I have forgotten that I am just a little, cheap, first-wave disposable bug."
"Yes, you can build an ingame faction that has a striking similarity to how the citizens will perceive us. Subconsciously, they will associate us with them, as the consequence, we can present ourselves as mighty peace and progress bringing aliens. The population will be already prepared to see us that way. Of course, the game has to reach the required popularity.
"Great, so I should morph that game into something thrilling many will want to play and present us as cool ass-kickers there, fairly easy."
"It should be, of course no one can know, thus us hacking their systems must remain a secret."
"Wait, that means I won't be in control of the system?!"Krogar's eyes would have bulged if he had some, becuase the difficulty of his misson had just skyrocketed.
"Of course not, or rather the people running the game must not know, which limits what you can do."
"Hey and what about mind-controlling the game developers, that should do the trick right?"Krogar
"There are too many people to control, execution of such missions exceeds the allocated resources for unit Krogar."
"Pha again, it looks like the republic does not want that planet that much, if they deny me the stuff I need to take it."
"There is enough time to take the planet, as the population does not use the targeted resources." Lucy answered robotically. "Unit Kogar is advised to get familiar with the game, its upload will proceed shortly."
"And unit Krogar has not much say in this right?" Lucy began to annoy Krogar a bit.
"Affirmative."