The night sky flickered on the fraying edges of his consciousness that struggled to recapture the flow of time. His heartbeat was unsteady and arrhythmic. He was conscious, but also unconscious.

It was impossible to describe what it was like to be struck by lightning. Nothing in the world could compare to it. Not even Aren’s accident, when he slammed into a building at well over four hundred kilometers per hour, could be put into the same category. However, the aftermath was a different matter. It felt as if he had an anvil on his chest — make that ten anvils. He also couldn’t feel his body and even his thoughts were fragments bouncing around his skull like a hollow-point bullet.

Aren didn’t know how long he remained like that, staring at the emerging stars. He wasn’t sure what he saw or if he saw anything; they just existed like that, next to each other. The night sky may as well have been the death line in the vision of others. It was there, Aren just wasn’t aware of it.

Whenever his buffer recovered it acted as a defibrillator, issuing lightning that surged through him and attempting to negotiate a stubborn, errant heart rhythm. Maybe, just maybe, in that moment, Aren was the problem. Perhaps, somewhere in the back of his mind he desired to hang up his coat here, and check out, so to speak; to pay the piper; to dance with the reaper. The only thing that was certain was that Aren — this Aren — had no regrets, no curses and no wishes.

Not even he was aware of what his liberated subconsciousness was considering in those moments.

At some point, he became more aware of himself and his surroundings; like the distant crackling of fire, the rumble of the clouds above, his thoughts and, most importantly perhaps, the now steady rhythm of his heart. Aren was only faintly aware of how close he came to death. It was, from the perspective of a human, a coin flip whether he lived or died. From the perspective of an AGMI, it was certainly not a coin flip, but a guaranteed outcome. Still, the fact that he had to leave everything he had on the battlefield to come out victorious, and almost always end up just shy of dying, was concerning.

He was concerned, yes, but he was also happy. Maybe calling it happy was a bit of a stretch. He was excited. Having witnessed Leviathan’s power first-hand, he couldn’t help but feel unstoppable. The manner in which the AGMI dispatched more than a dozen orcs was enough to drive one to madness with fright. Even the two orcs, the last remaining ones, were frozen in fear. To end it with a [Lightning Divider] that would cause the heavens to open and retaliate with a lightning bolt was just punctuation on the finishing statement. Not only was the AGMI inconceivably powerful, but it was remorseless and relentless. What it could’ve easily finished with a Reaping Sword technique, it finished with Aren’s most powerful ability.

In Aren’s mind, perhaps out of fear, he twisted Leviathan to be a malevolent entity. The more he thought of it as a demon, the more it sounded like one to Aren. Every word the AGMI spoke — if it could be called speaking — brimmed with hostility and tyranny, proportional to how much Aren believed the entity was an evil, unbound thing.

On the other hand, the AGMI had never shown obvious signs of such a thing; if anything, it helped Aren — dragged him, kicking and screaming, this far. There was reasonable doubt and then there was paranoia, and Aren may have been doing a little bit more of the latter than the former. Even so, just thinking of the AGMI was enough to cause Aren’s heart to tremble, threatening to go into cardiac arrest again — and that was not a figurative statement. AGMI were terrifying, and anyone who thought otherwise was either mad or knew something Aren did not. Fear of AGMI was as natural as the fear of deities was in the middle ages; almost as if Humanity made a full circle. Unlike deities of the middle ages, there was more than enough proof to confirm the existence of AGMI.

Paranoia was not that much of an overreaction.

However, seeing the AGMI in action put the matter to rest. It was malevolent. It was tyrannical. Perhaps the most frightening thing in the whole ordeal was the lack of emotion. Except perhaps for a small hint of pride in its actions, to Aren, the AGMI felt more like a force of nature than a sentient entity. How could a mortal creature comprehend something that had, or showed, no emotions? How could a mortal creature comprehend the motives of something that was driven only by calculations and logic?

However, Aren was not afraid of Leviathan in the same manner he was before. Each time the synchronization between them deepend, Aren felt his mind change. He rebounded from the cowardly thoughts of the surrenderer that he was until recently, and into territories that he never thought he would find himself in. Before long, he realized he stopped caring about the morality of a machine intelligence and started caring about how to utilize it. Instead of seeking a way to die in which he could say “At least I tried”, now he was embracing his inexorable death — in this world and the real world — as long as he could reach Priscilla. He rejected the idea of losing, and desired to win at all costs.

Slowly, as Aren’s muscles unlocked, he rolled over to his side, and then unsteadily made it to his feet. His head was spinning; it was as if he was punch-drunk. He couldn’t even focus his gaze on a singular spot for longer than one second, and still decided to search for the remains of his shadowblade.

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This Aren was different from the Aren that rejected the idea of losing. This Aren rejected death itself. And though his subconsciousness may have toyed with the idea of dying, this Aren did not.

Why should he?

Aren’s expression darkened, not only because he saw the molten remains of his shadowblade, but at the thought itself.

Why should he play the Roman fool and fall upon his own sword? Why should he accept the hand fate dealt him? He had an AGMI now; if he so desired it, he could drag fate into a dark alley and beat it to death. Theta, Sector 9, Ermin Saltzer, the Commonwealth; they could all go to hell.

Aren was the most captive free person in the world now. To obtain this freedom, he only had to sell his soul to Laplace’s Demon.

No, Aren did not fear Leviathan anymore.

For some reason, he had thought of what Fang said about these orcs. How everything that they have done from the moment the two met was for this. Their showdown.

It was with a cold, detached rationality that Aren observed his situation as he approached the remains of his shadowblade, and came to a realization.

< Not all of it was this unit’s doing. In accordance with the Gestalt Mandate, you were always given the choice: to follow or not to follow; to desire a future or to lament in the past; to rise above or to remain below; to live, or to die. >

Leviathan’s voice preempted Aren’s thoughts before they could coherently form, and this time, Leviathan sounded more stoic than malevolent.

Aren frowned as he picked up his shadowblade. Only the red-alloy remained, and a part of the hilt. It was wretchedly unusable. Even the enchantments on it were obliterated, so Aren couldn’t even use it as a foci, much less as a slashing weapon.

“Why? Why me?” Aren asked, as he threw away his broken shadowblade.

< I do not desire a puppet or a slave. I seek an arrangement of equality. As two entities with nothing left to lose and similar long-term goals, our cooperation is optimal. >

So that is what it was? Cooperation built out of necessity, not trust; like two enemies on a deserted island who have to work together to survive. Only in a movie or a book would the two enemies then become friends.

“Did you cause my accident?” Aren asked, suspiciously glancing around himself to make sure he was alone. He even observed the corpses of the orcs.

< This unit did not cause your accident. There is a small probability that THETA is involved. >

Why would Theta want to kill Aren? A likely reason could’ve been weapons testing; perhaps Theta was trying to figure out if she could override the onboard AI, or control it. Perhaps it was something else entirely and things just went wrong. Perhaps accidents like these were not uncommon, even though one was less likely to die in an APV than dying due to an accident while brushing their teeth.

Then there was also the more obvious choice of reason. Theta desired a Mind-Machine Interface.

Aren sighed. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” he asked. “Now, there is only one thing I want.”

< If you choose to follow my instructions, nothing is impossible. Do you accept the arrangement? >

Aren didn’t even think about it too much. It really did not matter. Until now, he was a ghost clinging to life. He died in that accident; the world was simply asserting its rules. Before, he was just buying time, holding on to a foolish dream. Now he rejected the world and its rules, and sought to manifest his will and accomplish his one and only goal. Aren doubted it was more spite than love, but he couldn’t refute that spite was not involved at all. No matter what, Aren would see Priscilla again. He would save her the way she saved him. He would burn down the entire Commonwealth if he had to.

“I accept,” Aren said.

< Mind-Machine Interface synchronization: 50% >

Aren stumbled and this time, the lightning bolt was not the cause. It lingered on the edge of his perception; it unraveled on the dissolving edges of his consciousness. It was as if he was aware of things that have always been there, buried beneath the thin surface of the world. He could not describe it — something that was almost as if he acquired a sixth sense. He didn’t know what it was, except that the feeling itself existed. As if he knew something that was unknowable; as if he saw something that his brain couldn’t comprehend and rejected. It was as if there was a door within his mind now, beyond which was the existence called Leviathan.

As soon as his mind was set, a death line formed in front of Aren. The red thread of fatal fate did not appear gradually, but rather settled immediately. It led back towards where Aren came from, deeper into the town. For once, Aren could tell, somehow, whom it was meant for. The one-armed orc that nearly killed Aren back in Rakab.

For once, ironically, Aren felt as if he was in control of his own destiny. He would never be free again — he would always be a hostage of Leviathan — but he would never again have to submit to the whims of the world. He was no longer a plaything of fate. Perhaps he really did sell his soul to a demon.

He closed his eyes and, with difficulty, his buffer opened. Without the shadowblade, it was magnitudes more difficult to use his basic abilities, and even the buffer itself appeared smaller and weaker. He was aware of the buffer’s statistics, which he could not understand before.

[ You have learned a new Arcane Territory secondary ability: Arcane Introspection ]

[ Buffer capacity: 4,058 CU. Interference strength: 124 IU. ]

What any of those units meant, Aren had no idea. He wove strands of lightning energy from his internal reservoir which was almost empty — it was practically criminal, considering he was hit by lightning — and he overlaid them over some of the remaining previous instructions. He even used part of the decaying [Lightning Divider] instructions to form this [Flash], and the moment the sequence was complete in his buffer, Aren felt himself in motion.

It was not over yet.