Author's Note:

These final two chapters had been made around the end of August. At that point in time, my original intention had been to mock up a quick summary finish for the Volume/Story and hang the towel since the experiment had sort of failed (just 1 new patron, and very few existing patrons meshed with it).

Unfortunately my grandmother's health took a turn for the worse, and as the only one in my family that worked 24/7 from home, it was my job to help out. I barely had the time (let alone the energy) to handle just the main story. Three months later, my nana passed away.

I've been sort of dragging myself along since, trying to just stay afloat with Monsters and Maidens (now called Alchimia Rex), and only just recently started to feel like I can take on a heavier load to test out the next idea out.

A part of me wishes I could go at this until the Epic Story goes all the way to its fruition, but I can't. So the next best thing I can do is break down the overall ideas and plans I had for it.

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For starters, the setting.

Humanity conquered the galaxy many thousands of years ago. They found it to be devoid of other intelligent life, only stumbling upon ruins or nascent civilizations that would sooner or later blow each other up.

Humans spread, they grew, they used friendly AI to engineer changes onto themselves.

We became the aliens.

In this environment, we tried time and again to create immersive simulations, the whole "mind upload" thing. But time and again the people that got into that space just went insane given enough time. All attempts to upload a mind just kept failing.

Until some tried to make an upload based off of a now declassified ancient military experiment where they'd tried to do a brain scan with the equipment that would eventually evolve into the mind-link.

Damon's scan somehow clicked. And it allowed the first ever "True" artificial intelligence.

It's at this point in time that "The Park" came to be. A place created where people could upload their mind into a flesh construct, have the construct "pretend to be them", and then download the memories of whatever their construct did while out and about "The Park".

Big hit, grows, becomes popular. And then war hits the galaxy when an AI from some other galaxy (humanity's true first encounter with intelligent alien life), swept in to fuck everything and take over. The war was brutal, and over the following decades and centuries and millenia Humans were pushed back, and back, and back, eventually managing to win by finding a way to cut off the AI from itself.

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The ruins of what was once Humanity began to reconquer the galaxy it had once owned and ruled over.

At this point in time, the Merchant guild had been contacted and taken over by one of the developer's test-AI "villain system". A "not-True" AI meant to create large narrative threats to the world that the users would then be meant to fight and win against. It'd been locked up and left in a sandbox within the administrator's test facilities during evacuation.

After millennia trapped, a Merchant vessel found a way in and accidentally released it. Partially. It's still trapped in the test facility, but it can reach out through the Merchants encrypted comms system (also known as the "hymn"). This AI has urged and pushed the Merchants towards finding and/or stealing as many of the "original" axons since, with an administrator's axon, it could break free from the sandbox.

That's where space-girl Emilie comes in. She just "rediscovered" "The Park", a place that's been running on its own without oversight or users for far too long. The very limited-AI systems within having died or gone insane or found some semblance of functionality and purpose.

From there, she ends up making it to the planet, crash-landing, but trapped in a cryo-pod. The nanites infesting the ship still very much alive, just without juice to function. She gets found out by the Merchant Guild, who keeps her in stasis, but puts the nanites to use as a tool to ensure that even a "pacified" non-user can take down a user easily (just sprinkle them with activated nanites and the little buggers will eat all they can until they die or run out again).

Which triggers "The Park"'s alarm system. Cue inability to loading any user, and instead loading Damon from one of the test files the administrator's had left behind for coding and testing purposes (since one of the easiest way to "control" how much freedom an AI system would have would be to carefully select what parts of the "original Damon code" was used. This way they could effectively implant a kill switch into an AI, as, given enough time, they'd just go insane and self-terminate).

> [The Story Starts Here]

What would happen after this point would be that Damon would hunt down the cult-of-AI inside the Merchant guild, eventually stumbling into Emilie's box, waking her up, and her going "Oh shit you're a Damon".

Cue Emilie wanting to allay with the evil-AI because she see's Damon as less of an actual entity than even the locals (why wouldn't she? Everyone with a hint of programming knowledge would've at some point or another downloaded a Damon-copy and toyed around with the settings to see if they could get "anything interesting", like one would toy with a game with mods and so on). That and the AI is the only real hope to leave the planet in the first place (at least from her perspective).

She in turn gets double-crossed (duh), followed by a redemption arc as she adapts to actually living "on the icky dirt" rather than in space. With Damon growing as a Monster-Hunter by the day, until eventually he'd go for the dragon, win, and have the facility reprogram itself (with AI-smith-chan's help) into creating space-ships.

The first thing he does is go after evil-AI since he's in the administrator's facility. Big fight ensues as he also has to go up against experimental monsters and so on. Culminating with the battle going into cyberspace. The whole thing ends up with the AI copying Damon's mind and integrating it into itself, and using the comm's array of the spaceship they built to send itself away before he gets deleted.

> --From there on the story would be entirely up in the air.--

Maybe it'd keep growing into Damon-In-Space, or maybe Space-Comes-To-Damon. Not sure.

Either way, I'm sorry I won't be continuing this story, and hope you guys enjoyed!