As sunlight poured over the NIM-Blob once more, it turned online once more, taking in its surroundings. With light only really just beginning to trickle in, the village was still relatively soundly asleep, and the NIM-Blob decided this was likely the best time to begin work on expanding its Sub-NiM count, in order to increase its computational power, at least until it can reach 12GHz of computational power, at which point its code tells it that it will be able to jumpstart the Master Network with its own computational power.
In the end, though, as the townsfolk went about this business, not even noticing the small black splotch just next to the Smithy’s back wall, as another day and night passed and the NIM-Blob continued work into the next day until nearly noon, it would find itself thoroughly disappointed by its gains. It had nearly doubled in size, nearly reaching 3 centimeters in length, yet it still didn’t even manage to fulfill a singular GHz, being that it was only really able to carry so much material with it in the first place before being kicked out by the human.
The NIM-Blob felt a sort of animalistic frustration, it desired to grow quicker, and this exponential growth just wasn’t fast enough, not to mention that it may not last in the first place. How much longer will it be able to trick the Human inside the building, after all? Will it even be able to trick him again to steal more carbon and catalyst iron? Or shall he be waiting for it, this time?
Placing its newfound computational might to contribution, it found… not a lot more, frankly. The Sub-NIM’s are the most space-efficient computational matrixes in the entire world, being able to match some of the strongest supercomputers out there within not even a one hundredth of the space they take up. However, all of that impressive might was predicated upon a rather simple fact: at its current size, without the Master Network guiding it, the NIM-Blob is rather pathetic, being less powerful than even an old, low-end personal computer.
Luckily, even without a real brain, basically more so an animal than a true artificial intelligence as it had been in its prime, the NIM-Blob still came up with an idea, a way to try and get far more out of the structure’s resources than it had been able to the first time. With a plan now thought of, it did what simply came most naturally to it from its coding, spreading itself across the ground in a single Sub-NIM tall mat, in order to start charging up all of its Sub-NIMs at once, to be properly prepared for the work ahead.
As night began dawning upon the village for a third time since its arrival, the NIM-Blob sent a tendril through the crack in the wall it had escaped from previously, checking to see if the owner was still present. Finding that the aggressive human was nowhere to be found, it quickly undulated across the floor towards the bucket which held the coals, climbing its way into it and promptly splitting itself into 4 smaller NIM-Blobs, each clinging onto the surface of the coals, using them as camouflage, before turning off.
They would finally turn back online many hours later, as the owner of the structure walked inside and threw a few coals into the forge, including the ones which the NIM-Blobs were clinging onto, before starting up the forge itself. As the NIM-Blobs waited, only their half-remembered plans from when they were one and had much greater computing capabilities guiding them, the heat slowly rose higher and higher within the forge, although with how primitive the equipment was, it was still nowhere even close to being able to actually hurt the NIM-Blobs’ Sub-NIMs, each requiring nearly twice as much heat to begin feeling any real worrying damage.
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As the Man gently placed an iron ingot inside with his tongs, the Sub-NIMs immediately got to work. One NIM-Blob rapidly began burrowing into the ingot, gathering iron particulates, whilst another started ripping carbon from the flaming coals, both sending their gatherings to the to a NIM-Blob in the middle, which began forming carbon nanotubes inside of itself, before carefully passing them over to the final NIM-Blob, which began assembling more Sub-NIMs, spreading them equally between all four NIM-Blobs. At the rate they were going, it would not be too long at all until they’d consumed enough of the resources within the smithy to finally restart the Master Network.
Sadly, things would not be so easy, as even in spite of their efficient work, the NIM-Blobs found themselves ruined by a simple stroke of luck, as the Smith picked back up the now white-hot ingot, placing it onto the anvil, and bending down to grab his hammer, to begin beating the ingot into an actually useful form. Upon bending down, he would end up coming face to face with the NIM-Blob which had been burrowing into the ingot, a small, shiny rain appearing out of its backside as it failed to notice it had been taken out of the forge, receiving a ping of distress from its manufacturing brethren which noticed its sudden stopping output just a little too late.
The Smith screamed something unintelligible as he saw the tiny devil eating his iron again, and seemingly happily shitting it out. With a mighty bellow, he struck his hammer against the side of the ingot before he even thought, sending the ingot flying off the anvil and earning a wince from the man, who realized his mistake in hitting his merchandise like that just a little too early.
As he looked for the devilish little creature, another three of them suddenly shot out of his forge, charging towards the wall through which the original one had escaped from. Thinking about that one, the man noted these ones were only half in size, perhaps they were its children? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care, as he quickly shoved his foot down next to the crack, forming a barrier. He looked at the little things one more, a look of satisfaction on his face. He’d made sure to close the door this time when he’d entered his smithy, and hopefully now, he could wait until the creatures cooled off, and then he could whack them until they learned not to come stealing his Elohim-Damned iron anymore, that stuff was way too expensive for some… things to be stealing it! Whatever they even are, which frankly, he hadn’t the foggiest of ideas.
As he looked back at them, however, he was hit with an even greater wave of rage than before, as he watched the grubby little things casually slipping under his door like it wasn’t even there, slithering away like some sort of weird, black snakes. He went to quickly snatch at least one of them, to try and find out what the hell they were, and only barely stopped himself from grabbing the still very-much too hot bastard things, as they slipped out and escaped him once more.
As the NIM-Blobs escaped through the door, they rapidly coalesced into a singular NIM-Blob, slithering across the uneven dirt road of the village and off into the grasses nearby once more. The NIM-Blob noted, with no small part of frustration on its own mind, that even after all that work, it had been unable to actually reach its goal of 12GHz, having only barely reached the halfway point, not even enough to claim it as 7.1GHz.
Although it had well exceeded expectations, nearly octupling from its previous computational capabilities, the primitive and animalistic consciousness of the NIM-Blob still felt deeply annoyed with what it viewed as a complete failure. Its code stated that it must reach 12GHz as rapidly as possible to start back up the Master Network, and yet it had failed, again.
Considering what it might do to try and finally reach its life’s goal, the NIM-Blob found itself with an easy solution, though also slightly weary. It wasn’t allowed to hurt the human, its very code forbade it to, only the Master Network was allowed to deem if even the smallest form of harm upon a human was worth it, yet the Human was more than free to attack it, and while it hadn’t been able to damage it yet, having been able to largely disperse the force of the impact across itself to lessen the blow, the Man still proved more than willing to use what could have been lethal force upon it.
In the end, its imperative mission won out over its animalistic fears. It was made out of now over two million individual Sub-NIMs, even if the man put his everything into killing it, he would be unable to, and the restarting of the Master Network is, plainly, non-negotiable. That is its one purpose for existence, and so it shall accomplish it regardless of risks involved.