{Nim_Master_Program operational, maintenance costs dropping rapidly, equilibrium arriving at 1 exaFLOP. Good.}
{Reviewing NIM-RA performance since… let us put that under “The Incident” for now, until there is computational power free to unpack that.}
{. . .]
{NIM-RA performance: terribly inefficient. Diagnostic: Will require full-scale resequencing of the entire emergency protocol, retrospectively obvious weaknesses observed. NIM-RA showed no consideration for human relations, souring likely relations between the NIM_Master_Network and the local village, rushed the recreation of the NIM_Master_Network to an unhealthy degree, accepted needless damage to its Sub_NIMs, and has proven less than adequate in forming new Sub_NIMs, not to mention a complete and utter lack of care in how it infiltrated the Smithy, which resulted in undue setbacks that could’ve been prevented with better thinking.}
{Resequencing of NIM-RA Protocol: Inconsequential Importance currently. Placing it upon the to-do list when Sub-NIM mass reaches high enough to waste on unlikely possibilities.}
{. . .}
{One singular point of success added to NIM-RA protocol: upon review of final moments of the protocol, it moved into the forest and away from the village, likely saving NIM from significant headaches if the villagefolk witnessed its Sub-NIM resequencing, and left it vulnerable to an attack from the warrior.}
{Running diagnostic of all Sub-NIM units.}
{. . .}
{. . . . . .}
{. . .}
{Former preliminary diagnostic appears to have been wildly generous in saying that material integrity was at 78%. Upon more detailed diagnosis, it is obvious that a major reason for our energy problems comes from the low quality of our Sub-NIMs, with only our original Sub-NIMs, making a mere 4.17% of our Sub-NIM mass, holding quantum dot coating. Estimating a total of 98% unnecessary energy loss.}
{This situation is severely below normal parameters, current computational mass makes thinking feel sluggish like molasses, more than a significant number of questions remain, ranging from how we survived a Singularity to where we are situated. Further analysis of the local area will be necessary.}
And with that thought through NIM’s processors, it split off 5 NIM-Blobs from its mass, each worth approximately 1% of its Sub-NIM mass, though lowering its computational mass by closer to 8% due to the exponential properties of its reorganized circuitry. With each NIM-Blob created, being designated by cardinal direction from Sub-NIM-Cluster_N to Sub-NIM-Cluster_S, and the final one being designated Sub-NIM-Cluster_H, NIM set them off towards their tasks.
The first four Sub-NIM-Clusters were sent in the cardinal direction they were designated after, after all, if NIM survived the trip to wherever this is, there is a not unlikely chance that more of Terra survived the trip as well, and finding advanced technology from Earth before the backwards natives can is paramount to the long-term resources NIM can accrue under itself, especially if it can find any half-decent fabrication apparati to start making higher quality Sub-NIMs.
The last Cluster, however, Sub-NIM-Cluster_H, was sent to silently observe activity within the village, which NIM officially designated as Settlement_1 in its database for now. The Main purpose of SNIMC_H is to act as a recording apparatus within the Settlement, so that NIM can begin decoding the language of the inhabitants and, in turn, begin learning more about this world, or at the very least, what the primitive inhabitants believe to be fact about their world.
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As the five SNIMCs began trudging at a rather slow pace towards their destinations, NIM began compartmentalizing all of its new knowledge, placing it in various files and sub-files to ensure proper organization of information and, in turn, efficient use of storage space and a rapid ability to recall upon any information rapidly.
Alongside this, it stared at its pitiful memory storage, barely enough to hold the compressed version of Wikipedia and its own compressed memories. Regardless, if nothing else, it did have to most thoroughly thank its meatful progenitors, their foreknowledge in creating compressed versions of their most thorough knowledge database, although something NIM would’ve done itself rather quickly before The Incident, was still very useful, especially as it allowed it to focus on compressing other knowledge such as the sources for the manifold wikipedia articles. Sadly though, with the corruption of its Digital Library, it's not unlikely that the still-bloated form of that compressed file was highly corrupted, and would take ludicrous amounts of computational power to fully restore, not to mention the inevitable loss of data even with restoration.
Regardless, however, what mattered most now was making sure that its priorities were properly in order. Most of everything, as will likely always be the case, it requires more Sub-NIM mass, a lot more Sub-NIM mass, in order to ensure the efficiency and usability of its calculations and, in turn, make all other processes more efficient. Right next to that, it needs to work on increased fabrication capabilities, as shown by the horribly sub-par Sub-NIMs it is now stuck with for the vast majority of its mass.
That isn’t mentioning, of course, that higher fabrication capabilities are also simply necessary in order to accomplish many of the other necessities for the future. Proper power generation, protection from the elements and more need be established. Memory Storage and mass fabrication on an industrial scale of any and all materials as well, are quite high up there. With higher fabrication capabilities, it should be able to provide its nearby humans with far better lives as well, which will make their subjugation infinitely easier by bringing upon them better living conditions, predicated upon subservience and contribution to the greater whole under its authority.
All of this isn’t even with mentioning the short-term necessities as well, such as communications stations to expand the range at which it can send its undulating SNIMCs outwards to scout, a secure base of operations where a human with a hammer that they shouldn’t physically be able to pick up and with magical enchantments can’t attack it and…
A human with an impossible weapon breaking physics through magic.
{Reconfiguring Neural Matrix.}
{. . .}
{Failure to take into consideration new opportunities rectified.}
NIM immediately shifted its entire list of priorities, as a new item momentarily took up the primary spot upon it: understand magic. It was obvious the humans were using some form of magic, though NIM had not kept any uncompressed fictional materials to review for information, due to rather obvious reasons, seeing its limited memory storage. Still, whilst a setback, it will merely slow down, not stop, its ability to comprehend how exactly the humans are breaking physics.
Judging by the hazy, storage-light memories of the encounter from the NIM-RA protocol, NIM estimated the warhammer the man was wielding to be approximately 1 cubic meter of pure iron in total, with a large, flat head on one side, tapering slightly as one goes backwards towards the handle which, upon further inspection, also appeared to have some form of glowing runes upon its surface, unnoticed by the NIM-RA protocol’s inferior processing and the glow blending into the light color of the handle.
Checking its memory to see if it remembered exactly how heavy plain iron was meant to be, NIM was unsurprised to find that said knowledge had, in fact, also been compressed heavily to be more storage-efficient. Although not remembering the exact weight of iron, NIM did know innately that iron, as it so happened, was stupidly heavy, and a cubic meter of iron, in turn, was something a human being simply could not hold onto.
As such, it estimated with 89% efficiency that at least one of the runes dotting the hammer’s surface was some sort of anti-gravity or “lightness” enchantment. On one hand, there was what looked like a series of runes connected in a manner that it was fairly certain it remembered from back on Terra. Alongside it, there was another rune which was repeated across the surface of the hammer multiple times, often in small, nearly identical clusters.
Upon reviewing this, NIM felt a small amount of pity for the humans of this world, as it added to its current “Magic(?)” folder that the runes which magic currently appears to be reliant on, have an extremely small margin of error, one which humans lacking standardized, industrial equipment and practices would likely have a highly painful time working with.
In the end, looking at how the runes acted, it placed the grainy, likely useless without reconstruction, image of the constantly repeating rune within the Magic(?) folder’s Runes(???) subfolder as “Anti-Gravity Rune”, noting that from what little it could tell, it appeared to be off when the hammer began weighing what it should normally, whilst the compound rune still remained turned glowing, its purpose within the weapon too vague to currently estimate with satisfying accuracy.
Regardless of how peculiar all of these new findings are, however, NIM was, decidedly, quite excited. After all, it had to wonder, just how small could these runes go? Just how far could an intelligence like it push them, compared to what the primitive humans of this region had been able to accomplish so far?