Nick spent the next minutes familiarizing himself with the base's capabilities.
When he looked at the Zephyx storage, he frowned.
Zephyx was necessary to synthesize Pure Energy, and the Zephyx storage was very low.
The next moment, Nick looked at the part of the grid where the Peak Adversary was supposed to be.
For some reason, that spot was empty.
"There is a Peak Adversary here that is not in the system," Nick said.
"Area is considered top secret," the Assistant said. "Do you wish to add the area to the regular layout?"
"Yes."
The next moment, the Containment Unit appeared, and Nick saw all the information about the Peak Adversary.
It grew more powerful by consuming human corpses.
"Can the Zephyx of its Containment Unit be harvested to refill the Zephyx storage?"
"The Containment Unit is not intrinsically connected to Rising Star Base's central network, but the Zephyx can be manually transported by drones," Assistant answered.
"Analyze the city above Rising Star Base," Nick ordered.
"Affirmative. Estimated time to completion: One hour."
Nick waited in silence for the entire hour.
"City designated as Crimson City."
Then, Assistant told Nick all the details about the city.
The speed and detail of the gathered information were terrifyingly accurate.
Nick would need several days and constant mind-reading to gather all of this information.
The more he interacted with Rising Star Base, the more he realized how superior the Enlightened Ones were.
Not even he could compare to this automated base.
"Identify criminals and generate a list."
A moment later, a long list appeared in front of Nick.
There were almost 1500 names, which was around 10% of the entire population.
First, Nick deleted people who committed petty crimes like burglary and thievery.
He also got rid of minor white-collar crimes and a couple more petty charges.
Most of this information was gathered by looking at documents and listening to people.
However, a person's testimony was not as valuable as hard evidence, which meant the criminals listed were all only possible criminals.
The lowest one only had a 10% chance of actually being a criminal, while the highest ones were at 100%.
Nick got rid of everyone below 95% certainty.
In the end, he was left with only around 50 criminals.
These were the worst criminals of Crimson City.
"Infiltration Drones one through five will be sent to execute these criminals and retrieve their corpses. Priority is secrecy."
"Executing criminals with a certainty lower than 100% violates the Empire's ethics code," Assistant answered.
Nick frowned.
He could probably overwrite the ethics code since he was the Emperor, but maybe Assistant was right.
With a 95% chance of certainty, there would be two to three innocents among 50 people based on chance.
"Then, only get the ones with 100% certainty."
That left a measly eight people.
"Affirmative," Assistant said.
The next moment, Nick saw five small robots moving on the grid.
Meanwhile, around the base of Crimson City…
A tiny drill quietly created a small hole in the molten metal surrounding Rising Star Base.
A moment later, the drill retreated, and a long stream of metal came out of the wall.
As soon as the stream of metal left the hole, it split into five pieces.
Several tiny legs appeared on the machines, giving them the appearance of small spiders.
Then, all of them turned invisible.
The drones rapidly entered the city.
Meanwhile, inside the Outer City, in a small home…
Three men were talking about their work and other random things.
They all worked on the farms, and their shifts had finally aligned, giving them the opportunity to gather.
As they talked, one of the invisible drones entered the house.
The drone immediately moved towards the target.
It slowly climbed the man's body,and the man didn't notice it.
A tiny needle came out of the drone, which quietly entered one of the man's veins.
For a couple of minutes, the men just kept talking and laughing.
"I gotta leave a big one," the target said with a laugh as he stood up.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Stephen. You don't have to tell us whenever you need to take a shit. Just go," another guy said with annoyance.
Stephen just laughed. "Well, I had some rats recently. Guess my guts aren't happy with me."
The other two looked at Stephen with shock.
Rats?!
Why?!
They had enough money to buy proper food!
Why would this guy eat rats?!
"That's horrible, Stephen!" another guy said.
Stephen just laughed and walked to the toilet.
As soon as he arrived in front of the toilet, the drone injected something else.
Stephen suddenly felt tired, and mere moments later, he collapsed.
All brain activity had ceased.
The tiny drone turned into liquid again and engulfed the man.
CRRRR!
The metal compressed until Stephen was turned into a ten-meter-long meat string.
The meat string was rolled into a ball, and the drone was now several times bigger.
Finally, it crawled through one of the windows and went back to the Rising Star Base.
When it arrived at the tiny hole, it compressed the corpse even more, becoming thin enough to fit through the hole.
It walked to the Containment Unit containing the Jolly Cannibal and stopped.
Nick was already in front of the Containment Unit, and he could see the drone approaching.
However, even with his advanced perception, it was quite difficult for him to perceive it.
Its camouflage ability was almost perfect.
Within the next two hours, the other drones also arrived.
"Mission accomplished," Assistant told Nick.
Nick nodded and walked over to the Containment Unit.
"Open a communications channel," Nick ordered.
The next moment, the image of the insides of a Containment Unit appeared in front of Nick.
Inside the Containment Unit was a bearded man wearing casual clothing.
A moment later, he turned his head and looked directly at the camera.
The next moment, the guy said something in an unknown language.
"Translate," Nick ordered.
Somehow, the Seed could already speak Nick's language, while the Peak Adversary couldn't.
The two of them had communicated with a self-created language.
Nick still didn't know the language of the Enlightened Ones.
"It says, are you the one I've been talking to?" Assistant answered.
The next moment, Nick approached the Containment Unit and sent some vibrations.
"Yes, and I got food," he transmitted with the vibrations.
The Jolly Cannibal smiled brightly.
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