[The World of The Machina]
’It’s been a while since I came here. I should’ve paid more attention to them.’
This thought went through Jason’s mind as Jason looked down from a tall building at the destroyed Machina city below. The former city of Machina had been completely destroyed by the battle between Jason, Gillian, and Rubik, and Jason knew that it would take years for anyone to rebuild what had been lost. The main battle had already destroyed a majority of the world, but the Death Star that the Machina used to try and kill Jason and Gillian had levelled the rest of the world, so now there was barely anything left of the once magnificent city. Jason finally turned away from the destruction and called on his subordinates before ordering them to spread out to look for any living Machina.
Jason had come here right after his meeting with the Supreme Leader to search the world and see if there were any survivors left behind. Jason knew that a lot of blame for what happened here lay on him. Even though Gina had tried to make Jason not blame himself, Jason knew that as the new Overlord, it had been his responsibility to make sure something like this never happened.
If Jason had been paying more attention to the Machina, then he could’ve stopped them before they launched their attack on Earth, but Jason also knew he couldn’t dwell on what-ifs, so he simply got rid of those thoughts and waited patiently for his subordinates to complete their search. The sun had already set in the sky, and there was a cold wind blowing across the rooftops. But Jason stood on the building with his hands in his coat pockets, and he didn’t even flinch against the cold as his coat fluttered behind him.
’My king. We found something.’
It hadn’t taken five minutes for the subordinates to find something, and Jason immediately used [King’s Substitute] to head towards where the subordinate was! Jason landed on a building at one end of a large street, and he felt his eyes widen slightly when he looked out on all the people below him. There were thousands of Machina children with a few hundred Machina adults in the group! They were all facing towards Jason, but they were on their knees with their hands stretched out in front of them like religious men praying to a god above them. The Machina were all looking up into the dark sky with wide, unseeing eyes, and Jason couldn’t help but think that this was some sort of ritual.
’No, not a ritual. I can’t feel any magic from them. It’s like... they’ve been petrified.’
Jason felt an uncomfortable feeling growing in his heart the longer he looked at the Machina, and Jason blinked in surprise as he realised that many of the Machina were actually looking at him! No, not at him. Behind him! Jason turned around slowly, and his eyes narrowed as he saw a massive rune carved into the wall of a tall building behind him!
’Is that an eye? Who the hell drew this?’
Jason’s eyes glanced over the massive rune with interest, and Jason realised that the rune was at least a Third Grade. The Rune had been carved in the shape of a single eye surrounded by a halo. The Rune had already lost all the magic within it, and it was now inactive, but it would’ve been extremely powerful when it was active. Jason studied the rune closely, and it didn’t even take him thirty seconds to analyse both the key and the foundation as he easily deconstructed the entire thing! Once Jason was done, he realised that this rune was meant to project someone’s gaze towards a wider area.
’The rune sequence here is similar to the mechanism of a projector screen, but it’s far more complex. It’s meant to project both sight and energy to a wider audience. But something is missing here. This is just one half of the rune sequence, and it won’t activate without the second part.’
Jason immediately deduced that the second part of this rune would be drawn on someone’s face. Was someone trying to project their sight towards the crowd?
Jason looked from the eye towards the group of Machina kneeling beneath him, and Jason quickly came up with a possible hypothesis for what had gone on here. The Mind Art’s user must have carried out a mass mental manipulation on the Machina here. Does that mean that the Mind Art’s user needs to look in your eyes before he can manipulate you? Is that one of the conditions of his Arcane Art?
Jason frowned as his mind ran through various possibilities, but Jason needed to be sure that the Machina here were really unsalvageable, so he sent a few subordinates into the crowd and told them to bring a few people to him. Anyone Jason’s subordinates touched would fall lifelessly to the ground with drool falling from their mouths, and after using his Qi to search their minds, Jason immediately realised that these people were the same as the other Machina that attacked Earth before. The Mind Arcane user was definitely responsible for this. But if that was the case, then why were they just sitting here? Why didn’t they attack Earth like the other Machina? The Mind Art’s user carried out a mass manipulation, so Jason figured that all the Machina would’ve attacked together.
"...Are these the defects?"
Jason didn’t know why this thought suddenly came to his mind, but he couldn’t help but think that the Mind Art’s user had also tried to manipulate the minds of these Machina, but rather than them retaining their ability to think after the Mind Art user went into their head, they lost all sense of self and immediately became vegetables. If that was the case, then Jason was sure that there was some criteria that the Mind Art’s user needed to fulfill before he could take over someone’s mind, and if it wasn’t done properly, then the Mind Art’s user would just end up turning the person into a mindless vegetable instead! If Jason was going to take him down, then Jason needed to figure out what those criteria were.
After searching through their minds with his Qi, Jason realised that there was nothing he could do for these Machina anymore, so Jason left the field of praying Machina and he began moving towards one of the buildings on the other side of the city. This building looked worn down and destroyed, but Jason didn’t mind the outside appearance, and he went through the front door to see a large cylindrical structure in the center of an empty room. Jason put a code into the keypad beside the structure, and he called on one of his Machina subordinates and made the subordinate scan his hand.
[Machina recognized. Access granted.]
A mechanical voice echoed through the room once the Machina scanned his hand, and a door opened into an elevator. Jason entered, and the elevator closed and immediately began to go down to a lower floor. It took about one minute for Jason to reach his destination, and once he did, the elevator opened, and Jason walked out into a gantryway that overlooked a wide underground cavern! The cavern had been built like a bunker with large metallic pillars holding up the roof, and metallic walls surrounding the main area. And in the center of all that were rows upon rows of small incubator pods that held tiny Machina babies. Jason let out a grateful breath when he saw that the babies were still alive, and Jason decided that this was for the best.
’A new generation of Machina that doesn’t remember what happened to the previous generation might be the best outcome out of all this.’