Ch.107107. Treatment.

Humans have continuously strived to defy the laws of nature.

But what they built up eventually came full circle and overwhelmed the last remaining human.

“…Mori?”

The friend who had journeyed with me for so long collapsed right in front of me.

Mori’s fingertips twitched slightly as she lay crushed under massive debris, approaching death, while blood spread across the cold floor.

An ordinary person would have panicked at such a sight and been unable to do anything.

But despite having sophisticated circuits that allowed for human-like expressions and thinking, what stood before Mori was ultimately a robot.

Mori had completely lost consciousness, not responding even when called.

Determining that this was a situation Mori could never escape from alone, the robot quickly moved away.

If it had been another robot dying, it might have stayed by their side to ensure they wouldn’t be lonely in their final moments.

But Mori was the robot’s only human and unique friend.

The robot had a duty to save her somehow, and wanted to save her.

Moving at maximum speed, it searched for Alexander, which they had parked near the building entrance.

“Puppy, please wait here.”

“Whine…”

Though this area wasn’t intact either, with broken glass scattered around, Alexander itself remained undamaged since nothing had fallen on it from above.

The robot placed the Puppy in the cargo compartment. While normally helpful for emotional stability, the puppy robot couldn’t help in this situation.

Looking at the dejected Puppy robot, wondering if Mori would die like so many others they had seen, the robot gathered medical modules, tools, and various medicines and bandages Mori had kept in her bag.

“Calculating survival probability—extremely low.”

But… this wasn’t enough.

The medications, of unknown manufacturing date, might not even function properly, and the quantity was ridiculously small.

The lack of blood packs and anesthetics was also problematic. Even if surgery wasn’t possible, minimal procedures would be necessary, but could Mori handle more blood loss when bleeding had already begun? Without anesthetics, the likelihood of death from shock during treatment was extremely high.

No, the first problem was removing the debris crushing her.

The robot wasn’t built for rescue or construction. There was a reason Mori would step in whenever something heavy needed lifting.

Removing the debris piece by piece would take too long—time Mori didn’t have.

This problem, that problem. With each additional condition, the survival probability decreased.

Even as the robot searched for solutions, the probability continued dropping, soon falling below one percent.

Though the robot’s circuits heated up from continuous calculations to improve those odds,

there simply wasn’t a viable solution for Mori, whose very existence in this world was already miraculous.

“—Come to think of it, there were industrial robots. And an infirmary.”

In that moment, various knowledge the robot didn’t know it possessed surfaced in its circuits.

Like when it had told Mori to “go to Paradise” when she asked about the library’s location.

The robot headed toward a place they had never visited while Mori was awake, following building schematics somehow stored in its head. A drone suddenly activated and flew after the robot.

Creak,

A remote location. The warehouse-like space contained many deactivated robots.

The sleeping robots didn’t move, but fortunately, the robot had the knowledge to transplant their parts into itself.

Why did a mere maintenance robot like itself possess such knowledge?

The robot momentarily felt strange about having knowledge beyond its original purpose, but that wasn’t important now.

The robot quickly replaced its parts.

It removed its own arms and various components, except for a few arms needed for delicate work, and attached large arms and hands to its body.

This made its appearance awkward and would obviously cause functional deterioration and durability issues due to the imbalance.

But the appearance and condition of a mere robot wasn’t more important than the life of its living friend.

After completing the transplant quickly, prioritizing speed above all else, the robot adapted to its skewed balance while visiting the infirmary.

In the wrecked building, the infirmary was surprisingly intact—so much so that one might believe it had been absent during the disaster—with all necessary medications neatly arranged.

Blood packs that hadn’t coagulated, easily injectable anesthetics, antibiotics, and more.

Had Mori seen this, she would have been lost in thought about how incongruous it all seemed, but the robot felt no sense of incongruity in the space.

Judging phenomena was a human role, not a robot’s. It was simply glad that Mori’s survival probability had increased.

“Please sleep for a while.”

With all preparations complete, the robot immediately went to rescue Mori. Fortunately, her breathing hadn’t stopped. The robot had also confirmed she had been conscious, if only for a moment.

But her lowered body temperature and heart rate indicated the situation remained critical. One small mistake or delay could mean death.

The robot carefully removed the debris. Though its body sustained some damage in the process, nothing fell onto Mori. That was enough.

After clearing enough debris, the robot carefully lifted Mori’s mangled body and carried her to a bed in the infirmary.

Scanning her body while removing her clothes for treatment revealed injuries everywhere.

Her upper body, somewhat protected by thick clothing, had only fractures, but her lower body was the problem.

The fractures were visible even from the outside, along with severe contusions and lacerations.

Without proper treatment, she would never walk again—that’s how serious the injuries were.

The fortunate aspects were that the robot now possessed sufficient medical knowledge, not much time had passed, and the bones weren’t damaged beyond recognition, allowing the position to be corrected with procedures and minor surgery.

The robot administered blood to Mori while injecting anesthetic containing nanobots into her spinal canal.

[Neural blockade——100%]

Once the nanobots confirmed the neural signals were blocked, the robot verified there would be no pain response and immediately began treatment.

It manually aligned the broken leg bones, carefully reduced the fractures near the ankle by making incisions, and quickly sutured the torn skin.

While Mori slept peacefully with her nerves completely blocked,

the problem was that there were people watching this entire process vividly.

People who had forgotten Mori for decades.

Having casually entered a suddenly appearing video feed, they were confronted with terrible disaster and medical treatment.

The clear sound and sight of broken bones being fitted together caused sympathetic pain and distress worldwide.

Some tried to report it as content too harmful for ordinary people or children to see, but were confused when they couldn’t—a farce repeating past events.

Of course, the robot had no way of knowing this, so it focused solely on treating Mori, regardless of the drone hovering nearby.

* * *

“……”

When I woke up, many things had changed.

I clearly remembered being crushed by massive debris—my dying self trapped underneath was vivid in my memory.

Yet after losing consciousness, I found myself lying on a bed. Moreover, my entire body was tightly bound.

I suddenly realized I was wrapped in bandages and splints.

It was strange. I didn’t have such sturdy splints for my damaged legs, nor enough bandages to wrap my entire body—where did they come from?

To begin with, the space I was lying in was utterly mysterious.

Despite the massive earthquake and collapsed building, nothing here was damaged—not the lights, not even the shelves.

As if this place hadn’t existed in the world during the disaster.

…Is this a dream?

In this scene too surreal to accept as reality, I naturally wondered if this was a dream or the afterlife.

Of course, if that were the case, I wouldn’t be bound in bandages like this, but the change in circumstances was so bewildering that I forgot even such obvious logic.

Especially since I’d been living in a world where nothing changed unless I took the initiative.

“…Ugh!”

But as my consciousness cleared and my mind began functioning properly, the pain throughout my body told me this was all real.

Pain severe enough to make me feel like dying, but not enough to actually kill me—painfully reassuring me this was reality.

Grimacing in pain, I looked around. Where was the robot? I remember it asking me to leave things to it at the end.

“What is that?”

As I looked around, I was startled. No wonder—while I slept, the robot’s appearance had completely changed.

It still had the same round face with slender arms, but now massive arms and hands that belonged on a giant robot were attached to both sides of its head.

Not only were the proportions wrong, but it seemed unbalanced, tilting to one side in sleep mode, which made me feel a bit uneasy.

…I didn’t expect it to go to such lengths to save me.

I thought I should thank it when it woke from sleep mode, then looked to the side.

“…Huh? I must really be dreaming. What a painful—and vivid—dream.”

There was the drone I had missed so much but shouldn’t have longed for, watching me.

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and looked again, but the drone was still capturing me with its camera.

I should be happy to meet an old friend after so long, especially after barely surviving a life-or-death situation.

But all that came out of my mouth was “Why?”