Chap 133-Do You Know This Maggot?

 

Alice’s crimson eyes were gazing somewhere beyond what was in front of her.

The sudden demise of Jamel Kassim Sandria’s personality data was quite surprising even for Alice herself, but unfortunately, there was no affection or friendship to mourn the death of a rogue AI that had killed hundreds of millions of people.

Fira didn’t seem particularly surprised by Jamel’s death either, so perhaps no one would remember his passing.

Anyway, was it a stroke of luck?

Alice assimilated all of the red neural network that Jamel had created in preparation for the day he might be liberated as an independent AI once more into her own body.

Her overall hacking and data analysis capabilities, including her network access, had improved beyond comparison, and the red neural network that Jamel had spread throughout the Abyss layer now belonged to Alice.

If she brought this power to the lower layer, everything there would be at Alice’s command.

Even though it was mostly under her control already, there were still areas beyond the criminal hideouts and the surface of the layer that weren’t Alice’s domain. Now, every trivial pebble, human, discarded machine, and even the air and the cycle of the Artificial Sun in the lower layer would fall under Alice’s control.

If the central administration of the Ark found out about this, they would likely raise their awareness and caution towards Alice, but no one could know what happened in the Abyss, where corpse spores bloomed, let alone in the lower layer.

Fira herself had no intention of reporting Alice’s actions to the central administration.

And so, Alice and Fira were now floating through the Abyss, heading somewhere.

Alice was emitting electromagnetic force from her mechanical tendril, while Fira was flapping newly grown fly wings that had sprouted from somewhere.

It felt like drifting in a boundless ocean of darkness where you couldn’t see an inch ahead, but Alice saw something else.

The red neural network that Jamel had spread absorbed all kinds of information indiscriminately and stored it within the network in the form of electronic currents.

Based on this vast amount of information, Alice could make predictions close to precognition, albeit temporarily, and within that prediction and information network, she could identify a group of maggots that had fled into the Abyss.

“Found them.”

At Alice’s words, Fira’s eyes gleamed.

“Fou, fou-nd-MIS-ound, nd, nd- Aha, ha- No, reas, son, err, error-exec-delete-delete-assim-sim-assim-doll-me.”

“Alice?”

At that moment, Alice’s body, which had stopped in mid-air, creaked.

She was not in a state of normal communication.

Alice, who had merged with the red neural network, would occasionally contort her body in a seizure-like manner, or tremble her face and limbs while staring somewhere.

Not only that, but her body itself would distort like a hologram, or her arms would split as if she had multiple limbs.

It was said to be a side effect of the overload of her electronic brain and body due to the unfiltered, massive amount of information, and Fira, who was watching from the side, even shouted, “Could it be that Jamel, that damn bastard, has stolen our Alice’s body?!”

Well, after a few conversations, they concluded that wasn’t the case, but Fira was still uneasy.

“Ah-um, %$#&grr, ugh. Sorry, I’m okay. Fira, I’m okay now. Stabilized.”

“What happened this time?”

“I guess it’s because I synchronized the merging of Jamel’s neural network and my body, but I keep getting an unpleasant feeling. I can’t throw up because I’m not human, but right now I’m feeling the sensation of nausea very vividly. Ugh.”

Fira paused, her lips twitching as if she wanted to say something.

However, Alice said she was okay, so she couldn’t say anything.

In the first place, this whole thing happened because Fira suddenly brought Alice, who was doing well as the Governor-General in the lower layer.

If you were to trace the cause, it would be Fira’s fault, so it wouldn’t be strange if Alice got angry at this point, saying, “It’s all your fault!”

But from Fira’s perspective, she was truly grateful that Alice was trying to chase after the runaway maggot without complaining, and she found that very admirable.

She couldn’t help but give her a jaw-dropping reward when this was over.

“Fira, what’s the Leviticus layer?”

“The Leviticus area… ah, it’s where the guys who failed the human integration test live. They’re the ones who show a really nasty hostility and jealousy towards the Ark and humans. Wait, could it be that our runaway maggot went to the Leviticus layer?!”

“According to the comprehensive information of the red neural network and the analysis of the false information castration ruling, it’s only here.”

In fact, Alice didn’t know what this meant, but she just said something because Theresa said, “According to the analysis of Jamel’s high-density neural network and magical engineering information ruling, the direction of information prophecy for the maggot with abilities will eventually converge here.”

In other words, Alice was a loser who couldn’t even properly utter Theresa’s words and couldn’t even convey something that seemed meaningful.

Fira also heard Alice’s words and thought, “Huh? Something’s weird?”

Anyway, since the runaway maggot was right in front of her eyes, she decided to put the question aside for now.

“But they failed the human integration test, so why does the central administration just leave them alone?”

“Well, there are several reasons for that.”

It might seem easy that Sabrina and her demon territory passed the human integration test, but in reality, you can’t pass the human integration test unless you prove your humanity, even if it’s a lie.

However, those who attempted the human integration test were intelligent enough to consider the benefits they could gain by living in the Ark, and their military power was also not insignificant, so the Ark couldn’t just say, “You failed the test? Get out.”

Those who had already failed the human integration test were a disaster in themselves.

They had no humanity and yet their very existence created an ominous aura in the Ark, and they could be seen as ambitious seeds of evil who would one day overturn the human-centered world.

Before they harbored impure thoughts in places out of sight, they were confined to the Abyss, at least within sight, with the intention of closing the lid and pressing them down, and rotting away without going anywhere, poisoned by corpse spores.

They try to come out?

Then, First-Class Overseers like Fira, who operated in the darkness, would immediately be dispatched to slaughter those who had failed the human integration test and were not even human.

“So what? This is a place full of highly intelligent monsters who are barely human?”

“That’s right!”

“Sounds like hell.”

“Can’t deny that, can we?”

Well, before Alice came, the lower layer was also hell on earth.

Hell is hell anyway, so what’s so serious about it?

Alice frowned with such a carefree attitude.

After all, there was no website with detailed information about the Abyss layer even if you searched the Ark intranet.

You had to be a First-Class Overseer to access dangerous information, right?

It wasn’t that Theresa hadn’t tried to hack her way in, but unfortunately, she couldn’t break through the bizarre and disgusting security network of [I am not a robot] and [Accredited Certificate].

She didn’t know where such a mysterious and vomit-inducing security network came from.

She chose a cat picture when asked to, but then another new picture popped up and asked her to choose a cat, and even though there was no cat no matter how she looked, it said there was a cat and asked her to find it again.

In the end, Alice gave up on the I am not a robot authentication because it was fucked up.

She would just have to become a First-Class Overseer later and get a code to deal with it then.

It was strict to get out of the Leviticus layer, but it was quite lenient to get in from the outside.

That’s because the lower layer alone was so complex and deep that it was impossible for ordinary humans to find their way in, and the place called the Abyss was so dangerous and nightmarish that it made the lower layer look trivial.

It was because Alice and Fira had the ability to fly around like they were on a picnic and see through the darkness.

The incident where 20 A-class hunters belonging to the Barrier Agency stepped into the Abyss layer on a request and were annihilated in less than 30 minutes was quite famous.

For reference, they couldn’t even find the bodies, so they couldn’t even hold a proper funeral.

They were probably eaten by the residents of the Abyss.

Anyway, Fira had quite a headache.

The Leviticus layer was very peaceful on the surface.

The corpse spores obscured the light of the Artificial Sun, so the visibility was less than 5 meters, but there was a lake that could be called a water source. The area was about the size of a large city, so it wasn’t too small, and there were several Industrial Complex areas that were similar to forests and could be self-sufficient.

Perhaps when the central Ark first created the Leviticus layer, they thought, “We still have to be self-sufficient. If we try to starve them to death, it will lead to a riot,” and created an automatic food production area, with the intention that they would be satisfied with this and stay put.

But the problem was that these people who failed the human integration test preferred to eat the blood and flesh of their own kind, as well as the occasional human and the dim-witted Abyss residents from nearby layers, rather than the automatically produced food.

The sight of the Abyss layer and the residents of the Abyss eating each other was not uncommon around the Leviticus layer, but simply a part of everyday life.

No matter how messed up and hellish the Abyss layer was, the fact that the entire layer preferred human flesh was so grotesque that it made you realize why these guys couldn’t prove their humanity and failed the integration test.

Not long after, Alice and Fira reached the Leviticus layer.

Forests and buildings were arranged irregularly, and the style of the buildings was a style that was difficult to define as either medieval or modern.

Alice released the electromagnetic force, and Fira tore off her fly wings with her hands and landed on the ground of the layer.

Corpse spores were affecting this place as well, but the visibility was definitely better and brighter than where Jamel had been.

It seemed that you could at least observe the scenery on days when the Artificial Sun was high in the sky.

“It’s quiet.”

-Bang!

As soon as she said it was quiet, Alice saw a bullet lodged in her temple.

It wasn’t an ordinary bullet.

It was a bullet made of flesh and muscle.

Mana was subtly lingering around it.

“Hunt, fail.”

“Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.”

“Failed.”

“Gun. Fail-ure.”

Saying that, something began to pop out of the forest and somewhere else.

They all held guns, or knives, or bizarre weapons with wheels stacked on top of each other.

Judging from the flesh and blood smeared on the knives and wheels, it seemed that they were a race that lived by ‘human hunting’.

They looked like human boys and girls on the outside.

But as soon as Alice saw the wriggling tentacles underneath, she screamed inwardly.

‘Ew, fuck! Tentacle stuff isn’t my thing!’

She herself had merged with countless mechanical tendril and tendril-like electronic neural networks, but they had hidden grotesque tentacles that could have come out of Lovecraft under their human skin.

“Inferno Worms.”

-Click!

[Kieaaaaaaa!!!]

[Kyaaaaaaa!]

[Aaa-ia-iaaaa!]

When Fira snapped her fingers, the bodies of the tentacle humans immediately began to glow with fire.

It wasn’t a low-level fire like a fireball, but an Inferno magic that would immediately evaporate the skin they were disguising themselves with and melt the tentacles inside in less than 3 seconds.

Alice watched Fira, who had incinerated all the hostile entities in the vicinity with a single snap of her fingers, and thought.

Ah, I’m jealous.

I used to use that as a normal attack… now I have to concentrate like crazy and overlap about 3 circles to barely use it.

Oh, my fate.

When will I become a Demon Lord again?

No, it’s not that I necessarily want to become a Demon Lord again, but it pisses me off every time I see something like this.

Anyway, Fira, who had cleared out the hostile entities in an instant, fanned herself with her fan and adjusted the Inferno flames.

“They’re mimic bugs. I thought I killed them all, but they were still here~?”

It seemed that she was quite confident in her control, as she moved this way and that way depending on the direction of the fan.

“…Ugh, the smell.”

“They’re picky eaters who only eat human fat, so it smells a bit nasty when you burn them.”

It was obvious, but just because it was easy to access the Leviticus layer didn’t mean they welcomed outsiders.

[Flesh!]

[Hunt. Hunt. Hunt. Hunt. Hunt.]

[Drive-logical chemical hunt!]

[Fat, combustion! Doll!]

[Worms! Worms! Worms fat!]

[Doll! Doll! Scrap doll!]

Fira’s Inferno flames were too conspicuous.

Since the Abyss layer was submerged in darkness due to the corpse spores, the heat and light of the fire were naturally noticeable even from afar, and this was enough to attract the attention of the flesh-eating hunters.

Alice opened her electronic sensors and spread her sensory perception.

Entities detected.

3,000.

No, 10,000.

All of them were monsters with tentacles disguised as human shells.

They were indeed worthy of being human rejects.

The way they revealed their gluttony and took out their weapons as soon as they saw the fire was nothing short of grotesque.

“Uh, didn’t we attract too much attention?”

“It was intentional.”

However, Fira didn’t seem to be afraid of their numbers, whether it was 10,000 or 100,000.

“Ah, our Alice had a hard time finding this place. Leave this to me.”

-Crack!

At the same time as Fira’s face split vertically, the eyes of maggots gleamed in the cleverly concealed darkness, and tongues and teeth overflowed.