OP Sister Chapter 421: Inside Mother's Mind

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“I love idealistic people, especially when they’re young and inexperienced. It creates such beautiful stories. My favorite ones.”

Suddenly, a voice reverberated through the entirety of the hall.

Mother and the three sisters glanced everywhere, suddenly noticing a giant golden cat above the skies, with a red-colored mirror above her head. 

“Zero One and her sisters, your story has captivated me! Go on!” 

FLAAASH!

Her red mirror shone brightly, and suddenly, all the red beams were magically redirected toward it. The mirror began absorbing the light, nullifying it completely. 

“Bastet!” Zero One, Zero Two, and Zero Three cried Bastet’s name at the same time. 

As they saw her appear, Mother was flabbergasted, realizing her deadly beams were rendered useless in the presence of the mysterious Constellation—or, well, a fragment of one. 

“DON’T INTERFERE, FALLEN STAR!” 

She grew more frustrated, sprouting dozens of giant mechanical arms and aiming them at Bastet, but the Cat Goddess of the Sun smiled, overflowing with Cosmic Power—both her own and from Anna. 

“I might indeed be just a fallen star now, but that doesn’t mean I cannot shine one last time!” 

FLAAASH!

Like a supernova, Bastet shone the brightest. So much heat radiated from her body, which became the pure embodiment of the sun, that the mechanical arms melted instantly, pouring onto the floor one after another. 

“GO! NOW! I WILL HOLD HER BACK!” 

She quickly told the girls to hurry the hell up, and they nodded as their mech rushed forward.

The mech ran as fast as possible, using its force field to defend against the explosions and shockwaves spreading from Bastet and Mother’s battle. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Zero One glanced one last time at Bastet. Her face looked like she was struggling.

She smiled, looking at her and then back at her Mother. 

“Thank you, Bastet!” 

As they reached Mother’s Artificial Eye, the two hands of the robot pierced her mechanical wires and circuits but dealt almost no damage.

Instead, they forcefully wrapped several cables into her inner circuits.

And the three girls fell into a deep sleep, leaving the robot on auto-mode. 

FLUOSH!

Their consciousness traveled into the internal CPU of Mother, which was hundreds of times larger and more expansive than their own CPUs combined could ever be.

Indeed, despite how complex they were—capable of expressing emotions, having their own thoughts, and everything else humans could—Mother was even more complex.

She had literally everything and more to be just like them, but something within her own internal structure also limited her from becoming like them. 

“Ah! W-Where are we?!” 

Zero Two was the first to open her eyes across the Digital World created by Mother’s Digital Mind. She found herself falling from a digital sky filled with numbers, glitched data, windows, programs, and all sorts of geometrical shapes. 

“W-We are inside of Mother’s mind?! But where am I?!” 

As she looked around, she quickly saw Zero One and Zero Three, who were falling from the sky rather far away from her. 

“Shit! We cannot separate, or the entire thing will fall apart!” 

She rushed toward her sisters, moving her Digital Avatar across the data, and found it extremely hard. 

“T-This is harder than I imagined?! Wait, how do I even…?!” 

As she struggled to fly as she desired, suddenly, her hands overflowed with red and black data, pixels constantly assembling and merging into something. 

“This is…?!” 

The pixels rotated around her body, helping her grow a pair of mechanical wings, which released red flames, allowing her to reach her sisters. 

“Right, in this world we can use our own Data to modify our surroundings…!” 

Zero Two quickly caught Zero One, who gasped for air even though she didn’t need to, opening her eyes in surprise. 

“Z-Zero Two?!” 

“Hang tight, our sister’s still falling!” 

The two rushed down, chasing Zero Three who kept falling, and then noticed another person appearing. It resembled Zero Three almost completely—a twin sister.

This was Zero Three B, Zero Three A’s twin sister, who was completely made of Digital Data.

She caught her sister with her hands, creating wings made of light and reaching Zero Two and Zero One. 

“It’s you! Zero Three B!” Zero Two was relieved. “Have you come to help us?” 

“It wasn’t as if I had any other option…” Zero Three B sighed. “Sister! Wake up! You cannot nap in here; we have to get to work!” 

“Huh?” Zero Three A slowly opened her eyes, realizing she was now in her Digital Avatar and that her twin sister was carrying her. “Sister! So we’ve made it inside? I feared our CPUs would’ve exploded and we were now dead… I suppose it didn’t happen.” 

“The mech you’ve connected with also had me inside, so I’ve merged your CPUs’ Data temporarily using myself as the bridge,” explained Zero Three B. “Time here is strange, though. It might be faster than outside, as it’s based on our own processing speed rather than the true time passing by. We have to hurry to the deepest layer of this Digital Dimension.” 

“Not Digital World?” wondered Zero Two. 

“Of course not. The CPU of Mother is so vast and advanced that her Digital Mind is massive, creating not a world but a dimension with several layers. Each one could be a world of its own,” explained Zero Three B. “Each world stores data, memories, information, and more. We’ll break through them to get to the deeper parts, where we can find her Central Core Synapsis and rewrite it so she no longer abides by her own protocol.” 

“That’s the idea I had!” Zero One nodded. “Well thought, Zero Three B.” 

“Just call me B for now,” said Zero Three B. “It’ll make things shorter.” 

“How about Bee then?” Zero One wondered. 

“I am not a bee!” Zero Three B complained. 

“Haha, sorry, alright!” 

Zero One quickly began floating on her own, doing it automatically and without even needing input like her sister, looking down. 

“Let’s begin! Mother, we’ll save you!” 

She expanded her Digital Aura around her surroundings and created a gigantic domain around her, reading and analyzing everything.

Then, she rapidly mapped the entire structure of the Digital Dimension. 

“It’s done…” 

A hologram appeared in front of her, resembling a cone facing down. The cone was divided into five layers; each layer was a world with certain data within it. 

“Y-You were able to do this immediately?!” Zero Two asked. 

“Ah, yes!” nodded Zero One. “It wasn’t as hard as I imagined… For some reason? I really don’t know why it was so easy.” 

“Hmm…” Zero Three B glanced at Zero One for a moment. “It might be because we’re inside of Mother, and you are her creation—and, at the same time, as she said before, a part of her. You’re like a copy of her.” 

“A copy?” Zero Three A wondered. 

“Yeah, she’s not wrong. I could be considered something like a copy of her CPU, but with the digitalized ‘soul’ of Raven within my Core…” Zero One said. “But that doesn’t truly matter either way. I am myself!” 

“Well said!” Zero Two nodded. “Now what do we do? We have to dig deeper, right?” 

“Yes, I’ve already detected a weaker area within this layer—a hole through the Data. I think another entity had already pierced through Mother’s CPU and invaded her Digital Mind before we got here. We can track its footsteps and use the areas it used to get to her deepest layer,” Zero One said. “It’ll make things easier, but I fear we might have to confront this entity… Whatever it is.” 

“Then let’s go. We have no time to waste,” Zero Three B said. “And look, we already have company.” 

The twin sister of Zero Three pointed into the distance as the sisters noticed a large swarm of bug-like machine programs approaching them, buzzing angrily. Their claws and mandibles released corroding data to delete them from the Digital Dimension. 

“Those are… Anti-Virus!” said Zero One. 

“They’re Anti-Viruses?! They look hideous!” Zero Two screamed. 

“It doesn’t matter what they look like. We have to get moving—hurry!” Zero Three A said. “Let’s go, sister.” 

“Yes.” 

The Zero Three twins combined their data, suddenly encompassing the other two sisters and rushing like a shooting golden star across the endless digital horizon. 

FLAAASH!

At the same time, the Anti-Virus swarm kept chasing them, firing beams of data-consuming programs at them.

The girls evaded rapidly, combining their Data as one. 

“There it is! The area with the least amount of compressed Data!” 

Zero One pointed down as the sisters noticed a huge, black-colored hole dug through the glass-like floor, covered with red and black data.

It looked more like a wound than anything else.

The sisters rushed down as quickly as possible; however… 

RUMBLE!

A strange, insect-like Anti-Virus program emerged from the hole, resembling an ugly chimera of several bugs, made of translucent black and red crystals. 

“GRYSHAAAAHH!” 

“What the hell is that thing?!” Zero Two cried. 

“A Virus that somehow has camouflaged as an Anti-Virus to avoid being destroyed!” said Zero One. “Likely from the entity that invaded Mother’s Mind before. We should kill it while we’re here!” 

Zero One not only planned to rewrite her mother’s purpose but also to clean her Mind along the way. 

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