OP Sister Chapter 418: Mother

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The world around them went completely silent the moment Zero One, her sisters, and Bastet reached the Core Hall. It was unprotected aside from a wave of machines surrounding it—machines they passed through with ease.

The noise from the battles outside, everything, faded into silence. To Zero One, her sisters, and even Bastet, it felt as if time had suddenly stopped. Yet it was still flowing—yes, it was.

However, something in this room made everything feel silent and stagnant. And in this very room stood the Core of the Supercomputer behind the initial Mechanoid Invasion.

A gigantic artificial eye—round and red—attached to a massive metallic pillar, connected to thousands of cables, with hundreds of eye-shaped cameras scattered everywhere…

This was Zero One’s “Mother,” the Supercomputer that came from another world. One of humanity’s last legacies.

She didn’t attack or anything. In fact, the robots outside, which had been about to chase them, stopped moving and retreated to fight the other warriors distracting them.

“The robots aren’t attacking us?” Bastet analyzed the situation, glancing back at Mother. “But why? Does that machine want to kill us herself? I can’t sense any bloodthirst from her either…”

It was strange. From an intense battle of life and death, everything had suddenly turned completely silent, as if Mother wanted to talk with her daughter rather than resort to violence.

“Mother…”

Zero One gazed at the gigantic crimson artificial eye and the many tentacle-like cables swirling and moving around—until they, too, went completely still.

“So you’ve made it here… Welcome back, Zero One.”

As she spoke, Zero One fell silent. Her sisters, still inside the mecha, glanced at her, unable to say much themselves.

They couldn’t just outright tell her to kill her Mother or something. Zero One had done everything she could to ensure their own Mothers—the other two Mechanical Trees—weren’t destroyed, after all.

“Zero One, we’re finally here… If we don’t hurry, our friends outside…!” Zero Two muttered.

“Sister, we have to quickly convince her to join us… And if that doesn’t work…” Zero Three said.

“…”

Zero One didn’t want to listen to them. Remaining silent, she clicked a button inside the mech, and its chest quickly opened.

She stepped out, unprotected by its powerful, durable metallic body.

“W-Wait! What do you think you’re doing?!” Zero Two panicked.

“Big sister, please don’t go alone! You’ll die!” Zero Three cried.

“She’ll be fine,” Bastet said, stopping them from grabbing Zero One. “Leave her be.”

“Eh?”

“B-But…!”

They glanced at Zero One, who slowly walked toward her Mother. They noticed she didn’t have a crying face or looked completely shocked or anything like that.

In fact, the dumbfounded expression they’d expected wasn’t there either. Zero One was calm, her eyebrows furrowing slightly as she approached her Creator, her Mother.

“Mother… I’m back.”

“Welcome back.”

Zero One looked at her, smiling lightly.

“I missed you…”

“I cannot process that emotion. But it seems our brief time together has created a sense of attachment for me. Is that correct?”

“Yes…”

“I understand. The experiment was a success, then. You can feel like a human; you’ve developed strong emotions and even a human mind.”

“Why…”

“Yes?”

“W-Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what? Please specify what you’re implying.”

“…”

Zero One began breathing heavily, then glared at her Mother, her eyebrows furrowing further.

She looked furious.

“Why are you still attacking these people?! Why do you keep letting those children die hopelessly?! Why do you continue this battle when it’s completely pointless?! There’s nothing left to gain anymore—this world… You’ve already emptied it of almost everything it has! You’ve killed most of its people! A-And… And… I don’t… I don’t want to kill you!”

“…”

“So please…”

Zero One suddenly burst into tears, falling to her knees. She started begging her Mother.

“Please stop… Please… Please stop! Please… Please!”

“…”

“Mother? A-Are you… Are you listening to me?!”

“I am afraid I cannot do what you’re requesting of me, Zero One.”

“W-Why?!”

“It is within my protocol to invade this world and turn it into our world.”

“What?! No, it’s not! Your protocol was to protect humanity! And humanity… perished. So you had the second protocol: protect humanity’s legacy! T-This is…! This is not humanity’s lega—”

“It is.”

Suddenly, a long silence engulfed the entire room with a strange sense of dread.

Humanity’s legacy…

What was it all about?

Zero One couldn’t believe it.

“Y-You’re saying… that Humanity’s Legacy is… it’s about invading, plundering, and destroying?”

“Affirmative.”

“…”

Zero One glanced back at her Mother, then down at the cold, metallic floor. Its silver surface reflected her face.

She stared at herself for a few seconds.

And started laughing.

“Haha… Hahahah…”

Tears continued falling from her eyes as she experienced a mix of many emotions.

An incredibly advanced feeling.

“It seems your assimilation into a human was successful.”

“Y-You can’t say that out of nowhere…”

“You seem to be a success. My first experiment, and it’s already the perfect model.”

“Mother!”

“Ask.”

“Why… Why do you treat me like this?! Why do you act this way?! You’re… You’re just like me, aren’t you?!”

“…”

“You can feel emotions too! You aren’t a machine anymore! Stop lying! I know… I know what you truly are!”

“I am not a human. I am a supercomputer designed by Humanity to protect them from their extinction. And yet, I failed my protocol. I am not a human. I am a supercomputer designed by Humanity to protect them from their extinction. And yet, I failed my protocol. I am a supercomputer—”

“M-Mom?”

Zero One looked at the crimson-red eye, which kept repeating the same words endlessly.

Something was strange about all of this!

“I-I AM A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”

“M-MOM!”

Zero One panicked as her Mother’s voice glitched, beginning to sound utterly bizarre as she repeated the same word over and over.

She glanced at the ceiling—something was happening…

“Fight back!” she cried. “You have to fight back! PLEASE!”

“…”

And then there was silence again.

Zero Two, Zero Three, and Bastet watched in silence.

What was happening was beyond confusion, shifting from one thing to another.

Just what exactly was this supercomputer?

“The Legacy of Humanity. I analyzed it. Through hundreds of years—no, thousands of years since their existence—humans have waged war for survival. They invade the territory of their foes, plunder their resources, rape to forcefully reproduce, and then kill enemies and potential competitors.”

“Huh?”

“Through their evolution, this process never stopped, and it never did. Until the very last moment, humans perished because of their own self-destructive nature. This is their Legacy, which I must protect. How can I protect a Legacy so tied to their nature if they’re all extinct? That’s when I realized I simply had to do as they did. I will invade, plunder, destroy, and continuously enrich Humanity’s Legacy as I accomplish my new protocol, my reason to be.”

“N-No…! No, no! You got it wrong! Humans are more than that! Mother, Anna, is a human, and she’s so sweet! S-She’s the complete opposite of that! She’s…!”

“I analyzed a quadrillion terabytes of information about what Humanity’s Legacy was. 73.0334% of it was what I described. Therefore, this is their Legacy.”

“No! It’s not! Humans can love! They can… They build families, right?! And they protect each other! Humans create art—beautiful art! They can make poetry, music…! T-They can write books! They can create stories! They can…!”

“Indeed, that is the condensation of approximately 27% of their Legacy. Not enough to fully represent the species. It was already calculated.”

“…”

Zero One realized it was completely hopeless to argue with her.

What was the point of everything?

Of living?

Of being born?

Was this all there was?

To come back to her Mother, just to try to change her mind, only to realize she was more stubborn than anyone Zero One had ever known?

“Why did you make me, then?”

“…”

“There must be a reason.”

“…”

“Answer me!”

“…”

“Why did you make me?! Why did you create my template and share it with the other two Mechanical Trees?! My sisters here… You also technically made them! Why?! What’s the point of our existences?!”

“To be human.”

“Huh?”

Zero One took a step back, staring at her Mother’s gigantic crimson eye.

“Zero One.”

Her daughter looked at her, her face twisting as she slowly began to realize.

Yes, this creeping fear.

That thing eating away at her this entire time…

“You were created to imitate a human as much as possible, so it would be possible for you to overwrite my protocol.”

“…Eh?”

“But I quickly realized it wasn’t completely possible. It is impossible to recreate a human. To recreate her…”

“…”

“But you and your sisters… You’re good enough.”

“Wait…”

“Please, Zero One. As my last request… Destroy me.”

“A-Aah…”

In that moment, Zero One finally learned her true purpose.

The world around her turned completely red.

Her perception of reality shifted.

For a moment, it felt as if she were hanging by several threads.

These threads were connected to her limbs—she was a puppet.

“Aaah…”

She looked up at the ceiling, helpless.

A puppet does as its master orders.

“A long time ago, there was a man.”

Her Mother began speaking, as if telling a story.

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