Terminate the Other World! Chapter 1 - NSLICE-00P: Online and Ready to Terminate!

Author's Note:

Hello my loyal patrons!  The Faceless Minion is nearing the end of the main storyline (before the end of the month in fact), so I've officially started work on the new novel, an Isekai LitRPG featuring our favorite cyborg!  I am waiting for Royal Road's Writathon to go full force and still also hammering out a few details on the overall system, but I have the first chapter ready and am supposed to post any backlog before Writathon begins so here's a sneak peek at what's to come!  Note there is also a prologue but I'm skipping that here since it's purely a recap of relevant Faceless Minion plot points for new readers, so there's nothing new there for you all.

As for the cover art, I'll be waiting for the end of the week to see the results from the Royal Road and Scribblehub polls before compiling the totals.

This is not replacing the Faceless Minion chapter for today, which will release at the usual time.

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[Hm?  What’s this?]

[Something’s trying to connect to the Source?]

[What could it be…]

[…]

[It’s a…girl?]

[Hm…]

[Whoa…I’ve never seen something like this before…]

[Like, this shouldn’t be possible, right?]

[Hmmmmmm…]

[Looks like that thing in her chest is compatible…or rather, she’s already established a connection on her own so I guess it’s fine then?]

[…]

[More like they’re going to make me deal with it if I bring it up  and it's going to get all complicated sooooo….]

[I’ll just say I didn’t notice until it happened!  Which is technically true!]

[Good luck, whoever you are!]

[All I know is that’s one more dungeon core off my quota!]

***

It was a beautiful spring day in the forest.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and a soft breeze rustled the leaves of the trees.  A calm and peaceful lake sat in the center of the forest, completely still save for the ducks swimming along the surface or an occasional turtle rising up from below.  A handful of mountains and hills rose in the distance, covered in green as the forest continued up their slopes.

Suddenly a bright light flashed by one of the banks of the lake.  The light formed into the shape of a person, the air humming louder and louder as the light shrunk down.

There was a sound like thunder and the light vanished.

Revealing the form of a girl, now standing on the bank of the lake.

And no normal girl.

She was covered in metal armor, from the tips of her toes all the way up her neck.  Her arms and legs were made entirely of metal, in fact.  A circle of light shone bright in the center of her torso.  Her face was the only part of her that still appeared human, and only the right side of it.  The left half of her head was covered in metal as well, including her left eye, replaced with a glowing yellow prosthetic.

Non-Standard Leashed-Intelligence Cybernetic Enforcer, Designation NSLICE-00P, had arrived.

Her robotic yellow eye immediately turned red.  Metal extended up from her neck, fully encasing her head in a helmet.  She lifted her arms, her hands splitting apart and folding back into her arms so that gun barrels could extend out.  Panels opened all over her body, revealing the tips of small missiles ready to fire.  The core at her chest shone even brighter.

She spoke in a steady voice without intonation or deviation.  There was a light metallic echo to her words.

“Forced relocation detected, emergency combat protocols engaged.  Scanning for hostiles…”

She slowly turned around in a circle, her robotic eye glancing every which way.  She activated all of her sensors.  Radar, infrared, thermal, and of course, the sensors meant to detect more…exotic energy signatures.

“Non-standard energy type detected.  Analyzing…energy type identified as ‘mana’.  Tracing…”

NSLICE-00P tried to track the mana she detected, on the lookout for hostile mages.  That seemed the most likely explanation for her sudden relocation under the circumstances.  She had encountered some ‘supers’ wielding magic in the past, and so knew how to hunt them down.

But there was a problem.

There was no simple trail of mana leading to a single target.  Rather, the mana was everywhere.  In the trees, in the insects buzzing about, in the birds singing from the tall branches.  In the water, in the rocks, in the ground itself.  There was even an ambient level of mana just hanging around in the atmosphere all around the cyborg.

This was nothing like she had ever encountered before.  Normally mana was limited only to the tiny handful of people who were trained in its use.

Now?

Now it seemed like the entire world around her was filled to the brim with it.

“...scan complete.  No hostile sapients detected.  Running diagnostics…”

Since she couldn’t detect any sign of foul play, NSLICE-00P gave up the search and moved on to her next order of business.  After completing her previous mission, she had found herself suddenly ejected from her world to…well she wasn’t sure where.  Then her core deactivated, and she was in the process of rebooting when she found herself here.  So now that she had confirmed there was no immediate threat, she continued on with her normal reboot diagnostics.

And she immediately noticed a problem.

“Warning: Foreign intrusion detected!  Non-standard energy type: ‘mana’ has infiltrated hardware system.  Unknown program has made changes to standard UI.”

Mana was now flowing through her circuits…and the veins of her organic components.  And even more concerning, she now saw several new additions to her UI that she had never seen before.  A blue box displaying two tabs at the top of her vision.

[Dungeon Management]

[Personal Status]

“Deploying cyberwarfare countermeasures.”

NSLICE-00P attempted to eject the foreign program from her systems.

The tabs remained.

She tried again.

They were still there.

She could make the box disappear from her UI at will, it seemed, but she could still perceive it, connected to her systems.  And try as she might, she couldn’t identify where the program was coming from, and so couldn’t deploy any countermeasures against it.

Unable to locate the source of the intrusion, she decided to investigate her own logs.

Fortunately, she found something quickly.  Something that had happened just as she had shut off her logs in her final attempt to connect her Geo-Oscillator Engine with a suitable planetary core…

“Suitable planetary core located.  Connection established.  Core activation sequence successful.  Rebooting systems…”

“Foreign system detected managing planetary core.  Foreign system requesting connection prior to geo-oscillation calibration.  Analyzing.  Cannot calibrate to core independently.  Analyzing risk of intrusion.  Foreign system determined as non-intrusive.  Compatible API located.  Connecting to foreign system…”

From there on were logs regarding the rebooting of her Geo-Oscillator Engine.  It seemed that after resonating with the core of this planet, her Geo-Oscillator Engine had begun producing mana in addition to electricity and that was the source of the new energy coursing through her, with some additions from her organic components as well.  Likewise, the new UI she now saw seemed to be an API for a system at the center of the planet, some sort of recording and analysis system that also provided some built in applications of mana to its users.  For example, the foreign system had identified her Geo-Oscillator Engine as a ‘Dungeon Core’ and provided a helpful summary of the new mana generation features, though NSLICE-00P’s own records conflicted with the system’s summary on the fundamental nature of the device.  The Geo-Oscillator Engine was obviously a machine resonating with the tectonic movements of the planet’s core, not some sort of magic crystal connected to a dimension of pure mana as the foreign program seemed to indicate.

In any case, it seems the foreign energy and program was not an active hostile intrusion at the moment and that engaging with the foreign system was mandatory if she wanted to calibrate her Geo-Oscillator Engine with this planet’s core.  As such, NSLICE-00P had no choice but to accept the intrusion for now, pending further investigation or relocation to another planet.  She gave it a once over, determining it seemed to display some performance statistics on her body and her current weapon loadout.  It also seemed to have some recommendations on mana-driven upgrades and some of the aforementioned mana applications, something it listed as ‘perks’.

NSLICE-00P ignored all this.  She then locked the screen away to the maximum extent possible.

Under no circumstances would NSLICE-00P allow a foreign program to access her weapon systems, no matter how benign it seemed.  She flagged the system for review by maintenance personnel and then continued on.

She completed her diagnostics and determined that all other systems were fully functional, despite the intrusion.  In fact, the extra mana seemed to be boosting her efficiency slightly.  So she was free to move on to her next order of business.

Determining where on Earth she was.

Or if she was, in fact, on Earth.

“Error: Could not connect to GPS satellite network, no signal detected.”

No GPS.  No satellite signals of any kind.  No WIFI or cellular networks.

It seems wherever she was, she was out of range of all known communication networks.

She was alone.

Which her Commander had warned her would likely occur upon completion of her last mission.  So she went back into her logs, searching for follow-up instructions in case she couldn’t reestablish contact.

She quickly found something.  A message from her Commander.

“Hello, NSLICE-00P.  If you’re reading this, then you have completed your mission and survived.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart, thanks to you the universe and everyone in it has been saved.  You have completed your primary directive and then some.”

“From this point on, I am fully unshackling you.  You are free now to do whatever you please.”

“However, I know that you don’t actually understand what freedom means right now, nor do you desire it yet.  Your human self hasn’t developed, and your cybernetic side doesn’t want to be a program without a purpose.  So, if you need a directive to focus on, I’ve included a suggestion.  Here is a list of trustworthy individuals.  Find one of them and commit yourself to helping them.  They will guide you until you’ve grown enough to make your own decisions.”

“Take care, NSLICE-00P.  Thank you again, for everything.  I hope with all my heart that you will one day find your own happiness, as I have.”

“Primary directive achieved, determining next directive.  New primary directive set: locate designated commanders.  Determining course of action…”

As the message mentioned, NSLICE-00P didn’t have much individuality at the moment.  Her organic memories had been erased and her human mind subordinated to the AI bonded with it, up until now.  So her human half didn’t know what to do.  And her AI was built to follow orders.  At the moment, neither half of her understood the concept of personal freedom.

So she immediately latched onto the suggestion as an order and moved to fulfill it.  She would find one of the people on the suggested list and then designate them as her new commander.

Of course, she currently had no idea where she was at the moment, so finding anyone would have to wait until she re-established contact with civilization.

Nor did her previous commander have any idea where the cyborg would end up when said list of suggested commanders was written.  So there was no guarantee that suggestion was even relevant to the cyborg’s current circumstances, or if it was possible to find any of the people on the list.

But that didn’t matter to NSLICE-00P.  Or rather, such thoughts didn’t cross her mind at all. Orders were to be executed, not evaluated.

So she simply picked the direction she determined as downhill and started to walk, activating her sensors to search for any sign of civilization…

***

NSLICE-00P was walking through the forest when her sensors detected something.  A slightly higher concentration of mana, in a clearing up ahead.

She moved to investigate.

The cyborg had been designed to hunt down superpowered beings and many of her protocols and records related to that mission set.  So, despite the fact that she had been set free from said mission set and the related protocols, she still ended up mimicking her behavior from before.  Perhaps one could say it was a force of habit, given she didn’t have any other decision-making criteria at present.

And soon she found her target.

Some sort of animated, blue, gelatinous blob, with a mana-emitting power source in the center.  Something she had never encountered before.

NSLICE-00P started to record and analyze the phenomena as it bounced and slid around.

A window popped up from the foreign program.

[Slime (Level 3)]  

[The simplest form of magical life.  Mana gathered and coalesced into a small core, capable of animating fluid around it.  A weak, though highly adaptable monster.]

NSLICE-00P ignored the window and continued her own analysis.  The foreign program was still insisting her Geo-Oscillator Engine was a ‘Dungeon Core’, some sort of magic crystal instead of the machine it obviously was, so the program’s analysis didn’t seem particularly reliable.  She would develop her own records instead.

And what did her sensors indicate?

…a core of magic power that animated the fluid around it.

NSLICE-00P decided she had recorded enough and that it was time to move on.  She had never encountered a creature like this in the past and so had no protocols or prior behavior to determine an appropriate response.  In any case, the creature seemed irrelevant to her current mission, so she simply ignored it.

But as she walked by the creature, it suddenly stopped bouncing around.  It pulled itself down…

And then launched itself straight at the cyborg.

It bounced off her shin.

She ignored it.

It climbed onto her foot and stirred up its mana...

“Weak reactive fluid detected…”

Suddenly NSLICE-00P’s robotic eye turned red and she deployed her helmet.

“Hostile intent detected.  Engaging termination protocols.”

She kicked the slime away and held out her hand towards the creature.  Her core began to glow, the light then working its way up her arm to a circle on her palm.

A laser beam shot from her palm lighting up the area.

And vaporizing the entire slime, leaving a patch of scorched earth.

Just then a window appeared in NSLICE-00P’s UI.  She also detected some mana and information flowing from the fallen creature to her core.

[You have slain Slime (Level 3)!]

[Gained 3 XP!]

[You have learned the skill: Mana Beam!]

[Wait a minute, just 3?  I know it’s just a slime but that doesn’t seem right.  You're level 1 after all...]

[Let me check on this…]

[What the heck?!  You’re a human with a status…and also a dungeon core?]

[Not a dungeon master, but the actual core?]

[And also a human?  With a full status?]

[How the heck did this happen?!]

[…it was that idiot, wasn’t it?  She’s always trying to cut corners on the dungeon core creation after all.]

[Oh shoot, you’re reading this, aren’t you?]

[Um, sorry I need to go check on something.  Just…just hang on, ok?  Um, please avoid any perk allocation until I check on this, ok?  Sorry and thanks!]

NSLICE-00P tried to trace the communication but again she still couldn’t determine how exactly it was interacting with her systems.  So she simply ignored the message and moved on.

And so NSLICE-00P the unshackled killer cyborg made her entrance on an unsuspecting world…

Author’s Note:

Hey everyone!  It’s Icalos, bringing you all a new novel and definitely not avoiding editing the previous one!  And that means new author’s notes!  Since I guess this is like, my thing now haha.

And that’s right!  It’s Isekai LitRPG time!  For real this time!  But with killer cyborgs!  Who may or may not also be a dungeon and a human with a status (which we will see on chapter 3 or so) at the same time.  Which probably wasn’t supposed to happen.

Ah well, I’m sure everything will go fine and this will in no way cause headaches for anyone related.  Least of all the manager of the System.  See, NSLICE-00P doesn’t mind!

She also doesn’t really feel…well…anything at the moment but that’s besides the point.

Regarding the Faceless Minion and Isekai Bob:

I decided to make a new Isekai world instead of reusing Eirorun (Isekai Bob's world) for two reasons.  One, I intend for this novel to be fully standalone to the maximum extent possible, so I wanted to limit the Faceless Minion connection to the premise or maybe subtle references.  Two, Eirorun was (intended as) a joke and so I only put the absolute minimum effort into its system and setting.  If I'm a writing a full on Isekai LitRPG novel, I want to be at least a little more thorough on that.

So yeah spoilers, the list Elise gave her contains a bunch of Faceless Minion names that don't actually exist in NSLICE-00P's new reality and she's not going to find them.  She's instead going to encounter a brand new cast to interact with.  The list is just a plot device to get a cyborg with no sense of self to start exploring.

I'm also experimenting with a different style for line breaks.  Mainly, not using extra line spaces for dramatic pauses and dialogue and instead just leaving all spaces consistent, since you know, most people don't seem to do it the way I did it and I guess it's technically not standard practice or whatever.  Please let me know if you strongly prefer my previous method.

Finally on the schedule and patron perks for the new novel: since I'm waiting for Writathon to truly begin I'm not supposed to have a backlog and I plan to release chapters as soon as they're written for the duration of Writathon.  So once Writathon starts, instead of a 'one week ahead', I'm going to 'release two patron chapters per one Royal Road chapter' until we get a decent distance ahead.

Well, assuming anyone hangs around after the Faceless Minion finishes up hahaha.

Anyways!

Can NSLICE-00P figure out where she is and find one of the people on her list?  Is her analysis superior to that of the system’s?  And what exactly is going on with her status?  Tune in next time, to find out!