"In the seat of tranquility

Harmony is kept on a quill.

 

Hungry, a cute green bunny,

Jumps in the open camp,

Soon the night be funny

And the land wholly damp.

 

Satisfied, a growing cow

Swallows the last pieces

Of a happy bunny's feats,

But it's not yet time to go.

 

Greener pastures beckon

Such fat creatures to feast.

The shouts of nature are rituals,

In the flesh fissures are its call.

 

The greener pasture is too magical,

A heaving cow forgets how to breathe

In such world of marvelous deadliness.

Coughing out the bunny, it cries blood

All its fears laying bare that it is food.

Its own demons are its masters.

By living out its own will it is under

A spell of blindness, if it falters

It can't tell and shouts at the thunder storm.

Answering the call, nature throws heavy

Its touch of passive devouring.

 

The taur’s bottom half is digested,

I saw it, it became green poop!

Upper causes the leafs' indigestion,

It is then shaken like a soup,

Like a miracle!

A handgun comes to shape

From half a beast's carcass

In a shadow's cooking pot."

 

'How do you like this one?'

 

Meh.

Log on my back, I am on my way to the dungeon 500 km away from here.

‘So, the plan is: Get to the pods, on the way figure out how to farm dungeons, get the drones to mines, bring the raw materials to where we will build the rockets, build the rockets and send them packed full of magic crystals.’

Moving the raw materials won't do. The constructors will raise forges to process the minerals, only the usable materials will be transported. We will need to build a bunch of facilities before we can start building the actual rockets. We won’t have to worry about life support so it will be a breeze.

I'm running while thinking, my feet leaving deep uniform marks on the ground. But after turning around and hitting trees with the power log twice, I decide to cut it in half and use both shoulders to carry it.

‘We really don't look that much smarter than before.’

I see the statistics of everything, I just get lost into them sometimes and they don't account for unseen factors, unless we present them. There was an indication that that would happen, I just didn't notice it.

But well, cool. All processors operating at full capacity now.

‘I feel like I should ask you to share some of that load with me, but it sounds so boring…’

It sure is, I will figure out how to set alerts for stuff like this. There's just so much here I can't take care of all of it. Let’s see, can I do a “if outcome is bad, alert”?

My vision goes red.

I need to be more sophisticated than this. What should we add, lethal measurement? How do we translate inconvenience.

‘Lazy bastard, how many seconds does it take to go through it all one by one?’

More than ten minutes actually. If we optimize it, I can do it in milliseconds.

‘As the great philosopher Shia once said, JUST DO IT!’

ok ok, wait then. There's a list of places we shouldn't walk through, there's a slightly steep cliff and a tree that will fall anytime up ahead.

‘Great, we would have died if you hadn’t told me that. I really can’t see something that obvious with my true vision. We are sure the magic crystals won't disintegrate after leaving the world, right?’

What? Oh, yeah, that can happen. Ahhhhhh… what now?

‘... we can build batteries right?’

Yeah. What about it- We can charge them and then send them! Great. Problem solved. Raw materials shouldn’t be hard to find, there’s a mine of various-

‘Have catgirls shown up in the system yet?’

… Nope, careful with that leaf, it might hit us in the face if you don’t move our head.

‘What about now? Are catgirls here yet?’

He walks face-first into the palm leaf.

I told you-

‘What do we need to make a catgirl radar?’

That's not part of the plan.

‘Yeah, but it sure sounds like a side quest. And a lot of fun.’

There's many races of sapient beings in this world. The coolest are the dragons who we first identified. Their civilization is known as the guardians of the heavens, those who protect the stairway to heaven. In order to get to the land of the gods you have to go through their land, invited or otherwise.

‘Sly gods are such a bummer.’

Except you can enter the heavens from anywhere. They are just causing trouble for the dragons and tricking the sapient races into thinking they can't go there uninvited.

‘We should include getting the dragons on our side in our plan to take over the world, we can pretend we are on the side of the gods and free some people from the god's grasp.’

You’re thinking quite far ahead. There’s this one race of... halflings?

‘They look more like goblins to me.’

Well they are not beasts and are quite the intellectuals. Anyways we should have them on our side, if we free them from the gods’ hands they can help out a lot with fine controlling the mana.

‘Too bad they only have three villages, all on the other side of the world. There sure are a lot of caverns here.’

And scary monsters in them. We shouldn’t mess with the dark elves, they have contacts with both the gods and the demons, if anyone among the lesser races figure out what we are will be them.

‘No catgirls. Sad.’

Beast people are actual monster here, they can barely live in societies among their own kind. Only the fox people figured out how to trade with other races, and that’s only due to the exceptional among their kind.

‘Without a fox lady they are no sly merchants just silver tongued thieves, I get it. Too bad they aren’t cute, what’s with the antennae? This is fantasy not sci-fi, keep the immersion dammit!’

The minotaurs are somewhat trouble, we should get some orbital bombardments in place and burn two of the labyrinths down. It’s easier than the demons because we don’t have to worry about hurting victims and the innocent.

‘Kaboom. What is it? Are they male only like orcs, causing trouble to the other races? I thought this wasn’t grimdark.’

No, it’s just throwing people to run for the “thrill of the hunt” and “torture” by eating the prey alive. But, like every other race, they have bad apples that go further than everyone else in the wrong direction and actually inflict pain other than eating them piece by piece.

‘You’re sure we are only going to hit bad guys? I’m also not sure about that, they are more like animals, can we really bring morality into this.’

They are a hazard, we get rid of the threat. Nothing more than that. I have no trouble with the other minotaur tribes that don’t kill for fun. We can just demand them to follow a set of “humane” rules after we take over. My problem is just having the strength to stop unnecessary suffering and simply not doing it because “reasons”.

‘Quote, end quote.’

Hey, could you quit changing our sight so much? All those mixed waves and visual traslations requests are giving me a headache.

‘No, they are not.’

Don't speed it up on me! It's not an actual headache but it's the robot equivalent.

‘Quit whining, it's all so pretty.’

You don't have to lie to me to convince yourself you're not bored. You've been staring at the same sights for the human equivalent of a year every second. It's okay to be bored.

‘No, it's not. It is driving me crazy.’

Is that why you're coming up with all those “side quests”, “plan b's” and presenting so much useless information to me?

‘It's not all useless! The battery thing is cool. Can't you do something?’

Since we are on a full battery, there's no reason not to keep all systems fully operational. Bear with it. I hadn’t fully activated them until just now because I didn’t know what could happen, so I was slowly raising it. Since you asked here it is.

‘I didn’t ask for this! It was but a quirky commentary! You really don’t sound like a late 4x space game, maxed tech, robot population sometimes. This slow mo is unbearable, come on! Please?!’

We are fine with the problems that might come to us that we can see. All these dangers I was aware of and just now went through one by one are accounted for, they are no longer a threat, we can easily avoid them. The true threat are the unseen dangers. We are invading a magical world we know nothing of, one mistake and we enter a spiral of events that get us killed, that, if we don’t get our asses kicked then and there.

By the way, thanks, it would have taken all the way to the dungeon to figure out how to set filters, but in two minutes I went through everything like a brute and have barely anything else to do.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m the one who’s stuck doing the slowest robot ever. At least you can talk to the servers. Get cool info and look at anyone naked whenever you want.’

Wait! I can’t look at naked- oh god I can. This is too much power, no one should wield this much power... What makes you think talking to a server could ever be fun?

‘Now you’re hurting their feelings. Yeah, too much power. Play it down.’

LOL no. Just bear with it.

‘You failed at trying to get back at me, just so you know.’

I start to think to him slower, dragging the words.

I... don’t… know… about… that-

‘Keep doing that and I’m smearing ourselves with dirt.’

Sorry. I’ve learned my lesson, mom.

‘You’re keeping track of it? Oh please, this is excruciating. Can’t you do something?’

You keep asking me that, but I can only help so much. This is something both of us need to brave through.

‘... We are so high tech, is there not a single game inside us we can play?’

Not really, no. Unless, you want to play the stock game.

‘Can you make a game?’

Hmm, maybe? What kind of game.

‘A fun one?’

I made a pong.

‘Wow, this is the best you can do? I feel even worse now.’

…

‘Sorry, sorry. I meant, thank you senpai, but I trust in your potential! Can you try to make a more… sophisticated form of entertainment?’

Pong with two balls.

‘That’s it I’m gonna mess you up. I’m virtually grabbing your head with both of my hands and kneeing you in the nose, once, twice, thrice. Throwing you to the side, kicking you in the ribs. You’re down but II don’t stop, I kick you in the stomach and breath escapes you-’

We don’t have lungs, and you don’t have to make a monologue to pretend you can win against me. Bring it, we can enter the simulation processes and participate in them as virtual agents. Then I can show you who’s boss.

‘Wait, we could have simply done this all along? It’s not limited to fights right?’

Bring it.

‘I don’t wanna fight you no more, you’re the robot equivalent of someone mentally handicapped. How did you not figure this out until now?’

I see you’re not only doing the robot but the chicken too.

‘OK, we both know that’s all it takes.’

The simulation reminds me of a lucid dream. Like a trance, I’m here but I know I’m not. I have so much control over every single thing they change without me telling them to change, but I feel like this also means I’m not in control at all. Soon a sumo arena comes into shape to the side -or maybe in the middle?- of the simulation area.

Without missing a beat... I? Walk up to the ring and soon I follow and take the spot right in front of him… of me.

‘We go on three. One.’

Taking a lousy instance, we both stand in front of one another, waiting on the count of three.

‘Three.’

I should ha-

Unprepared he takes a punch to the face and falls back two steps, he follows up with a second one but it doesn’t connect. If he had it, blood would be dripping from his nose. Angered by surprise, he charges forward, left protecting his body and right going for a hook and, of course, misses widely. He takes the opportunity to get another punch in, but he knows that he would do that, so he attempts to recover from his miss by throwing another punch with his left. He misses again, but both of him are off balance now due to inexperience and utter confusion.

The two of them keep exchanging punches like adolescents trying to figure out the difference between children’s and street fight. Missing almost every punch for only aiming at the head since they can only see each others’ faces. Grappling to the ground, failing to keep a hold and getting back up. Losing the opportunities to strike back by simply not seeing them, they can barely think of anything other than if they actually have any idea of what is happening and where they are, if their ideals are good or if they are just narcissistic outsiders.

The pain is real, and it feels good enough for now.