(A/N: Info dump. You have been warned.)

…

Back in Tokyo.

The post-production of the movie was in full swing.

It was already July and everything was going smoothly. The movie would be finalized by the end of the month where 

Except for one tiny little hiccup. Which came by the name of Ruka… She had been pestering Chizuru for quite a while.

Chizuru hadn’t told Kazuya what, but he already knew what it was.

Every once in a while, Chizuru would get ambushed by Ruka who would drag her off to a cafe and try to convince her through different means. She tried guilt-tripping her, she tried all sorts of things to convince Chizuru.

After weeks of convincing, even the iron-lady Mizuhara was coming around to agree with Ruka.

Never once did Ruka try to strong-arm her or say anything hurtful to her though. She kept her promise to Kazuya by making sure that she didn’t say anything that made Chizuru sad.

It was all going pretty well.

Kazuya had also hired Asuna as an intern for Nexus with a contract to come work for them full-time after she finished college.

He’d also given some incentive to her to show him something good in the field of AR. If even the idea was something that could be implemented by Nexus, the company would sponsor her college education.

It wasn’t something especially given to her. A lot of potentially good interns were given that contract.

It was a way to incentivize ideas and if just one of the interns came up with a truly profitable idea, the company would easily make much more than their investment in that person.

Kaguya had implemented quite a few such policies that encouraged rapid growth and scalability for the company. She was truly a capable CEO.

Another thing was that they’d finally been approached by the government. Kaguya had been brought up in such circles and although the Shimonia family had all but disappeared from the map, she still had a few contacts here and there.

Especially since she went to one of the most prominent schools in the country where all sorts of children had enrolled. Almost all of them came from very prominent backgrounds.

Quite a few of them had some sway in the political sphere of the country.

She hadn’t been willing to utilize those contacts since she had nothing to stand on at the start but now she has her company, Nexus. 

Ever since she came on board as the CEO, she has been the face of the company. Kazuya seldom interfered in her management of the company.

He was content as long as the company made him money for his projects.

Kaguya had had only one meeting with the government for now. It was an admiral from the military who’d been advocating for the use of unmanned aircraft for quite a while.

It was just an introductory meeting where the admiral expressed his interest in working with the company.

Kaguya had already been prepared for such a scenario and had discussed things with Kazuya beforehand.

She expressed the company’s agreement to work with the military, but subtly mentioned that they wanted more than just money from the military.

The admiral didn’t give her any confirmation about anything and concluded the meeting after that. 

He didn’t discuss any specifics with her and Kaguya understood that it was just a probing meeting. They just wanted to understand the company’s attitude toward working with the military.

She had also read the guy enough to understand that he was interested in her proposal and would be talking to his own superiors.

Kazuya on the other hand had finally delved into his biggest project, yet. The level 5 AI. 

It wasn’t something that could be done quickly and would likely take years to come to fruition. Just the code that had to be written to give a machine simple sentience was monstrous in quantity, to say the least.

Although he knew what to code, the amount that he had to write was easily going to take him about a year. After that, another year would be spent on the training of the sentient being that Kazuya would create, which would still be a level 4 Artificial intelligence.

The third year would be given to iron out the kinks in the training and upgrade the AI to a true level 5 artificial intelligence. 

Only then would the AI be ready to connect to the outside world and by extension, the internet. Kazuya wasn’t going to risk creating an Ultron which was a very likely possibility if he messed up even a little in the training and let it connect to the internet early on.

Although he’d finally started working on the AI, he still didn’t have the capabilities to house such a being of immense processing power.

This was where Kazuya’s processor farm in Greenland came in.

He’d traveled there with Kaguya and Ai for a three-day trip to inspect it and he was satisfied with the place.

The low temperatures were ideal for the huge amount of heat-generating processors.

After returning from his trip Kazuya was greeted by his dissatisfied clingy girl who was mad that he left her alone for three days. Needless to say, they celebrated his return with very hardcore sex.

He’d also decided on the initial plans to create a warehouse that would be able to house all the potential equipment for the AI, while also keeping it isolated from the outside world. 

He was going to make sure that there was no receiver for any sort of signal that would inadvertently reach the hardware by any means.

It was going to be all processing hardware. He would migrate it to the internet when the time came.

When Kaguya asked him why he needed that specific warehouse, he told her of his future plans. Needless to say, she freaked out.

She basically called up an intervention for Kazuya that consisted of the company’s core team, namely, Kaguya herself, Kei, and their new recruit, Ishigami Yuu. He was the financial manager of the company.

It took a whole lot of effort on his part to convince them that it was going to be safe and that he has fail-safes upon fail-safes that would ensure that the AI doesn’t end up in some Domesday scenario.

The media’s portrayal of high-level artificial intelligence has created a very negative light on the entire concept.

It took quite a while but he was able to convince everyone that it was safe.

Especially since Ishigami was actually on his side in this debate. He was an avid supporter of his creation of a sentient AI that would benefit everyone.

After a meeting that lasted more than a few hours, It was decided that Kazuya would make the level 5 AI to its final point but wouldn’t connect it to the cloud and by extension, the internet without talking with the core team first.

Also, on another note, although they had a large number of people working for the company. The top management was growing very slowly.

Kazuya had noticed that everyone that Kaguya hired seemed to have some very talented people, they seemed to have some very specific situations.

He’d realized that they were all Kaguya’s acquaintances.

This was where Kazuya’s level 20 Psychology knowledge came in. He was able to read quite a few things from people’s behaviors over their daily lives.

Kei seemed to have some sort of repressed trauma about something which Kazuya assumed was over the loss of a loved one.

Kaguya was similar in that she also seemed to be silently grieving. On the other hand, Hayasaka seemed to be fine. She seemed to like helping Kaguya as the secretary.

Ishigami seemed to have it the worst of the bunch. He was a cheerful guy who seemed pretty outgoing and mingled with the people well.

Kazuya instantly saw through that front. Ishigami was desperate, really desperate. What for, Kazuya didn’t know. He also had a scar on his face over his left eye going from his upper cheekbone to his eyebrow. It looked precise enough to have been made using a knife. His eye was perfectly fine but his face was scarred.

Kazuya wasn’t tackless enough to directly ask him about his scar but understood that Ishigami was also someone who was involved in Kaguya’s past with the Shinomiya family. 

Although he understood the situation, he didn’t plan to meddle unless Kaguya or any one of them asked him to.

They were all very efficient workers and whatever minor problems came up at the company would be easily managed by them collectively.

Kazuya didn’t have to step in and waste his time, which was all he wanted in the first place.

Once he finishes his level 5 AI, it would all be pretty much useless anyway. With the power of something like that, he could effectively take over the world within a few months.

Nexus wasn’t some big dream that Kazuya was going to revolve around for his life.

It was just a means through which he was going to create his AI, that’s it.

After everything was done, Kazuya was going to do something that he’d been putting off for quite a while.

That was to take Mami out on a date.

He’d realized that she wasn’t some devil that he’d conjured up in his mind.

She was just a broken girl who’d been hurt by her father. Her separate persona was also a defense mechanism from exactly all of that trauma.

She not only needed his love, but she also deserved it.

In fact, even the trouble that he had been expecting from her dad and his contacts had been delayed for quite a while.

Mami had been working against her dad behind the scenes for quite a while and she’d thrown a big wrench in the stability of his political position.

Although it wouldn’t last forever, she’d bought Kazuya quite a bit of time before he had to face any retaliation from political forces.