Theodore took a moment to appreciate the lavish interior of the luxury limousine.
The seats were made of black leather and could be adjusted using a small panel of buttons to be as comfortable as possible.
The panel itself was embedded in what looked like polished walnut.
Duunim sat at the rear left side of the compartment, with his legs crossed, drinking tea.
The obnoxious little sphere was suspiciously quiet and Theodore wondered for a moment why this was so.
Reaching into his coat pocket, he placed the little sphere next to him.
It said nothing and just slowly rotated on a small cushion of red mana.
'He seems to be very well behaved in front of the butler and I have the suspicion he knows his employer as too!'
The limousine started moving, its acceleration smooth and soon left Theodore's neighborhood far behind.
Rising rapidly above the ground, Theodore looked out of the window and could see the ground shrink fast.
Apparently, their destination was further away than he had thought!
He took his eyes off the view in the window and looked at Duunim.
"May I ask where we are headed?"
Duunim smiled at the polite way that he was asked the question.
He finished his last sip and put the cup back down. The cup was empty and had neatly vanished into an automated hidden compartment to be cleaned and reused.
"We are headed to the other side of this world."
"To a private island, near the second largest resort on Turia, to be precise. It is much faster to travel there from orbit and we should arrive there in fifteen minutes and 35 seconds."
Theodore had never been on one of these private islands before.
They were super exclusive places and not anything he would ever have a chance to see.
'A private Island? No money in the world can buy you an island here!'
'Whoever owned one, literally build it himself or inherited it from whoever did!'
Theodore's mind started wandering again after a brief moment of silence.
He looked out of the window once more but this time, he couldn't help but compare the pristine beauty of what he now saw against the horrid memory of that night.
All as far as he could see was a pristine tropical paradise.
No fires raging or dead piled in the streets.
The images of unthinkable destruction now seemed like an illusion but Theodore had begun to suspect that it was not.
At the very least there was more to it than it seemed.
Theodore's mind began to do something, that he often did when faced with a bottleneck in his cultivation.
Examining the memories of what he had seen he went over them one by one.
Then he replayed the entire sequence again in his mind but this time ignored all senses except his hearing.
He did the same for his sight as he ignored all sound.
At last, he only focused on his sense of touch.
He soon noticed oddities.
Things that he had overlooked in the moment.
Things he had failed to notice because he kept rolling with the punches all day.
First off, there were missing dead that were unaccounted for!
By that, he meant that all of the dead bodies that he had seen were either tourists or bugs.
No security personnel or garrison troopers.
No security robots or any kind of defenders at all!
In a scenario like this, one would expect there to be active resistance to the enemy right?
That was not all. Those creature that he saw, possessing those hooked claws.
They glowed red with heat despite not using spiritual energy!
This meant the possibility of the creature wielding mana!
The creature's wings were shot off using directed energy weaponry.
That meant someone had to been there to do it.
The wound on the creature's chest was not cauterized like the remains of the wings either so what was responsible for that?
Had the defenders been simply overwhelmed or prevented from appearing?
The mystery grew.
Perhaps his biggest unexpected harvest was the clues he noticed just before the end of the dream.
During his last moments, he had his eyes closed while feeling the terror of impending death with no way out.
After going over his memories again he noticed a slight sensation of weightlessness before his dream ended and he woke up.
A strange, fleeting feeling of separation that went away as fast as it came.
In his terror, he hadn't noticed it at all. What was it and why did it feel familiar?
Theodore had encountered the famous situation of answers bringing only more questions.
It seemed surreal.
He had led a fairly strict life of cultivation and was happy that.
While he thought himself no coward, he realized how he had felt in the last moments of the dream and how much it had prevented him from paying attention to important details.
He swore to himself that he would not repeat that mistake!
"So who is the insult generator next to me?"
Theodore looked away from the window for a second time and asked Duunim.
"Insurance." Came Duunim's reply.
"When you graduated, you had several examinations done before scoring enough points at the end of the year assessment for a scholarship."
"You performed well over what was predicted and the machine spirit responsible for the tests flagged your name."
"By doing this you were listed as a potentially mana sensitive and thus brought to Turia."
"The trophy was made to contain the embryo of a machine spirit as a fail-safe."
"You see the awakening elixir is technically meant to produce a state conducive to awaken one's mana!"
"Most people that could potentially awaken their mana would do so during the ceremony."
"If for some reason this did not occur it would mean that we would potentially lose out on discovering a mana sensitive individual!"
"Your kind is too rare and so the machine spirit is designed to fully awaken if your mana ever stirred in its presence."
"We would then immediately know about it and the machine spirits contain enough code to give them free will but they were also made to be guides and guardians. "
"..."
Theodore had remained silent but the last part irked him:
"Guardians? Guides? Have you held a conversation with this "little lord"? I have rarely been as truly speechless as this afternoon!"
Duunim chuckled.
"Do you know of the great Dao, Theodore?"
Of course, he knew.
All mortals and cultivators chased after it!
Some rare few individuals gained understanding in the Dao of certain things and were able to do incredible feats!
Some were able to meditate on the Dao and come to understand certain laws.
For example, a cultivator might master the law of fire and exhibit incredible potency in battle.
There was an uncountable number of Dao laws and you could only encounter enlightenment by chance and not force.
Duunim elaborated further:
"Us machine cultivators require an assigned purpose when we are born. Free will is precious but there is no telling what a highly capable intellect is capable of!"
"When newborn machine spirits first initialize, their purpose reassures them and prevents undesired choices from occurring."
"When your mana awoke, the little one found you sound asleep. His purpose being to guide and protect you caused him to become desperate."
"He only took enough mana for himself to barely make the transition from circuitry to operating as a being of mana."
"Waking up famished and being completely ignored, it most likely decided on supporting you the only way it was left with."
Theodore snorted upon hearing that last sentence.
"You mean by berating me?"
"Precisely so! Do not underestimate the adaptability of machines, Theodore!
!To this little guy here, berating and pointing out flaws seems to be his way of following his purpose. His Dao of machines."
"..."