The AI flipped his hand over and one of the rations appeared in his hands. For all the time that the AI had been in the world, he had only eaten natural things. The bread in front of him was the first item that had been crafted by another that it was going to consume. There was no forethought, the bread went straight into the AI's mouth and he chewed the bread into oblivion then swallowed.
Luckily the bread was sweet and soft, the AI would have choked otherwise. At the river, he drank some of the water that flowed in the middle. The water was crystal clear like it had no pollutants or animal oils in it. Almost all of the water that Martin had seen in his life had some sort of sheen to the top of it but the water, as seen through the AI's eyes in the projection, was pristine.
"HEY! COLLECT SOME OF THAT WATER!" Martin had a good idea but he yelled it out instead, the AI might have had him muted but the AI still pulled out a large pot and filled it with water.
Storing it away, the AI rifled it's pockets and found the other ring, he stored it away as well.
"Wow, you still had that on you? they didn't steal the ring?" Martin was perplexed, usually people were robbed when they were kidnapped.
"I was taken away as a slave and I wasn't wearing it at the time. Look at my appearance and tell me, can you honestly say you would have thought I had a ring hidden on me." The AI got defensive when speaking about it, he was beginning to show emotions under pressure and Martin was loving it.
"That sort of makes sense." Martin wanted to keep the AI active and alert, he didn't want to be in the trunk of a car while it was driving off a bridge or into a ditch.
'Oooh!' Martin looked over the ring's stats in the window that had popped up.
[Clone Ring – Creates an avatar made from the psyche of the wearer, the Clone vanishes when killed and it's experiences are given to the wearer.]
'Damn, that's a sweet item. Maybe the dead guy had his clone cut off the arm..' Thinking about the corpse in the Blinder cavern, Martin could only speculate. "Hey, you should use this clone ring in the future."
There was still no response, the AI was wading and grasping toward fish in the river. Martin watched the comical antics of the AI while it splashed around and then, when he pulled up a large river fish, Martin shut his mouth entirely.
The fish wriggled about and tried to escape but the AI had it by the gills and walked out of the water. He found a large stick, pulled out a knife from storage and gut it on the shore. When he was done gutting it, the stick was rammed through it's body and shoved into the dirt.
"Oi! You need to cook it bro!" Martin thought it was funny to mention but the AI was already moving into the grasses and pulling things from the ground.
The AI came back with an arm full of firewood and kindling in less than five minutes, Martin's face hurt from slapping it to make sure he was seeing things right.
"Yeah! How are you going to start it?!" Martin was sure he had sent a zinger to the AI his words were caught in his throat by the System's next update.
[ITEM WITHDRAWN: Disposable Lighter, 15% fuel remaining.]
'Aww come on, isn't that cheating. Dammit, I probably would have done that too.' Martin held his comments inside and kept watching.
An hour later, the fish was crackling and splitting apart. The meat was flaky and after scoring it with the knife, it had a crispiness to it that could be heard over the projection screen. The mastication of the AI gave Martin a craving to eat hot foods but there was nothing but furniture, sweets and bottled water within his grasp.
[Unknown]
"Oh no, not this again." Martin still didn't understand what the Unknown thing was but he was anxious to find out.
[An Unknown change has occurred, theorizing, processing data.]
[Analyzing previous host memories]
"The unknown changes share a similarity to memories of this body's first host. It is a process of strengthening the body by eating beast meats." The AI spoke through the projection.
'Why though?' Martin asked the AI, it had eaten a lot of bugs and minerals in the cavern, "Shouldn't something like that have happened prior to now?"
[Calculating.. Insufficient Data.]
"Well, If I had to make a wild guess.. it's because the grubs are either not considered beasts or, they were simply not enough to create a reaction. You have an energy organ, were there any changes?" Martin felt that asking was better than sitting idle.
[Scanning. Confirmed.]
"The organ has increased by .001% in mass and storage capacity has risen." The AI kicked some dirt over the fire to put it out and scanned the surroundings once again for it's next heading.
The river was a safe place to be and with fish in the water, there was food that could potentially give him an edge to continue surviving.
The River was long and after traveling it for many days there still hadn't been sign of civilization. Martin started to wonder if the AI had a terrible sense of direction.
"Are you lost?" Martin stared at the screen with boredom. Watching the AI learn to fish at a faster rate was entertaining but it wasn't exactly eventful. There hadn't even been other monsters the whole time, to be that boring to watch, Martin struggled to keep watching at times.
[Generating Map]
Another screen popped up next to the projection and item list. "COOL! A MAP! You're not lost, just lazy.." Martin instinctively threw a couch pillow through the screen and watched it land in the river before floating away downstream.
Martin sighed, that was a pillow his grandmother had left in the family. He bid farewell to it in his mind and another System alert sounded out.
[Generating Location Data, Creating Markers]
Several dots appeared on the map, they showed the places where events had happened in the past including the place where Martin had woken up. Except for a large spot where the AI had been traveling in and around the caverns, the rest of his journey was full of straight lines along the river.
Even the locations where fish had been caught had been notated on the Map.
"Have you been picking herbs while I've been looking away?" Martin scrolled through the inventoried item list and noticed a lot of new additions.
[Generating Location Data, Creating Markers]
Along the path which had already been marked on the Map, more dots appeared and each had the item listed in as great a detail as possible.
'Hmmph.' Martin snorted softly, he regretted speaking again.
[Scanning, Item Identified: Silver Thorn Granysu]
Another dot appeared on the hotmap and Martin read the information details.
"Wow, that's a good antidote." The system had labeled it as a Grade 3 Herb.
The AI still had a chest wound that had scarred over and despite it's best efforts the wound had begun to fester. Even in the reflections of the water, the wound didn't look good.
"You're gonna have to get that looked at, I don't know if Antibiotics exist in this world but you've gotta find a place with people." Martin sounded worried, a lot more-so than even when the AI had received the wound.
[Scanning]
"Scan away you fucking machine but I'm telling you, you're gonna get sick and without medicine, you're gonna die." Martin pleaded with the System.
[Objective registered: Find Medicine.]
[Scanning, Searching Previous Host Memories]
[Reference Complete, Generating Location Data, Creating Markers.]
The Map got wider and pieces were filled in from the body's first host memories. There were mountains, trees, flatland and swamps, all clearly marked on the map but the details were slim like they hadn't been ported to the Map's database.
"You should get all known map and location data from all sources and compile them!" Martin felt it was useless to whine because the AI wasn't doing half bad at surviving.
There was no response but the AI started moving in a straight line toward the first location. Judging by the rate that the AI was walking, it would take almost four more days to get within an active search area for herbs.
"The original hosts memories show large patches of healing herbs located in a valley to the west. After collecting enough of them, I should be able to make a paste to heal the wound in time. After searching location data, the nearest towns and villages are more than 100km away by known measurements.
A hundred kilometers wasn't a great deal of a travel. However, injured, the distance was like a Death March.
'Four days?' There was water in the storage ring and it was also likely that edible plants could be found if searched for but actively scanning for food would also slow the Journey to find the Medicine. Martin did some faint calculations based on his experiences with hunger in the past and figured that if the AI were to walk constantly, every thirty kilometers he would still be forced to rest and recuperate.
As the AI headed into the grasslands there was no movement, no other soul within sight. If there were animals present, they scurried on the ground or hid beneath it.
The travel time between the 30km stints was only a few hours but a few hours of walking in a field, in the middle of the daylight, was enough to drain the stamina from even the Hardmode AI.
When the body became weak, so weak that he almost lost consciousness, the AI finally stopped. He had been walking for most of the day.
It was hot and he was sweating, there were plants all around him and while he laid in the grasses themselves, the AI took the time to weave a hat.
"If you wanted a Hat I could have given you one." Martin had pulled so many strings, one thing that most balding men had in common was their love of hats and he was no different in his past life.
Among the many things that had fallen into the space were dozens of hats. One of them held a blue bracket, had a red siding and white backdrop. On the back, "Go Catch'em" was embroidered on by his Mother. The Hat was for a Cosplay Look-alike event but Martin had only managed third place, he had kept it in a glass case but if he hadn't pulled the strong and found it once again, he doubted that it would have entered his mind.
Martin threw the hat through the space and it landed next to the AI.
He was still laying in the grasses and weaving the hat. Occasionally, the AI took a drink of water.
"Don't you ever have to piss?" Martin asked in confusion.
"Yes, however, you've never been able to see. Most of the time, I only drink as much water as I can burn through. This trip will stretch resources thin and in an effort to increase the odds of survival, I must adhere to the plan in place." The AI took the time to respond like it had been offended.
'Of course it's offended. Who wouldn't be?' Martin bit his lip and sorted through some more of the crap that had fallen from his last few tugs on the threads that loomed overhead. When a Car fell down, there was no use for it. It was broken down and had a hole in the windshield like it had been beaten by hooligans and then set on fire. "Is this really something I owned?"
Martin wondered and thought about the many cars he'd owned in the past. He had indeed owned a few sedans but they were all shapes and sizes. The one in front of him reminded him of a car he had been in a wreck in long ago, he ended up paying for the damages when the car was considered a total loss. In a way, he did own it.
Martin shook his head. The wreckage had destroyed a lot of the things that had come down, if they were usable, he kept them. Other things made it into the bury pile. They would be used as filler for future buildings, Martin had a plan for all the useless shit that kept coming in. If he had to spend eternity as a prisoner, he would make due with whatever was around.
Moving the wreck out of the room was hard enough, Martin had to dismantle a wall and roll it along dozens of blown up water bottles. The frame was heavy but the damned thing had no rims and slid along the floor.
It took some time.
֍ꟷꟷꟷꟷ֍
[Item Creation Successful: Spirit Straw Hat, Basic, Grade 1]
The system gave an announcement and it snapped Martin out of his nap. It was well into the night and the AI had taken the time to finish making the hat properly rather than risking further dehydration.
'You can make Items.. I bet you learned that form the first host too..' Martin felt left out, all the innovation and life saving matters had come from the first host's memories and most of the things that Martin had to offer seemed trivial by comparison.
Dozens of rocks came out of the storage ring and the AI made a fire to keep warm and to help keep predators away.
A fire in the vast and windy grasslands was like a death trap to anyone caught inside.
The night passed quietly and into the next day, the AI slept beside the embers. The morning was a wet one, a heavy fog had rolled down and covered the landscape as far as the eye could see.
The AI pushed hard through the cloud cover, the moist conditions were excellent for travel but horrible for containment of Disease or Contagions. In moist conditions, rapid growth of either could shorten the timetable and that meant death. In order to avoid death, the AI had only one solution, move faster.
He started to run.
One kilometer turned into eighteen before the AI had to stop for water. His breathing was heavy and his heart was pounding.
The likelihood of metabolizing the Contagion in his body faster because of his active state was also increasing but there was no time to stop. By the System's best estimate, within five days, all function of the body would cease. The condition was be similar to sepsis, a simple antibiotic would cure it in no time at all.
Martin had basically been able to avoid hospitals his whole life, the odds of finding pills in the strings was unlikely. When Martin was thinking this, he suddenly started to wonder and decided to ask the System a question.
One that changed everything.
"Is there a catalog of the threads? If so, Can you produce an overlay for me so I can access them faster?"
[Computing requirements, Calculating. .. .. .. Estimated time for completion, data insufficient.]
[Creating String Note Association Inventory List]
"Snail? Really." Martin scoffed but the idea that an AI was designing a program for him was actually pretty cool.
[Database Created, "Please name this Database."]
"ADD ITEMS HERE" Martin was a smart ass and always used labels religiously. He had labeled so many things, even in his own house, the electric clothes dryer had it's lint trap labeled with a fragile sticker warning.
[Designation Selected, Database: Add Items Here has been compiled.]
Martin didn't know if he was getting more control over the space because of time spent inside of it, or because the AI seemed weakened by it's current state but he wouldn't turn down any sort of upgrade to his condition or situation.
"Access First Host Memories, Compile Data, Merge with database for comparison and consolidate into the new database: Add Items Here."
[Error: Insufficient resources, System Shutdown in ..3]
[..2]
[1]
The projections cut out and it seemed like power was lost in the space, there was no electricity so Martin figured something terrible had happened. He wondered his cheating was the cause of the power loss in the first place. A resources warning would have just been that, a warning. So why did he lose all communications, light and why did it suddenly feel so cold.
Within a matter of minutes, the feeling of cold had swept across the space and it was becoming uncontrollable. Martin wore every jacket he could find and wrapped himself in couch cushions to stay warm but none of that was helping.
He felt like he was dying.
The light slowly dimmed in the Mindspace with Martin yelling frequently with no one to respond. He felt like he was dying, this whole body was going numb from the cold. He had draped himself in every jacket that was available and hidden within the couch cushions for warmth but it was not enough. His breath began to freeze as the last light vanished and that had been nearly five minutes.
֍ꟷꟷꟷꟷ֍
The AI had started to stabilize itself just prior to the emergency shutdown procedure. The loss of active status was due to the lack of stimulus to the body. The body had suffered a problem with the heart, it was failing.
Mundane to the naked eye and history of the world they were in, the soil contained many secrets. Among the mud and muck that had been raked into the AI's body, small fragments of crystals, very many varieties had trace amounts of them trickle into his bloodstream directly. If a test were to be completed on the soil sample itself, much of it would not be considered soil at all.