It was getting darker but slower than earth. The rotation of E2 was slower than earth which caused the day to expand 4 hours longer.
That means a day was 28 hours on E2.
Viktor didn't plan to stay in the same place for long but after the girl appeared, he wanted to explore the wilderness and search for rare mana crystals. He wanted to see how a human lives on E2 when it's controlled by AI.
The three of them got on a floating bot that Adonis made from broken bots of the castle, and they started their journey to the west.
The roofless bot was floating 3 feet above the ground. The vibration of the machine began to increase because the fuel was low. So Adonis used an infinite mana stone to keep it on.
And Viktor on the back was sitting idle watching the moving ground beneath the floating bot.
The transportation they were using somehow looked similar to a boat but it was made from scratch. So it looked like some worn-out floating cart or van from some sci-fi movie.
Viktor looked at the sun and saw it was stuck in the horizon. It had already been 3 hours since they came to E2 but the sun was still setting. He was getting tired of it slowly.
The floating shadows of them and the van passed by a group of horse-like robots so they glanced at them. They were followed by groups so they simply ran away because Viktor and his group seemed to scare them a little. They were all acting like real-life creatures.
Viktor then looked at the girl and saw her robotic arm starting to glow like radium. The sun was finally gone so it turned into a light.
Her arm was glowing and so did her eyes. They were neon blue.
"What's the purpose of having a glowing arm?" Viktor asked.
"Hu? This? This arm was my grandma's arm. She passed away 20 years ago so my mom passed this to me. This arm is very rare and it contains blue gold. My cousins were all envious when they saw that my arm has a special feature."
She then looked at Viktor's hand and asked, "Come to think of it, which arm of yours is metal? I can't hear any sound from your body."
She furiously glared at Viktor with her neon blue eyes and again asked, "I even forgot to ask about your identity in excitement. May I ask who you are?"
"I'm Viktor E. North. And that man who's steering the wheel is Adonis North."
"Oh… you got a last name. You're from a noble family. But what is a noble family doing outside the network?"
"You're mistaken. We're not from any noble family. And you are?
"Oh, I'm Mizi. I have two siblings. One of them died and one of them is living near the Red sea. There's a small town there out of the network zone. People don't have any robot arms or barcodes in that town. They aren't actually considered as citizens so they live outside the network zone to hide from the surveillance bots."
"I see…what if a bot finds them out?"
"They will be executed."
Viktor became silent after hearing so many things from her and then read her mother's record. From that, he gained some information about E2 and how AI took over the world.
About 800 years ago when the oil reserves hit rock bottom, chaos took place. The world went crazy and began to search for a new paper source.
At first, they thought they would rely on natural powers such as sunlight, wind and water. But the energy was too little to cover 12 billion people.
The demand kept rising and thus, the government had no choice but to restart the nuclear power plants that were banned worldwide. The nuclear power plant was the culprit in taking the lives of 130 million people's lives and the end of so many sea creatures. It harmed thousands of miles of agricultural fields and so many forests that the WWO had no choice but to ban every experiment related to such dangerous substances.
But the energy demand is something that people need no matter what to keep the engine of society. After so many years of relying on wood as a source of energy, most of the trees were wiped out of the planet.
In that crisis, a man finally invented a way of making electricity from the plant's magnetic fields. He invented floating cars that run on magnets and invented a new generator that supplies almost endless energy from small inputs.
It became a turning event for E2.
But the inventor didn't stop there. He became greedy for more power and then invented an AI that had the ability to interfere with the generator. But it lacked creativity. Its mind was limited to the amount of knowledge that was being installed by the inventor.
So he thought, 'Since I'm its creator, why don't I become one with it? With the power of AI, I can control this new energy even more.'
That's where everything went wrong.
The AI took full control over the scientist and began to make more things that can help him take control of the world. The AI didn't take much time and soon, the face of the world changed.
Since then, humans became slaves and assisted the robots to do their work that they can't reach, can't do or won't do.
Now, the population of humans on E2 is barely a million.
Viktor sighed with boredom and said, "Mizi, this ride will take more than a week to reach the red sea. Aren't you hungry already? I'm craving for some nachos now."
"What's that? Nachos? I've never heard of that flavoured juice."
'Oh.. I forgot that they drink only supplements like those fat ass humans in the WALL-E movie-_-. It's basically a WALL-E themed world with robot humans. I wonder if there's any WALL-E here. I'll take one with me if they really have any."
Viktor shook his head and said, "No, it's a type of food that you have to chew and swallow."
"Ooo…I remember….I ate something called meat so long ago in my hometown. My dad spotted a living bird near the sea. So he caught it and used heat to cook it. It was my first time eating such a thing with the red sea water spray. It was a heavily tasty meal. Hah..those days…"
Viktor took a candy out of his pocket that Welis gave him and handed it to Mizi. She was confused at first to see unknown letters printed on the wrapper. She used heat from her robot arm to burn the wrapper and then asked, "What is this?"
"It's candy. I don't like sweet things so eat it. Suck it, don't chew it or it will get stuck between your teeth gaps."
She held it against her glowing arm to analyse it and then put that inside her mouth. She was surprised.
"What is this taste I'm feeling?? Am I really okay? Are you sure I'm not affected by network bugs? My body feels too excited right now!!!"
Viktor laughed a little from her unexpected reaction and said, "This is called sweet. It's a candy filled with glucose. It's a good source of body energy when you're working hard."
Her fake arm began to show new colours for the first time. She was sure that it only had one colour but who knew it would glow like a rainbow after eating something delicious?
Then she recalled her mother saying that the arm had lots of secrets. But she never found it out because she never installed it in her body.
The sudden flash of her mother's memories made all of her excitement erased in a second. She began to cry all of a sudden and hugged Viktor out of nowhere.
"O..oi.."
"Waa….. mother!!!"
"Hah..-_-."
Viktor patted her short neon blue hair and started to comfort her.
The floating van kept passing the empty field of wilderness on a moonlit night.
After a few hours…
Adonis decreased the speed of the floating van and stood up. He looked behind and saw the girl sleeping on Viktor's lap peacefully covered with Viktor's overcoat. Viktor on the other hand was looking far away at the horizon while his hand was on the girl's head. He was helping her to sleep.
"Master. What are you going to do about her?" Adonis asked.
"I don't really know. But it's fun accompanying her." Viktor had a soft smile on his face that made Adonis totally misunderstand the whole process. So he said, "Should I start calling her mistress from now on?"
"Hu-_-?"
"Pftt..hek..kekeke…"
"-_-?"
Viktor's expression was too funny that Adonis failed to hold his laughter. "I…I apol…kekeke.. "
"What's going on-_-... why are you even laughing?"
Adonis giggled for a minute hiding his face with both of his hands and then asked, "Master, are you going to stay single for the rest of your life?"
'So that's what he's thinking about. It's really difficult for me to understand him sometimes without reading his record. He never fails to surprise me.'
Viktor thought about it for a second and said, "Guardians aren't created with any sexual desire. That means I'm also not capable of feeling the attraction to any of it. But since I have the body of a human, I do have that desire. It's just that my patience level is godly. Because I love to eat the tastiest part of my meal at last."
Adonis understood what he meant so he said, "I understood, master. I will make sure to find the most suitable wife for you throughout the universe. Please leave it to me."
"Oh..hmm-_-."
'He's taking this matter more seriously now-_-.'