Chapter 585: The Fallen Asuran General’s Armor’s Self Awareness Is Problematic
Laz was speechless in more ways than one, hearing the voice inside his head. He had played games before, watched robot anime... hell, he had even been a fan of those rainbow warriors and their big battle mech when he was in grade school, but actually encountering something like this was never a bet he would have been willing to make.
Still though, he knew that for better or for worse, he absolutely could not keep this armor or activate it right now as the resulting fallout wouldn’t be something he could survive. At least, he didn’t think so. The female, Artemis, leading the team was an actual god level entity, on the same level as Maia when he had first met her. Basically, she was already that strong and she wasn’t even the Emperor so Laz could only imagine how strong they would be.
So even if he wanted to see what would happen with this armor, he could not.
Still though, since they were still chatting away while the guard captain observed everything from top to bottom, having been selected for this job since Artemis agreed with his opinion earlier Laz wanted to see if he could get some answers.
"Are you sentient?" Laz asked, wondering what the right wording was. Calling it an artificial intelligence was more like linking it to a chatbot and Laz didn’t think it was appropriate to refer to an ancient armor spirit thingy in such a way.
"I am the equipped protocol interaction control, commonly referred to as Epic. Would you grant me access to you memories young warrior to update my network and command structure? I seem unable to connect to the Cosmic Network from where we are now," the voice called Epic asked.
"Sure. Just don’t fry my brain if you don’t mind."
"Scanning."
...
"Epic?" Laz asked, not getting any response.
"Holy Fuck what a ride..." Came the response in a voice that almost made Laz hit the floor.
"KAT?" Laz almost screamed. Luckily his voice was contained within the facemask and couldn’t be heard by the outside world.
"That’s right big boy. Did you miss me?"
"DON’T FUCK WITH ME!" Laz said, almost wanting to punch himself in the face to teach the armor a lesson.
"Hey now. Don’t go getting your non-existent panties in a bunch alright? Let me explain..."
"STOP USING HER VOICE!" Laz said, his voice almost a growl.
"I can’t, even if I wanted to. The download structure and update feature exist to help integrate the usage of the armor with the one who wields it. So when I updated, all of your memories came flowing into me in such a massive quantity that it almost overloaded my database. How the hell has some little shit like you on some no name planet managed to integrate so much information into your head in the measly twenty something years you’ve been alive? I’ll tell you how, actually. That thing called television and the internet. Do you know how many lives you’ve lived through others just by experiencing those things? Back in the days when I was created, people would have killed for even one percent of the experiences you lived out just by sitting on your ass and eating while doing nothing but browsing your phone. Sure, maybe you can’t recall some of those things, but they are in there, needing only the slightest nudge to bring the memory to the surface. AND THE AMOUNT OF PORN YOU USED TO CONSUME? UGH... At least now your actually experiencing it first hand and not just with your hand. Even ancient lords who ruled over entire worlds wouldn’t have seen the number of naked women you have stored up there, and they have harems in the thousands. Not to mention the fetishes..."
"OK. Ok... What’s your point?" Laz asked, feeling very self conscious to have his porn history known by an armor suit speaking with the voice of his dead lover.
"My point is that while looking for someone to replicate to help with the interaction, this person who you considered to be your first, favorite and somewhat forbidden teacher was the one that made the most sense, also because since they are lost to you, it wouldn’t be something that could become a conflicted memory. While most first time activation of EPIC allows one to pick the voice and personality of the control your memory dump didn’t allow me time to store more candidates, therefore... well boy... we are somewhat stuck together like this."
"I don’t think..."
"Right. You can think later. For now, listen to this big sister here, ok? You don’t have a lot of time and from the sounds of it, neither do I. Luckily for both of us, since your blood activated me, I’m linked to you one way or the other. Plus... I’ve been sleeping for sooo soooo long that it feels good to have you inside me again.... wow! You just got bright red after getting hit on by a suit of space armor. How does that make you feel? Sorry. Back on topic. I’m yours now and since you’re not in the best of positions, I’m going to place a little communication device on your ear so we can talk more when you’re alone. Just try not to do it out loud since you’ll look really strange. Anyway, they are about to pull me off so just put a dumb look on your face and all will be well.... that’s the way. Bye for now baby. You’ve filled me once again and I can’t wait to have you back inside me. Kiss!"
Laz felt something like pressure from the suit on his lips right before the headgear was removed. After that, everything else was taken off piece by piece while Laz stood there in a daze, having no trouble maintaining the dumb look since that’s what had just happened to his brain.
As they put the suit back and escorted Laz out the door, no one noticed the golden crest was now inlaid in his right ear.
Just as they were about to walk off, a blond woman who made all the men avert their gaze stood in front of Laz and looked into his eyes awakening him from his daze. Her almost transparent dress seemed to shimmer in even the dim lights of the hallway, causing one to almost believe the dress was there but not there either, like it was a trick of the eye.
"I hope to see another amazing performance. Perhaps there will be a reward if you impress me," she said with a smile that made all the men go slightly weak and bend over for some reason, as though they were trying to hide something.
She walked off without another word, but laughed to herself.
Everyone was left a little speechless at this rare visitor, but quickly regained their senses and brought Laz back to his cell.
Sitting down afterwards, he wanted to talk to Epic again, not wanting to call the armor Kat, but Jacob came over and sat next to him.
"So what did they want?" He asked the still dazed Laz, wondering just how bad his experience had been.
Laz turned to look at the man and quickly adjusted his mental state, knowing that he needed to be present and figure things out, not worry about them.
"They wanted to find me some showy armor for some sort of match coming up," Laz answered, taking the que from the things he had heard.
"Showy armor? Assuming they didn’t take anyone else..."
"Not that I saw, no..."
"Then they must be bringing in some special beast for you to fight. Or they could have already brought the other one there or intend to do so still?"
"I doubt it. From what I could tell, they seemed like they had no idea what they were looking for but it seemed like they were only concerned about the armor for one person."
"Well, then that means it’s going to be a beast fight boy. Anything else weird happen?" Jacob asked, hoping he could be of more help.
"No..." Laz said, thinking about the armor.
"Well.,.. some person showed up and helped them out. Some beauty they called uh... Artemis?"
"LADY ARTEMIS?" Jacob said in almost a scream before covering his own mouth.
"YES. SHE IS A WISE AND FEARLESS BATTLE MAIDEN, ONE WITH WHOM WE COULD ALL LEARN A LESSON FROM," Jacob them quickly added in a voice that sounded like they were singing phrase to her, as many slaves had a particular member of the royal family that they worshiped as their own personal god, the strongest fighting types or most beautiful females being their primary choice, such as Artemis’s sister, the blonde Aphrodite. The number of slaves who prayed to her would probably make up at least three forth of every slave block.
"Yeah, Her. Since the people picking my armor seemed to be useless at picking anything decent, she ended up lending her advice and directed me to what truly counted as formidable armor. If it wasn’t for her, I couldn’t even began to imagine what kinds of colorful feathers I would be forced to walk out in otherwise," Laz said, explaining in a way that seemed to be praise for her.
"Oh... and there was another woman who seemed to want to run into me as well, but she didn’t stay long after saying she was looking forward to seeing me fight again.
"Oh... And the guards didn’t stop her?" Jacob asked, wondering who this woman was to be where even the guards didn’t object.
"Nope. From the looks of it, they were all too busy trying to hide a sudden hard on or something.
Laz suddenly noticed Jacob was standing in from of him, his hands on his shoulders.
"What color was her hair?" Jacob asked in a harsh tone.
’Blonde? If I remember correctly," Laz said, mostly to himself.
Jacob collapsed on his bed.
"Oh noble goddess... why must you taunt me so...?
