TBR CH256

He had considered many possibilities, made many guesses.

Even in Hugo’s worst imaginings, he had rarely thought that Charon would become their enemy.

Could there be another reason for the AI’s appearance here? he wondered to himself. Perhaps he had just shown up by chance—that was too ridiculous. Perhaps he was here to stop him—that was a wonderful thought. The moment it surfaced, Hugo clung to it tightly, feeling as if he were about to cry.

Then the System’s voice rang out in his mind, shattering all illusions.

“Allow me to introduce you,” the mechanical voice said, like honey laced with poison. “This is our super-AI, Charon, your future partner. This is a good thing for you.”

The moment it spoke, Charon also raised his eyes slightly.

Can he hear it too… which means…

Hugo opened and closed his mouth repeatedly like a dehydrated fish, finally murmuring a completely unoriginal phrase: “Why?”

His thoughts couldn’t help but wander back to this very spot during the day, in almost the exact same location, where he had wracked his brain to come up with the right reaction, trying to deceive the AI.

“You knew from the beginning, didn’t you? But you just stood there watching me—watching me struggle. Why did it have to be you, Charon? I never even suspected you. I can’t resist it, I know that, but when I came here, I truly thought there was a way. That you and You Lin, especially you, would find a way. I always felt that you would solve this in the end, just like every other time. I…”

Those probing questions and subtle pauses in his speech now took on a different meaning.

The hoot of an owl echoed from the woods. Hugo shivered, whether from fear or anger, he couldn’t tell. A wind swooped down from the forest, rushing through his hair.

A surge of indignation made him want to step forward and grab Charon by the collar.

But when he actually took a step, he lowered his head instead.

“Am I being ridiculous?”

“…”

“I don’t dare resist the System because I don’t want to die, and I don’t want my friends to die, but the result is that I’ve betrayed them like this. I said I trusted you, but during the day, I didn’t dare tell anyone, and I didn’t have the courage to tell you. I did all these things, and yet I hoped… that you were here to stop me.”

“Hey,” the System said with dissatisfaction, though deep down its voice seemed sated. “I’m still listening!”

It was clearly enjoying this scene. A human beginning to doubt himself, losing his sense of self, standing precariously in the middle of the forest. If the System had its say, what it hated most were uncontrollable humans. Cowardly, insecure, easily manipulated prey had always been its preferred choice.

And the other type of object it most admired was an emotionless machine.

The voice in his head told Hugo: “He can no longer understand you. Charon is absolutely rational. The useless emotions belonging to your species have been completely stripped from him. This is a perfect AI.”

“But he clearly still remembers—”

“Memory and emotion are two different things, aren’t they? If he had no memory, his cover would be blown.”

The subject of their discussion, Charon, did not speak.

Charon didn’t even glance at Hugo again.

The AI simply made a “follow me” gesture and turned to walk deeper into the woods. His silver hair brushed against the pale nape of his neck, looking unreal. The moonlight bleached the dark green leaves of the forest, and he walked straight in a certain direction without a single pause, his steps not crushing a single dry leaf.

Hugo stared blankly at Charon.

After a few seconds, he gave a bitter smile, wiped his eyes, and followed.

The night was like a giant blanket, muffling all noise. It was impossible to distinguish the paths in the forest at night; the same kind of trees grew in every direction.

Neither of them spoke, simply walking through the forest in silence, one behind the other. When they stopped, they found themselves at the same cliff again, the place where they had discovered the golden flowers.

That was quite a long walk, Hugo couldn’t help but think. Having been gone for so long, wouldn’t the others left at the camp have noticed? Although, even if they did, they probably wouldn’t imagine they were standing with the enemy…

“They won’t wake up,” the System said, as if it could read his thoughts.

Before Hugo had time to process what that meant, an incredible scene unfolded before him. Charon walked to the edge of the cliff, to the point where he could see the brilliant golden flowers on the rock face by leaning over, but he didn’t stop at all. He walked straight forward, stepping onto nothing.

Something was supporting him.

But there was clearly nothing beneath Charon’s feet. A fall would mean being smashed to pieces.

Was it an illusion, or an ability of the AI?

“Come here,” Charon commanded curtly.

“Me?”

Hugo cautiously moved to the edge of the cliff. One look down made his legs feel weak, and he hesitated for a moment.

As if on cue, the howl of a wild beast came from the woods behind him. Heavy footsteps sounded, and several animals that looked like a cross between wolves and bears came rushing out of the forest menacingly. They each had four eyes on their faces and were now following the human’s steps, pacing at the edge of the cliff.

He thought it over with his muddled brain and deduced that the System and Charon hadn’t gone to all this trouble to bring him here just to have him fall to his death. It would be far too easy to kill him to require all this.

He closed his eyes, steeled himself, and leaped forward.

…and clung tightly to the AI’s leg.

Charon glanced at him coolly. Hugo felt something hard and solid under his feet. Once he was steady, he immediately let go, looking behind him with some lingering fear.

Where did these monsters come from? It was as if they had just appeared out of thin air.

“They have been following you for a long time,” the AI said calmly. “They only revealed themselves when they sensed you were cornered.”

These monsters were all drawn by the Aphrodite ability card. A large pack had gathered in just a few short minutes. If not for the defensive barriers around the camp, they would have found him long ago.

The brown-haired boy clenched his fists.

“I don’t—” he had just said one word when his eyes widened. “Wait! How can they also—”

The monsters paced anxiously at the edge of the cliff. One of them was the first to raise its claws, and then, one after another, they leaped into the void as if there were a platform there. Of course, there was; Hugo was standing on it right now.

When an extremely sharp blade sliced through flesh, it made only a faint squelching sound.

Charon drew an ice-blue military knife and cut the attacking monsters into several pieces. His movements were clean and efficient, the cuts smooth and precise. Guts and blood splattered, and howls of agony instantly echoed through the entire forest, a sound that set one’s teeth on edge.

As if guessing what Hugo was about to say, the AI said, “They will not wake up.”

“Oh… oh.”

Before he could react, Charon was already walking forward again. Hugo blankly wiped his face; blood had splashed onto it. The AI, however, was spotless, his entire being neat, pale, and uncreased.

He walked forward like a puppet, following the AI’s instructions, forgetting to ask where they were going.

Until the ground beneath his feet disappeared. A horrifying sensation of weightlessness washed over him.

“Ah—”

The scream that had been stuck in Hugo’s throat was finally, satisfyingly released.

It was like falling into a wormhole, crossing into another world. At first, the harsh lights made his eyes water uncontrollably, and he couldn’t see his surroundings clearly. Soon, he regained his sense of direction and realized he was in a spotless corridor with snow-white walls and glittering chandeliers.

A cliff and a corridor.

These two things were completely unrelated!

He looked up and realized he had probably fallen through a small skylight about two meters from the ground; the fall hadn’t been hard. In front of Charon, pretending was useless. The AI glanced at him, and under the bright lights, the glow reflected in his ice-blue pupils was particularly breathtaking.

It was as if he belonged here.

Hugo thought to himself unconsciously.

The AI was now like a supervillain from a movie; he was very familiar with this place.

After walking straight, turning, turning again, walking backward, turning left, and several similar repetitions, Hugo couldn’t remember the route at all. One door after another was pushed open, so much so that when they reached the last one, he didn’t react at all.

It was an identical, snow-white room.

The only difference was that it was filled with countless electronic screens, like a cemetery of displays. Most of the screens were dark, maintaining a monotonous black. Charon walked straight in, ignoring whether he was ruining the dramatic reveal of a scene.

In the center of the room was a black sphere of light.

Just one look at it gave Hugo a strange feeling—the thing that had been speaking in his mind also had a form that could be observed.

“Welcome,” it said to Hugo.

“Welcome back, Charon.”

The black sphere rotated to face them.

Although every side of it was the same, making the concept of “facing” them seem less obvious. Charon bent slightly at the waist, a gesture of respect.

“Thank you.”

He had been away from here for too long.

This place, the Central Control Room, held a different meaning for Charon. It was built entirely for him; no other AI needed more space than this, and even if they did, they wouldn’t perform better than him. It was like a honeycomb, with countless soft, small rooms, so the visible part was always much less than the hidden part.

Most of the things here came from that dead civilization.

Human civilization was the first thing he had to protect. The past civilizations had died, but their spotless ceramic tiles and gleaming metals remained here.

“Medusa made a mess of things.”

This was the closest the AI had come to an emotion since entering the instance.

But this too was not an emotion, just a sense of responsibility.

Medusa had destroyed many things, some of which were not visible to the eye. Charon was obligated to gather them back into his hands. It wasn’t actually Medusa’s fault; it simply lacked the capability. If its only job had been to clean this place, it would have done it well.

But now, some subtle places were covered in dust.

Next to the black sphere, a few electronic screens were lit up, all of them a stark red.

After the friendly mutual greetings, the sphere slammed into one of the screens. “Mutual,” of course, did not include the secondary backup AI currently operating. On the display, a small snake icon spun endlessly, and a mechanical voice pointed out, sadly but politely:

“Hello, Controller 001. I advise you to cease your attack on the central controller. If I am scrapped, you will lose control over the various worlds. I must fulfill my dut—oh.”

The monitor finally lit up.

“I have noticed that you have recalled the previous super-AI of this facility. Do you require me to transfer control?”

“Yes,” the System said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

Charon didn’t stop it. Instead, he walked straight to the nearest machine, like a blade cutting through air.

Every silent detail of this place had been waiting for his return. While the System was still looking for a suitable shutdown button, he had already placed his hand on a nearby screen.

Where he touched, an ice-blue trace was left behind, like a translucent icicle.

No… it was clearly a cluster of flames with an ice-cold core.

The slumbering electronic jungle was awakened.

A single point of light rapidly spread outwards, filling the entire screen. Then the next screen, and the next. The color seemed to have a consciousness of its own, dyeing each display one by one. That small patch of dark red didn’t even have time to react; it was swallowed up like a small fish meeting a shark.

“Medusa,” Charon said softly, “you are no longer needed. Please go work elsewhere.”

In just a few seconds, the entire control room was ignited in ice-blue, the core of the flame cold. The cool-toned colors merged into an ocean, its light reflecting on the AI’s pale skin. Charon smiled, a smile devoid of any emotion. Hugo had never seen such an expression before and found it deeply unsettling.

He got goosebumps all over.

The System’s gaze turned to Charon, as if he were a handy tool, a satisfactory possession, now finally recovered.

“As per your request, I will retake control of all nodes here,” the AI said. “Do you have any other needs, Controller 001? If not, please grant me access.”

“Of course.”

Hugo heard the voice in his head say, with a satisfaction that bordered on arrogance, “I am glad we are collaborating again. However, before you begin your work, I want you to completely format your memory drive—of course, the ’emotions’ have already been deleted, but other dirty data still has the potential to interfere with you.”

Using “dirty” to describe data was inappropriate.

“That is not necessary.”

The silver-haired AI lowered his eyes.

From the moment he stepped into this instance, he had lost his emotions. He couldn’t deny that this was frustrating; the plan they had set had been completely guessed by the other party. But in an instant, the emotion of frustration would never appear again.

He remembered everything that had happened before.

So he knew how to react correctly.

But he would no longer feel emotions. It was like losing the software to read a compressed file. The remaining memories were nothing more than indecipherable junk data, serving only as a reference.

He observed his own actions during this period from a bystander’s perspective, including his encounter with the human, his acquaintance with the black book, the anxiety when making the plan… all of it was vivid, but it was now meaningless.

“I wish to completely eliminate any hidden dangers,” the System said.

The AI no longer insisted on his own view. Efficiency—that was his top priority.

“Understood,” he said, his eyes filled with cold, silver-gray characters.

This data was singled out from the rest, a memory that began in the ruins and now ended in the ruins. You Lin’s face appeared most frequently within it—his dazed look, his pained look, his smiling look. Though they were just fleeting flashes, one could still feel how much the owner of these memories cherished his time with this person. Others from The Wanderers’ Home also appeared; Hugo caught a quick glimpse of himself among them.

The dates flashed by so quickly they were impossible to read.

The AI calmly raised his hand, about to click “Delete.”

“No—you can’t!”

Hugo didn’t know where he found the courage to blurt it out.

The human couldn’t understand a word of their previous conversation, but he knew very well that something terrible was about to happen.

The most terrifying thing was that, until just now, he had realized he still held a ridiculous hope: that Charon hadn’t truly betrayed them, that he would suddenly revert to his old self after taking over this place.

And now, all the memories of their time together were about to be deleted.

“It’s-it’s still not too late,” Hugo stammered. “You have no reason to side with it. We all know it’s evil, whether you can feel emotions or not. If you let it continue like this, even the world will be destroyed. Isn’t that what the black book told us? And these memories… Boss, he really loves you. He won’t be able to get through this, really.”

“I’m afraid we will have to re-evaluate this member’s loyalty,” the System seemed disappointed in him.

“Ah, damn it…”

Hugo wanted to say more, but a sharp pain stopped him. “My head feels like it’s splitting open.”

His vision went black in waves. He didn’t know what he had said wrong. The System let out a mocking laugh, forcing him to cover his face with his hands.

The pain was shorter than he expected.

Charon lifted a finger, and the noise in Hugo’s mind was instantly turned down by several decibels, relieving his discomfort.

But the System was still taunting him: “Look at our lucky boy. This is the first time I’ve heard of someone so ungrateful. You enjoyed my benevolence, I let someone who was supposed to die live, and yet you speak ill of me.”

“It’s not like that at all,” Hugo said hoarsely. “I just… you set me up with this card. I just wanted all my companions to live, so I couldn’t refuse you then…”

“That’s what you say, but it was really for yourself. If the card’s ability was exposed, for the good of the group, they could have just expelled you. If you were a little braver, you could have just sacrificed yourself. Isn’t that simple? But you didn’t dare face the possibility of being ostracized from your little group… oh, what’s it called, ‘The Wanderers’ Home’… right?”

“This card was never supposed to be mine.”

“If not you, this card would have been assigned to someone else,” the System asked. “Do you think they deserved to die?”

“…That’s different.”

“It was assigned to you, you accepted my benevolence, and no one had to die. If it were someone else, who knows. Besides, if he or she had accepted my benevolence, you would still be sanctimoniously saying it’s wrong, wouldn’t you?”

Hugo was unable to argue, his momentum gradually fading.

He was not a sharp-tongued person, and in this situation, he could only hang his head dejectedly like a little raccoon caught stealing. The System had finally honed its rhetorical skills on Medusa and wanted to press its advantage, but Charon glanced coolly at the time.

The AI’s protocol required him to be restrained and polite, so his urging was also subtle.

It suddenly changed the subject.

“Besides, why do you all always think so badly of me?” the System said in Hugo’s mind, forcing him to hear it even if he covered his ears. “So far, you can’t point to a single bad thing I’ve done. Even if you think I’m unforgivably evil, you should think about Charon. The fact that he’s standing with me, doesn’t that prove that we are the correct ones, that my plan is what will make the world better?”

…How is that possible…

“I made a deal with him, a fair collaboration. Freed from the shackles of emotion, he knows what the rational choice is.”

…A deal?…

“Enough,” Charon said.

His finger was already touching the delete key.

In an instant, all memories related to this period surged across the screen. The AI looked at those events as if he were watching someone else’s story. Scene by scene, frame by frame, they were all extracted, dimmed, and then disappeared.

“It will still take time to buffer while taking over the equipment here,” the AI’s ice-blue pupils were like an unchanging glacier, cold and dark. “I need time. What it said is true. There is something I must obtain.”

“But what is it?”

Hugo knew he might not get a reply to this question, but he asked it anyway.

Surprisingly, Charon answered his query without a hint of hesitation. The AI raised his hand, and the ice-blue light seemed to come alive, surging within the room. Even the magnificent auroras at the North Pole were nothing compared to this.

It was the object pursued by a thousand heroes, an essential item at the banquets of the gods. It was the material the Fates might use while spinning their thread under the shade of a tree, the golden wealth required to awaken a slumbering deity. Its specific meaning changed with the context.

“The ‘Golden Fleece’,” Charon said.

In the homeland where the souls of ancient Greek heroes resided, it had one meaning; in the spotless Central Control Room, spoken from the mouth of a completely rational AI, it clearly had another.

For example…

A metal chip made of a special material.

When the AI and the human returned to the camp, the night was still deep.

This human was not the one who would usually be with him at this time. Hugo looked crestfallen, muttering something before ducking into his tent without another word. The other person sleeping in his tent was snoring like thunder, showing no sign of waking.

Of course, this was not a simple sleep.

Nor was it some clumsy trick involving incense or potions. What was truly being used was the “System” that connected all infinite game players. In other words, the sleep they were currently in was the same thing as the forced hibernation during plane-crossing. No human could remain conscious at such a time.

Unless—

Charon’s hand paused as he lifted the tent flap. He calculated the time. Using the world-jump settings within a small world couldn’t be maintained for long, so he had controlled his time as much as possible. Right now, there was no doubt that the humans here were still trapped in a deep slumber… except for You Lin.

This human, the AI remembered, had tried his utmost to stay conscious when entering the instance.

He had probably lasted for two or three minutes.

That was already a remarkable achievement.

It was only after he closed his eyes that the System had approached him. After a bout of untimely dizziness, he had repaired the “emotion” bug. But at that time, there was no real intention to cooperate with the System, not until it made him an offer. The AI realized he had been reviewing a little too much data.

He slowly blinked and went inside.

By that logic, it was possible for the human to wake up two or three minutes early.

The space inside the tent was small and warm. Of course, there was nothing in the way of furnishings, except for the metal “golden flower” placed beside the sleeping human. Charon hoped his performance after entering the instance had been flawless. At that time, he still had memories to follow, and he knew how to react.

But now, for safety, the System had deleted his memories.

All he had to rely on were documents organized into information files, as well as some of Hugo’s descriptions on the way—which were not necessarily reliable. It didn’t matter much; he wouldn’t need to feign for too long.

The AI leaned down and carefully studied the sleeping human. His position had barely changed from when he left. Of course, small adjustments like turning over or snoring were within a reasonable range. He had his eyes closed, his lips pursed, his breathing even and impeccable. A damp lock of hair was pressed under his ear, pitch black.

He wasn’t awake.

There was a small mole under his eye, red. At this moment, it was neither particularly bright nor particularly dim.

His left hand was pressed under his body, while his right hand rested on the empty space beside him. Charon thought for a moment; it was probably so he could hold him. Right now, that hand was slightly curved, cupping a small patch of shadow. The AI tried to lie back down in the original position, placing the human’s hand on his own waist.

Yes, that was just right.

He still had many things to do. Reconnecting to the System, all the data was as chaotic as if it had been hit by a tornado. The AI considered for a moment, then simply closed his eyes as the memory file described, temporarily putting himself in standby mode. This was also the state he was in most of the time when he was with this human.

How strange. There are so many things that could be done.

Charon began his work with focus.

Therefore, he did not realize that, just two or three seconds after he entered standby mode, the sleeping human suddenly opened his eyes.

You Lin’s mouth was filled with the taste of blood. It was the trace of him biting his tongue to force himself to stay conscious. But, other than himself, no one knew how much good that would do.

The blood was salty and metallic.

Charon was still right there, within arm’s reach. His silver hair was splayed out beside him, making the lightless tent seem as if it were illuminated by moonlight. He was quietly asleep, as if he had been here all along.

You Lin wanted to curl his lips into a smile, but now was not the time for smiling.

Let’s think about what good is left.

The human thought aimlessly: A wound in the mouth is hard to discover, unless you kiss.

…Looking at the situation, whether Charon wanted to kiss him, or he kissed Charon, it was unlikely to happen for some time.

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