Despite all my talents, I was not some deity or wizard capable of changing reality with a snap of my fingers as I pleased.
My skills in understanding machines are great, as is my mastery of code and hardware, but there were still systems that even I failed to crack.
The information defense of these metallic creatures fell into the category of things that were too difficult a puzzle even for me.
Having found several more humanoids spending eternity in special coffins attached to the walls, I was able to carefully extract them and analyze their construction; however, their cyber-defense systems were so unusual and yet so perfect that, after a time, I truly had to admit their defense was practically unbreakable.
Given my current resources, I could have managed it in a couple of decades of hard work, but right now it was definitely not worth it.
The mere decoding of their complex alphanumeric language with a very unusual numbering system took a month and a half—what then can be said about a full-scale serious cipher?
And yes, the mechanical skeletons I found possessed some form of consciousness.
Having dismantled several into parts and checked them against the destroyed remains of other machines, I was absolutely certain that these thinking machines could not only self-develop and think like humans, but even emulate something distantly resembling emotions.
Moreover, the entire system is so complex that the Iron Men seemed a pathetic fake in comparison.
With this fact, the theory that these Precursors were actually biological beings in the distant past gained much more weight, for their entire secondary structure was not as efficient as that of automatons created from scratch.
These creatures chose to preserve a rough appearance at the cost of potential efficiency.
And judging by their place of residence, they acted in this manner quite often in general.
The longer I immersed myself in this pyramid, the better I understood the logic and thinking of the Precursors.
The dark metallic corridors only seemed like a dead tomb at first glance, but if you looked closely and began to notice details, it became clear that this place was a home and, especially, a necropolis for sleeping machines.
Having gone into a form of stasis millions of years ago, they built a fortress around themselves filled with ritual signs, marks of their own achievements, and a whole heap of heraldry telling of the great deeds of their houses.
The psychology of the Precursors turned out to be surprisingly human, at least if I correctly understood the entire network of frescoes and manuscripts decorating the walls inside the Black Pyramid and telling the story of an ancient people.
All names were erased or damaged by a weapon unknown to me that simply wiped away layers of reality; however, some things were still decipherable.
According to them, the Precursors were an incredibly technically advanced race that settled among the stars and even entire galaxies.
A countless people settled on hundreds of thousands and even millions of worlds, completely mastering the laws of the material universe and spending eternity in search of either a cure for some deadly disease or trying to achieve true immortality.
In their language, these were roughly the same terms.
Obviously, they were highly advanced, as they could not only travel between stars without problems but also knew how to move these very clumps of burning plasma, sometimes creating entire new clusters and thereby reshaping the universe to their vision.
Of course, the “wise” Precursors wrote that they did not use this power for evil and only maintained order, while preventing malicious rivals from destroying all their labors.
However, I treated this part of the tales with particular skepticism.
Further, part of the inscriptions was destroyed along with the walls, which is why the next piece of information immediately told of some conflict with a Great and Terrible Rival who sent living nightmares upon the “worthy sons of the Dying Stars.”
There were stories about a war of galactic scale, where the “good and honest” Precursors heroically fought countless legions of horror sent by the worst creatures in the entire visible universe, and would have won long ago if the enemy had even a drop of common sense and behaved like “honest warriors.”
The entire story ended with the tale of some representative of the Precursor species who was going to meet in a final battle with a sworn enemy.
There were dozens of messages about the bravery and greatness of the fortress defender, but none of them were completed due to the massive destruction inside the pyramid.
Something seemed to have passed through all levels of defense and destroyed any resistance…
A decent story, but presented too one-sidedly and clearly lacking several key details.
Their legends told of mythical warriors and scientists, but at the same time, all the rest of the people were considered almost simple property and mediocre weapons at best.
Therefore, I have very big questions for a species that could conquer the galaxy but did not get rid of slavery and its equivalent of feudal law.
However, such cultural-archaeological questions were amusing, bringing variety to my reflections, but they were not my main focus.
Even if understanding the psychology of the creators of this place could be beneficial, the further I went, the clearer it became that the threat of this place was not as great as it first seemed to me.
No, of course, once this place was a real armed fortress into which I could never have sneaked without attracting the attention of entire mechanical armies, and any attempt to learn anything from the inside would have been stopped by a heap of weapons and traps, but those times are long gone.
After an ancient battle, there are almost no working defense systems left here, and only scarab-like robots without self-awareness continued to perform programmed tasks.
Over the past months, I have managed to avoid their attention, which is limited to simple cleaning of the pyramid and futile attempts to restore it, but there were no more traps or encounters, except for the Precursors sleeping in eternal sleep. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
And even then, only one in ten remained in working condition, while the others lay in heaps on the floor in those sections where, due to destruction and other phenomena unknown to me, the scarabs could not reach.
The only still unchecked part of the pyramid was its very center, along with several ruined corridors that had collapsed, likely after the destruction of one of the main walls.
The phenomenon itself, capable of somehow blocking nanomachines and interfering with their work, also interested me very much, but I didn’t even know which side to approach it from.
Most likely, these are precisely the consequences of the weapons of the Ancient Enemies, whom even the Precursors feared, which is why they should be reflected upon in the future.
Therefore, I should have taken up what could bring benefit right now.
I was unlikely to succeed in getting under tons of nanites to reach the abandoned corridors, so only the heart of the entire fortress remained unexplored.
A place least affected by the past battle, which is why I will have to be clever for a single penetration inside.
However, this is the best situation for me—having time and resources in reserve, one can prepare for any obstacle or enemy.
.
.
.
Waiting behind a pile of dead metallic bodies, I mentally counted the seconds, preparing for the arrival of my “pass” into the heart of the pyramid.
The thick walls and gates were equipped with green field generators, reducing practically any forceful attempts to get inside to zero; however, a certain option existed.
The Black Fortress is dead, but it still had maintenance staff working with perfect precision.
Three…
Two…
One…
There they are.
As soon as I finished counting, the wall ahead slightly trembled for a moment, the swarm of nanites opened, creating a meter-wide hole from which dozens of small metallic scarabs with shiny emerald eyes immediately emerged, beginning to spread over the walls and ceiling.
The repair bots possessed no mind and even produced practically no sound, so primitive were they.
A simple machine with a strict set of commands, obeying the orders of someone from above.
Being near them, I heard only a hollow humming call and sharp clicks, as if sounding from afar.
After each such click, the scarabs stopped for a moment and divided into streams, going off to perform different commands.
And although I did not guess the nature of these sounds for a long time, I recently found the answer to the riddle.
Primitive machines were too stupid to work as a group in places where repair was truly required, so they needed a general “foreman.” A certain mechanism, although deprived of a mind so as not to revolt against the sleeping masters, but at the same time sufficiently developed and complex to keep the pyramid in order and prevent enemies from bursting inside.
I saw this machine least often, about once every twenty days, when it went around the corridors of the pyramid and checked for intruders.
The two-meter mechanical spider made almost no sound, while looking very carefully in the direction where I was hiding.
Last time, I managed to maintain stealth only thanks to a timely retreat into one of the abandoned corridors, but now the task is different.
After waiting another three hundred and forty-five seconds, the main and last guardian of this place emerged from the widened hole.
With eight mechanical legs ending in sharp blades, several shining eyes, and a large maw from which a faint glow emanated, this beast at first glance seemed the most dangerous of all the Precursors’ creations.
However, any machine, no matter how complex it may be, is still infinitely far from a human capable of thinking with their head and adapting to all situations.
It is like a wild beast relying on instincts alone, which are very simple to use.
A sentient individual only needed to prepare to deal with the enemy in an instant, hitting its weak spot.
Over the last two months, I had also reliably verified that only one such machine remained in working order in the entire pyramid.
In one of the half-ruined corridors, I managed to find a practically collapsed “corpse” of an identical mechanism, which, although it continued to send a signal, was already deprived of all limbs and also served as a source of resources and knowledge.
Any attempts to create two small disruptions in the operation of the pyramid always led to the emergency appearance of only one spider.
Having assessed the chances, after almost a year of exploring the pyramid, I decided to take the risk. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Moving in the shadows slightly to the side, I proceeded to implement the plan.
First of all, it was necessary to wait for the perfect moment when the spider would come out of its burrow, after which I would distance myself as far as possible from the scarabs.
In any case, they might run to it if signs of a threat appeared, and then I would be forced to flee.
It is unknown whether this mechanism can turn on other defense systems of the pyramid, but I cannot take the risk.
It is necessary to deal with it with such speed that it does not have time to take any action.
Therefore, as soon as it moved about twenty meters away, directing almost all the servants around, I struck immediately.
Since my goal was the study of machines and not simple destruction, I had to act carefully.
Having spent three weeks on an expedition to the Sublimatum bases, I managed to collect everything necessary for several grenades that would solve the issue.
A small shining cube immediately flew at the spider, after which I threw several more of a different composition into the largest clusters of scarabs.
The robots didn’t even have time to react when a stream of black-blue sticky slime burst out of them and began to grow in all directions, consuming the nanite machines in the process.
Mechanisms created from molecular-sized nanites were quite a puzzle, difficult to restrain even for me due to their ability to absorb any matter.
And destruction is ruled out because of the threat of activating defense protocols after their mass death.
And so I developed something capable of at least temporarily restraining the swarm if the spider could not be liquidated.
The plus of chemical reactions is that such formations can increase and gain mass faster than the machines eat them.
Of course, because of this, all the oxygen here will soon run out, but I can last thirty minutes even without it.
But I won’t even need that much time.
The flying cube sparkled with blue runes in flight, previously touched by me, and then began to emit a bright glow, while releasing thin strands of photons encompassing one specific spider…
Just a moment, and the mechanism disappeared along with a flash, so that only a faint flickering of the cube reminded that the machine was restrained and locked in a spatial storage.
Perhaps the Keepers of Karaashi could not help me themselves in any way, but they had some very useful items left over from the times preceding the Long Night.
And such a curious “place of imprisonment” was almost their greatest treasure, which, however, they gave up without question when I reached a dead end trying to deal with such a great threat without direct violence and emergency activation of defense systems.
“Stop,” my voice echoed across the walls of the pyramid and, as if, even went far beyond its limits.
The swarm of small machines, already about to tear all the flesh off me, stopped instantly and slightly raised their green eyes toward me.
Technically, I didn’t need to utter the words aloud, since the entire principle of my decoy was related to the emulation of the mecha-spider’s signal, with which it gave orders to the scarabs, but right now I wasn’t going to take risks.
Because of this, at the same time, I tried to influence the machines using the same principle thanks to which I hear them.
“Open up,” I said, taking the cube and pointing my hand at the door, giving the bugs another order, also duplicating it on a portable emulator designed based on the remains of another fallen spider.
The crooked, crudely made mechanism was only formally portable – a hundred-kilogram machine hanging on my back and running on Assimilator cyborg processors could seem so only to me.
However, it still worked successfully.
The scarabs stood in place for some time, but after a few seconds, they slowly moved toward the door leading to the very heart of the Black Pyramid.
They crawled along the walls, floor, and ceilings, and some even merged into a swarm and began to cover the nanite wall, slowly eating a round hole in it.
Not exactly what I was counting on, but it will do for now.
“Make way.”
I didn’t even need a drone to see the inside of the wide and spacious room, where a giant, sickly green shining sun glowed in the center, while around it were hundreds and thousands of metallic sarcophagi, some of which were destroyed and melted, but most turned out to be intact.
Having surveyed the entire room and assessed the scale of the work, I put away the cube and then took a deep breath.
The work ahead would be long…
However, the second part of the plan is complete.
There is still much to be done ahead, but if I can get even a part of the local technologies – then the unification of the entire planet will only be a matter of time…
And then only the threats lurking in the galaxy will be able to create competition for me.