NSLICE-00P and her newest monsters walked through another dungeon, sweeping through to hunt down as many monsters as they could find. A couple of drone-golems flew overhead, piloted by Snuan and a handful of newly summoned cyber-rats from within the monster hangar. 00B led the way, controlling the pace of the battle to keep the lower level subordinates safe.

NSLICE-00P, on the other hand, was currently running an analysis. The new subordinates had gained a couple of levels and were learning to coordinate on their own, so NSLICE-00P didn’t need to watch them as closely. Likewise, 00B had volunteered to assist them, so they still had a powerful and experienced leader to guide them. As such, NSLICE-00P could safely her attention to other affairs.

Mainly, expanding her own capabilities.

At the end of the day, she was still the most powerful combat asset in the network, and that was unlikely to change anytime soon. And she was also providing more combat protocols to the NSLICE database than any other unit, and so advancements in her own capabilities also improved the network as a whole.

So she was analyzing her combat experiences and data gained from Imperial records, and then comparing them to the available upgrade options to determine how best to proceed.

For she had many options.

She currently had over 200 Personal perk points she could spend, and gained a few more anytime they terminated a dungeon. Her Dungeon points were currently sitting just over 100, given all the individuals she had upgraded into CELIU units, but between the Otter Burrow and her New World she was currently gaining around 50 points a day, so the Dungeon points were growing increasingly less scarce, especially as she gained more subordinate cores.

As such, there were a great many upgrades she could afford.

So…what would be the most efficient way for her to grow her capabilities? And what would be the most efficient choices to counteract the Heralds of the New Dawn?

Her magical capabilities continued to grow, her firepower had proven effective in most cases. The Legion’s ritual barrier had stopped her, but her improvised anti-mana bomb had dealt with it, and she could continue to iterate on that concept. She already had some options to boost her firepower or strip enemy defenses if need be.

Rather, with the massive expansion of her mana pool thanks to the new world, which only grew as the new world expanded in size, firepower was no longer the limiting factor. She had all the mana needed to either Supercharge a spell past what the enemy could resist, or simply Multicast strategic magic to overwhelm the enemy via sheer quantity.

The limiting factor had now become her own processing capabilities.

Her AI might have been capable of perfect precision in magic circle construction and in adjusting the flows of mana during a Supercharge, but it was not a free action. Such things required parts of her attention and her processing power, and there was ultimately a limit to those resources. And now, those limits could be reached before the limits of her available mana, not to mention all the other aspects of combat that would require her attention during a battle.

She could utilize additional processing resources via the NSLICE network, but such a solution did have limits of its own. Each additional linked unit represented a physically disconnected piece of hardware that had to be contacted for each calculation it assisted with, which added a tiny bit of time to the process. Eventually, that could add up to slow down the speed of a given calculation.

And her experiences had proven that time was at a premium in active combat. Even fractions of a second could mean the difference between activating a spell that would terminate the enemy, and the enemy reaching her and dealing critical damage in turn. If, for example, she had been able to respond in the moments before the Heralds of the New Dawn sent her to the Realms of Mana, she might have been able to avoid the forcible relocation. Even if she couldn’t, a sufficiently powerful counterattack in that moment might have incapacitated the Herald of Night, making it more difficult for Sidonia to have kidnapped Ateia before NSLICE-00P managed to return.

NSLICE-00P had vastly improved her firepower since arriving in this universe. But she hadn’t thus far improved her speed, either that of her body, her spellcasting, or her processing.

And so, she took a look at the Implants menu.

Implants -> Upgrade Implants -> Bonded AI

Name

Cost

Upkeep

Description

Processing Speed +1

point

mana

Increases the speed of all processors. Cost and upkeep increase with subsequent purchases.

Boost Memory +1

point

mana

Increases available memory. Cost and upkeep increase with subsequent purchases.