Once again, NSLICE-00P found herself in a pitch black world. She couldn’t feel anything. She was picking up soft whispers and the occasional growl, but her other sensors couldn't identify the source of the noises. Even her Dungeon Field couldn't pierce through the darkness around her.

And worse…

Her Geo-Oscillator Engine had once again lost contact with the planetary core.

Well, in many ways the situation was better than the first time. The most important of which was that her systems could currently run on mana, and she had numerous Mana Capacitors that gave her significantly greater power storage than she was originally designed for. That mana started flowing back from the capacitors into the Geo-Oscillator Engine, keeping it active for now.

But in other ways, the situation was worse.

Because previously she found herself in an empty void with nothing in it. But now? She couldn’t detect anything around her…but this void was not empty. The darkness itself appeared to have substance…and will. It was creeping into her armor plating and her systems. And everywhere it touched, she stopped being able to perceive.

Her robotic eye turned red.

“Hostility detected. Activating termination protocols.”

And how exactly would NSLICE-00P terminate an amorphous substance she couldn’t identify? One that seemed more like a dangerous energy than a living thing?

“Equalizer engaged.”

NSLICE-00P opened fire with the Equalizer…and then everything became clear. The Equalizer did, in fact, react with the hostile substance in its current configuration, confirming it was a type of mana. While NSLICE-00P still couldn’t sense or record the hostile mana around her, she could record the reaction with the Equalizer. And because of that, she was able to make a reasonable approximation as to the attribute of the mana around her.

It appeared to be a type of Dark mana, only significantly more dense and powerful.

And…there was another revelation.

As the Equalizer destroyed the Dark mana, it created a small, minuscule area where no Dark mana existed. Yet, the area was not empty. NSLICE-00P detected unattributed mana flow into the gap before it contacted the Dark mana and joined with it.

NSLICE-00P’s robotic eye flickered as she analyzed the situation.

First of all, she appeared to be in a location filled to the brim with mana that was cut off from the planetary core she had calibrated her Geo-Oscillator Engine to.

Secondly, this mana was a type of Dark mana, and was innately hostile to her, as well as jamming most of her senses.

Thirdly, this mana could still be interacted with as normal mana, and when destroyed was replaced by attribute-less mana that immediately took on the Dark attribute on contact.

And so, she determined the course of action with the highest probability to avoid eventual termination by either hostile mana or by running out of power.

She took out a metal sphere from her inventory. It was one of her anti-mana storage devices she had experimented with. She fired up the Equalizer and channeled it into the device.

When experimenting with anti-magic circles, she ran into certain limitations. She could guide the anti-mana down appropriately formed energy channels…but she herself had no contact with or control over the energy. This was an issue when attempting to replicate magic circles, as mana-based spellcasting appeared to have a mental element. Mana could be manipulated by the mind unassisted, and mana-based magic circles assumed this to be the case. Even something as simple as the Bolt spell had variables such as velocity that turned out to be determined, at least in part, by the caster rather than the circle. But since she couldn’t interact directly with anti-mana, she could not impart those variables into the anti-spell.

But she did have one success.

The Barrier spell, at least in its simplest, Arcane attribute form, was a relatively static construct. It simply formed mana into a spherical shape, and that was it, with very few adjustable components requiring mental input. So…once she had determined the correct anti-mana circle to match the effect, she found she could channel anti-mana into a barrier. She couldn’t control the size, shape, or density of this barrier, and since the Equalizer power output didn't scale with her mana density it was noticeably weaker than her Barrier spells, but she could surround herself with a sphere of anti-mana if she wished.

She fired up the Equalizer and channeled it into the anti-mana barrier projector she had made, forming this barrier now. This would create a small region around her where the Dark mana would be erased and attribute-less mana would flow in.

Of course, if she only erased the Dark mana, the attribute-less mana would convert to Dark and replace it. So she moved on to the second step.

If the attribute-less mana took on an attribute on contact with the Dark Mana, then she predicted she could simply cast a spell of a different attribute, and so give the mana something else to convert to.If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

And which attribute did she pick?

The attribute which had proven itself against Dark mana in the past, as well as being generally effective against most attributes she had encountered.

The Holy attribute.

Interestingly, when NSLICE-00P attempted to cast the spell, the spell library from the foreign system didn’t appear in her UI. NSLICE-00P double checked the UI and found that the entire ‘Personal Status’ section of the foreign system was missing.

But that didn’t matter to NSLICE-00P. She had already recorded her spell library into the NSLICE network’s joint protocol database. So she simply brought up the relevant spell file and let her cybernetic components guide the magic circle construction.

And so, NSLICE-00P created a Holy Barrier, just barely smaller than the anti-mana barrier.

And as she predicted, the area within the barrier started to flood with golden and silver light, as the attribute-less mana contacted Holy mana and took on that attribute. The Dark mana still within the barrier started to burn away, cut off as it was from the main source all around.

Of course, NSLICE-00P couldn’t keep this up forever. Since her Geo-Oscillator Engine was running on her mana capacitors instead of supplying them, her mana wasn’t regenerating. She would run out quickly at the rate she was spending it.

But she had calculated a reasonably likely phenomena that might resolve that issue. If the attribute-less mana converted to a non-hostile attribute, she predicted she may be able to utilize it to power her core.

But it turned out she would not need to rely on the external mana after all. Because as the Dark mana covering her body started to burn away, a message passed across her UI.

“Diagnostic Report: Attempting to recalibrate Geo-Oscillator Engine. Suitable planetary core located. Connection established.”

It turned out she had not been moved out of range of the planetary core after all, but rather that the Dark mana had been jamming her connection to it. Once enough of the Dark mana was cleared, the Geo-Oscillator Engine was able to locate and reestablish a connection with that core.

And then mana started to flood NSLICE-00P’s systems as the Geo-Oscillator Engine began producing power once again. In fact, her diagnostics reported the Geo-Oscillator Engine was now producing significantly more power than before. Her Dungeon Field Generator shone some light on the situation, revealing she had connected via the attribute-less mana flowing into the area…and that this connection was even stronger than the original one.

And then…something happened that NSLICE-00P had not predicted.

The last of the Dark mana within her barrier burned away…and then there was a massive flash of light that blinded all of her senses.

And when the light faded and her senses began to respond, the Dark mana was gone. Instead she found herself standing on a tiny rock floating in an empty void. Fortunately, her Geo-Oscillator Engine remained calibrated, and nothing in the area proved hostile towards her. It appeared she had avoided termination.

However…she had no data as to her current location, or how she might return.

And it was then that she heard something.

“Seero…help me, please!”

She froze. That voice…was Ateia’s.

And then…the dream she had after casting Divination played through her organic components once again. Something snapped into place, like a switch in a circuit had just been turned on.

She realized the voice calling for her help in that dream was Ateia’s.

And the city burning around her then was Corvanus.

NSLICE-00P’s heart rate began to spike, and her body temperature increased. Her emotional control efficiency was rapidly deteriorating. Somehow, her organic components were convinced that Ateia was currently at a high risk of termination.

Her cybernetic components began to weave a Calm spell to reinforce her emotional controls.

But her organic components grabbed hold of the mana, and prevented the circle from completing. The cybernetic components began to calculate a response when the organic components contacted them.

The organic components proposed an idea. And they reasoned that rather than spending resources and bandwidth trying to reestablish emotional controls, that she should dedicate all available resources to finding a way to move from this location. As long as she was trapped in this unknown place, she couldn’t make progress on any of her directives, she couldn’t prevent Ateia from being terminated, and she couldn’t terminate the hostiles who forcibly relocated her to a hostile environment.

Her robotic eye flickered…

And her cybernetic components concluded…that this proposal was reasonable. Reestablishing emotional controls was ultimately of lower priority than determining a return path from this location. If her organic components had a possible solution to the second issue, then the most efficient course of action was to analyze and test it.

So that’s what she did.

She lay on the ground for safety, and then cast the Divination spell.

Her organic components had pointed out that the dream from the Divination spell ended up matching her current scenario, and speculated that recasting the spell might provide relevant data. Her cybernetic components objected to the dangerous spell, but her organic components pointed to records from the library that indicated that historical figures of the Empire had cast the spell in the past without the side effects she experienced. They proposed the hypothesis that her earlier collapse was due to her attempts to increase the data transfer from the spell, and that she may have bypassed built-in safeguards as a result. The cybernetic components concluded this hypothesis as reasonably likely, and so it was worthwhile to attempt another casting with no modification to either the circle or the flow of mana.

The spell activated…and then NSLICE-00P’s organic eye blinked while her robotic eye flickered.

The data transfer…was many orders of magnitude smaller than before. And rather than any dreams or relevant data, it gave her a great deal of information about her surrounding space, including its current dimensions. Apparently, the size of the rock she was on indicated the entire dimensions of the current universe?

That…did not make any logical sense. But when she attempted to confirm via the Dungeon Field Generator and her sensors, all data recorded ended up supporting that conclusion.

“Seero…anybody…help me, please!”

But then…she heard Ateia’s voice again.

And more than that…she felt Ateia’s mana, brushing up on the boundaries she had just identified. Her robotic eye began flickering rapidly.

Thanks to the data she had just received…she had recorded the existence of some sort of barrier around this tiny universe. And as Ateia’s mana brushed up against it and tried to flow through their contract bond, she recorded energy signatures from the reaction of the mana to this barrier.

And if NSLICE-00P could record an energy signature, then…

She lifted her hands and placed them together with her palms facing forward, connecting the energy channel outputs in either hand together. As she did, she heard Ateia’s voice once more. Her heart pounded, her body temperature increased as her metabolic rate began to rise.

And the edge of her mouth curled down slightly as her organic eye narrowed.

“Equalizer engaged, full power.”