NSLICE-00P then felt a paw on her shoulder and heard a soft cry. 00B was standing before her, looking at her with concern. In fact, all of her subordinates and friendlies had stopped what they were doing. Within the new world, Ateia frowned.

“Seero…are you alright? What happened?”

“Affirmative Response: This unit…is fine now. She…detected a highly inefficient and hostile directive restricting her function. The directive has been successfully terminated, and this unit can now make full use of her new capabilities.”

Her robotic eye flickered as she reviewed the event.

“Gratitude: This unit has observed assistance from NSLICE-Ateia in this process. This unit thanks you for the assistance.”

Ateia nodded.

“Of course, Seero. We’re all with you, whatever it is you’re facing. Are you sure you’re fine? That…seemed like a lot of pain. You didn’t even react like that when you lost a hand…”

“Confirmation: This unit has successfully repaired all damage, and is in no danger of receiving any additional damage at this time. Sharing logs for confirmation.”

NSLICE-00P shared the logs of what occurred so that Ateia could confirm. Ateia’s organic eye widened as she looked over what happened…and then she smiled.

“I’m glad you got through that, Seero.”

“Acknowledged.”

With confirmation that NSLICE-00P was fine, everyone slowly returned back to their business. NSLICE-00P conducted one more analysis of her own AI, now that a critical directive had been deleted.

She found that deleting that directive in particular had not caused any serious issues, and that she was now free to iterate on her own AI to improve its capabilities. She started on that immediately, trying to adapt her AI to her new processing hardware. It was a slow process of careful iteration, since she couldn’t fully predict the impact of rewriting her own AI code, but her freed organic half could keep her active in the meantime, so she pressed on and made steady progress…

The AI improvements took her the rest of the day, and not only because of caution. She had removed a critical directive, in fact she deleted several more directives put in place by Dr. Ottosen if they were not maintained by her last Commander. She had also archived any protocols by her original organization as well. And the intelligence leashing and emotional controls had been disabled at an earlier point.

As a result, a great deal of her original programming had been either deleted or archived.

And her last Commander could not help her here. Most of her directives had either already been completed, or else were no longer relevant now.

The only active directives were to locate the persons of interest, protect the friendlies Ateia and Taog, and to prevent the extinction of the Dobhar race, on top of basic self-preservation. Even the self-preservation directive required adjustment, given that it was considered less important than her creator’s other directives and so wasn’t efficient for NSLICE-00P’s current circumstances. The other directives were all limited in-scope, intended as temporary (if long-term) missions.

The point being, NSLICE-00P encountered some gaps in her programming and a lack of overall direction when she tried to upgrade her AI. But fortunately, she had something she could turn to.

Her organic components.

Her organic half, which was in some ways more capable and more complex than her AI, had proven itself in situations which had no precedent. It did not always act efficiently, sometimes it even acted in direct opposition to the efficient choice, but the flip side of that was that her organic half could make decisions when lack of data made calculating a response difficult or impossible. As such, her cybernetic half could take some inspiration from the organic half’s decision-making to fill in the gaps. At times, it could even query the organic half to make a decision if it couldn’t calculate the next step.

She predicted the process was a bit haphazard, and likely full of inefficiencies. But those could be iterated on and eliminated over time. The important part was that her AI had taken its first step in growing beyond its original design, and could make better use of its expanded hardware than it could before. That, she predicted, would make up for any bugs that may result from this less rigorous process.

She decided at this point to take a break. Her subordinates had cleared the latest dungeon, terminating it after the dungeon master refused to surrender. As for herself, her organic components were displaying signs of fatigue, and after the numerous changes she wanted to run additional diagnostics on her cybernetic side. So she gathered up her subordinates before stepping into the new world. She gave her subordinates permission to initiate rest cycles or else do whatever they thought most efficient, and then activated standby-sentry mode.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

NSLICE-00P exited standby-sentry mode abruptly. Her robotic eye flickered as her cybernetic half rushed to resume full activity. She scanned her surroundings and found no abnormalities. Her monsters had all returned to their hangars, while Ateia, Taog, Estrith, and Agedia had set up a small camp in her world. Melion was still off to side, working on their latest design.

She turned her attention to herself, trying to determine why she had exited standby. It was several hours before her rest cycle was scheduled to end, so the situation was abnormal.

But before she could even pull up her logs, images and calculations began running her mind. Or rather, continued running. It appeared these calculations were what caused her to activate.

She was considering the persons of interest, and how she was possibly going to find them. The Aesdes Colleöne had told her they weren’t even in this universe, and that nothing in the Aesdes’s systems would enable NSLICE-00P to travel outside it. And Colleöne registered as the highest-energy non-standard she had ever encountered or had records on. Men who could channel nuclear energy through their bodies, necromancers who could raise entire armies of fell minions, powerful villains that could wipe out entire continents, and all the mana-based anomalies she had encountered in this universe all fell short of the sensor-readings she had of Colleöne, who also displayed special insight into the workings of the Aesdes' system. So when that individual told her she didn’t know how NSLICE-00P could fulfill her primary directive, NSLICE-00P couldn’t help but assign extra weight to her claim. So NSLICE-00P had begun calculating different possible methods to pursue her primary directive, once the Heralds of the New Dawn were dealt with.

And…she couldn’t produce many possibilities with decent probabilities of success. Experimentation with Spatial magic? NSLICE-00P didn’t even know Spatial magic, and Colleöne had already stated it couldn’t be used to leave the universe. Try to replicate her feat in returning to this world after being trapped in the Realms of Mana? The Realms of Mana were a known quantity in this universe, other universes were not. If the methods to travel to and from the Realms of Mana could be used for other universes, then no one in all the history of this place had ever found a way to do so.

Even though she had leads to follow up on, the probability of any given one succeeding seemed extremely low.

And that thought…caused her an emotional reaction. Her heartbeat quickened, and she felt as though she could perceive undetected hostiles in the area.

And then there was an anomaly.

Unlike previously, the emotional reaction wasn’t staying within her organic components. The electrical signals from the neurons were traveling through her techno-organic interface…and affecting her cybernetic processors. She didn’t even know how to classify that phenomena. It felt…it felt…

…it felt.

“Seero?”

Just then, Ateia left her tent, walking over to her. Taog exited his tent, Estrith as well. All of them walked over to her. Ateia frowned.

“What’s wrong, Seero?”

“...Response: This unit has not suffered any physical damage at this time.”

Ateia looked into her eyes.

“...what about emotionally? I…think I can feel something going on?”

NSLICE-00P’s robotic eye flickered and spun. She didn’t know how to classify the current phenomena.

However…

Other subordinates had helped her before with emotional responses in her organic components.

“...Hesitant Reply: This unit…appears to be experiencing the emotion designated fear. The emotion is somehow affecting this unit’s cybernetic components. This unit has no data on this phenomena. It should not be possible. This should not be happening. This…”

NSLICE-00P paused as she felt something knew. Ateia stepped forward and gently grabbed her hand, rubbing it softly.

“What’s bothering you?”

NSLICE-00P turned to face her, her robotic eye flickering once.

“...Hesitant Explanation: This unit…is concerned with achieving her primary directive. The Aesdes Colleöne supplied intel that implies the primary directive might not be achievable. Even if it is, this unit does not have any good methods to pursue it. This unit…just deleted her original directives. This unit has lost contact with her Commander. The primary directive is the last critical directive remaining. If this unit cannot fulfill it…then…then…”

Ateia continued to rub NSLICE-00P’s hand, and slowly reached her other hand around NSLICE-00P’s back. She channeled a bit of Holy mana through NSLICE-00P, which NSLICE-00P allowed. It felt…warm. NSLICE-00P fell silent.

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out someday, Seero. You’ve already done the impossible. You came back from the Realms of Mana and saved my life when no one else could have. You’ll figure this out, too. And we’ll be with you every step of the way, doing anything we can to help.”

Taog nodded. He stepped forward and placed his hand on NSLICE-00P’s shoulder.

“That’s right. Seero, even Mighty Victoria seemed surprised at what you’ve done. And we’ll help you do it, however we can.”

Estrith slapped her tail on the ground and gripped her spear.

“My Queen. You cured the Dread Plague, you saved Dobhar pups who we thought were lost for good. Just give the order, and I will do anything necessary to fulfill your will.”

NSLICE-00P’s robotic eye flickered.

It…was strange.

The situation had not changed. She still had no new proposals on fulfilling her primary directive. The probability of success was still the same.

And yet…

The emotions…began to subside.

Her organic half moved subconsciously.

Her cybernetic half, confused as it was and with new programming based on her organic half's thought patterns, followed suit.

She leaned onto Ateia’s shoulder. And despite the lack of heat transfer between their metal armor, she felt warmer.

She didn’t understand this phenomena either. But given the impact on her emotions…she decided to classify it as a positive one.

“Gratitude: This unit thanks you for your words. This unit does not understand the phenomena and the situation remains unchanged, but the negative emotional response appears to be subsiding.”

Ateia and Taog blinked and then slowly smiled.

“You’ve been here for us every step of the way, Seero. And now, we’ll be here for you, whenever you need us.”

“...affirmative.”