Hosting a small part of the vast mind of the Polymath was a big deal in the Cybernetic Empire.
Hugo Fournier looked dazed and overwheld after the Star Designer ended her possession without grace.
A normal person would have felt concerned whether he or she had beco compromised by a being that was too powerful to resist.
The Cybers were not normal people.
It beca clear that Hugo had not been kidding when he and his fellow Cybers regarded the temporary and unsolicited hijacking incident as a positive rather than a negative event!
"Thank... thank you." Hugo shakily said as he steadily tried to get a grip on himself. "I have always dread of letting my brain beco a host to Her Imperial Majesty. This is one of the greatest honors that she can bestow to her subjects, and now I have beco the latest person to receive her blessing. Even now, I can feel my cybernetic synapses work faster and more effectively. My data retention and recall has improved by multiple tis and I am able to perform faster calculations. More importantly, I have been able to make deductions on theories and problems that I have struggled with for months or years. My next breakthrough has co much further within my reach."
While Hugo kept gushing about his rare but incredibly valuable privilege for receiving the Polymath’s blessing, Ves and Lucky both remained suspicious as they scrutinized the other ch designer for any potential issues.
"ow..."
"I can sense it as well."
Hugo Fournier was a creation cultivator of the first major rank.
The Polymath was a creation cultivator of the third major rank.
The gap between them was vast, so much so that the latter had left permanent traces in the forr!
The Cybernetic Empress may have indoctrinated her subjects into believing that hosting her powerful divinity may have been a blessing, but Ves referred to this phenonon with a different term.
Contamination.
A small but potent sliver of the Polymath’s insanely powerful intellect had incidentally rubbed off onto Hugo’s mind and spirit.
This most definitely caused his cognitive functions to grow and expand, allowing him to tackle greater intellectual challenges with considerably greater speed and ease!
Yet the price of this ’blessing’ was not trivial.
Because the Polymath was so strong, a part of his personality and design style would begin to echo hers in strange and subtle ways.
Ves could not tell for certain how impactful the contamination may be without seeing Hugo in action, but he could definitely predict that Hugo would adopt a more dispassionate and analytical approach to his work!
That was not necessarily a good developnt for a ch designer who specialized in living chs.
Life equated to passion.
Cold logic could exist without life, but the sa could not be said for emotions.
This was why Ves had long developed the belief that the capacity to feel strong emotions was essential to living chs, whether it was designing or piloting them to the fullest extent.
Ves actually felt sorry that Hugo had turned into the Polymath’s unwitting victim.
He felt responsible.
Hugo would have never ended up losing a part of himself to the Star Designer if Ves did not push him into making greater concessions.
Perhaps there was a way to fix or mitigate the damage. So long as Ves kept a close eye on the Cyber Journeyman’s ntal state and carefully prodded him in specific ways, he could reignite his faded passion and help him rember his true calling.
Whether this was possible or not, Ves was not sure, but he intended to give it a try.
Wait.
What was he just thinking about?
Ves looked at Hugo’s condition from a different angle.
He recalled Calabast’s warnings and reflected on how easily the Polymath managed to get past his suspicions.
What if the Polymath deliberately arranged a personal eting between Ves and Hugo, only for her to descend into the body of the latter just so that she could ss him up in a way that aroused sympathy?
As a passionate ch designer, Ves held a lot of empathy towards people of the sa kind.
He found it completely plausible that she deliberately set up this situation to promote a closer relationship between the two!
The Polymath definitely gained a lot of advantages if one of her loyal subjects managed to worm his way into developing a close relationship with Ves.
Did the Star Designer truly plan ahead and deliberately engineer this specific circumstance?
Ves could not say for certain. The only reason why he was considering this possibility was because Calabast had told him to watch out for any attempts to bind himself to the Cybernetic Empire on a more permanent basis.
The Polymath certainly pushed for this, just like his spymaster had predicted.
Getting involved in the trade between the two galaxies was one way to pull Ves and his extended network into her orbit.
Trying to turn Hugo into a close associate and confidante was a subtler and softer ans to bring Ves closer to the Cybers.
It was a brilliant sche, because it worked even if Ves had figured out the Star Designer’s ulterior motives.
Ever since he learned about the Living Machine Tower and how many difficulties its ch designers had to deal with compared to their colleagues at the other towers, Ves couldn’t help but sympathize with the plight of his ’descendants’.
Each of them tried to get started on the rough and unproven path of designing living chs.
They all believed in the promise of living chs, and were willing to forsake many easier and more solid specializations.
All of them must have done so voluntarily, or else so many of them would not have been able to reach the rank of Journeyman ch Designer.
Having t Hugo Fournier in person, Ves could confirm without a shadow of a doubt that the Cyber truly gained the capability to design a living ch, though in a very different style and direction.
This made them kin in a professional sense.
To put it in a different way, they belonged to the sa tribe. Ves was its founder, and the ch designers of the Living ch Tower had beco its latest mbers.
It did not matter to Ves what motives they possessed or whether they were acting under orders of another authority.
So long as they belonged to the sa tribe as him, Ves felt responsible for them and their works.
As long as Ves was not a completely selfish bastard, he could never ignore Hugo’s plight.
"Damnit." He muttered under his breath.
Ves was not going to start to turn Hugo into his direct disciple or anything. He still rembered that he needed to remain vigilant towards the Cybers, especially after finding out that the Polymath’s control over them was more absolute than he could have imagined.
How these Cybers remained completely fine with knowing that their ’benevolent’ dictator could unilaterally wrest control over their bodies at any ti, Ves did not know.
So long as that remained the case, Ves needed to treat them as extensions of the Polymath rather than completely separate individuals.
The Cybers actually had more in common with the mutated voribugs than Ves initially thought.
Both of them had fallen under the sway of absolute rulers!
The voribug queen permanently controlled the actions of every voribug.
The Polymath’s control over her own subjects was a lot less direct, but no less scary.
Ves needed to think about this a lot more. For now, he needed to wrap up his eting with the Cybers.
"I believe it is best to discuss the specifics of our upcoming collaboration projects on another day." Hugo Fournier said in his normal voice this ti. "Since you have yet to embark on either projects, we can take the ti to prepare for them properly. We will need ti on our end to select the most relevant technologies and organize support from the relevant research teams."
"I understand." Ves said with a nod. "Much has changed today. The new deal has many implications for everyone involved."
"Before you go, we would like to bestow you with an additional gift."
"Didn’t you already give one?" Ves asked while pointing his thumb at the floating container box.
"This is different, sir. We did not originally intend to transfer the item to your possession, but the magnitude of our new agreent calls for an additional gift."
A bit of ti passed before the entrance slid open.
A pair of heavily ard Cybers moved forward while escorting a larger and much coldeer container.
It was clear that they had just retrieved it from a cold storage vault.
Once the guards had co close enough, they stopped.
The chilled container ca to a stop as well.
"What is this?" Ves curiously asked.
Hugo did not answer straight away. He moved forward and fiddled with the electronic locks.
The box soon slid open to reveal... a wooden doll.
No.
That was not quite it. Ves frowned as he tried to figure out what he was looking at. It looked like a small elf whose body was made completely out of wood.
Despite the inherent rigid properties of normal wood, Ves bet that this creature’s biology was sohow flexible enough to make movents without relying on hinges, just as was the case with the Arboreal Project.
"ow?"
Lucky looked confused.
On the one hand, he could trace tals inside the creature’s wooden construction.
On the other hand, what was he supposed to do with a miniature life form, and why did it end up stuck in a chilly container?
"What you are looking at is a life form that has spontaneously co into existence as far as we can tell." Hugo seriously said. "It did not originate from our star empire. We cannot claim credit for its identification, capture and dismantling. We do not know as much of them, but we did discover that they are not born from older ’elves’, for lack of a better term. This creature spontaneously ford into existence."
"How many of them exist? How prevalent are they and do they require special environnts to grow to an enormous tree."
Hugo smiled as he gazed down at the elf. "I was not aware of their existence, but according to the information package that I have received, these mysterious elves are exceedingly rare, to the point where there are less than 5 properly docunted encounters. This particular specin did not originate from Bridgehead One. We actually managed to obtain it through one of the grand auctions that we attended."
"I see. So what can this ’elf’ do for a ch designer such as myself?"
"We are not entirely clear of this, but we believe that we can make optimal use of it in our research. However, this is not a matter that deserves our full scrutiny. We are still willing to present it to you as a gift. We believe that you can find a ans to add its strength and special properties to the birthday gift that you have reserved for your firstborn."
The Cyber Journeyman made it sound as if Ves was running a protection racket or whatever.
He distinctly disliked this analogy.
"I will accept this gift, just like I have done with the other one." Ves said as he solemnly closed the lid of the freezer container again. There was no need to tempt fate and risk escape. "I would appreciate it if you can transfer as much information you have on it as possible. I will look for references in the RC’s internal library, so you do not need to check it on my behalf."
"That is acceptable."
The eting finally ended after Hugo dismissed Ves from the chamber in order to send all of the ssages.
As Ves and Lucky boarded their armored shuttle, the two kept staring at the pair of floating containers.
Now what?
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