Modern World Warlock-Chapter 250: Android 42

While Megan, Alice, and Zac dealt with the androids on the landing strip, Dante had already slipped away and ventured inside the building that seemed to be carved inside the mountain.

Asphodel and her son, Ezekiel, followed the warlock inside, and they noticed the interior resembled the laboratory at the Jade Palace, so they deduced that the facilities were used by the rebels to conduct experiments.

Dante had his eyes set on the origin of the strange necrotic energy, which he could sense much deeper inside the building.

When they reached an open room where a group of scientists were working at different desks, Dante and the vampires walked through as if they knew where they were going.

Initially, their casual stroll didn't raise any suspicions, but when the trio tried to open a sealed door at the end of the room, one of the scientists was alarmed and hastily approached them.

"Wh-what are you doing? Who are you!?" The woman asked.

"I just gotta check out this place. It won't take long…" Dante replied.

Still, his laid-back answer only made the woman more nervous, as they had orders to never even come close to that room.

"Is that right?" Dante pondered aloud.

Suddenly, they were interrupted by the laboratory's alarm, which started blaring loudly and making the red lights flicker incessantly.

"It seems the group at the hangar got into a bit of trouble," Asphodel commented, seemingly annoyed by the loud alarm.

Knowing that he had limited time, Dante pointed his hand at the sealed iron door and cast a "Destro" spell that turned it into dust and blasted it away.

The vampires stayed in the same room where the scientists were panicking while Dante entered the forbidden room.

Inside, he noticed that the walls were the mountain itself, utterly different from the rest of the modern lab.

The door took him into an iron platform that traveled around the room, overlooking a twenty-meter drop, where a massive orb glowed brightly with necrotic energy at the bottom.

He could hear the whispers of the dead as he got closer to the edge of the platform, which he tried to ignore.

"Hmm?" The warlock hummed as he peeked down, seeing the silhouette of a person, but the lack of energy coming from them revealed to him that it was an android.

Dante was prepared for a fight, and when he jumped down to the bottom and found himself before the massive orb overflowing with death, he also realized that the android didn't seem hostile.

There was no way for him to know the robot's intentions since there was no umbra to read, but her body language and apparent disinterest in intruders made him relax a bit.

"Hello?" Dante said, catching the attention of the female android.

As she stepped out of the darkness and took a few steps toward him, he was able to detail her long, blonde hair and purple eyes. Moreover, her somber expression was different from all the other androids he had seen before.

The warlock couldn't tell what it was, but something about the android made her look more human than the others, even though they were already difficult to differentiate at a glance.

"Intruder… You cannot be here," The android said.

'Huh? Isn't she speaking a bit too casually?' Dante pondered.

The few androids he had seen only ever spoke a few words, and their sentences were entirely scripted. However, the tone she used was different.

"Umm, sorry?" Dante said, raising an eyebrow with confusion.

"It's okay. Please leave me be…" The android replied.

"I, uhh… I'll do that—But I have to destroy this necrotic core first," Dante continued.

"I see… What a conundrum," she said, placing a hand on her chin as if she were deep in thought.

At that moment, for a very brief window that lasted for less than half a second, Dante spotted a flow of umbra coming out of the android's body, making his eyes wince with his utmost attention.

"Hey… You are an android, right?" Dante inquired, as it should have been impossible for a robot to produce any magical energy without a magic core.

"Mhmm, I'm Android 42," she replied.

'Did she just 'mhmm' me? Is she really a robot?' Dante thought.

Remembering that the numbers on the androids were supposed to be their version number, he realized that the woman standing before him was the most powerful he had encountered.

"How come you sound different from the others?" The warlock inquired, believing there shouldn't be a problem if he simply asked. freeweɓnøvel.com

"Ah, you mean my speech? My AI has been designed to act and sound more human-like…" Forty-two replied, her expression hinting at sadness.

"So, you were programmed that way?" Dante asked.

"That's correct. As an AI, my emotions or concerns aren't real," she said, and once again, a brief flow of umbra appeared from her body.

'For the first time in a very long time, I have no idea what the hell is happening…' Dante thought.

Forty-two was most definitely an android, but the fact that small trails of umbra appeared for less than half a second was telling him otherwise.

"Anyways… It seems my system has reached an impasse," Forty-two said.

"What do you mean?" Dante wondered.

"The last command added into my system was to protect this room and this core… However, there is a command that was etched into the system that overwrites all others—Protect the people of Novaria…" She replied.

"Hmm, I get the gist of it, but I'm definitely not the most knowledgeable about this topic…" Dante commented.

The android was asked to protect the room, but the command to help the people of Novaria took priority in her system. However, the warlock still didn't understand what made Forty-two so confused since there was nobody to protect in there.

At that moment, he heard the whispers of the dead coming from the necrotic core, which caught the attention of the android.

'Could it be…?' Dante pondered.

"Do you hear the whispers?" He followed up his thoughts with a question, prompting the android to nod affirmatively.

"The ones I was meant to save…" she muttered.