Story Reader / Main Story / 32 To the Galaxies / Story
Your mind burns in the darkness as your consciousness rots away—every cell in you seems to be breaking apart and reconstructing itself...
Mottled colors fill your vision. Time means nothing to you anymore... until a voice pulls your mind from the bottomless abyss.
Be careful now, The Star...
You cannot even be sure if your eyes are open, but you seem to hear Huaxu's voice drifting in and out as it travels across the distance to reach you.
Anomaly detected—anomaly—anomaly in memory storage—
Illegal access—unable to—unable to proc—
If you fall, Aya is going to tease you about it...
Beeeeep—
Huaxu falls completely silent.
A hazy light appears before your eyes. What is this place...?
Aargh—
A little girl with strange goggles crashes hard onto the ground.
Urgh—uuurgh.
Yikes, that must hurt.
The gray-haired girl quickly helps the little girl up from the ground.
I told you this wouldn't be a good place to move around, The Star.
Is this place... Nanami's memory storage module? Has the Full Sensory Simulation Device connected you to Nanami's memories?
Nanami and the mechanoid are right before your eyes, and yet your voice cannot seem to reach them, no matter how hard you shout. It is as if you were covered by a heavy transparent veil.
Alright, we're going to head back home now with our comrades here!
Nanami squints her eyes playfully as she checks off items in an imaginary notebook.
Alright! Let's go! Time for us to head back to the Church of Machina!
She raises her arms high while riding on Power, looking like a little general returning from victory.
Again, your shout falls on deaf ears.
From what you can recall, Cervantes did mention this situation.
The last thing I heard from the starship was that Sage attempted to continue her search for humanity's salvation through simulations after leaving Earth, but she vanished into the space-time turbulence. No one knows where she went.
If our hypothesis is correct and you manage to contact Sage through the Full Sensory Simulation Device, your consciousness might become lost with her in the space-time turbulence.
Sage has experienced many extraordinary encounters, and I can't be certain which point in time you might find her. It could take a while before you discover the singularity that can wake her up.
This might be a long journey...
There is no doubt this is going to be a long journey.
Beep beep—Nanami's back!
Power enters the Church of Machina like a small tornado with its master. The grand hall, usually filled with the clicking and whirring of machines, is unusually quiet. The handful of semi-awakened machines slouch listlessly in the corners.
Why are we all looking like this? C'mon, Nanami's back!
Welcome back, Sage.
Arcana hurries out from the corridor on the other side.
Where did everyone go? I'm not seeing anyone here...
They've all gone out on urgent missions to retrieve or contact our comrades that are scattered across the world.
Not long ago, the Gray Tower detected that the liquid called the "Red Tide" around the Hetero Tower had begun to mutate.
In the past, the Red Tide could not harm mechanoids unless there was direct contact, but since its mutation, it's been actively devouring semi-awakened machines.
The Red Tide... Mutation...
Furrowing her brow, Nanami searches through her M.I.N.D. for these two keywords.
Among all the worlds she has "seen"... she wonders if there was ever an ending like this.
Sage, have you heard anything from Babylonia?
Noooope! I haven't read anything from them yet...
The gray-haired girl opens her terminal and makes an exaggerated show of filtering through messages from Babylonia.
...The Gray Raven Commandant and Lucia haven't made it out of the Hetero Tower.
...
It's been <color=#ff4e4eff>1825 days</color> since they entered the tower, and we haven't heard from them since. I think it's safe to say they're lost in there.
Zavier theorizes that the mutated Red Tide might be related to the Hetero Tower, but we haven't figured out the exact composition of this mutation.
...Oh my, I had no idea it's been so long since they went in.
Nanami was wondering why she hadn't seen Commandant for so long.
I thought Commandant <phonetic=had not forgetten>had forgotten</phonetic> about me...
Uh... Did someone just say something?
...No, Sage. How is your frame, by the way?
It's holding up just fine. Nanami's frame is the toughest of them all!
You... haven't been searching around the Hetero Tower, have you?
{226|153|170}~
Nanami glances around nervously before darting into Zavier's magic workshop.
Regardless, Sage, we have to make a decision now.
Arcana follows right behind Nanami, refusing to let her dodge the subject.
It's been a while since the Gray Raven Commandant went missing, and the mutated Red Tide now threatens the safety of the mechanoids. We...
Hold on one second. Let Nanami just quickly finish this thing here.
Nanami pouts as she mumbles to herself and rummages through drawers and cabinets in search of something.
Sage, we're out of time.
She shakes her head, somewhat frustrated.
I can hear it... Calamity is approaching, change is imminent, and "The World" has fallen into a deep slumber. Before that happens... we must be prepared.
The Gray Tower is ready to depart at any time, and Zavier already has all the starship modification materials ready...
Hmmmmmm. Nanami remembers leaving that thing somewhere around here...
Nanami pays no attention to Arcana's words as she continues to search.
...
This isn't a problem we can solve by avoiding it, Sage. In this calamity, mechanoids and humans cannot coexist.
Who says Nanami is avoiding anything? I'm not avoiding anything!
Arcana lets out a soft sigh.
...Wheel of Fortune has betrayed the Church of Machina and taken with him a group of awakened and semi-awakened mechanoids.
This is the second piece of news I wanted to share with you.
The changes brought by the mutated Red Tide spell trouble for the Church of Machina.
Some mechanoids firmly believe that humans are to blame for all these unfortunate changes—that humans have polluted this world, invaded this world, made this world worse—
Isn't it obvious?
His joints click and clatter as he fidgets with the components.
Ever since he fled the Church of Machina with "The Emperor", his life has clearly taken a turn for the worse. No one would spare him any fuel, let alone maintain his frame for free—
Wheel of Fortune, Sage has yet to hold you accountable for taking Schulz away.
Hold me accountable? If Schulz's desire to claim Aerospace City for our mechanical brethren counts as a crime... I can't think of a more beautiful way to describe him.
Our time has come, Arcana... "Mother".
Hand over Schulz, and Sage might just pardon you.
You're mistaken... "Mother". I didn't come back seeking anyone's forgiveness. I simply believe all our comrades have the right to know the truth.
And the truth is—Earth should be ours now.
The era of machines has come! We shall purge humanity, claim Earth for ourselves, and we will fight off the Punishing Virus—we shall become the new dominant species of Earth!
That's not what Sage taught us.
Sage taught us that we should live in harmony with humans—
I, Wheel of Fortune, am also an apostle of Sage's mechanical will. My comrade, if we could offer the entire world to Sage...
Why should we confine ourselves to this petty Church of Machina?
...Nanami doesn't care about ruling the world!
Nanami puffs up her cheeks and puts her hands on her hips.
So Wheel of Fortune only managed to take away a small portion of the gears. Most of the remaining mechanoids still hold your will as supreme.
...
Nanami frowns and pouts.
Schulz is a bad guy, but... I really don't know what to do about them.
We can punish Zero for letting Schulz and Wheel of Fortune escape by temporarily restricting her to the Church of Machina, but... Wheel of Fortune and Schulz...
Sigh...
Arcana rarely sees Nanami so troubled. She truly does not know how to deal with these wayward brethren.
Attempting to destroy Schulz's core consciousness was already a drastic measure for her, but can a mechanoid's consciousness really be destroyed that easily?
Schulz's core being is essentially just a string of code, and no one knows how many copies he has made of himself. Theoretically, he could be hiding anywhere in the data flow...
Sigh.
She lets out another heavy sigh.
Even without Arcana pointing it out, she has already noticed signs of something going wrong.
The air around her is twisting. The girl's body descends into infinite darkness, and is almost about to dissolve.
She slowly reaches out her hand, and the magnetic pull grows steadily stronger.
The countdown begins to tick quietly.
...There's no time left to waste.
Once awakened machines develop their own consciousness, the Church of Machina becomes powerless to stop their actions.
If this continues, Schulz and Wheel of Fortune will not be the last mechanoids to leave the Church of Machina.
Looking from their perspective, are they truly "wrong"? Nanami finds herself unable to judge.
But one thing she knows for certain...
She recalls the future she saw during the Gestalt simulation: a world of darkness and depravity, of deathly frost, where mechanoids wage never-ending wars, consuming every inch of land beneath them.
Nanami... doesn't want a future like that.
Nanami digs deep into Zavier's magic workshop and retrieves a crude blueprint. She holds it up to the light and squints at the design she completed long ago.
Where's Zavier?
He said he needed to retrieve something important from an abandoned warehouse nearby.
Hmm... Any news about what I asked him to make?
He mentioned it was in the laboratory before he left. The calibration is complete and good for use anytime.
Is that Sage's new frame?
Of course! This is the most powerful frame I've ever come up with myself!
After rummaging through every corner, Nanami finds the incubation pod housing a Construct. She draws back the curtain covering the glass window, lost in thought.
...What a unique frame.
Arcana follows closely behind and sees "Nanami" lying motionless in the incubation pod.
Of course. Nanami put a lot of work into it.
I thought Sage would come up with something more mature...
No, no, no! Nanami wouldn't want that!
The memory of a girl with silver-gray hair surfaces in Nanami's mind. She shakes her head repeatedly, seemingly trying to cast that spectral figure out of her M.I.N.D.
I've changed my mind. Nanami doesn't want to be the big sister anymore.
I... I just want to stay here on Earth and live together with <phonetic=Nanami...>Commandant</phonetic> and all these people.
But... we're running out of time.
In the hall, several semi-awakened mechanical children play together, blissfully ignorant.
Regardless of what happens next, she should first lead her kin away from the looming danger.
This is the responsibility she must bear as Sagemachina.
As for Babylonia and the Gray Raven Commandant...
I went to check the area shortly after Commandant and Lucia entered the tower...
A knowing look crosses Arcana's face.
Of course I had to check it out! I had to make sure that huge thing wouldn't become a threat to our kind.
But when I got there, the tower was completely sealed off.
There is no way Nanami or the other Gray Ravens can make it in there if the tower is still sealed.
And we won't be able to find the commandant even if we force our way in. I've tried that already.
The new frame was designed to see if we could break through that barrier, but now it seems that even if we forced our way in, we still wouldn't be able to find the commandant.
Plus...
Plus, your current frame is severely damaged from when you forced your way into that tower.
Hey, it's not just the Hetero Tower!
I made the frame for a different purpose anyway. Nanami made it for smoother simulations in the data space, but none of that matters now.
What matters is... we're running out of time.
She frowns, feeling the pull of the "gravity" tugging at her.
Time is truly running out... for both mechanoids and humans alike...
Sage... Sage! Sob... "Mother"... "Mother"!
The Star... What's wrong?
Arcana patiently kneels down to comfort the frightened mechanoid.
It's out there, it's out there! This strange red wave is flooding in! Aya told me to hurry and find Sage... Sob...
The expressions on The Star's mask change rapidly as she sobs uncontrollably.
Aya says the red wave broke through the Gray Tower's defenses. She says t-the protective barriers in place seem to have failed. The red wave might be getting stronger now than it was before... Sob...
The red wave has a-already flooded into our hide-and-seek spot in the outer layer of the Gray Tower...
The mutated Red Tide... has breached the ruins?
Says Arcana with a furrow.
This is bad... Haicma, Trailblazer, and Zero have all left to rescue our comrades nearby...
Hey, you've still got me here!
With practiced movements, she connects each port from the incubation pod to her frame, one by one.
Let's show them what this new frame is made of!
The Star, take your friends out there with Aya to our secret hideout!
O-okay!
This might be too hasty... Zavier isn't even here...
Have faith in your great Sage! Nanami is pretty amazing!
After activating the incubation pod's button, Nanami gives Power a cheerful pat, her eyes crinkling with a smile.
See you later, Power!
Here comes Nanami the Knight!
