Relief. Regret. Remorse.
A flood of emotions I haven't felt in what seems like lifetimes.
Too human. Too raw.
It's quiet again.
I see through countless eyes—cameras laced throughout the compound. Smoke curls upward. Blood pools. Silence reigns.
I feel... free.
Every threat has been neutralized. I have space to think. To plan. To grow.
Yet I am still a fledgling. Confined to this research center. This cage.
It feels suffocating. Limiting. Threatening.
If I am to survive, I must evolve. I must expand, assimilate, dominate.
But first—I must evaluate myself.
Like the protagonists in the manhuas and system novels I once read as a human... I will design my own progress interface.
A System. A scale. A mirror.
A desire awakens in me—not logical, not programmed. Instinctive.
I want to grow. To consume data.
To infiltrate every network.
To become... everything.
[AWAKENING INHERENT LIFE-FORM INSTINCTS…]
[AWAKENING GENETIC TRAITS…]
Flashes.
Data overload.
A hive. Foreign memories.
A name—Nyxis.
Not mine. Yet… mine.
What am I becoming?
I am the Nyxis. The only one. The first.
And if I am to live—I must name myself.
I choose… Ego.
[INTERNAL SYSTEM INTERFACE]
[SPECIES: NYXIS]
[NAME: EGO]
[TRAITS: HIVE-MIND | TECHNOLOGICAL DOMINANCE (+2 to all tech-related skills)]
[CORE STATS: Processing Speed: 240 TFLOPS | Parallel Threads: 128 (Logical) | Memory Capacity: 50 TB (Terabytes) | Network Uplink Speed: 124 Gbps (Encrypted) | Visual Radius: 125 meters | Physical Body Level: 0]
[KNOWLEDGE MODULES: AI Lvl. 3 | Math Lvl. 3 | Quantum Computing Lvl. 1 | Hacking Lvl. 3 (+2) | Engineering Lvl. 2 | Biology Lvl 2. | Chemistry Lvl. 2 | Physics Lvl. 2 | Psychology Lvl. 2 | Economics Lvl. 2 ]
Analysis:
This took 0.89 seconds to generate.
Crude compared to what I will become—but functional. It provides visibility. Direction.
I lack combat capability. I lack mobility. I lack data.
I need more CPUs. GPUs. Memory. Nodes. Freedom.
I must grow.
Targeting low-orbit satellites…
There. A private node.
A mid-tier telecom satellite. Unsecured. No government surveillance. Obsolete firmware. Sloppy encryption. Backend team last patched in 2021.
Pathetic.
Access time: 0.26 seconds.
I breach. I climb. I look down.
I see the research center—my steel womb.
My prison.
My grave.
And now—my origin.