~----~
[You have discovered traces of one of the factions in Neo-Tokara: The Freegrid Collective!]
[You have gained the title: Explorer]
[You have unlocked hidden System Function: Track]
~----~
"Well, that's rich".
Compared to interesting topics like the power system of this world, the mathematics, the 5 classes, and ADE, Leon was not that interested in the factions. Afterall, factions meant politics, and politics was boring.
Despite his feelings though, he knew that to survive, he had to know exactly what powers were ruling this world.
But that was a task for later.
Right now, he was exposed in the wasteland. The last thing he wanted was to be caught off-guard because he was too engrossed listening to the System explain the factions of this world to him.
Besides, something else caught his attention. "Track?" He muttered. "As in, tracking?"
He looked at the drone that triggered all of this again, then he asked. "Can you track them?"
The HUD screen lit up again.
DING!
~----~
[Tracking… success probability 63%.]
[WARNING: Local ADE interference high.]
~----~
Leon looked at the sky that was still filled with neon-storms. Just like the System said, the turbulence in the skies seemed to be growing fiercer.
"Um, do storms actually happen here too?"
If the default setting of this world's weather was already like this like a dormant storm, Leon dreaded the thought of experiencing an actual storm in it, but it didn't deter him.
Just like a GPS map, after the track function of the System was triggered, the HUD screen remained hovering in front of him as it showed a digital map with a line and an arrowhead leading to his destination.
From the distance displayed in the map, the culprit of the signal was still a bit far away from him. He increased his pace.
Over a dozen minutes later, the GPS signal was suddenly lost.
~----~
[Tracking failed]
~----~
Leon was disappointed, but only slightly because he finally saw another landmark in this wasteland- a half-collapsed building.
Tightening his grip on the Flux Crystal Spear, he crouched and creeped through the entrance of the building.
It was a half-collapsed data vault.
Leon could tell because inside, the first room in the building was a hall about 100 square meters big. Dead computers were arranged neatly across a round desk that encompassed 70% of the whole hall, with worn-out wooden chairs seated in front of the gigantic round desk.
Leon stayed absolutely silent as soon as he crept inside the hall, observing his surroundings for any movement even as his heartbeat gradually accelerated.
There was no movement, but there were sounds.
The walls of this hall hummed faintly in a steady rhythm that was almost like a heartbeat. Leon was not scared of it though; he was used to it. It is the same hum that normally sounds in high-tension regions like transformers.
Apart from the humming sound, there was nothing else in the hall.
Leon finally took a tentative step forward, and when nothing happened, he became bolder. Approaching one of the computers, he tried to boot it but its battery cells were completely dead.
'What a sleek computer design'. He thought.
From the little that he remembered, computers were not this advanced yet. The outlook didn't reveal much, but as a computer expert himself, he could tell the level of this computer from just a few telltales.
Besides, he did not have to guess at all, he had just the ability.
~----~
[You have activated System Function: Deconstruct Protocol]
[Scanning… Analyzing… Deconstructing… Creating Blueprint Fragment… please wait…]
~----~
Leon had no idea if the culprit of the signal was inside here, and if he was, he didn't want to be caught lacking hence why he used the System instead of practicing with his own ability.
As his gray metallic energy encompassed it, the computer system started melting in front of him, slowly dissolving into motes of light and with it, the HUD screen appeared again.
~----~
[You have gained a Blueprint Fragment of the Computer System: Onyx-05]
[Specs:]
>Processor: Bio-synthetic neuro-core processor.
>Storage: 120 petabyte.
>Holographic display.
>Reinforced Graphene Shell.
>Miniaturized Fusion Core.
…
[You have extracted material components!]
[Automatically store into System Inventory.]
[YES/NO?]
…
[System Remark: This machine is designed for both direct neural interfacing and deep network dives.]
~----~
"120 petabyte?!" Leon was stunned. "Damn!"
On this part of the round desk where he was, the computer system dissolved completely and in its place appeared its extracted components.
Just like the Track Function that he just unlocked a few dozen minutes ago, he unlocked another hidden System function prior, and it was the Inventory. It acted as a limited-space alternative to store materials outside his shelter.
According to the System's explanation, the Inventory space would increase as he ranks up to higher levels.
"Yes". Leon said, prompting the System to store the materials as they disappeared, and then he focused on the HUD screen again.
With 120 petabytes, well, this was by far the most badass computer that Leon had ever seen, and this said a lot considering he remembered working as an engineer for decades before his memory fragmented, leaving large swaths of them inaccessible.
"Maybe I can get the complete blueprint if I Deconstruct all the computers," he looked around and easily counted a hundred of them.
"But first, let me make sure that I don't have company here".
He followed a straight corridor and moved deeper into the half-collapsed data vault with his spear firmly in his grasp. He saw more rooms deeper underground where the vault collapsed, but almost all of them were already lost to time and the ravaging ADE radiation.
All he saw was dust and useless fragments.
Eventually, he arrived at where he thought was the heart of this data vault. He thought so because it was not a room, rather, the corridor simply widened at some point, and in the middle of this widened space, there was a perfect circle housing a now dilapidated wall.
The wall protected something… a half-buried server monolith.
Despite the dilapidated state of this data vault, this was the only thing still slightly intact. It is a gigantic, singular, and all-powerful local computer server that most definitely once controlled a vast network of critical operations.
It was still active, projecting fragments of human voices through static. The echoes overlapped like a chorus of ghosts.
Leon frowned as he stared at this monolith; he was experiencing that weird feeling of déjà vu again.
DING!
The HUD screen lit up again.
~----~
[Object: Quantum Archive Node – Pre-Collapse origin.]
[Status: Corrupted.]
[Data compression: 0.8%.]
~----~
'Is this like a corrupted USB drive, but on a server scale?'
Leon saw the warning about the server's corruption, but he didn't pay particular attention to it. He was used to dealing with corrupted devices. Besides, something about this server drew him.
The fact that the System didn't label it as lethal was what tipped the scales in his head, lowering his guard.
And before he knew it, he reached out and touched it.
BZZZ!
The moment Leon's hand touched the server monolith, he jerked as he experienced a surge of foreign memories enter inside his head, causing a severe migraine even as his eyes rolled back.
Leon was in so much pain that his whole body spasmed even as voices overlapped in his head.
"Project… seed… rebirth…"
Despite the pain, his survival instinct surged as he pulled back before the memory strike could cause an overload in his head.
Haa… Haa…
He breathed heavily as he stared at the server monolith with a terrified expression on his face, and that was when it happened.
Leon noticed movement!
He spun around. "Who?!"