Chapter 213: Electric Sheep in a Dream 4
Chapter 213: Electric Sheep in a Dream 4
The moment the Unfading Giant Tree stepped into that cramped little space,
the first thing she did wasn't offer a greeting—it was to pour out points.
Which was fair enough. She was the type who found even a single room with nothing but a bed uncomfortable.
There was no way she'd accept this server room, where there weren't even enough places to sit, as living quarters.
It wasn't just that it'd be bad for the kids' mental health—
it was the kind of bleak, barren room where anyone living there would end up chronically ill.
There was a reason people called it a server room, not a living space, the moment they saw it.
The Elf Constellation, whose hobbies were tending a garden and decorating her home, simply couldn't tolerate it.
"So this is expansion via points? If we expand, we could fit more servers—"
"No, that's not really the point."
The old neighborhood gang-leader instincts for looking after kids hadn't gone anywhere.
The moment they met, the Unfading Giant Tree dropped all formalities and spoke casually.
And with that, a strange conversation between an android and an elf began.
"The elven race is—"
"In my world—"
I didn't exactly listen closely.
I felt a little bad about it, but it was a boilerplate fantasy world, and it'd already been destroyed, hadn't it?
I'd gladly sit through the Unfading Giant Tree's own story,
but I had no interest in hearing about some world that had already met its end.
So I quietly slipped away and took in the expanded room.
The space was wood-paneled again—maybe the interior design was set by a Constellation's nature.
Brown wooden floors, stark white wallpaper, and vines quietly occupying their spots along the walls.
Bit ironic, honestly: all this eco-friendly interior and nothing but machines crammed inside.
'Why aren't there any basic amenities? Do they just not need them?'
When I first arrived in this world, there'd been a tiny fridge in the corner of the room.
Ice-cold canned cola. Cheap convenience-store lunchboxes I could heat up in the microwave.
Eating food that hadn't rotted, molded, or turned to mush—I remember how moving that was.
But in this space, there was no fridge, let alone a TV or computer or screen.
Was it because the Shepherd of Electric Sheep was an android that he didn't need any machinery for the contract?
Well, he was the robot who'd stood stock-still in the middle of the server room with no bed or chair in sight.
What use would a soda and a lunchbox be to a robot who didn't even need a bed?
"They couldn't bear children, but even so, they laughed and—"
I'd been thinking that when I tuned back in, and the conversation had turned heavier than I'd expected.
A story of the world's end: living in the World Tree's forest, unable to create children, and fading into extinction.
It stuck with me—the way she spoke so gently, in a soft, kind murmur, despite the weight of what she was saying.
After a long exchange, the conversation wound to a close, and both their gazes swung toward me.
Even with my rudeness—cutting in with questions, interrupting her mid-sentence—
she'd finished the story with the patience of a childcare specialist.
Answering a barrage of scattered questions must have been exhausting.
"I understand you came to make a deal."
"That's right. Something you want?"
"...."
His mouth snapped shut. His eyes rolled around in their sockets.
But as if drawing courage from a look the Unfading Giant Tree gave him, he opened his mouth again.
For a robot, his emotional responses came across as remarkably expressive.
"After hearing the stories, something occurred to me. A question."
'You've always had plenty of questions.'
"It seems every Constellation who came to this world remembers their own world and knows how it perished."
"Yeah. That's right."
Even in my case, a nuclear missile lay dormant inside my Origin.
The first Dream Demon I crushed had remembered a whole monster army,
and every other Constellation remembered plagues or demon kings or yokai or some damn thing.
But the android in front of me was a different case.
An android whose soul had sprouted inside a laboratory.
Humanity that had been wiped out before his basic tuning could even be completed.
"But I'm not the same. I don't have a single piece of information or memory about the world I was made in."
"So?"
"I want information about the world I was made in."
Well, of course he'd be curious.
Wouldn't you be more curious about your own past than some total stranger's story?
The only thing she knew was this: a humanity advanced enough to build androids and reach into space
had one day, abruptly, been wiped out at a terrifying speed—and only she had been left behind.
A galaxy-spanning humanity that had ventured into space—poof, all gone. How could she not want to know why?
※
Contract condition one.
Lethargic Nightmare will employ every available means to probe the Shepherd of Electric Sheep's past.
He may use his Dream Demon abilities, or he may put up rewards to hire psychometrists and other specialists.
Contract condition two.
The Shepherd of Electric Sheep will concentrate all her resources on developing her first Incarnation.
Thus, the top priority, overriding any other information, is to track down the perpetrators of the recent Academy terrorist incident.
"We'll adjust the other conditions as we go. Neither of us has any reason to break a promise, anyway."
The spirit-body being finished her explanation, unfurling the scroll beneath the World Tree's branches.
I had no reason to break it, since developing my Dream Demon abilities would probably resolve things one way or another,
and the Shepherd of Electric Sheep had no reason to give up on information-gathering, the sole purpose of her robotic existence.
At those final words, the many watching eyes took in the spirit as she shimmered and vanished.
"Then, for now, I'll have to start leveling Yamma up."
Thump, thump. The girl, who'd been frozen stiff among the legendary veteran figures, got jostled this way and that.
She was just a middle-schooler, baby fat still clinging to her cheeks. But what could you do?
Everything else aside, the fact that she'd leaked classified intel to the Seonghwa Gallery was beyond dispute.
"So, how exactly do you develop her?"
"I don't develop. This Electronic Spirit levels up."
So unlike the other Incarnations, she'd just strapped a level system right onto it. Simple and intuitive.
Performance improved per level, new skills unlocked every five levels.
The catch was that you couldn't just dump points in and make it stronger.
Then again, my own Incarnations could be outfitted with Authorities and items using points,
but you couldn't straight-up buy experience points that way.
The others seemed to find that familiar, nodding slightly.
"So, what—just funnel her a bunch of work?"
"Should we pull some files from the Northern Command juniors?"
"There'll be plenty of cold cases. And a ton of paperwork they've been kicking down the road because they were short on time."
"It was Kim Jae-eun, wasn't it? You're sticking with us until this case is closed."
At the muttering voices of the old veterans, the face of the Seonghwa Gallery Regular—Kim Jae-eun—drained to a pale, sickly blue.
She'd been grinning ear to ear, thinking she'd coast through life on the support of three Constellations' power-leveling,
until the time-honored wisdom that there's no such thing as a free lunch smacked her right in the face.
A swordswoman grows by swinging her sword. A mage grows by casting magic.
Muscle builds, Authorities and spells strengthen—only through use.
Same went for the Electronic Spirit our Seonghwa Gallery regular was lugging around.
It needed to grind—collecting and processing information—for its experience bar to tick steadily upward.
"Uh, s-so, then...?"
"Count yourself lucky. The timing's perfect—we're sitting on a mountain of encrypted documents we couldn't process because they weren't cleared for our classification level."
This way, the Seonghwa Gallery Regular Kim Jae-eun could rocket the Electronic Spirit's level up in no time,
and the Northern military could clean up all the data they'd never gotten around to thanks to manpower shortages and budget problems.
But the girl, who just had to sit there and let the levels roll in, had a face scrunched up like she'd bitten into something foul.
No matter how hard she tried to spin it, the expression was beyond covering up, and everyone's eyes locked onto her.
She had three Constellations throwing their full support behind her—so what was the problem?
"No, I, uh, it's just... could I have a little more time?"
At the stammering explanation that followed, everyone could only click their tongues.
Not an electronic drone. An Electronic Spirit.
Right—so not a drone, a spirit.
A partner you had to ask, not just issue orders to.
No wonder she'd been sweet-talking that boy-shaped spirit, voice all gentle, when she was asking it to show her photos.
So it wasn't just setting a robot to grind out menial labor for experience—she had to manage the spirit's mood to get any work done.
"Then do it."
"Huh?"
"Persuade it. Right now. You think this situation is a joke?"
"N-no, sir!"
"These old-timers came together to catch a continental-scale criminal who just attacked the Academy and the Constellations, and you're telling us you're having trouble getting one measly spirit to pull its weight?"
"No, sir!"
"You little shit, you can't figure out why the Academy instructors walk around in military uniform? Want me to look up what kind of sentencing you're facing if that classified leak gets tried under military law?"
her timid protest about needing to appease the spirit's temperament
got swallowed right up in the torrent of verbal abuse that followed.
This wasn't a situation where they were politely asking a capable cadet to cooperate—
this was dragging in a girl who'd leaked classified intel and putting her to work, so they weren't pulling any punches.
Not that it wasn't all her own karma.
Doxxing Constellations on Seonghwa Gallery to mock the ones who dared make the first move—
leaking secrets to string along a curious audience begging for just a little more—
and fleecing otaku by dangling Constellation information that wasn't even in the public database.
"If I level up with this, I can mess around even more!"
The Electronic Spirit, now stuck sorting military paperwork because of antics like that, puffed out its cheeks and sulked.
Watching her desperately plead and grovel to her own spirit was a tiny bit pitiful...
...but fuck, how deep into Seonghwa Gallery culture did you have to be for your Electronic Spirit's personality to get stained by it too?