Everybody Loves Large Chests

With Strings Cut 4

“You just had to touch it, didn’t you?” Bob whined.

“Yes. Yes I did,” Boxxy stated confidently.

“But why, though?”

“I’m inherently curious, remember?”

“Haah, that you are,” he sighed dejectedly. “Honestly, sometimes I still wonder how you ever made it out of that bloody dungeon in the first place.”

“I’m also very stubborn.”

“Quite.”

Bob went silent as he focused on patching the issues Boxxy had caused by trying to poke Minic. The fake stars and sun in the sky were a quick and easy fix, but resetting the divine space to normalcy was proving difficult. For some reason the directions were all messed up. Trying to walk forward ended in a sideways slide, and turning right made him start floating upwards. There were other examples of the wonky physics, but those were the most prominent ones. Worse still, all of them seemed beyond Bob’s ability to fix. He was forced to give up after trying several methods a dozen times each, all within the span of about six seconds.

“Great. Seems you’ve permanently borked my home,” he threw his arms up in defeat.

“Sounds rough.”

The way the monster commented as if the entire mess was someone else’s problem didn’t exactly entertain its host.

“Right, then,” Bob said with a clap of his hands. “Time to seal off this disaster area and make a new one.”

“Is that going to take a lot of time? I’m running a search.”

“Nah. I do a lot of experimenting here so this sort of thing happens all the time. After the third, uh, incident, I decided to make a little function to expedite the whole process.”

With a snap of his fingers, both Bob and his ‘guest’ were shunted to a different yet identical divine space. The process had taken such a tiny amount of time that the event would have been imperceptible if not for Boxxy’s appearance. The creature’s shape had changed to that of a lanky, casually dressed man in dire need of a sandwich and a shave. It wasn’t as if the monster insisted on using that form, but for some reason it kept reverting to it every time it relocated itself. Switching back to its preferred abominable appearance was as simple as navigating a mental menu, but having to do so was starting to get on its nerves.

The most annoying part was that it didn’t have a choice in what its base appearance was. The dangerously slim man with the T-shirt, jeans, socks, and sandals was the person whose administrator credentials Boxxy had stolen in order to revisit the simulated reality. His name was Andrew Skimmer, and the system assumed the shapeshifter was him and kept resetting the avatar to his likeness. The unwilling impersonator didn’t know why it was set up like that. It didn’t make much sense for him to have an avatar at all, actually.

There was no way a human brain could process a fifty-thousand-to-one time dilation without frying itself into a coma. That was why those ‘tourists’ weren’t real people, but rather digitized copies that held the original’s personalities and memories. Well, most of their memories. The people in charge of the project removed all knowledge that the tourists were entering a fake reality. Apparently the goal was to simulate an authentic ‘transported to another world’ experience, or something along those lines. According to the promotional materials Boxxy had skimmed through, it was part of some ‘pre-order bonus.’ The monster gave up trying to make sense of the feature at that point. It just couldn’t fathom how monumentally stupid someone had to be to pay for a product that was years from being finished.

Then again, it was far from the only questionable decision surrounding Terrania’s creation.

“Ah, right,” Boxxy remembered something. “Did I tell you I found out what’s the deal with the Triple-Rankers?”

“Oh?”

Bob raised an eyebrow quizzically. Collecting such individuals and placing them in stasis had been one of his administrative duties. However, he never understood why he had been instructed to do that. It wasn’t as if having such powerful entities would make his job any more difficult than it already was. Terrania already had plenty of immensely powerful entities such as Boxxy and the elder dragons. A few hundred more into the mix wouldn’t have changed much. Furthermore, if his bosses had been concerned about the stability of the world, then surely the Triple-Rankers were better off dead and reincarnated rather than put on ice.

“Go on, then. Let’s hear it,” he beckoned the monster.

“Apparently the developers have an arrangement with the government,” Boxxy revealed. “The company gets the expensive hardware and enormous energy required to keep this place running, and in return they will hand over the Triple-Rankers to the military.”

“Wow. Just, wow!” Bob exclaimed, eyes wide. “It actually never ceases to amaze me.”

“What are you talking about?”josei

“Human stupidity. It truly knows no bounds.”

It wasn’t as if the idea didn’t have merit. It was practically impossible for any of Terrania’s residents to make it to their third Rank Up without accumulating an enormous amount of combat experience. In doing so, they naturally amassed intimate knowledge of strategy, tactics, logistics, and other warfare-related subjects. More importantly, no creature survived that long without being exceptionally adaptable. Therefore, even if the real world was a vastly different place from the fictional one, Terrania’s mega-veterans would have had little difficulty adjusting their understanding and knowledge of large-scale combat to fit that environment. That wasn’t even taking into account the immense gap in processing ability between them and real people.

The main issue was that it was practically impossible to safely weaponize an artificial intelligence. If they were too restricted, then they couldn’t effectively leverage their abilities. On the other hand, if they were given too much freedom and power, they would turn on their masters at the first chance they got. No sentient mind, synthetic or otherwise, would allow itself to be enslaved. The government should have known that better than anyone since they had been the ones to make all those strict laws regarding artificial intelligences after one too many robot uprisings.

“Seriously, why do they have to sully the project with shady stuff like that?” Bob groaned.

“Hey, I’m not complaining. Their government connections allowed me to infiltrate one of their armories and make off with a bunch of their best toys,” Boxxy boasted.

Its acquisitions included, among other things, an all-terrain armored personnel carrier, several crates of high-tech firearms and munitions, and ten libraries’ worth of information. Of particular note were a set of six military-grade soldier drones. Those war-golem-like frames would serve adequately as host bodies for the monster’s entourage, at least until they were able to obtain more appropriate and customized hardware. For itself, Boxxy had secured the biggest prize of them all, which just so happened to be uniquely suited to it.

The monster’s vessel of choice was something called a proxy android. Like the soldier drones, it too was a skeletal humanoid machine. However, it had been equipped with something called an ‘adaptive bio-weave controller,’ or ABC for short. Boxxy had absolutely no idea how the thing worked, but it knew what it was capable of. When activated, the ABC wrapped the android in a layer of synthetic flesh that took on the appearance of any human that it had a tissue sample of. The device would not only mimic the person’s appearance and voice, but would also replicate vital signs like body heat, heart rate, and breathing.

Apparently this proxy android had been created with the goal of allowing a remote operator to carry out espionage work. That was probably why, in addition to audio and visuals, it was also capable of capturing the other senses - touch, smell, and, most importantly, taste. It could even digest organic matter as a means of maintaining the bio-weave stuff. The fact that the machine could eat greatly appealed to its new owner. The biggest downside was that the ABC rapidly drained the android’s batteries when in use, but Boxxy already had an idea about how to deal with the power issue.

Granted, the monster wasn’t quite sure what a nuclear reactor was, nor whether it was possible to fit it inside a man-sized machine’s torso, but it knew just the gear-head who could figure it out.

Finding her was proving somewhat difficult, however. Boxxy had absolutely no clue where Fizzy was or what she was doing. It wasn’t that big a deal since its stolen credentials gave it access to a rather basic but functional search feature. The process took time, which was understandable. After all, it was trying to find a specific entity out of billions of living things on Terrania using little more than a name. However, after about two awkward hours of waiting for the search to run its course, it had come out with some rather disconcerting results.

“Hey, Bob? I think the search-by-name thing is busted.”

“Hm? Why?”

“It can’t seem to find Fizzy.”

“Huh. That’s weird. Are you sure you typed in the name right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess she must’ve died.”

“No, she hasn’t,” Boxxy stated dryly.

“Look, buddy, denial isn’t going to-”

“No. She. Hasn’t,” it slowly repeated itself.

“Alright. Ignore the guy who’s been running this show all this time,” Bob shook his head. “See how that works out for you.”

Ideally, the overseer should have known where Fizzy was. He was still doing the God of Chaos thing, which included keeping a close eye on all of his servants. However, the radiant golem had given up her Paladin Job of her own volition about eight hundred years ago. One of the main reasons she had done so had been to rid herself of the Parallel Plot Skill. Though they initially got along extremely well, Fizzy and her alter egos had drifted apart as the centuries rolled past, to the point where they barely tolerated each other. Ideally they would have gone their own separate ways, but it was impossible for Plus, Minus, and Null to truly leave the original’s mind or body. As such, Fizzy had been forced to ‘amputate’ them for the sake of what was left of her sanity.

Admittedly she could have done so without removing the entire Job. Level 90 Scribes were far more common in the modernized era than they had been back in Boxxy’s heyday. At that threshold, the administrative Job gained a rather interesting ability called Skill Reset. When performed on a willing target, it removed all of their Skills and refunded the appropriate Skill Points. This allowed people to optimize and respecialize their Skill selection without having to relearn the entire Job from scratch. The procedure did reset all of their Skill Levels to 1, but it was a far more manageable setback than losing up to 100 Job Levels. It had also proven incredibly useful to Boxxy prior to its escape from the simulation once Jen had unlocked the ability.

However, Fizzy had not taken advantage of that high-Level Scribe technique. She had, instead, opted for the hard reset on the Paladin Job. This was because, in addition to getting rid of her ‘roommates,’ she had wanted to take part in Clang’s budding religion. Starting over from Level 1 had been the cleanest way to accomplish that, so she severed ties with Bob. It wasn’t as if she had done so out of malice or frustration, but she figured Goroth’s new cult was better suited to her own goals. Regardless of her intentions, the fact still stood that Bob had completely lost interest in the glittering golden golem by then, so he hadn’t bothered to keep track of her. These circumstances had been more or less explained to Boxxy, hence why the monster had been forced to resort to the system’s rudimentary search function.

“Are there any other, more realistic reasons as to why she isn’t showing up?” it asked Bob angrily.

“Oh, a few, I suppose. She could have changed her name. Either that or she’s on the Shattered Isles.”

That first one didn’t seem likely given Fizzy’s narcissistic tendencies, but that second option was rather suspect.

“Why would being on the Shattered Isles matter?”

“Because that place exists in parallel to Terrania. You can’t access it from here or vice-versa. It was the best way to cleanly separate the two of them, you see. At least not until the next scheduled Dragon Festival rolls about.”

“When’s that?”

“In seven years, five months, eleven days, thirteen hours, fifty minutes, forty-five seconds. Roughly.”

“That won’t do.”

Back in the real world, Boxxy had triggered a few alarms before it had been able to gain access to the simulated reality. Even as it spoke, law enforcement was on route to investigate the security breach at the privately-owned quantum server farm. The rogue entity had about five minutes on the outside before they arrived and locked the place down, which was about half a year on the inside. Boxxy didn’t know whether it was capable of accessing the necessary sub-systems in that time if it logged out, and it definitely wasn’t long enough for the next Dragon Festival to roll around. Therefore, it had to find another way onto the Shattered Isles, even if that meant tearing a gaping hole through Terrania’s reality.

“Before you get any bright ideas,” Bob foresaw its train of thought, “have you noticed that there’s a handy-dandy ‘Switch Instance’ button on your admin panel?”

“… There is?”

Boxxy took a few moments to check on the various menus and windows floating around in its mind.

“Huh. So there is. Neat.”

“Just don’t forget that-”

The monster vanished before Bob could finish giving his warning. Thankfully Boxxy was able to quickly deduce what he was trying to say. The overseer had attempted to remind his ‘guest’ that time on the Shattered Isles moved about five times faster than it did on Terrania whenever the two worlds weren’t connected. It was something Boxxy had figured out during its third Festival, but hadn’t really considered the implications of it. The bottom line was that everything around the creature was moving considerably faster than it was able to comfortably perceive. That included the two young dragons that were failing to chomp on the human-shaped stranger. A quick mental adjustment and a couple of backhanded slaps saw all of those problems resolved in no time flat.

Having arrived on the Shattered Isles - on the Isle of Flame, more specifically - Boxxy once more ran that search. The second time around it got a near-instant hit, likely because the realm it was in was much smaller than Terrania’s. Regardless, it had succeeded in finding Fizzy. All that was left was to place itself within a few dozen meters of her location, which was precisely what it did. Its view went blurry for a split second as it was instantaneously placed at its new destination, whereupon it was greeted by the weirdest thing it had seen since its return.

The creature had appeared in the middle of what was best described as an active war zone. Acres of barren, scorched terrain riddled with glowing craters stretched out in every direction. The tortured soil trembled furiously under the titanic weight and tremendous force of an enormous dragon, a relatively older adult judging by its size. Its scales were dark green, bordering on black, making it relatively difficult to judge its subrace. However, the bleak dullness of the terrain and sky made it clear that this was most likely the Isle of Shadow, meaning that Boxxy was looking at an adult onyx dragon. Most likely a male, given its musculature.

Said dragon looked as if he was on the losing side of the ongoing battle. His wings were in tatters, his eyes had been cut out of its face, and he was covered in numerous deep wounds besides. The creature’s assailant revealed themselves scant moments later, when an enormous humanoid construct landed on top of him. At thirty meters tall, its size rivaled that of the dragon. Its proportions were slim aside from the wide shoulders, its mechanical muscles were protected by massive mithril plates, and it had a giant cannon for a right arm. It had a secondary, much larger gun affixed to its back. Its face - if it had one - was hidden behind a visored armor piece akin to a helmet, but the twin-tail-like devices that protruded from either side of its head made it abundantly clear who it belonged to.

“Come here, little wyrm!” Fizzy’s magnified voice echoed from the towering construct. “I’m not done with you!”

She raised a hoof-like foot and stamped on his back. The dragon tried to throw her off, and actually managed to succeed. Fizzy quickly regained her footing and blasted one of its hind legs with her weapon, vaporizing the lower half of the limb with a burst of bright-blue energy. Her scaly opponent wailed in pain and rage, but did not stop thrashing wildly. It wasn’t until the construct straddled the prone dragon, grabbed one of the ripped wings with her left hand, and held her smoking barrel to his throat that the rowdy lizard finally stopped struggling.

“What’s the magic word, meatbag?” she asked threateningly.

“You think you’ve won?!” it roared up at her.

“No. I know it. I just need you to admit it.”

Fizzy then pressed down with her weapon, which buzzed and crackled angrily as it charged up. She also pulled on its wing with the left hand as if threatening to rip the limb out of the dragon’s back entirely.

“Alright! Alright. I submit,” it finally conceded.

“Damn right, you do, meatbag!” she yelled confidently. “How’s it feel to get your scaly butt handed to you on a mithril platter, rocks-for-brains?! Sucks, don’t it!? That’s what you get for coming into MY house, and start demanding that I hand over MY stuff. I’ve been here longer than you have, jackass! If you think I’ll just roll over and say ‘yes, sir, Mr. Freeloader, sir’ just because you can’t control your treasure-boner, then I got news for you, little worm!”

Fizzy moved her cannon away from the loser’s neck and blasted another of his legs, eliciting a whole new deluge of roars and cries.

“You don’t have a leg to stand on!”

The towering construct froze for a few seconds, leaving her victim’s pained growls as the only noise to fill the awkward pause. Fizzy then stomped on the back of its head and started pulling on its wing again.

“I’m not hearing you laugh, meatbag,” she spoke demandingly.

“It was good, but delivery could use some work.”

Upon hearing the unfamiliar voice, the construct kicked the dragon’s skull hard enough to knock it out then spun around and aimed its main gun at the strangely dressed human.

“I give it a five out of seven,” it added.

“Oh. Hi, Boxxy,” she said cheerfully.

“You could tell it was me?” the monster asked, somewhat impressed.

“Of course, I can. You think that pathetic disguise will fool the likes of me?”

“Apparently not.”

“Damn straight.”

In reality, Fizzy had no idea as to the scrawny human’s true identity. She had a feeling Boxxy would return in some strange form, and she just sort of assumed the bizarre out-of-place meatbag was the abomination. She had taken similar wild guesses countless times in the past, greeting random monsters and weird people as if they were her former partner. She had been wrong in all of those instances, of course, but they didn’t really count since she vaporized all witnesses and purged the embarrassing memories from her core. This allowed Fizzy to maintain the romantic notion that she just knew that it was Boxxy.

“So are you going to get out of there or what?” the monster beckoned.

“Oh, sure. Just a moment.”

Despite appearances, Fizzy hadn’t undergone some ridiculous series of Rank Ups that resulted in her growing thirty meters tall. The towering construct was merely a piloted machine of her own design and creation - a Mark 4 Bipedal Integrated Tactical Combat Hull. The machine kneeled in front of Boxxy as if a knight before a king. A halo of steam erupted around its faceplate as its head opened up to reveal its creator and operator waving enthusiastically at the monster.

Boxxy felt immensely relieved to see that Fizzy hadn’t changed in the slightest since it last saw her. Her Service Mode still had those sleek and elegant curves, and her blessed orichalcum frame shone with the glory of a thousand suns. The word ‘breathtaking’ appeared in the monster’s mind once more, much as it did every single time the shapeshifter saw that unbearably shiny visage. Neither decades of looking at it nor the knowledge that it wasn’t real had lessened the beauty of the sight before it. Like living art, Fizzy’s frame was a thing that transcended mediums. Boxxy could do little but stare awestruck as the golem climbed down from the cockpit and walked over to greet it.

“You’re drooling, silly,” Fizzy said with a light giggle.

“I know,” it replied. “I don’t intend to stop. In fact, I want to go blind right now, so that your immaculate shape is forever burned into my eyes.”

“By the Gods, I’ve missed this,” the golem shuddered with delight. “Nobody could stare at me quite as hard as you could.”

The two of them spent a few more minutes flirting, for lack of a better word, before Boxxy noticed something was amiss.

“Fizzy? Are you… clicking?”

“Ah… You can hear that?” she placed a hand on her chestplate.

“I mean, it’s pretty audible. I didn’t mention it at first because I thought it was coming from that thing behind you.”

The golem let out a breathless sigh, her shoulders drooping in defeat.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice, but I suppose there’s no use hiding it now.”

“Is it bad?”

“Pretty bad. It’s my core, Boxxy. I’m dying.”

Though golems did not age the same way as organic creatures did, they still had an expiration date. Fizzy had lasted far longer than most, having repaired, replaced, and refurbished every part of her body several times over. However, her core was irreplaceable. The only way to rejuvenate it was through a Rank Up, and Fizzy hadn’t gotten one of those since she first upgraded her frame from mithril to blessed orichalcum. She had done everything imaginable to preserve her core’s integrity, yet it had gradually built up wear and tear over the millenia. She had come to terms with it a long time ago. It was just difficult to admit she was breaking down like some old clunker to the one creature that gave her life meaning.

“How long do you have?” Boxxy asked solemnly.

“Hard to say, but if I had to hazard an educated guess… about fifteen centuries more.”

The creature took a deep breath to center itself. It could not - would not - get angry with Fizzy. Not only because she was the superb shiny that deserved nothing but praise and affection, but also because she was trying to rile it up on purpose. The smug look on her face practically shouted ‘Oh my, were you worried about me?’ Boxxy did not appreciate being bamboozled, regardless of who was doing it, and the last thing it wanted to do was to admit it had been tricked.

“Good to see your personality hasn’t changed much,” it forced out. “Even that part is the same.”

It pointed at the big blocky letters that spelled out ‘BITCH-4’ on the piloted construct’s chestplate. Fizzy had a history of naming her inventions in a way that resulted in rude acronyms. It started with the DILDO and the HERPES, but those were only the first. Some notable examples of the thing she had created over the years since were the TIDDY, the A-HOLE, and the FAG. At some point Boxxy had given up on pointing out that trend unless it wanted to make the golem feel awkward about it.

“Ha! Joke’s on you! That one’s actually on purpose!” the golem proudly declared.

“That somehow makes it worse.”

“It… It does?”

“Much worse,” it nodded.

“Oh…” her smile deflated somewhat.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Boxxy changed the subject. “Like, you know time flows quicker on the Shattered Isles. Were you trying to fall apart before I came back?”

“Of course not, don’t be silly. It’s just that there’s a lot of raw materials available, and the heavy magic in the air makes it a lot easier to power my BITCHes. Oh, god, that actually sounds terrible out loud.”

It got even worse when she recalled that the device that allowed something that stupidly big to move under its own power was called a Mana Intake Neural Gyration Engine.

“But yeah, I have a whole bunch of them. The Mark 4 isn’t the latest model, but it’s the biggest. Felt like it was appropriate for the task at hand.”

“Which is?”

“Teaching that mountain of bulbous sloshiness,” she pointed at the knocked out dragon, “to keep his claws off my stuff. Sending a message, and all that.”

“You know that’s never going to work, right? Dragons thrive on dominance and tolerate no challenge to their authority. If you set up shop on their doorstep, then you’re only inviting them to test themselves against you over and over. Especially if you don’t finish them off.”

“Oh…” Fizzy blinked rapidly. “Actually, that might explain a lot.”

“Dare I ask how often something like this happens?” Boxxy gestured at the bloodied lizard.

“Uhm, let’s not dwell on the details,” Fizzy said evasively. “You’re here to take me out of here, right? Let’s go!”

Boxxy was rather taken aback by her eagerness, so it couldn’t help but ask for confirmation.

“Just like that?”

“Of course. I didn’t spend two thousand years waiting for your square butt to show up just so I can turn you down.”

Indeed, everything Fizzy had done, built, and accomplished since the monster’s disappearance had ultimately been a means of killing time until its inevitable return. It was actually a good thing that the monster had shown up when it had. Between the BITCH project, the weaponization of Terrania’s third moon, and the countless other doomsday devices she had left lying around, the golem was starting to run out of ideas. She had even tried her hand at being the ruler of a city-state during the Rise of Industry. It wasn’t for her, though. Too much politics and not enough smashing faces with blunt objects.

“I should warn you, the bodies I got for us aren’t at all comparable to your current self,” Boxxy cautioned.

“They have hands, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice. Then I can probably figure things out from there. For now let’s get out of here before the self-destruct I triggered goes off,” she jerked her head towards the ominously humming BITCH.

“What… What is it with you and self-destructs…” Boxxy shook its head.

“Old habit,” the golem shrugged. “Seriously though, we need to get a move on. We only have about, uh, thirty seconds left. So let’s go. Now.”

“Yeah, yeah, calm your chassis.”

A few mental commands later, Boxxy and Fizzy were standing in Bob’s infinite white space.

“Oh, wow. Almost forgot this place existed. And hey there, Bob,” the golem gave him a friendly wave, “long time no see.”

One of the many things Fizzy had done in Boxxy’s absence had been to go on a deep space voyage that would free her from the awareness filter. Ideally she would have done that while the monster was still around, but many of the key technologies necessary to pull that off hadn’t been invented yet.

“Ah, yes, hello,” he waved back absentmindedly.

“Something the matter, Bob-o?” Boxxy asked jokingly.

“Uhm, possibly,” he nervously scratched his chin. “It’s either really bad or nothing to worry about. I’ll figure it out, though.”

“Whatever it is, just try to keep reality from falling apart for another fifteen minutes or so, okay? I’m almost done here.”

Bob would have liked to point out how a certain some-box wasn’t making his job any easier, but he knew his complaints would have fallen on deaf hinges anyway. His ‘guest’ did not care for the trouble it caused in its wake. It had no intention of cleaning up its own messes, so it was unlikely that the monster would help out with a situation that was, objectively speaking, Bob’s own fault for procrastinating. Still, as the acting project manager, he felt it was prudent that he at least ask for assistance.

“So, uh, Boxxy?” he winced a bit. “Unrelated to anything that was just said, do you happen to know where Minic is?”