The Mech Lord

Chapter 17 - 16: Artificial Intelligence Arthur

"Pang!"

Lightning crackled as the clouds pour down heavily on the land, filling the streets with water and the pitter-patter continuously rang in Leo's ears.

The roads were empty without a single person visible within miles of the area.

A person laid on the waiting shed near the City hospital. He had clutched his head and seemed to be in pain.

"Aaahhh!!"

Leo groaned for a few minutes when the pain started to calm down and his tensed face finally relaxed and a minute later, he slowly opened his eyes and was surprised, "Huh?"

He rubbed his eyes, but it still didn't help him. It seemed that the world in front of him had changed. Everything was covered in a slight azure gleam.

"What is this?" Leo mumbled when he realized that the veins in his body were glowing with the same azure gleam. There were several tiny dots that seemed to be moving in them.

[Establishing connection with the body….]

[Running an over all check….]

[All checks done…Status clear… Beginning operations..]

A strange voice began to sound in Leo's making him extremely uncomfortable.

"Whats going on?"

[Greetings Inheritor, I am Arthur an Artificial Intelligence.]

A voice rang in his head and Leo couldn't help but frown. He had heard of A.I. glasses and Helmets. But, A.I. chips being installed internally within a human body was still under development phase. Had he been caught and made a guinea pig? Is this why he was missing his memory? Did they lie about him missing for a month before finally being rescued?

[You are wrong in your assumptions. You have been chosen as the Inheritor to the legacy of a Great Person and had your memories sealed in order top keep you from being distracted in your initial endeavors…]

Those words immediately caught Leo's attention. He finally had heard something about his missing memories.

"What do you mean my memories has been sealed? And what inheritor and whose legacy? Is this all your fault that I lost my original body?" Leo immediately barraged Arthur with all his questions.

[I have no answers your questions. I am not the same A.I. Arthur you met. I am the one who is in charge of assisting the Inheritor while the one you had met must have been the one responsible for selection of the Inheritor. So, this is our first meeting and its useless to ask me this questions.]

Leo really had no idea what he was talking about as he had no memories of it, but he could get the gist of it.

"At least you should know about this legacy and stuff? You don't call me inheritor for no reason, right?"

[You don't have access to any knowledge about the Legator as of yet.]

Leo's face changed colors and became extremely ugly. He was not only confused now but frustrated as well. Yet he understood one thing clearly, he wasn't getting any of his answers here.

"I don't care, I want to know what had happened during those one month. Do something?!!"

[You need to achieve Lv 11 for me to lift the seal on your memories..]

Leo really wanted pull this thing out of his head and bash it with his bare hands. He only had a Yellow Rank Skill, Lv 10 was his limit.

How was he supposed to reach Lv 11?!!

This guy was deliberately messing with him. It didn't have any plans to tell him anything from the very beginning.

"How did you get in my head to begin with?" Leo asked with a sigh. It was not like he could do anything to it. What was he supposed to do? Cut open his head and pull the A.I. chip out? That would be a death wish…

[I was installed in you body when you became the Inheritor. Its just that you have your memories sealed and can't remember any of it.]

"Why do you words sound a lot like human? It feels as if I am communicating with another human instead of an A.I." He couldn't help but ask.

[This how we were designed. Our Creator was a great person and now I wish you to follow his footsteps as well…]

"Oh..why do you say he was great? Did he achieve something big?'' Leo tried to see if the thing would accidentally spill out some information. But A.I.s were A.I.s and not humans.

[You don't have access to the information..]

And he was back at square one.

Leo didn't know why but he felt as if this A.I. was deliberately hiding things from him. But the question was 'Why?'. It was not like he would run away after hearing its creator's name.

"If I am some kind of inheritor, shouldn't you tell me what to do and what not to? And do I not get anything? I though your creator was a great person, he really is going to leave his inheritor empty handed?" Leo asked, he wished for something good after all this trouble. And no one could blame him for that.

[You already have receive three gifts due to the grace of our Creator...]

"Oh..Why don't I know about it?" Leo asked as his curiosity got piqued.

[The First gift is the earing on your left ear..]

Leo was surprised, wasn't this a bit cheap.

[Take it off and give it a proper look.]

Leo tried to take the earring off and this time, it came off pretty easily. On a closer look, it looked like some kind of cheap.

"What is this?'' Leo asked in confusion.

[Its a Bio-Chip..]

"And what does that mean?"

[Its one of the most famous toy cheaps, which can a have the data of a life form trapped in it. Mostly used in toy pet… ]

"Isn't it basically useless? Do I look a three year old to you?" Leo retorted with an unhappy face before wearing the chip back on his ear. It at least looked good on him.

[The Second thing should be available on your Awakening Card..]

Leo looked at the Awakening as he passed his aura through it.

The next instant, his eyes almost popped when he saw there was another Yellow Rank skill beside [Charge] on it.

[A.I. Mind]

A Brain integrated with A.I.

There wasn't any other information on it. He didn't know what else to make of it. One thing was for sure thought. The A.I. was integrated with his body now and was somehow recognized as a skill. As for what he could do with it, as soon as Leo tried to activate the skill, a bunch of information began to flow into his head.

[Transmitting information regarding my current capabilities after integrating with host….]

Soon a list of things had appeared in Leo's mind.

[Scan]

Can be used on on living as well as non living things to collect and process data. Amount of information provided will depend on current amount of data available within my directory.

[Enhance]

Can boost user's physical and mental capabilities for 5 minutes by removing the limiters on the body. Can only be used once within 24 hours.

[Virtual Projection]

Allows the user to create any virtual thing within his own mind with no difference to that of real world.

[Update]

Needs a Higher grade energy then the current one to update the current directories and improve A.I.'s capabilities.

Leo was speechless for a second, it was honestly not that surprising for an A.I. but when a Human possessed all this, wasn't each of this equivalent to a skill? It was true that none of them were major combat type skill, but Leo was sure that one could utilize them in different fields to distinguish oneself from the rest.

Besides, there was still this update thing. Didn't that mean this thing could be further improved?

But, a higher grade energy meant going from yellow to Cyan colored Arora energy.

And that was next to impossible!

How was he supposed to reach Lv 11 with Yellow Ranked Skill?

[Transferring the main Inheritance..]

It seemed that this thing was still not done yet.

An old book suddenly appeared in Leo's mind. Books were very rare in this digital age but still there were a few physical publishing houses. After all, there were people who liked collecting physical copies of books.

But there was something strange about this book, no matter how you look, someone had deliberately messed up with its name and the author's name below. Both of it had been hidden under a black ink.

"Don't tell me you are deliberately hiding the names because I don't have access to that information as of yet?" Leo asked jokingly.

[…]

"You kidding me? Just who is this guy whose name can't be taken?''

[Reach Lv 11 to update the current data directory and access new information..]

"If you really had to enter my brain, why didn't you just enter with your latest update?"

This Lv 11 thing was starting to annoy him now. He now knew that his missing memories were this things fault. But even if he did, he was helpless to do anything.

[Scanning the user…]

Level 1 - Awake

Yellow Rank Skill: [Charge], [A.I. Mind]

Comprehensive Body Assessment: [-F]

[Your body is weak to handle the advanced version of the mine. If the advanced version was forcefully installed, there were chances that your brain might not have been able to tolerate the pressure leading to its failure.]

Leo's face twitched on hearing that. It really seemed he had no way out of this. If he had to find out what was going on, then he would have to do the impossible.

He sighed before curiously flipping the first page of the Inheritance Book and looked at the contents.

Leo eye's shined with a strange light on the sight of the contents and he continued to flip a few pages and curiosity really got the best of him, he had suddenly lost himself in it and before he knew an hour had already passed.

"Your Creator is really amazing, I can't believe there is a person who specializes in so many things."

Reverence filled Leo's eyes. Even though it had only been am hour and he had barely gone through this seemingly never ending book, he could tell that this person was a genius. He didn't only had knowledge about A.I.'s , but it went around all technological aspects. Hell, he even saw several designs which represented Mechas and some machines which he had never seen before.

Aside from that, there were strange theories relating to science which Leo couldn't understand at all. But he knew one thing that this person had most likely tried to prove something, whether he had succeeded or not wasn't something Leo could understand at his current level.

How could such a person be unknown?

Leo tried to think hard and finally came up with a name.

Alek Oxborn, The Father of the Interstellar Age for Humans.

He was there at the core of the project which had kick started this new era. In the entire Solar System, there have never been a second genius like him. Even among the entire universe, he could probably be counted among the top 5 scientists of all time.

This man had diverse knowledge in all fields and was a born prodigy. He never took any students in his life and one day he suddenly disappeared as if he never existed to begin with. There were a lot of conspiracies behind his disappearance but the truth never came out.

Now looking at it, Leo was starting to doubt whether it was related to him or not….

If it truly did, then Leo really wouldn't know what to say. The things stated in here should be thousands of years old but looking at it, Leo could tell the man was way ahead of anyone else in his ear.

Even though it was difficult for Leo to understand things written in here, he had managed to decipher a few.

And it really was surprising, a few of this things had just came into existence and yet this person had already talked about them in his time.

Just what kind of monster was this?

Leo closed the book for now, he was wondering whether his conjecture was true or not. But he was at least 70% sure that it had to be true, it had to be that man.

"Anyway, you said something about three gifts. What's the third one?" Leo asked after realizing it had only been two.

[Your life.]

"Sorry?'' Leo felt he had misheard something.

[You would be dead now if not for the third gift.]

"What do you mean by that?" He asked with a frown.

[You don't have access to the information, reach Lv 11 to gain access.]

A vein popped up on Leo's forehead and his face turned ugly. But he knew that arguing with it was not going to bring anything to him. It was just a waste of time.

He asked a few more things to it and in the end didn't gained much.

It seemed he could only work hard to Level up.

But Leo was more interested in Inheritance book, he finally had an opportunity to learn even though he didn't get an admission into Academy. It was actually very hard to be a self taught in regards to a subject which require technical as well as practical knowledge.

Not to mention, Leo practically had no one to learn from.

And another important thing to note here was that, proper knowledge about Mechas were heavily censored on Internet. After all, there were chances that people might learn it and then use the half baked knowledge to cause troubles and disasters. As one needed to be a Professional Mech Engineer to handle this things. Especially the Arora Cores which were an important parts of Mechs. These cores could be disastrous if handled incorrectly.

So, Leo only had basic knowledge about things until know and had more knowledge about parts of Mechs and their arrangement. As for how they were made and what were the necessary conditions for fine tunning, how to design a Mech from scratch, what was the relation between different elements to be kept in mind, which ore reacted in what conditions, etc.. he had no idea about any of it. And this was just the beginning, there were tons of things like this that he had zero idea about.

"What I am getting excited about? There are more important things that I need to deal with first." Leo shook his head coming back to reality.

He stayed on the bench as the cold showers brushed past his face due to the light winds.

Now, that his mind was off the rest of things, Leo began to think about the event in the noon.

Who were those people? What connections did his father have with them?

And he had definitely heard them talking about his mother and his father's family.

Had his father lied to him this entire time? Why did he do so?

It was as if just having this body problem and inheritance weren't enough for Leo now that he had this coming on his as well.

When he had lost his body and was freaking out, he had feeling that he didn't know who he was anymore and now he had a similar feeling.

Leo suddenly got up and took in a deep breath before turning his head towards the street and then walking out of the shed in the heavy rain.