World Keeper
Chapter 1264: What’s a Survival Instinct?

Back on her machine world, Lifre took the inert queen with her to a large building that seemed to construct itself as she approached it. Although she could scan through its code with her mana, she still needed external devices in order to perform an in-depth scan of its physical components, given that it appeared far more complex than the previous drone.

Unlike the drone, this queen was considerably large, nearly a dozen meters long and with numerous circular holes that Lifre assumed were meant to store the other classes of robots. Its thrusters were far more powerful, as well, able to move up to tens of thousands of times the speed of light when it was unburdened.

Once inside the new facility, Lifre deposited the queen into a scanning chamber, where it began to analyze every inch of it, both internal and external. In the meantime, Lifre herself dove into the monster’s code.

Sure enough, there was no ‘Empress’ rank, or any other rank that the queen had to obey. Although the queens could communicate with one another, they were largely in charge of their own swarms, and did not have any authority to directly command another queen.

That said, Lifre could immediately sense that the queens were far more intelligent than the drone she had previously scanned. When she had scanned the drone, it came off as little more than a feral beast, whereas the queen almost had a human level of intelligence. It had no desire to communicate with other beings, and no remorse if it destroyed an entire race of creature, but it could properly analyze the targets that would be valuable to the swarm.

Unfortunately, this also meant that the other queens were intelligent enough to block the exploit that she previously used. In fact, this queen that she had captured had already begun working on such a patch in the moments before Lifre grabbed it. It looks like it was changing the frequency that orders would be accepted from?

This was a rather rudimentary fix, but still enough to completely cripple Lifre’s attack method. Without knowing the new frequency that the other queens adopted, her signal was completely useless.

“Still, I expected that.” Lifre said aloud with a grin as the nearby machines dinged, alerting her that they were done with their scan.

When Lifre looked through the information, she couldn’t help but grin. She had seen hints of it in the code, but it looked like this queen was capable of fulfilling all of the other roles of the swarm, allowing her to measure their capabilities.

As she studied the data, Lifre began to plan her next course of action. There were only a few ways to properly annihilate a swarm like this. The easiest, and surely the most logical course of action would be to go run to Dale and pout until he pressed the big red button. However, since when did Lifre do things the logical way?! That was an insult to her pride as a silly slime!

“Let’s see, what tools do I have at my disposal that could work…?” Lifre muttered, tapping her foot against the ground. “I wanna keep myself to the Mechanic persona, just for funsies. So, what can the mechanic do to a robotic swarm?”

Lifre hummed softly, tilting her head from side to side. “I could make a living virus, and spread it through their network? I’d still need to get the new frequency to get the first bots to accept the virus, though.”

“Oh! What if I go full meta? I could imbue the virus onto a physical material, and then when they absorb or scan that material, they’ll be infected with the virus!” She said gleefully, clapping her hands together. “Of course, whatever the virus is imprinted on, it will need to be attractive enough of a target to get as many drones and scouts as possible to check it out, that way I can maximize the impact.”

“But, where am I going to find a massive chunk of tech to act as bait for a near-sentient swarm of self-replicating robots capable of chewing through titanium like soggy french fries?” She asked, before suddenly looking down. “Oh, right, I have a giant machine planet. That’ll do!”

With a grin, Lifre began to modify the planet, removing certain pieces of tech that she absolutely did not want to risk the swarm getting their grubby little lasers on. Of course, this meant getting rid of the long-distance teleporter, but she just set up another one as a separate satellite that would remain behind later.

Once the truly hazardous tech had been taken out, Lifre focused, planting both of her hands to the ground. Mana flowed around her body, forming into digital streams that carved through the floor and walls. A blue field of energy began to grow around Lifre, spreading further and further every passing second.

Soon, this field had left her laboratory, and was spreading across the surface of the planet. And finally, before five minutes had passed, the entire planet was covered with a blue light. “Aaand, that’s all for me!” Lifre said, keeping her eyes closed as she triggered the satellite, and then immediately teleported herself out of the area.

I leaned back against the couch, watching with Terra as Thessa fought against a living planet. It had massive, glowing volcanoes for eyes, and a jagged canyon for a mouth. Even with her Monster Hunter buff, it wasn’t something that she could kill in just one or two hits.

As we were enjoying the fight, Lifre suddenly appeared in the room. “Hey boss?!” She called out. “Can I snatch the remote for a minute?”

Hearing that, I blinked, looking over. “Did you do something bad?” I asked, and Lifre gasped, putting a hand over her chest.

“Me!? Don’t be serious! I would never! Please? I wanna watch a plan come together, but the way I set it up, I can’t actually watch it normally!” She pleaded, and I let out a sigh, tossing the remote to her.

“Thanks, you’re the best!” She said, before running over and jumping onto a free chair, changing the channel.

We were treated to the sight of a silver planet warping through space, surrounded by a shimmering glow of mana. “...Did you make a planet bomb?” I couldn’t help but ask, but Lifre placed a finger on her lips.

“Shh, it’s getting to the best part! Or maybe the worst! We’ll see soon!” She said with a grin, the planet suddenly appearing within a giant swarm of robots, packed together tight enough to be likened to a sea of metal. At first, the planet’s arrival forced them apart, but then they swarmed in on it, rapidly cutting away at its surface.

Lifre stared at the screen, rocking back and forth lightly as she waited. Every second that passed, more and more of the planet was chipped away. After a few moments, she began to count down. “Five… four… three… two… one… now?” She muttered, watching.

All of the sudden, the screen froze, as if time had stood still. No, time wasn’t frozen. Rather, it was the entire swarm that had stopped. Sparks flew from each of the countless robots, their limbs fidgeting briefly. Then, there was stillness.

“Yes!” Lifre shouted, throwing her arms into the air. “The power of pseudo-science strikes again!”

“Lifre… what did you do?” I asked with a long groan, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer. However, Lifre grinned proudly towards me.

“So, there was this super evil self-replicating swarm that devoured technology within the Metong universe, and they filed an emergency request for Olympus to help, since otherwise they would have been strong enough to conquer the entire multiverse within a week. So, I turned an entire planet into a giant megafactory-slash-superweapon, and infused the entire thing with a living memetic virus fashioned after my own consciousness, with the simple order to self-destruct the entire swarm! Then, I threw the planet at them, waiting for them to gobble it up like a dish of popcorn!”

My brow twitched when I heard that. “You made a memetic virus, based on your own mind. What would have happened if that living virus decided it didn’t want to die?”

“Pssh, please!” Lifre chuckled. “I’ve killed myself enough times in various forms for that not to be an issue. My survival instincts are pretty much in the negative at this point!”

“...I wish I could disagree with that statement. I truly do.” I muttered, earning a laugh from Terra. “Are you sure that you got the entire swarm, though?”

“Should have!” She nodded her head. “The virus was meant to spread over every member of the swarm, since even leaving one tiny drone could kickstart the entire process all over again. Buuuut, just to be safe, do you mind scanning the entire universe, just to be safe?”

I let out a small sigh, focusing on running the scan. Sure enough, there were five small clusters in far-off regions of the galaxy, causing Lifre to pout. “Oh, come on?! I thought that virus would get them for sure! Were they all just out of range, or not part of the same swarm to begin with?” She huffed, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Should I just smite them, or..?” I started, but Lifre grumbled, shaking her head.

“No, no, I’ll go find more planets to throw at them.” She said in a sullen tone, standing up and heading for the door. “I swear, you can’t even fix pest problems when you throw an entire freaking planet at it these days!”

With that, she left the Admin Room, heading back to the Metong universe. I gave Terra a curious look, but she simply shrugged, grinning back at me. “You know how she gets. Besides, at least the problem will be dealt with. If she really thought it was annoying, she would have just asked you to do it when you offered.”

I nodded my head at that, agreeing with the sentiment. Unlike some of the others, Lifre had no problems asking for help when there was something wrong. Hence her coming here in the first place, rather than constructing some grand machine to remotely watch the chaos unfold from a safe space.

As I was thinking that, my brow twitched once again. I had just received an alert that one of my alarms had gone off. This particular alarm was set to trigger whenever one of the Hal Tua guilds was destroyed.

Note, this destruction did not mean the total annihilation of their universe, or even the death of every member of their guild. Rather, it was the death of all of their upper tier fighting strength, those that actually held any chance contending against the monsters plaguing their universes. In other words, if the remaining leadership of the guild did not accept any help at this point, there would truly be nothing to save them from annihilation.

Looking at the alert, I saw that it was a rather small guild, though clearly one of the ones that had refused Lyrica’s offer for support. They only controlled a single universe, and their main focus was… ah. They were memetic cultists… and they worshipped an entity that could only be described as horrific in both personality and appearance. Okay, nothing of value was lost today! Given their proclivities, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lyrica never made the protection offer in the first place!