Star Rank Hunter

Xi Kai didn’t take too long this time. He contacted Cillin not long after “Return” was founded.

The meeting location was set in Black Viper’s “vanished” zone, but unlike last time it was slightly further away from the center. There, Cillin found a small planet that was almost completely covered in electronic equipment and machines. It was Xi Kai, or more accurately the Xi Family’s main base.

Cillin sensed a powerful but unusual machine signal the moment the spaceplane got close to the planet. It felt similar to Sigma’s signal, but it was also very different in some ways.

“There’s a huge AI control center here. It controlled almost the entire planet.” Even Wheeze had stopped “arguing” on the forum to focus on the present. The planet gave off a strange, even friendly feeling to Wheeze. The gray cat quickly identified it as the AI’s emotion.

That’s right, emotion. Unlike the rigid emotions most robots displayed, this one felt closer to a human and met the standards to be called an “Original”.

Almost the whole planet was crawling with robots and machines. The only humans here were the members of the Xi Family.

“Welcome, my dear friends,” a voice came through the spaceplane’s communications system. It sounded like something a kindly elderly would say.

“Who are you?” Wheeze asked.

“My name is Chip. Xi Kai told me that you know Sigma.”

“Eh? Do you know Sigma too?” Wheeze curled its tail and looked around, but couldn’t find a Sigma-like robot anywhere. Still, the voice reminded Wheeze strongly of its acquaintance, Sigma.

“We are old friends. You may even call us brothers.”

“Are you one of the five Original robots?” Cillin asked.

“Yes, I am.”

He followed the directions displayed on the screen and flew the spaceplane into a mechanical fortress. The structure looked like the core of the “web” of mechanical structures that sprawled across the entire planet.

Cillin saw Xi Kai not long after he entered the fortress. He was accompanied by two human strangers—probably Xi family members—and several robots clad in human appearances.

Xi Kai had proven his sincerity by inviting them to this planet. If he had to venture a guess, the number of high level Black Viper personnel who were invited to this planet could be counted on one hand.

“Where’s Chip?” Wheeze looked left and right impatiently.

Xi Kai smiled at the gray cat and said, “Come with me.”

Motioning the others to stay where they were, Xi Kai personally led Cillin and Wheeze to a wide location inside the fortress. Cillin noticed a lot of guarded entrances along the way, but they didn’t need to swipe an access card or identification card to pass through all of them. All the doors had opened on their own as if someone was watching them. As Wheeze said, this whole place was managed by an AI control center.

When they arrived at their destination, a wide door opened to admit Cillin, Xi Kai and Wheeze. The first thing they saw was a huge mechanical structure and many complicated-looking circuit boards and wires. Somewhere above the structure hung a flashing round screen.

When the group approached the structure, the round screen moved down until it was at eye level. Then, the face of an old man appeared on the screen.

“Nice to meet you.”

“You’re Chip?!” Wheeze rose to its feet on Cillin’s shoulder and examined the human face closely. “If you have a face, then why not Sigma?”

“Sure it has.” The human face on the screen turned into Sigma’s signature wavy blue line “face”. “This is its face.”

“Then why is your face like that?” Wheeze pointed at the old human face. “It feels really off, you know.”

Xi Kai smiled bitterly at the side. To say that it was off was an understatement, but if they hadn’t come up with this lousy fix they would’ve lost Chip a long time ago.

Xi Kai didn’t say too much this time. It was mostly Chip doing the answering. It told them briefly about the Originals’ origin and some of their experiences.

Just like Cillin had deduced earlier, the ancestor of the Xi Family had created the five Original robots after accidentally discovering a certain matter and using it to create their “brain”.

When the Xi Family arrived at this galaxy, the empire was embroiled in a terrible rebellion. As a result, most of their people and robots were killed in that war until the isolated prince MB. Freeman gave them refuge. It was around the same time a batch of intelligent combat robots were created.

After that, the remaining Xi Family members and the four Original robots signed an agreement with the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor and became a part of the new underground organization, Black Viper.

This was something every leader of the Xi Family including Xi Kai was aware of. However, he didn’t know that one robot had already gone missing when his ancestors encountered Freeman! To this day, no one knew why such a thing had happened, only that there were many, many more mysteries such as this.

Cillin asked, “Why are there only four origin robots left when you encountered Prince Freeman?”

Chip paused for a second before sighing. “Our master had deleted a part of our memories. We don’t know what that memory contains, only that the reason for the deletion was to protect the Xi Family, or so our master said.”

“So the vanished robot is...”

“It’s Sigma,” Chip answered.

Cillin lowered his gaze. If the missing robot really was Sigma, then the deleted memory most likely had something to do with Sigma being sent over to GAL’s galaxy. In other words, the ancestors of the Xi Family had chosen to conceal the technology that enabled them to cross between two galaxies!

“May I ask where you’ve met Sigma? It may very well share some connections to that deleted memory,” Chip asked urgently. This question had puzzled it for nearly a thousand years. It was the main reason it asked Xi Kai to accept Cillin’s request the moment it heard that it had news of Sigma.

Originally, Cillin was planning to confess to Chip everything he knew, but as it turned out Chip didn’t even know that the Xi Family didn’t originally belong in this galaxy or the empire. Or more accurately, they knew this until their master had deleted their memories.

Sensing Cillin’s hesitation, Chip added, “Not all the Original robots had their memories deleted back then. I do not know if Sigma has lost its memories, but Moon’s memories are most certainly intact. If Sigma is the most naive out of all of us, then Moon is the best at pretending to be naive. Even I didn’t know that Moon had retained its memories until much later.”

Moon wasn’t one of the two broken Original robots, but it was stuck in an unusual state since a long time ago.

The robots were broken during the Xi Family descendants’ attempts to figure out the matter that made up their brain. They would’ve lost even Chip if they hadn’t found a way to save it, although the price was its current state. After Chip’s incident, Moon entered into a state of forced hibernation and refused to answer anyone’s call for hundreds of years. Chip itself had forbidden anyone from using Moon’s body as research. It would rather never discover the way to create another Original robot than destroy its remaining sibling.

Moon had talked to Chip for a bit before entering forced hibernation. It was how Chip knew that Moon possessed far more knowledge and memories than the rest of them. Moon’s ability to act and keep secrets was precisely why their master had trusted it to keep their secrets and memories.

Although the Xi Family was forbidden from using Moon for their research, a lot of people including Chip had tried to wake it from its hibernation and speak to it. Their efforts were all futile, however. It was as if Moon had decided to shut itself inside a thick shell and refused all contact with the outside world.

“Where is Moon right now?” Cillin asked.

“Moon was in forced hibernation for over seven centuries already.” Chip said as an image appeared on a screen. They saw a robot that looked like Sigma, except that it was slumped on the ground and not moving at all.

Cillin was wondering if he should try to wake Moon from its hibernation and ask it about their hidden technology when Xi Kai interrupted his thoughts.

Unlike Chip whose main goal was to figure out what the vanished Sigma did, Xi Kai’s biggest focus had always been to rediscover the technology to create an Original robot. Plus, he didn’t think that Cillin could awaken Moon.

“Do you think it’s possible to create another Original robot, Cillin?” Xi Kai asked.

Cillin frowned as he stared at Chip’s humongous body. Then, he said, “Before that, I’d like to know exactly what the matter that makes up their brain is.”

Xi Kai shook his head. “I told you we couldn’t figure it out despite spending nearly a millennium researching it. We only learned a part of it even after we sacrificed two and a half Origin robots.”

Xi Kai nodded at Chip, and an image appeared on the screen. It was a circular crystal with a core, and the core had countless branches sticking out of it. Each branch, each crystal column had an unusual and complicated shape, and in great numbers they looked like a layer of thick “hair” covering the surface of the core.

Cillin’s face and Wheeze’s whiskers twitched the moment they saw the image. Noticing Cillin and Wheeze’s unusual expression, Xi Kai exclaimed in shocked realization, “Wait a second. Have you seen this somewhere, Cillin?!”

Cillin’s distress doubled in that moment. He never imagined that it would be that thing!

“I have seen it before, but it has already been used. I doubt we’ll be able to find another one easily...”

“It... it was used?” Xi Kai’s simmering blood instantly cooled, but he immediately threw out another question. “Did you use it on a robot? Where is that robot right now?”

Cillin shook his head and fell silent. Wheeze was staring at Xi Kai with clear hostility. These idiots already broke two and a half Original robots, and now they’re planning on breaking Czedow too?!

Cillin’s worry was different from Wheeze’s. If what Xi Kai said was true, then Czedow’s capacity to think might be even broader than he initially predicted. He had been gone from GAL for a very long time, and he had no idea if Czedow was developing in a good or bad way. If it was bad, he wouldn’t be surprised if Czedow turned out to be the creator of a robotic apocalypse when he returned.

Xi Kai was about to fire another series of questions, but Chip stopped him. Xi Kai might not be able to pick up the gray cat’s hostility, but it could sense it very, very clearly, so it changed the subject and said,

“We can try waking Moon again if you wish to know more. But if it turns out to be a failure, then I’m sorry to say this is the extent we are able to help you.”

Cillin nodded. It wasn’t like he had another way, so he might as well give this a try.

Chip opened a door. Moon was hibernating right inside the room.

At first glance, Moon looked almost identical to Sigma. The difference lies in the color of its exterior and some other parts.

A human didn’t look completely lifeless when they were hibernating, but not a robot. Moon looked like an ancient relic that had been dead for a very, very long time.

“Moon, I’ve brought two friends over. They said they’ve met Sigma before,” Chip said emotionally.

Several centuries had passed since its brothers were missing, broken, or in hibernation. It had been alone for a very, very long time. They might not be human beings, but their thoughts and feelings were almost no different from a human’s at all. They too could feel sadness, longing, and after so many years, a deep sense of impotence and helplessness.

Moon didn’t respond despite Chip’s greeting. It looked exactly the same as before.

Xi Kai was watching at the sidelines, but he honestly thought that it was a futile attempt just like all others. If this was all it took to wake Moon from its hibernation, the Xi Family would’ve done so way before Cillin. In fact, Xi Kai suspected that the reason Moon had decided to shut itself from all contact was because it was traumatized by his ancestors’ operations of the two Original robots. Still, was a robot’s psyche really that fragile?

Chip shot Moon a glance but didn’t say anything. He simply flicked Wheeze’s ear once and pointed his Chin at Moon.

Wheeze jumped down Cillin’s shoulder and circled Moon one time. Then, it leaped up Moon’s head and gave it a pat, a look, a sniff and so on.

Wheeze was engaging Moon in a soundless conversation, an interaction using machine language just like how it had interacted with Sigma back then.

Although it was soundless, Xi Kai could feel like something he couldn’t understand was happening in front of him. Chip’s eyes however, were growing brighter and brighter and flashing with some sort of complicated emotions from time to time.

Wheeze was speaking to Moon using a specific machine language about Sigma. However, it didn’t reveal anything that might point to the fact that they came from GAL because Chip was listening in as well. At the very least, now wasn’t the time to reveal everything they knew.

As the conversation continued, Chip started picking up a weak feedback from Moon. But since the feedback was directed at Wheeze, it couldn’t tell the content of the response. After the feedback, its mechanical signals started growing stronger. It was to the point where even Xi Kai could feel that the robot was coming “alive” once more.

When a bluish strip appeared across Moon’s face, Cillin knew that Wheeze had succeeded. As the saying goes, one must fit the right key in the right keyhole to “unlock” any object, human or robot. If they hadn’t found the right “key” to persuade Moon into awakening, the robot would’ve continued feigning ignorance and hibernating unto time immemorial.

The bluish strip continued to grow brighter and brighter. A couple of flickers later, Moon suddenly backflipped a couple meters away from the group and exclaimed in a childish voice, “Who... who are you all?!”

Chip’s elderly face stiffened for a second. Bah, he’s pretending again.