Why Did You Summon Me?

Chapter 463: 463

‘You picked such a remote location for testing? Don’t tell me… Did you make a weapon of mass destruction?’ Baiyi wondered as he flew towards his destination. In the past, the Engineering Faculty’s demonstrations were carried out on their own experimental ground, not in wastelands reserved for destructive weapons and magic.

Baiyi’s mind drifted to a claim he once saw on the internet: nuclear bombs could be easily created in the facilities of a standard university. According to the claim, though, the only problem with this was finding enough concentrated uranium.

Some parts of the claim were exaggerated, but there was some degree of truth to it. However, in this world where magic existed, claims like these, which are considered ridiculous on Earth, are not farfetched, as it had the Engineer Walker’s ingenuity.

With that in mind, Baiyi landed at the test area, mentally steeling himself for an epic demonstration. The wasteland was already packed with students from the Engineering Faculty, and every one of them was busy carrying out their respective objectives. When the students saw Baiyi, they stopped what they were doing and bowed.

Baiyi waved at them, implying that they relax. Afterward, his eyes shifted to an enormous object resting at the center of the area. It was covered by a black canvas.

A few moments later, the project leader, the Engineer Walker, walked towards Baiyi whilst rubbing his hands together in excitement. “You’re here! Okay, be patient. A few calibrations left, and we’ll be all set!”

“It’s that thing over there, isn’t it?” Baiyi said, pointing at whatever it was shrouded by the canvas. Then, he asked in a low voice, “Did you make a weapon of mass destruction?”

“A WMD, you say? Hmm… I guess you could put it that way, especially considering how it’s definitely no less mighty than your typical Forbidden Spells,” The Engineer Walker boasted.

“Look, it’s not gonna cause any disaster, right?” Baiyi pressed on anxiously. This micro-realm may be large enough for an academy, but its total size was only about as large as a metropolis, too small for a safe nuclear bomb test. If a nuclear bomb were to be detonated here, its shockwaves and radiation would have instantly annihilated his precious Da Xue in minutes, killing countless of his precious students, including his most precious angels.

The Engineer Walker beat his chest confidently. “You may doubt my character, but you can’t doubt my professionalism, can you? Besides, we’ve got our final trump card with us here — you! With the Fifth Walker around, any problem is no problem!”

“I guess so…” Baiyi relented and nodded as he thought about the plausibility of protecting oneself from the force of a nuclear bomb using defensive magic, which was theoretically possible. Besides, the Engineer Walker was right; he may be a member of the Gentlemen Club, but unlike his peers, he was still largely reliable and professional; He must have already known the damage a nuclear bomb could deal over a large area, and therefore knew better than to take any related experiment lightly.

Just as Baiyi was still musing about the boons and banes of such an experiment, a student rushed towards them, bowing curtly before informing, “Everything’s set, Professors! It’s ready!”

“Well done! Now, let us begin!” The Engineer Walker declared gleefully and produced a small rectangular object from his pocket.

He slid his finger across its surface and drew a pattern across some dots. Then, he raised the slab’s surface to his face level, shook a bit, and waited, as if the slab was reading his face. After that, he punched a few characters in the slab as if he was typing his passwords. Next, he placed his thumb in the lower middle area of his slab.

Those unlocking procedures took a while, but the slab was still initiated, shown through a faint glow from its body. At the same time, the object hidden under the black canvas stirred as well, emitting a series of sounds not unlike started engines.

The students around it started to back away. A few students clutched the corner of the canvas and pulled.

Underneath the canvas a magical marionette. It was completely white and resembled a spider, though it only bore four legs. Its body was a sphere with a yellow halo-like object hovering above it. In general, Baiyi thought it looked like a spider-shaped four-legged marionette.

“And that’s not all there is about it, too. Somehow this thing seems* familiar*,” Baiyi murmured out loud.

He had just finished his remark when a strong, jovially male voice rang out from that spider-marionette, exclaiming, “Solaire of Astora 1 has been activated!”

Baiyi immediately turned to the Engineer, shooting him a questioning look.

“Haha, like what you hear? It’s one of the pre-recorded voice clips we’d installed into this beauty. Of course, voiced marionettes are hardly new, but ours is special. We’ve taken some effort to make it sound more dulcet and livelier because everyone could get really sick of that monotone robotic voice, right?” The Engineer beamed proudly.

“That’s not the point!” Baiyi replied. “I was just wondering… How did you manage to build this thing in such a short amount of time?”

“Aha! Truth is, this babe had been in construction about two years ago. Back then we never got it to work as we wanted, though, because of some technical issues concerning its mechanical structure and locomotion. However, the tech you’d brought from your world had provided the answers to our long-held questions, and so voila! It’s like that idiom your people use, right? ‘Adding eyes on the dragon 1’?”

“You misapplied the idiom, my friend,” Baiyi replied weakly before turning back to the subject at hand. “So, what now?”

“Now, it is time to demonstrate to you our revolutionary operating model! No longer do we control via voice command; we now appropriate a highly-accurate, spectacularly comprehensive, and all-around more efficient interface based on RISC 1 principles!” The Engineer Walker exclaimed in excitement, showing Baiyi the slab he had been tapping.

To Baiyi’s shock, the remote control had been designed to resemble a typical video gaming console’s layout!

The standard method of operating a marionette in this world was to write a series of instructions for the marionette to follow using magic pertaining commands such as walking, changing direction, etc. Then, one could control it either by voice or mana, with the marionette responding to the command by carrying out its corresponding preset instructions. As the field of engineering in this world improved over time, the marionette’s actions and performance became more flexible and intelligent, thus making them seemed like they innately “understood” human speech.

However, this method posed a long-time problem: the marionette could not perform anything that was not prewritten in its memory. If one were to ask it to serve a cup of coffee, then changed one’s mind halfway while it was in the middle to deliver that coffee, that marionette would not change its end goal right there and then. Instead, it would carry out that previous command to the end before taking the newer command.

A more life-threatening example would be this: imagine a user commanding it to sweep the floor. While it was working, the user’s house suddenly caught fire, and the user was now frantically commanding the marionette to save them. However, the marionette would not stop its sweeping duty at all, even if one’s butt was literally on fire. Instead, the new commands would just pile up, only to be carried out after the current command was completed.

Needless to say, a rigid model like this would cause inconvenience at best and tragedies at worse, which was why the Engineer had been looking for ways to curb it from all related knowledge he could salvage. Even if they could never reach the same level as the bar artificial intelligence on Earth had achieved, marionettes that could be controlled with more precision and flexibility would still be enough to usher a new era of technological advancement in Isythre, such as being used for demanding activities such as in mass manufacturing. Currently, standard marionette models had yet reached that level of utility and were only used as dumb muscles for moving bricks or boulders.

“Now that’s what I call a technological revolution, huh?” The Engineer Walker waved the remote control in his hand, beaming proudly. “With this, we can improve the overall efficiency of magical marionettes that one day, we’ll finally get to introduce the automation to the world!”

As plenty of futurists were wont to be, The Engineer Walker’s perception towards automation was very optimistic.

Baiyi may not understand the imperative to design his remote control after a PlayStation, but he had to admit that what the Engineer Walker had achieved was incredibly impressive. In fact, it really reassured Baiyi that despite the man’s character flaws, the Engineer was a man to be trusted with his ingenuity, after all.

“This is only the beginning, my friend! Behold, the strongest marionette humans had ever created: The Phoenix!” The Engineer Walker exclaimed.

‘But it’s a spider thingy! It’s nowhere close to a bird or anything! Baiyi deadpanned.* I’m sure this must be a reference of some kind… A reference that is so obscure not a soul would get it!’*

The Engineer Walker was, naturally, completely oblivious to the glaring problem regarding his naming skill and continued to press a few buttons on his remote control. It seemed that he was commanding the spider-marionette to move.

On cue, the monstrous machine said, “The adherent of the Lord of Sunlight has returned!” and began to move forward at a steady pace, like a valiant warrior gallantly marching towards a sea of enemies.

The students cheered and hugged each other. Some were even crying tears of joy!

Baiyi, however, was only fixated on one thing. ‘What is with these cheesy lines? Why even make the marionette say something like that?!’

“Now, let us see its firepower!” The Engineer Walker exclaimed and pressed a button that had a square on it.

The Phoenix whispered, “En taro Adun.” The yellow halo behind it suddenly shot out a beam of yellow light at a nearby dune.

The dune melted instantly as though it had been hit by a laser. The only thing left was a puddle of dark crimson red composed of soot, ashes and shiny silica!

Baiyi was startled. A power like that was enough to rival an advanced stage fire magic.

“That’s not all, my friend. I can even shoot successively!” The Engineer Walker said and pressed two buttons at the same time.

This time, the spider-marionette said nothing; instead, its body glowed iridescent in deep yellow before firing out beams after beams relentlessly, unleashing a salvo everywhere until the entire wasteland was charred. In other words, its power boasted exactly the same damage as a forbidden fire technique!

‘What do you know? The Engineer Walker wasn’t exaggerating the power of his creation, after all!’

“Haha! What a beast to behold, huh?” The Engineer Walker beamed proudly, commanding the spider-marionette to return to him. Obediently, it turned and once again marched with its gallant stride.

However, two steps later, its body suddenly toppled to a side, stirring up a smog of sand and dust with its fall.

The Engineer Walker was alarmed. “Oh no, no, no! What happened?!”

“Ah, it’s over. My sun is setting. It’s so dark… So dark…” The Phoenix replied as jovially and passionately as it had always been, even as it was going dark.

Footnotes:

Ch 463 Footnote 1

Here’s a Dark Souls reference.

Ch 463 Footnote 2

Adding eyes on the dragon, basically, meant refining what is already spectacular!

Ch 463 Footnote 3

Reduced Instructions Set Computer. The easiest explanation about this is the literal meaning of its name.