Many leaders had assud that with increased access to mana, face-to-face etings between civilizations would beco commonplace. Previously, such gatherings were nearly impossible, requiring either years of conventional travel or the exorbitant cost of mana-fueled wormholes. They yearned for these secure etings, fearing that their long-distance mana communication nodes could be tapped, preventing them from speaking freely. With travel now a moderate expense, they hoped for deeper conversations without the worry of eavesdroppers.
However, it hadn’t panned out as they expected. Leaders soon realized that just as they had gained greater access to manastones from the Terra Empire, so too had their enemies. Leaving their secure territories to attend etings in person ant an unacceptable risk. Who could guarantee their safety? An attack could be easily orchestrated by a rival and frad on their host. As a result, most face-to-face etings were conducted by representatives; their deaths, while tragic, would limit the political damage to their respective empires. The leaders themselves preferred to et in virtual reality, a perfect compromise. The Empire had provided the core VR technology, but with the crucial ability for each civilization to create its own unbreakable encryption, ensuring their privacy.
At this mont, many of those leaders were grateful for their caution. Had things gone as they first hoped, they would be physically present at the excruciatingly tense eting taking place in the Conclave Central Command.
The tension in the room was so thick you could almost touch it. Several leaders had made their holograms as transparent as possible, hoping to avoid the attention of the Grand Xor’Vak. His usual bored, uncaring expression had been replaced by a furious, stormy mask, his eyes locked on Costcka, the leader of the Elara civilization, who had just called him a coward.
It was a word the Grand Xor’Vak had heard often in his long life and had even been a frequent user of, but never, in the portion of his mory since he ascended to his title, had it been directed at him.
Yet throughout this terrifying transformation, Costcka t the Grand Xor’Vak’s gaze without flinching. To the onlookers, he seed utterly fearless. None of them could imagine the truth: it wasn’t that Costcka didn’t fear the Grand Xor’Vak; it was that an even more terrifying individual was standing taphorically at his back, leaving him with a simple choice. He could face the wrath of the Grand Xor’Vak, or he could face the monster who put him here. His mind had calculated that the Grand Xor’Vak would yield the least amount of harm. Each ti the mory of his recent ordeal surfaced, his resolve hardened, and all fear of the Grand Elder vanished from his body.
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A few hours earlier...
The mont the man appeared from nowhere and put him to sleep, Costcka awoke in a seamless, brightly lit white room. There were no doors, no windows, no visible exits. But his mind didn’t focus on that. He imdiately felt a familiar sensation, an anchor that everyone who used the VR knew, the subtle disconnect that differentiated the virtual world from reality.
His heart sank. The Empire had him. Amidst his rising panic, he didn’t even stop to consider how they had breached the most secure area of his entire civilization, the pride of the ruling family. What good would knowing do him now? He couldn’t log off; he had already tried, using the ntal commands the Empire provided for connecting directly to the VR towers without external hardware.
“Let introduce myself,” a man’s voice said from behind him. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough ti to drag this out. I’m a very busy man.”
Costcka whirled around but saw no one.
“I’m over here,” the voice said again, this ti from in front of him.
When he turned back, he finally saw the man from the intelligence reports, the figure all civilizations had to keep in mind: Youssef, the Minister of the Exterior for the Terra Empire.
“Now that I have your attention, my na is Youssef,” he said calmly. “And while I’d love to take my ti threatening you, I’ll get straight to the point. I’m going to show you sothing interesting.” Youssef clapped his hands, and the white room dissolved. They were now back in a very familiar space: the room where Costcka’s real body was resting.
“A small disclosure,” Youssef said, his tone like a product demonstrator. “This is your real-world room, and we are currently in what we call a ‘third-person view mode’ that we have been perfecting.” He gestured toward Costcka’s physical form, suspended in a light-based tractor beam. “That device on your head is currently sending out pulses, mapping the entire room. It allows us to place your point of view anywhere we wish, to let you watch the back of your own head, among other things.”
Costcka, who had been silent throughout, paralyzed by fear, looked around in horror. He realized his security detail had not yet detected a thing.
“Now, you might be wondering why I’m here and why I’ve shown you this,” Youssef continued. “The answer is simple: you are about to witness the second ti this ability has been used, and the first ti it has been used on an individual deliberately.”
As Youssef finished speaking, the chest of a chanical avatar standing behind Costcka’s real body opened. A tallic, root-like tendril snaked out, touching and then inserting itself into his physical form. The tractor beam humd, increasing its power output to ensure his body’s registered weight didn’t fluctuate.
“What are you doing to ?” Costcka finally scread, his voice a frantic plea in the virtual space. “Stop it! What do you want? Why didn’t you demand anything? Stop it, STOP IT! Guards! I’m in danger, save !” The mont he saw the root, a primal fear he had never experienced washed over him, even without knowing its purpose.
“To answer your questions,” Youssef replied, as if Costcka were asking a genuine query and not just rambling in terror. “We are doing this because while threats can work, there is always the possibility of betrayal. For important individuals, we are employing a more... certain thod. We are going to move your soul, or rather, your consciousness, to a body of our own making, one that contains all the necessary precautionary asures to ensure that a thought of defiance never even crosses your mind.”
The root began to pulsate, as if absorbing sothing. “ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” A level of pain Costcka couldn’t describe ripped through him. He was forced to watch and feel everything as his soul was literally torn from his body, siphoned into the root, while the VR devices on both his old body and the automaton worked in tandem to keep him logged in through the entire process.
After a few agonizing seconds, the root stopped pulsating and retreated. The pain ceased, but its phantom effects left Costcka stunned. He didn’t even react as the surroundings shifted again, and they found themselves observing a pristine laboratory.
“This is sothing we call the Fountain of Life, or FOL, discovered on so remote planet,” Youssef said, pointing to a clear cylinder filled with a shimring liquid. As he spoke, the root that now held Costcka’s soul opened a small compartnt and dropped a single strand of hair, collected from his original body, into the liquid. A reaction began imdiately. The liquid churned, rapidly forming a human body. Simultaneously, the cylinder lit up; an integrated atomic printer was interfering with the creation, ensuring the new body’s DNA was a one-to-one match for Costcka’s original, while also adding a few upgrades. Runic lines were woven into the flesh, biological-grade nanomachines were seeded in the bones, and quantum computing logic gates were integrated alongside the biological neural network, turning the entire body into a giant, living, quantum-runic computer.
While the body was still forming, the root connected to it. The soul was injected into its new vessel, but this ti, instead of pain, Costcka felt a profound warmth, like a child in the womb, before he lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes, he was floating in the sa cylindrical tank, but he felt more alive than ever before. He could sense and control every cell in his body with perfect precision, his mind already processing abilities his soul was just beginning to understand.
“You still have a eting to attend,” Youssef’s voice echoed in his mind. “Go there and ensure all of our objectives are achieved. It will be quite easy, as you now have all the necessary information at your disposal. Good luck.”
Costcka’s new body received a massive data assimilation detailing the Empire’s demands. A mont later, he was transported back to replace his forr body, which was now stored in stasis.
“Don’t worry,” Youssef’s voice added as a final thought. “We will return your soul to your original body when this is all over, if you wish. But I don’t think you will want that.”
Throughout all of this, not even a thimble of a thought about betrayal materialized in his mind. The Empire hadn’t bothered with simple threats. The mory of his soul’s extraction was a powerful deterrent, but even more terrifying was the realization that they could have done all of this without him ever knowing. They had deliberately made him a witness to target his greatest fear: death. They had shown him that he was always on the verge of annihilation, and he only survived because they allowed it. Now, in this new body, they could end him at any ti.
But this terrifying demonstration was also the greatest bribe imaginable. The Empire had just proven that even if his body decayed, they could move his soul to a new, younger one, allowing him to live forever with his loved ones. What better incentive could there be for a man who feared death above all else?
‘We ssed with monsters,’ was his last independent thought before his new mind, aided by the biological computer that was now his entire body, began to execute its orders.
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“Where did I lie?” Costcka said, his voice ringing with conviction in the tense Conclave chamber. “Every action you and the other top ten civilizations have taken has been nothing but proof of cowardice. And I, for one, refuse to be in an alliance with cowards.” He pushed the buttons of the Grand Xor’Vak and the other leaders. This was one of the Empire’s orders, and now, achieving it also aligned perfectly with his own dream of immortality. He brought his A-ga.
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