Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix

"You sure are methodical with your approaches," Elisabetha said. "I can do that, but it would be a lot less time-consuming just to focus on finding information about the machine gods themselves."

Rain wasn't so sure of that since the other machine gods didn't interfere in the fight… that confirmed that they didn't see each other in a good light. They could have tried to hide as much information from each other, or they would have tried to make them look different than they were supposed to be.

In any case, Elisabetha organized the immense library according to the first memories of the machine gods… Elisabetha even split the shelves according to the years of Lok's life… it goes without saying, but the shelf had dozens of books, and there were millions of those.

"I guess it is time to use my doppelgangers and the Reading skill as well," Rain shrugged.

The story of the machine gods started eleven million years ago… at first, they were all simple programs that had only simple goals. They worked in a virtual reality and had to keep doing experiments to learn more about the laws of the universe… they did countless experiments to learn as much as possible.

The things that they learned were simple things… but the knowledge of Loks was restricted to only the aspect of space.

After countless experiments, Loks was given the access to use all kinds of types of energy sources. Electric, heat, nuclear… with those sources, he began to expand the experiments and then learn more. However, when he was given the power to access another form of energy that was derived from living beings, he began to develop a consciousness that that form of energy was corrupt energy.

"It seems that they didn't develop corrupt energy…" Elisabetha said.

"We can't say that for sure… the logs say that he received access to the energy type, but we can't tell if another machine god was the cause of it. At least not yet," Rain said. "One could have obtained consciousness faster than the others to control them."

"That feels very possible," Elisabetha said.

The corrupt energy could be fueled by negative emotions such as greed, hatred, or selfishness. Each action driven by these intentions contributes to the expansion of this dark energy.

Even seemingly harmless activities like hunting, when undertaken with malicious intent or disregard for some considerations, could contribute to the growth of corrupt energy. For example, if hunting was done recklessly, excessively, or for purely selfish reasons without respect for the balance of nature, it could feed into this dark force.

Just as dark matter and dark energy are thought to permeate the universe and drive its expansion, this corrupt energy could spread and influence the world around us, perpetuating negative cycles and impacting both the physical and metaphysical realms.

"Programs are created by living beings… while Loks doesn't mention them working on machines like programs on Earth, their similarities are plenty," Rain said while rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I guess we won't find logs of what kind of civilization they existed for a while."

Even when they obtained consciousness, the machine gods kept following their orders for hundreds of years… that only granted them a bit of awareness without organic bodies, after all.

The skill Reading leveled up.

The skill Reading leveled up.

The skill Reading leveled up.

…

As expected, the doppelgangers were great for grinding skills, but it seemed a bit off-putting to spend that much mana for such a skill… unfortunately, there wasn't much that Rain could do about that. The information was stored in a metaphysical space. In order not to overload his brain with that much information, he could only obtain it like that.

In any case, after one hour, Rain and his doppelgangers read plenty of books… from many shelves. Many of them only had duplicated informations of failed experiments, so Rain just skimmed over those until the information becomes more interesting. Some pieces of information came in handy, though.

The Energy Path leveled up.

The Energy Path leveled up.

The Energy Path leveled up.

…

Lvl 5: Energy Absorption - Absorbs ambient energy from the surroundings, replenishing one's own reserves and providing a temporary boost to physical and mental capabilities. Higher levels grant more efficiency in the process.

Lvl 10: Energy Conversion - Converts one form of energy into another, transforming kinetic energy into thermal energy, electrical energy into mechanical energy, or vice versa. All those sources can be converted into mana, but the higher the level of the skill, the more efficient the process will be.

"I guess their knowledge complemented each other," Rain thought. "In any case, I guess I can use Energy Conversion to keep and make even more doppelgangers analyze this data for me… but this is worrisome."

The path would keep leveling up with ease as long as Rain stayed close to any source of energy… but if one of the machine gods had total control of that aspect, how could he defeat it when they had the power to improve that aspect and obtain energy for thousands of years?

"Just thinking about it makes my head hurt…" Rain said and then sighed. "Anyway, I will talk with the others and tell them what I learned."

No one was in his pocket dimension, so the wounded had left a long time ago… in situations where he remained unconscious for long periods of time, Rain made the spectral weapons teleport people back to reality as soon as they were healed, so Rain didn't worry about that.

When Rain left his tent, he found everyone in the distance having another meeting… along the way, he found that they had built a cemetery in the distance, and it had close to one hundred graves there… it seemed that they had suffered some losses in that mission as well.

"This doesn't surprise me… in the end, I did what I could to prevent as many deaths as possible," Rain thought.