Chapter 3 - Neuro Internal Art

Ash was nearing completion.

An old torso and a left leg. Then a right arm. A few days ago, even a right leg.

Now only his left arm remained.

That did not mean he could roam about as he pleased. Cables were connected all over his body to supply power and run system checks. In Akina's words, Ash was currently undergoing “optimization setup.”

He still could not leave the support frame, but things were undeniably different from before. He now had something he could call a body.

In this world where everything was bewildering, he finally had a body he could call his own.

And so Ash found himself pondering a question.

'Could internal energy exist even in this mechanical body?'

His steel flesh might have been patched together from old parts, but his mind belonged to a martial artist. In a sense, yearning for mighty internal power was nothing less than instinct.

There was no one to answer his question.

Then he would simply have to try it himself.

He drew on everything he could, from the memories of his former life to the data of the Underworld, searching for a way. None of it proved much help.

It moved like his own body, but at its core it was only a machine. Nothing more than a cold mass of machinery whose parts could be replaced at any time.

There was no reason for something as subtle and profound as internal energy to dwell in a mere machine.

An obvious conclusion, but a bitter one.

Yet Ash did not give up. Had it not seemed impossible when he first vowed to destroy the Demonic Cult?

Recalling the formulas of every internal art and divine art he knew, he attempted to gather qi.

The Three Powers Internal Art.

The Lesser Purity Divine Art.

The Jade Purity Tempering Art.

The Grand Purity Divine Art.

And finally, even the Dragon-Slaying Divine Art and the High Purity Supreme Divine Art, secret supreme arts of the Kunlun Sect!

But none of them worked.

No.

To be precise, he could not even attempt them.

The reason was absurdly simple.

He had no respiratory organs to begin with.

Every internal art and divine art he knew was based on breathing—drawing in pure qi and expelling impure qi.

But his mechanical body had no need for the very act of breathing. Never mind applying the formulas; he could not even perform the most basic breathing exercises to circulate qi.

Utterly useless.

Ash felt a profound sense of loss. It was as though the very foundations of the martial arts, which had been his everything, had been denied.

Yet he did not despair.

He had discovered something new.

A few days earlier, Ash had shared a brief conversation with Akina while she was attaching his right leg.

["Lady A. Might I ask you a question?"]

["What's gotten into you? You've never asked me anything before. What is it?"]

["How do I move?"]

["What kind of question is that?"]

["What I mean is, what is the source of the power that moves this body?"]

Akina answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

["Electricity, of course!"]

["Electricity? What is electricity?"]

["Uh... you don't know what electricity is?"]

["I can only blush at my lack of learning."]

["No, that's not what I meant! Oh, damn it. How do I explain this? So... ah! You know the lightning that comes down from the sky? Just think of that flowing inside your body."]

["My word. You mean you harness the lightning of the heavens? And it flows within my body? The Underworld is extraordinary indeed!"]

From that moment, Ash's mind had focused on a single question.

'How might I use electricity as internal energy?'

If he could not cultivate internal energy, he would replace it with something else.

That was the conclusion he had reached.

There was just one problem.

Internal energy and electricity were fundamentally different in nature.

Internal energy was like flowing water. It flowed gently and was refined according to the practitioner's will, then gathered in one place to be wielded as desired.

Electricity was different.

It shot off or scattered at will, seeming to be there one moment and vanishing the next, much like mist. Fine, incomparably swift, and unpredictable.

A power of an entirely different nature.

Despite that, he had once tried to force it to condense—inside the battery pack attached to his torso, of all places.

He had done so with the dantian in mind.

The results had been disastrous.

Amid blaring warning messages, his temperature had skyrocketed. The electricity he had forcibly gathered fluctuated wildly before scattering out of control, and his artificial neural network screamed.

The battery pack could not serve as a dantian.

It was merely a vessel for holding electricity. Electricity was not something he could refine, condense, and accumulate like internal energy.

A complete failure.

'But I did gain something.'

He had failed to accumulate energy, but succeeded in controlling it.

The electricity had unmistakably followed his will toward the battery pack. He had successfully directed and moved it as he wished.

And now, in the present, Ash prepared to try something else.

First, he sat down. Even if he could not leave the support frame, he could manage that much.

Then he assumed the lotus position. Crossing his mismatched mechanical legs felt decidedly awkward, but it would do.

Circulating qi had failed. So had accumulating it.

Then what about orbital circulation?

He had learned to control electricity, and he had an artificial neural network matrix—a Neuro Matrix—that brought the eight extraordinary meridians to mind.

It seemed possible in theory.

In theory, at least.

Ash composed himself and shut off his optical sensors. Then he sank into deep meditation.

This time, he did not try to gather electricity in any particular part of his body.

Instead, he guided its flow along the main stream that seemed thickest and most important within the neural matrix spanning his entire body, much as he would perform a minor heavenly circuit.

As expected, it was not easy at first.

The unruly electricity leaked into the wrong circuits or produced tiny discharges, as if mocking his will.

Each time, the orange lights illuminating the workshop flickered.

There were dangerous moments, too.

The electrical flow accelerated in an instant, shaking the neural network with violent jolts.

Ash unconsciously uttered a Taoist chant.

"If one can remain forever pure and still, all heaven and earth shall return..."

If a person could always remain clear and tranquil, all things in heaven and earth would return to them.

As though displeased by the chant, the lightning's voltage leaped, and its power slammed into Ash's main core.

His body convulsed, but he did not stop.

"Heavenly Lord of Universal Transformation, whose thunder responds to the Origin in the Nine Heavens..."

Seated in the lotus position with cables plugged into his entire body, the humanoid continued uttering Taoist chants tinged with electronic sound.

How much time had passed?

At the end of that tug-of-war, signs of change finally appeared.

The electrical energy circulating through the neural matrix gradually began to settle into a stable flow.

Like a wild horse entering a racetrack, it began accelerating fiercely along the route Ash intended.

But as the circulation continued, something strange happened.

He felt as though the quality of the electrical energy flowing through his body was subtly changing.

At first, he dismissed it as his imagination. With each successive circuit, however, that feeling became certainty.

Hot.

And intense.

One by one, notifications burst from the data pads scattered around Ash.

[SYSTEM STABILITY: NOMINAL]

[ENERGY FLOW: HARMONIZED]

[CYBERWARE SYNC: 100%]

[. . .]

[SYSTEM INTEGRATION: ABSOLUTE]

[EFFICIENCY: MAX+]

A short while later, the many monitors surrounding him turned green, announcing that optimization was complete.

Scrap metal made in different generations, even by different corporations, had been bound into one beneath Ash's will.

It was a perfect sense of unity, incomparable to anything before. He almost felt as though he had returned to his original body.

His once-creaking joints moved so smoothly that he could no longer feel the slightest trace of resistance. The subtle lag caused by weak signals had vanished entirely.

Ash emerged from his deep meditation and returned to reality. Reconnecting his optical sensors, he raised his hand and spread all five fingers.

BZZZ-CRACKLE!

Above his steel palm, blue lightning resembling an electrical arc flared into being, then vanished in an instant.

An unknown power, similar to electricity, transformed into something else beneath Ash's will.

"... A new path has opened."

And with it came the birth of the signature internal art that made it possible.

The Neuro Internal Art.

It was still feeble.

Yet it was also the promise of a new form of martial arts.

Uncrossing his legs, Ash rose and reviewed what he had just experienced, determined not to forget that fleeting moment of enlightenment.

Stable energy circulation.

Perfect bodily synchronization.

Blue lightning manifested through his will.

Just as he was examining the principles of this new power and seeking a way to advance further—

BANG!

A gunshot rang out.

Very close by.

* * *

Deep in the night.

"Guh...!"

Akina tumbled into a dark, damp corner between heaps of waste. In diving out of the way of a bullet, she had failed to check the ground beneath her.

"Hey! Over here! Here!"

Shadows fell over her. They belonged to the men in shabby leather jackets who had been chasing her down like a rabbit.

Every one of them looked wretched and scruffy, but they shared one distinguishing feature: yellow insignia tied near their shoulders.

An emblem of three interlocking gears, with a single inscription beneath it.

[R.E.S.T.]

The city's hyenas, who thought nothing of looting and murder behind the shield of their “Sanctum Administration–Certified Resource Recovery Permit.”

"Yeehaw!"

The apparent leader came running down the mound of waste and kicked Akina.

"Guh!"

She collapsed without even managing a proper scream.

Seemingly pleased, the man grinned, exposing teeth so discolored they had gone beyond yellow to black.

"Hello there, young lady. What brings you to our turf at this hour?"

Gasping for breath, Akina barely managed to answer.

"N-nothing... I just came to pick up some scrap... agh!"

But he had no intention of listening.

Before she could finish, he kicked her in the side again.

"Hahaha! Hey. You think I'm asking because I don't know? You're that little rat, aren't you? I've seen the back of your fucking head twice now!"

"I-it wasn't me..."

"Bullshit it wasn't!"

The man reached out a rough hand, seized Akina by the collar, and hauled her up. As he did, the bundle she had been clutching fell to the ground.

It was a mechanical arm—old, but still quite serviceable.

"What's this?"

He flung Akina aside mid-lift, then picked up the fallen cyberware.

"No! That's for him!"

The girl, who had been cowering until now, lunged at him. A kick promptly sent her sprawling again.

"Like I give a shit who it's for."

The man whistled as he examined the cyberware.

"Bitch says she's here for scrap, but she's carrying something worth more than that? Where'd you get this, huh? Not that it matters now. It's mine."

The REST-men who had gathered around began murmuring.

"Isn't that Apex Arms?"

"Think so. Where'd she get something like that?"

"Whoa. How much is that worth?"

"Shut up, all of you! It's mine!"

The yellow-toothed man gave Akina a sinister smile, then roughly seized her chin.

"And of course, this bitch is mine too."

Greed, lust, and violence writhed together in his gleaming eyes. Tears welling in her own, Akina glared at him, then spat in his face.

"You fucking bitch...!"

The REST-man raised a hand.

Akina squeezed her eyes shut in terror.

But the pain she expected never came.

She cautiously opened her eyes. The bastard holding her by the hair was staring at something as though transfixed.

And he was not alone.

Every REST-man who had been menacing her was doing the same. Following their gazes, Akina turned her head.

A hill of waste lay beneath an ominous shroud of darkness.

At its summit stood something shaped like a human, like a ghost roaming the murky night.

It was watching them.

Radiating a piercing teal light.

"What the hell is that...?"

"Uh... looks like a humanoid?"

The REST-men murmured at its sudden appearance.

Really, there was no reason to react this way just because a single humanoid had appeared. Yet there was something strange about the thing before them.

Something eerie and repellent... yes.

It felt exactly like encountering a monster.

Then the humanoid spoke.

"Lady A. You seemed to be running late, so I came to meet you."

Its electronic voice crackled with noise, yet its manner was strangely antiquated and refined.