?

  “That was Cao Cao!” I yelled directly into the face of the Diaochan A.I. Had she been a woman of flesh and blood, I have little doubt that she would be cringing and cowering away from me. As an ethereal being made of intellect, she was able to stand her ground without fear. It was enough to make me wish I could slap her. That is a lie, I could never lay a striking hand on Diaochan’s impossibly beautiful face even if it were presently on an impersonator.

  “ I am not saying you are wrong, Master Lu Bu.” The A.I replied. “Simply that, while yes, Cao Cao was lord of the Wei Faction, the CEO of WeiTech Dynamics shares virtually no physical characteristics with the man in your own memories. Also, if CEO Eden is a Paradox Incursion like yourself, there is no public record to prove it.”

  I stalked over to the wall opposite the couch and slammed a fist into it until I had cracked the cement, and then filled those cracks with blood from my torn knuckles. Of course, it hurt, but in all honesty, the pain felt good in a nostalgic sort of way.

  “It was him.” I insisted. “I don’t care how unlikely it is, or how many reasons for me to be wrong that there are. It is him, so figure out ways that could be the case.”

  I have said before, I like a little backbone in my women, not too much, mind you. Just enough that they get you thinking and can maybe defend themselves if someone means them harm. I have never disagreed with my own thoughts on the matter more than when the being literally created to serve me rolled her eyes before obeying my commands.

  “Technically, some Classes can create illusions over him, so he could have one of those. They are rare, but they do exist. Divine Hacker, which was an option available to you, can do it, for example. Even rarer are classes that can truly shapeshift. There aren’t any records of it, but he could have just had some surgeries, I guess.”

  That got my attention. I hadn’t been in Abeyance for more than a few days, but surgery seemed to be a wildly prevalent thing among the people here. The siblings I was imposing my presence on ran a whole business based around creating better-than-flesh machine parts for human beings. Surgery that could entirely change your appearance, though, that I had never heard of.

  “You can alter your appearance that much with the work of mere doctors?” I asked, somewhat shocked.

  “Well, not me.” She said, pulling that ‘technically correct’ garbage that the real Diaochan had been so fond of in life. I had always thought she'd inherited it from her father, who had been an extremely long-serving imperial minister. That pack of bureaucrats adored all of that shit.

  “But yes, it is actually fairly simple with modern technology and the advantages of the Class system.”

  My mind ignited with possibilities, and I began pacing the room. It was Cao Cao, I knew it, and no amount of my HUD referring to the man as ‘MG Eden’ could convince me otherwise.

  They called him the hero of chaos, the king of ambition, and on top of that, the CEO was apparently like a sort of merchant lord. I didn't know how long Cao Cao had been here, but it seemed like longer than I had by a wide margin. Even if it wasn't, he always moved fast and with brutal purpose.

  The man who had ordered my death would have or would soon acquire mountains of gold, legions of warriors, elite advisors and bodyguards, the best equipment money could buy or steal…

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I'm going to need some of those gun things.” I mused aloud. “Guns, powerful melee weapons, and followers. Is territory a thing in this city?” My words were speeding up as I spoke, and the ghostly Diaochan figure watched me with poorly concealed concern.

  “Stop staring at me and make note of all this!” I snapped and went right back to my list.

  “Cybernetic replacements, and one of those bikes.” Even to myself, it sounded like I was going to need an appalling amount of money for all of this.

  That didn't matter, now that I knew Cao Cao was present in this world, I had no choice but to build up and seek revenge upon him. If I didn't, and he discovered my presence, I would be slaughtered before I ever knew it was coming.

  I had only just begun to get used to this afterlife, I wasn't willing to die again so soon, and never at the hands of the same man who had killed me with such contempt last time.

  For now, I had the advantage of initiative over an unaware foe. I would neither waste such an edge, nor let it rust unused in its sheath. Of course, everything I listed really boiled down to a single goal, and began with a single step. The same one it always did, the same one it always would. I needed to get stronger.

  “I can see you are thinking, and I don’t want to interrupt.” Came Diaochan’s tentative voice.

  “Speak.”

  “You wanted to be notified when there was a significant change with Ha-Rin, well she is waking up right now.”

  The scene that greeted me when I returned to the room where Ha-Rin had been operated on was somehow more jovial while also being one of the most horrifying things I had ever seen.

  Ji-Ho was in new clothes and looked like he had taken a shower, the doctor was sitting in a steel chair with the back against his chest and puffing on what could only have been a pipe from the multicolored smoke he exhaled. Neither of them was actually doing anything to administer to Ha-Rin. Their pair of A.I.s and a metal yaogui with multiple-bladed limbs were handling that.

  The creature which my HUD listed as a [Surgery Bot-Custom Make] was about the size of a small dog, and skittered about Ha-Rin’s hanging and vivisected form doing…whatever it is it did. Above hovered the ethereal form of Jeoseung A.I in his dark clothes and broad hat, accompanied by an equally ethereal woman of middle years and plain looks, and of the strange breed whose skin was appalling pale. I took her to be Doctor Cenna’s A.I. assistant.

  None of that was really all that horrific without the context of how Ha-Rin looked. The normally pretty young woman had literally no limbs, and her chest was cut open to reveal a bloody amalgamation of flesh and metal. I lack the words to really describe it, but little Surgery bot was seemingly injecting some sort of coagulated fluid into the internal spots where machine met girl.

  “Oh, hey Bu” said Ha-Rin through a cheerful smile, despite the fact that she was a stump of a person with a metallic insect routing around her insides. Lacking any ability to respond to the scene, I managed a very eloquent.

  “Uhh.”

  In my defense, I doubt any of you have a good idea about what to say when confronted with such a sight, especially when it was being treated with such utter mundanity. Making an effort to recover from my shock at what I was looking at, and who was speaking to me, I managed to exchange greetings with everyone present, including the dark skinned doctor and his A.i who I learned was named Madam Marie.

  While I spoke, the surgery bot finished up inside Ha-Rin’s chest and moved onto reattaching her limbs. None of this was anywhere near as difficult as my mind kept telling me it should be, and before long, the bot was spraying a fluid my HUD listed as [Kaf Co- Synthetic Skin ASIAN FLAVOR] from a small bottle onto metal that had been used to replace parts of Ha-Rin’s flesh.

  “Does that not hurt?” I had asked the girl while she was being worked on.

  “Nah,” She replied with a scrunch of her nose that I found surprisingly cute given the circumstances. “ There is like a no pain switch in our brains and doc there turned it off before surgery."