Navigator Two's Hardcore Upgrade Method

The moment Navigator Two spoke, Duncan had already noticed that this "God of Wisdom" was in a very different state from the Goddess of Storms—not because of the "corruption" evident in its mainframe array, but because it had somehow remained "awake."

Duncan did not hide his curiosity. "We have already met Gemona. She sealed her own 'death' and 'decay' inside a temple to prevent them from eroding the shelter from within. I thought you were all in similar circumstances, but it seems your situation is different?"

"We all face similar problems—decay and corrosion spreading through our 'existence,'" a humming vibration came from the central mainframe. "It is simply that our methods of slowing the process differ.

"As the world's 'substrate,' Gemona bears the greatest pressure, so she had no choice but to resort to the extreme measure of 'splitting herself in two.' Tarquin's method was to sleep within fire, delaying decay by imprisoning himself in a closed-loop dream. Bartok built himself a prison: a boundless wasteland from which he could never leave...

"As for me, I am perhaps the most unusual of all—as you can see, I am merely a machine built by mortals. Great Annihilation only gave me the qualities of life, death, and decay. Therefore, my method of resisting it is 'iteration.'"

The lights on the central mainframe flickered. Duncan looked surprised at those words. "Iteration?"

"I am currently version v16.08.102-beta," Navigator Two said calmly and seriously. Then, perhaps noticing Duncan's subtle expression, it patiently explained, "The first number denotes the generation, the middle one is the major version number, and the last is a minor version update. It is a beta version because I recently updated my lighting drivers, but they are not yet stable—those are the lighting effects constantly flickering across the secondary servers. They can