Honestly, the whole vibe had gotten a little weird.
Jia Xiu looked at the mechanical hand extending from Larven's robe. It did not match the statue of Larven at Larven Harbor at all.
It felt like they had abruptly jumped from a fantasy world into a science-fiction one.
The last person he had heard of who was covered in technological equipment yet still counted as a mage was Victor.
Seeing Jia Xiu's surprise, Larven explained, "Don't be too surprised. This is merely one way to break free from the shackles of flesh. Sooner or later, you'll need to consider it too."
His voice sounded exactly like every stereotype of a robot voice.
Stiff, cold, each word delivered separately.
He had no idea why people stereotyped machines as speaking like that. As someone who had seen plenty of AI works—uh, serious AI works—Jia Xiu was certain that if they wanted to, machines could sound no different from living people.
Smiling, he took Larven's mechanical hand.
Pure metal was exposed on the outside. It pressed painfully against his hand, and he felt a faint numbness too. Maybe it was just an illusion—there was no way Larven's mechanical prosthetic body was leaking electricity, right?
Breaking free from the shackles of flesh.
It sounded rather like mechanical ascension.
He felt Larven would get along with Ram. One believed flesh was weak and frail, while the other rejoiced in the Machine Spirit. Maybe they could even come up with some kind of combo skill.
In any case, it did not fit his image of a top-tier mage at all. Jia Xiu felt that even if mages of this level pursued immortality, they ought to use methods that felt "more high-end."
Like ascending into a god, becoming immortal through elementalization, or even cloning a whole bunch