Artificial Chat Group

"Resurrection of the Dead, Asmodeus!"

An image surfaced in Hawkins's mind: a brown-haired young man taking a pirate's scimitar to the chest while protecting several girls. Then he spoke.

In an instant, the Curse Power within him surged into the Sea Chart, and another spatial vortex formed within it.

The passage inside the spatial vortex led straight to the Dream Realm. After passing through endless mist and darkness, a beam of light shot from the vortex and struck a ring.

Asmodeus was in immense pain. It had already been a full three years. He could see nothing, could not sense the outside world, and countless mad thoughts kept rising in his mind.

He wanted to scream, but he had no organs to make a sound.

He wanted to run madly, to escape this dreadful world, but he had neither hands nor feet.

He wanted to kill himself, yet did not even have the right to choose death.

Boundless loneliness and deathly stillness seemed ready to swallow him whole, while he was like fish on a chopping block, utterly powerless to resist.

He had thought about it countless times: if he were given another chance, would he still have the courage to step forward and protect those children?

Sometimes, he cursed himself in his heart for being stupid, but at other times, boundless courage rose within him.

He wavered endlessly, interrogating his own heart again and again, until silence claimed him once more.

[Hawkins has used Resurrection of the Dead on you. Respond? Yes/No]

Suddenly, a line of golden words appeared in Asmodeus's consciousness. He could not read, yet when he saw those words, he understood their meaning.

"Hawkins?"

"Resurrection?"

"Is he going to resurrect me?"

Asmodeus thought excitedly, choosing "Yes" without hesitation.

In an instant, he felt himself being pulled free and flying continuously along a miraculous passage. A thread like an umbilical cord connected him to the ring, so the ring was dragged into the passage as well, advancing alongside him.

"Boom!"

He stepped through the final barrier of the passage and appeared before Hawkins.

"Welcome back, brave young man!" Hawkins said with a smile when he saw Asmodeus open his eyes.

Ai Miye stared at Asmodeus in shock, then rushed forward in delight and hugged him around the waist. "Big Brother Asmodeus!"

"Ai Miye? You're Mr. Hawkins? You resurrected me?" Asmodeus looked excitedly at Ai Miye, then turned back to Hawkins and asked.

Hawkins patted Asmodeus on the shoulder and smiled. "You should thank Ai Miye. At the same time, it was your courage that earned you this chance at resurrection. I admire you, young man!"

He had now confirmed that resurrection truly revived the dead. It did not merely extract someone's image from his memories and fabricate a false person.

However, there were still several restrictions.

First, resurrection consumed a great deal. Asmodeus had only been dead for three years, yet resurrecting him had used up all of Hawkins's Curse Power.

Second, Asmodeus was not yet perfectly resurrected. He could only live in Eternal Space. Once he left Eternal Space, Hawkins would have to continuously pay even more Curse Power to sustain his existence, until he dispersed or returned to Eternal Space.

Next, Hawkins explained the precautions to Asmodeus. Naturally, Asmodeus had no objections. Compared to being trapped inside a tiny ring, Eternal Space was practically heaven.

At that moment, Hawkins noticed the ring at Asmodeus's feet. He stepped forward, bent down, and picked it up.

"That's the ring that trapped me. It came along too!" Asmodeus said in surprise, clearly somewhat repulsed by it.

Hawkins held the ring between his fingers, but instead smiled. Looking at Asmodeus, he said, "Looks like we're in luck. This ring is the vessel anchoring your resurrection. As long as it remains in Eternal Space, I can reduce the cost and resurrect you an unlimited number of times."

"Really?" Asmodeus asked in disbelief.

He opened the Sea Chart and placed the ring inside it. In an instant, he felt an additional curse settle upon him.

The curse of Asmodeus's ring was not particularly severe. It merely caused its wearer to have diarrhea every two hours. Even with an empty stomach, they would still feel an intense urge to relieve themselves.

Of course, a Cursed Relic could not possess only a curse. It also had an ability.

Hawkins possessed appraisal abilities, so the moment he saw the ring, he already knew what it could do.

Contract!

Its use was simple. After signing a contract, press the ring onto the contract document. The stronger the Curse Power infused into it, the stronger the contract's binding force.

Hawkins walked outside. Ai Miye and Asmodeus hurried after him, both somewhat curious about what Hawkins intended to do.

However, after coming outside, Hawkins simply stood there without moving. Ai Miye and Asmodeus found this rather baffling. When they walked around in front of him, Hawkins appeared to have fallen asleep standing up.

"Ai Miye, what is Mr. Hawkins doing?" Asmodeus asked doubtfully.

Ai Miye shook her head. "I don't know, but Hawkins must have a reason for doing this. I believe in him."

"Can you tell me what Mr. Hawkins does?" Asmodeus asked quietly.

Ai Miye nodded. "Hawkins is a pirate."

"A... a pirate?" Asmodeus's expression immediately darkened somewhat. He had been killed by pirates.

Ai Miye realized that as well and hurriedly said, "But Hawkins is a good person, and he's already decided not to be... Well, at most, he only takes on occasional pirate work part-time."

After that, neither of them spoke. Ai Miye worried that Asmodeus might misunderstand Hawkins, anxiously thinking about how she should explain things to him. As for Asmodeus, he recalled the time after his death. If Hawkins had not resurrected him, he himself dared not imagine what he would eventually have become.

In truth, he did not hate pirates as much as Ai Miye thought. If he had to hate pirates, then he only hated the pirate who had killed him.

Half an hour passed in the blink of an eye. Hawkins opened his eyes. He had just been writing programs in his consciousness.

Communication in this era was highly inconvenient, and information was extremely closed off. Just like now—he had suddenly been teleported away, and he had no idea what was happening to the people aboard the Black Knife.

So he needed an ability similar to a QQ group or WeChat group. This was something he had planned from the beginning.

Second, the curses on him might grow more numerous as his abilities increased. Relying on himself alone to complete missions and offset the curses might not be efficient enough, so he planned to bring the resurrected people into it as well. Everyone would complete missions together.

Of course, he would not make others work for nothing. Completing missions could earn points, and points had two uses: one, they could be exchanged for various abilities; two, they could be exchanged for treasures or money.

He possessed a vast number of abilities. If they were broken apart, most people probably could not learn them all in several lifetimes. He would place all those abilities in the exchange system and let the resurrected complete missions to redeem them.

Then there were treasures and money, things indispensable in every world.

Although Hawkins could now live perfectly well without relying on humanity's cumbersome gold coin system, gold coins still had indispensable uses. For example, half the supplies aboard the Black Knife had been obtained from the Vidalya Glory, but even more had been bought on Pliskin Island with hard cash.

At that moment, Hawkins knelt on one knee and pressed one hand against the ground, Curse Power pouring endlessly into the earth.

Deep underground, a silver metal sphere rapidly formed. Like a tree, it grew roots that spread continuously in every direction, forming extremely regular rings. Even more conduits extended toward different locations across Vitalia Island.

This was a Superluminal Computer. All information processing could be completed in an instant, and Hawkins intended to use it as a server.

Three minutes later, a metal column emerged from the ground and formed a spherical statue before Hawkins.

Hawkins pressed his hand against the statue. In the next moment, he infused Curse Power mixed with the contract he had already written in his consciousness into it.

The statue rapidly began to glow. Then, screens of light projected from the sphere, filled with lines of contract text.

Hawkins opened his eyes and wrote his name on one of the contracts with his finger. The contract swiftly shrank back into the sphere, and a loading bar immediately appeared before his eyes.

The loading bar rapidly filled, and a translucent screen of light appeared before him.

[I Love My Family Group]

[Members: 1]

[Group Owner: Hawkins]

Hawkins checked it over. There was no problem with the chat group page, no problem with the exchange page, and the mission page was generating missions.

The missions on this page were linked to the Eternal Sea Chart. Once the Eternal Sea Chart generated a mission, the mission page would act as the contract-based agent for that mission. Then the other members could accept it and ultimately complete it.

[Ordinary Mission: Please thoroughly clean three toilets. This is the resentment of a maid. Success: the diarrhea curse will not flare up for one week. Failure: diarrhea frequency increases.]

That was the mission Hawkins saw on the Eternal Sea Chart.

After the mission was transferred to the mission page, it became:

[Ordinary Mission: Please thoroughly clean three toilets. Success Reward: 1 Exchange Point. Failure Penalty: 10 Exchange Points deducted.]

Hawkins carefully tested every function. Once he confirmed that none of them had any bugs, he smiled at the silent Ai Miye and Asmodeus beside him. "All right, you can try signing a contract with it. Then we'll be a true family!"

He yearned for family, and he was not particularly attached to blood relations.

After all, he could transform anyone's body into his "blood relative" whenever he wished. Their DNA could even be completely identical, making them closer than true blood relatives.

Ai Miye walked forward curiously. She could not understand the words appearing on the light screen, but encouraged by Hawkins, she directly used Guide in place of a signature.

In fact, so long as the contractor did not object, even spitting on the contract would still complete it.

When Ai Miye completed the contract, a loading bar immediately appeared in her eyes.

"Ah! Bugs are growing in my eyes! They're crawling—still crawling!"

Ai Miye was startled by the loading bar. She immediately clutched Hawkins's arm and shrieked.

Hawkins could not help bursting into laughter. Only after laughing enough did he explain that it was not a bug, but by then Ai Miye had already opened the light screen.