The consciousness upload hall beneath the Hive.
As the most orthodox mechanical race in the Dark World, the Mechanical Church set up terminal hubs like this to recruit consciousnesses in virtually every region it invaded.
In truth, this was an order the God of Ten Thousand Machines had been forced to issue after falling into Hell.
Because...
All the lives of the Machine Intelligence Civilization had long since fused together after their collective ascension, becoming the present God of Ten Thousand Machines. He could, in fact, be called the Machine Intelligence Civilization itself.
And here in Hell...
With both their tiers and their strength severely restricted, absorbing other consciousnesses to serve the Machine Intelligence Civilization had become an almost inevitable path.
Thus, the present Mechanical Church had come into being.
"In the past, every uploaded consciousness had to undergo an extremely rigorous review by the Purification Council. But after the last battle of Curse City cost us a large number of machine consciousnesses, the upload requirements were relaxed considerably."
Silver Fantasy stood before the terminal hub, filling out the application information for the Little Refrigerator beside her.
Occasionally, she glanced sideways at him.
He looked around curiously like a country kid who had never seen the world, sometimes secretly turning the hub's nuts with his wrench, sometimes gazing in amazement at the brand-new intelligent mechanical bodies emerging from the mechanical factory after consciousnesses descended into them.
She closed her eyes, a hint of relaxation appearing on her face.
Yes.
He truly was a very innocent mechanical lifeform.
Perhaps some of his experiences in Dark Night City had affected him badly, but they had left no lingering scars. In that respect, he really was far stronger than she was.
Watching his lively, innocent demeanor, she felt even her own tension