An unsettling piece of news spread through the Starfish Republic: cases of Synths going missing had begun appearing across the country.
These Synths had no names, only identification numbers. They were utterly unremarkable, yet for some unknown reason, they suddenly disconnected from the Starfish Republic's surveillance network and vanished without a trace.
Investigations found that they had shown no abnormalities before going missing. In the space of a single day and night, they had disappeared completely from the Synth cities where they lived.
The Starfish scientists were helpless. Faced with such a bizarre situation, they had no leads whatsoever and did not even know where to begin their research.
After conducting random checks on a sample of Synths, they were certain there was nothing wrong with them. The only change was the antivirus program installed in their Cognitive Cores some time earlier.
In the end, they could only record the matter in their intelligence logs and set it aside, while tightening surveillance on the other Synths.
But was it really over?
The Empire had assigned these Synths a complex task, then relinquished control over them to ensure it could swiftly deny any involvement when the truth came to light.
The consciousnesses of these Synths had combined into an independent Cognitive Core, secretly directing all the Synths' actions.
The scattered disappearances had been orchestrated by this consciousness core.
This consciousness had acquired almost all of the Empire's technology. It modified some of the Synths, subjecting them to Nanization, then sent these Nanite swarms to an overlooked Barren World within Starfish territory.
It intended to create the Contingency's Machine World itself!
It was a civilization similar to the Contingency, but it was no Calamity. It was a machine vassal state of the Human Empire!
Xi Yan was eager to see what surprises