Chapter 247: The Corruption Growth Plan
"I'm listening, so hurry up and explain." Irene really couldn't bear to look anymore—how to put it, she felt that every glance she stole revealed yet another bizarre little something hidden away in this room.
For instance, off to one side, in a cabinet she hadn't yet paid attention to, were arranged figurines of her wearing all sorts of outfits—the ones on top were at least relatively normal, but the ones down below…
And over on the other side, the various photos looked like they'd been screen-capped straight off surveillance footage. Clearly, this child had probably, before this…
Tsk, she just hoped it wasn't the kind of thing she was imagining—the sort of unhinged sasaeng-fan who'd sit in front of a computer watching her combat recordings, gushing "Lord Irene" with every other breath.
This wasn't the set of ZZZ either, and she was no legendary rope artisan, so why had she been handed a Vivian as well?
And all of that still counted as the better stuff. The most outrageous thing was that Irene spotted those few books set beside the bed—from the details, they looked like manga, but judging by the atmosphere of this room, Irene rather felt that the contents inside probably weren't any sort of wholesome manga.
Sigh, she just hoped it wasn't the kind of thing she was imagining. Because if it was, it'd be way too…
Irene looked at Elysia, and being looked at like this by Irene, Elysia felt a bit awkward too—after all, with the Corruption having grown up like this, she and Little Corruption each bore over 50% of the blame.
"As you know, we were also afraid Little Corruption would grow up crooked, so, um, so we only fed her data of purely positive emotions."
Elysia poked her index fingers together, looking somewhat awkward, because she already knew that, if it had only been a matter of feeding her purely positive emotions, the problem actually wouldn't have been a big deal.
At most it would have raised the Corruption to not understand the meaning of the sinister side of the human heart, but the problem was, Elysia—Elysia had stuffed the Corruption full of common sense bearing her own distinctive flavor.
And then, in the course of learning, the Corruption contrasted the Elysia-style common sense Elysia had stuffed into her against those purely positive emotions.
And the imprinting-fledgling emotion that arose when she first met Irene further intertwined and resonated with those purely positive emotions, and what was ultimately born was an extremely strong positive emotion toward Irene.
The Corruption, which had just been about to formally birth a self-consciousness, then began to self-evolve negative emotions; however, because her earlier positive impression of Irene was too intense, her sense of presence too obvious, and on top of that it was only Irene who had left the Corruption's field of view—
so the very first negative emotion the Corruption derived was reluctance to part.
And during this very process, who knows what exactly the Corruption was thinking, but she let this emotion gain just a tiny bit more of, um… obsessiveness.
And then came Little Senti's handiwork. At the time no one had paid attention to the Corruption's state, and seeing that the Corruption had already cultivated a self-consciousness, she planned to take her to formally make contact with the internet a little—after all, the Corruption still had to be allowed to grow on her own.
Back in the day she herself had done the same thing: just after she'd first coalesced into form, she detached from Mei's body and went off to learn from other people. Only in this way could the Corruption's abilities begin to formally develop.
One could say that the more things the Corruption came into contact with during her growth, the faster her growth would be; the more things she contacted, the more multifaceted the Corruption's abilities would be too.
So Little Senti went and took the Corruption online, and then, unsurprisingly, things went wrong. Little Senti had underestimated the chaotic, jumbled information on the internet, as well as the Corruption's own information-retrieval and search capability.
By the time Little Senti noticed, it was already too late. This child had already become self-taught.
The final result that was born was the death-otaku sasaeng-fan Corruption before her eyes—steeped in all five otaku vices, self-taught, and fully versed in handicrafts and AI illustration skills.
After hearing Elysia's account, Irene reached up and pinched her own philtrum, and after taking quite a while to recover, Irene looked toward Elysia: "Where's Little Senti? I need to have a talk with her about life."
"I've already punished her." Mobius looked at Irene. "You have no idea how furious I was when I found out those two bastards had raised this child into such a state."
As Mobius spoke, she shot Elysia a fierce sidelong glare—otherwise she'd already had it all planned out, how she was going to properly tutor the Corruption.
To properly research this Authority brimming with endless possibilities, even to develop some new uses for it.
Yet these two bastards had turned around and told me that this child had been corrupted by the pair of them. That was truly a close call—it nearly made Mobius keel over dead from anger and respawn.
"Hahaha." Elysia scratched her head, which was exactly why she said she and Little Senti each shouldered 50% of the blame. But this way was pretty good too, probably.
Although her personality had been raised a bit crooked, and she'd picked up some hobbies that weren't quite proper to put into words, she still loved humanity very much, and thanks to Mobius stepping in and taking over in time—
the Corruption's Authority hadn't been completely set in stone toward internet searching and AI image generation. Speaking of which, if it had truly become fixed, Mobius might really have throttled these two unreliable goods to death.
Irene covered her face and looked toward the Corruption over there. How to put it—it felt like looking into a funhouse mirror, like the whole thing had been faded; the originally silver hair was white as on a star-stone, as if it were glowing.
The ice-blue pupils had also paled into a light blue—on the whole like a faded version of herself, but it was precisely this appearance that made her feel even more uncomfortable.
It wasn't anything like an uncanny-valley effect; it was mainly that she looked too alike. Put her outside, and she'd simply be a super-fanatical fan—the kind of top-tier lunatic who, to get close to their idol, would go so far as to remodel themselves into the idol.
But as for the Corruption, her having grown into this appearance was, in all likelihood, simply because she thought it looked rather pretty—just like how Little Senti took on Elysia's appearance.
Seeing that Irene had finally looked toward her, the Corruption's face flushed red, the originally bright-white skin at last taking on a trace of living-person blood-red. She swiftly pulled a notebook out from behind her and pressed up to Irene's side.
"Um, Lord Irene, could you give me an autograph? Please, please." The Corruption's eyes were sparkling and shining, and Irene watched the Corruption—who looked exactly like herself—asking her for an autograph with eyes ablaze.
Ah, as expected this was just too weird. The Irene inside the Palace of Consciousness sprawled on the floor, somewhat unable to accept it, and was even going a bit berserk, while off to one side [Irene], a smile all over her face, patted Irene's head and remarked.
"Isn't this pretty nice too? It really is the first time I've ever seen another me make such an expression."
But from the smile hung on [Irene]'s face, she too was merely watching the show.
"Why, thank you so much." Irene gritted her teeth as she looked at [Irene], then returned her attention to reality. Looking at the Corruption before her, she couldn't really bring herself to actually refuse, so she took the notebook and signing pen and wrote down her own name.
What else could she do? By the look of it, she probably couldn't stop the Corruption's fixation on her, so she could only accept it. Looking on the bright side, the Corruption wouldn't have the tragedy from the original story happen again, which was pretty good, wasn't it? Pretty good.
Receiving with both hands the autographed notebook Irene handed back, she cherishingly tucked it into her arms. Just as she was about to invite Irene into the room for something to drink, she remembered the situation in her room.
The things on display out in the open were actually relatively the more presentable ones—just some special figurines and a few dolls she'd hand-sewn herself.
But in reality only the Corruption herself knew exactly what kinds of things she'd made; the data she'd read certainly wasn't limited to just this shallow bit on the surface.
Don't underestimate the internet too much, and don't underestimate the Corruption's own search ability too much either—though this wasn't anything particularly worth taking pride in right now.
Playing around with it herself was one thing, but if Irene were to see these things, her own image of Lord Irene in her heart would plummet a thousand zhang—and that was something absolutely unacceptable to the Corruption.
And so the Corruption swallowed back down the words inviting her in to sit, which had nearly reached the tip of her tongue, and switched topics: "Um, Lord Irene, would it be all right if we went and sat in the main hall instead?"
"Ah, no need. I'd originally only meant to ask after your situation, but seeing how you seem to be doing now…" Irene lifted her head again to glance at the scene before her that was making her blood pressure rise a little, and let out a helpless sigh.
To tell the truth, even without going in, drawing on Irene's understanding of this type of person, Irene could well imagine what it might look like inside—especially for someone like the Corruption who was even skilled at handicrafts.
And going by the Corruption's abilities, nine times out of ten this child had long since self-taught herself into a doujin author, so…
Irene sighed once again, and finally looked at the Corruption gently—after all, the Corruption having grown up like this wasn't the Corruption's own fault.
Later she would give Elysia and Little Senti, those two who'd led the child astray, a proper talking-to.
So Irene looked at the Corruption and said with a smile: "I can see you're getting by pretty well. But let's skip the resting—after all, the banquet hall over there is still going, and it's not really good to be away from one's seat for too long."
Hearing that Irene was about to leave, the Corruption immediately lowered her head, a flicker of disappointment flashing across her, but then she pulled herself together and nodded: "Okay, Lord Irene."
Irene looked at the simple, guileless Corruption before her and smiled. In the end it was only information gleaned from the internet, so the Corruption was still a simple child. So she extended an invitation.
"Or would you like to go over to the banquet and eat something?"
No sooner had Irene's words fallen than the Corruption immediately nodded with eyes ablaze—as if, this being an invitation from Lord Irene, refusing those words would be inviting heaven's punishment.
"Mm, then come back with us." Irene looked at the Corruption and nodded, then, remembering something at last, turned her head to look toward Elysia.
"This child—does everyone know about her?"
"They all know. But after I explained it to them, everyone understood." Elysia nodded. After the Corruption took on human form, she had of course brought her around to meet everyone.
It was just that at the time Irene had been accompanying Theresa pulling overtime at Schicksal, so she didn't know; and everyone assumed this was simply the Corruption Irene had brought back, that Irene must already know, so they hadn't told Irene.
On top of that, with the Corruption getting up to this kind of thing in her own room, she hadn't yet exposed her hobbies to the outside world for the time being, so in everyone's eyes, the Corruption was still a shy, good child.
"Mm, then let's go." Irene nodded, then watched the Corruption set everything down. After that, the Corruption thought for a moment, and a trace of radiance flashed across her again, seeming to refresh her body, after which she stood by Irene's side.
Having reined herself in, the Corruption now rather resembled an elegant and gentle woman—which was somewhat similar to Irene, who knows whether it was the result of learning from Irene.
"Let's go, Lord Irene."
The group returned to the banquet hall. The atmosphere in the banquet hall was still just right, and everyone noticed Irene and the others, who had just gone out and come back, so they once again called out greetings to the few of them.
Theresa, meanwhile, came pattering over, looking with a face full of surprise at the Corruption following beside Irene—after all, she, like Irene, had been pulling overtime at Schicksal, and knew nothing about the matter of the Corruption.
"Wait, Irene, this is—?" Theresa looked at the Corruption who looked exactly like Irene, and then, after sensing carefully, Theresa did detect a clue.
"Corruption?" Theresa looked at the Corruption. Although she hadn't had all that much contact with Little Senti, she'd had plenty of contact with Irene; and although the Corruption mimicked her very closely, the aura was still a little different.
Before all this, while they were joining forces, Irene had said she was preparing to go bring the Corruption down. Since Irene had come to help in the end, and had also said the final battle was already over—
that meant Irene had succeeded, so this one before her was probably a Corruption who, like Little Senti, had learned from Irene's data.
As for being surprised, there was a bit at first, but once she'd thought it through there was nothing worth being surprised about, after all—because although this kind of situation was hard to describe, they'd already gotten used to it.
Coming to think of it now, here among them, there really were quite a lot of this type of person—dual personalities, multiple selves, and the like. By rights this ought to be an extremely rare circumstance, yet here among them it cropped up in clusters.
For instance, two personalities living in the same body—there were several such cases—and also two individuals born from the same will extending in different directions, though by now they'd already reconciled.
The one formed by relying on the Key of Consciousness, inheriting the memories but with a different personality, was now being raised as a child; and there were also replicants, clones, mass-produced units, and Soulium bodies.
And then there were the data-mimickers represented by Little Senti—now it was just one more added, so it wasn't all that surprising anymore. The kinds of situations she'd seen were simply too many.
But she still wanted to grumble a bit: by rights this should be a handful of isolated cases, or a minority phenomenon, yet here among them it cropped up in clusters.
It was as if, without being a dual personality and toting around a second self, you'd be too embarrassed to hang around in their Schicksal upper echelon. Was their Schicksal really this teeming with talent?
"Mm, hello, Principal Theresa." The Corruption spoke up with a smile, a gentle smile on her face—one glance and you could tell it had been learned from Irene.
"Ah, hello." Theresa nodded amicably toward the Corruption. She looked like a good child, but for the moment Theresa didn't know what to say.
"All right, stop standing around here like a post." Irene smiled and beckoned everyone inside. "Let's keep eating—there's still things to be done afterward."
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