Chapter 352: The Three Paths (1/2)

The seconds passed but the darkness of true death never arrived, forcing Zac to finally look up to see what was going on. The cyborg still loomed above them like a mountain, completely unmoving. But the terrorizing aura it emitted up till now was gone, making the thing seem like a hollow shell.

”Is it dead? What did you do?” Ogras soon ventured with a weak voice, also realizing something was up.

”I didn't do anything,” Zac croaked, confusion filling his mind.

He wasn't sure what to do since he hadn't received a shred of cosmic energy, something that usually entailed that his enemy was still alive. He was afraid that any sudden action would rekindle the life of the thing, which would end with their death without a doubt. Ogras didn't have any such compunctions as a blast of shadows hit the cyborg right in its head.

Zac groaned inwardly as he scrambled for anything to use to protect them in case it responded, but the hulking humanoid simply toppled over. It slammed into the ground with a thud that launched Zac a few centimeters up into the air, but that was it. His body was wracked with pain but he still lunged at the humanoid, putting it into one of his Cosmos Sacks.

The demon sighed in relief as he immediately took out a handful of array disks before eating a healing pill. Zac followed suit, and he also took out two E-Grade Miasma Crystals. He still didn't want to transform into his human form, just in case some scanning device remained in the area. The Nexus Hub would only be blocked for a couple of more minutes, after all.

Normally he would have completed a sweep to look for such a thing, but there was simply no way. His right arm was broken in at least 5 different places, and most of his ribs on the side that tanked the last punch were broken as well. Luckily he didn't need his organs in his current form. Otherwise he would likely have been in a far more critical situation.

Neither of the two spoke for over thirty minutes, both focusing on restoring themselves from their critical states. Thankfully the battle against the other Technocrats was over, and there was no movement at all in the area.

”What the hell is going on?” Zac finally muttered with incredulity, still not believing he had survived that thing.

“Perhaps it ran out of lifeforce? Or perhaps the Heavens wouldn’t allow for its continued existence,” Ogras ventured.

“How was that thing even allowed though the Incursion in the first place? High Tech was supposed to be confiscated?” Zac complained, still rattled from being so close to death.

“Heaven’s rules have always been negotiable. If the cost outweighs the benefits it will usually back down. The Technocrats might have directly paid for the Ruthless Heaven’s to look the other way. Or they might have paid by hiding the seed from Heaven’s Eyes. Either way, bringing a thing like this through the Nexus Hub would no doubt bankrupt a clan like Azh’Rezak,” Ogras said with a shake of his head.

Zac slowly nodded, suddenly remembering how Greatest was able to keep the System at bay to allow him to have a conversation. Besides, while the Cyborg was closing in on D-Grade power by the end it didn’t start out that way. Its first attack could conceivably come from a peak F-grade being if it was using its life-force to empower its strike.

Perhaps the machine or parasite that was put inside the Foreman was just peak F-Grade at the start, but rapidly pushed the host to greater heights by draining its life force or something. It would explain why it only lasted less than a minute before shutting down.

”A hybrid of the Dao of Technology and Cosmic Energy,” Ogras muttered with a raspy voice, echoing Zac’s thoughts. ”It’s was not a true fusion, but it’s not too far off. These heretics are something else. Perhaps they can only keep such a thing alive for a few strikes, but it is still a terrifying accomplishment.”

Zac nodded in agreement, but the small movement made him grimace in pain. It was truly a scary thing put inside someone. There likely were no more than 5 people on Earth, including the invaders, who would be able to survive that thing’s onslaught. The two of them would have turned into mush if he didn't have [Immutable Bulwark] and the Seed of Hardness to drain enough of the final strike's momentum.

”Isn't this something common among the Technocrats?” Zac asked as he ate another healing pill. “I thought blending technology and cultivation was just their thing.”

By now he started to feel strong enough for a short battle in case it was needed, so he kept his eyes trained on the Nexus Hub. There might be other Technocrats who were waiting for an opportunity to reach the Teleportation Crystal. Some might have been sent away on missions or handling the enormous drill that was digging toward the surface. He needed to defend the Nexus Hub for another 8 hours to make sure that there were no escapees.

The cyborg's punch had thrown them a few hundred meters away, and they had fallen onto an outcropping that overlooked both the battlefield and the small Technocrat outpost. No one would be able to reach the Hub without them noticing unless they possessed some sort of cloaking technology that could move.

“A true integration of technology and cultivation is impossible since the Dao of Technology is not accepted. The Technocrats always has to work around this inviolable fact, and the way they do this differ. It’s generally known in the multiverse that there are essentially three main paths of the Technocrats,” Ogras explained as finally got up to a sitting position from lying down on the ground like a dead fish.

”The first is the Machine God Faction,” Ogras said. ”They go all-in on technology, avoiding the System as much as possible. Some of them might be level 1 but still possess the capability to kill B-Grade hegemons. You can’t consider them mortals though, as their lifespans have been prolonged through technology rather than Race upgrades.”

Zac nodded as that was his original impression of the Technocrats after reading about them.

”The second group are the Technomancers. They use a mix of both systems. They might get a ranger class but use technological guns, like the rifles we took during the Auction. It's a slightly annoying path since they still would have to exert twice the effort to improve. Their kills with their technological weapons would give no energy or merits,” the demon continued. ”But they usually have destructive capabilities that are far stronger than normal cultivators. Just look at the weapons that these things used.”

”The final group are the Transcenders. They use technology to augment themselves, but they fully utilize the class- and cultivation systems of the Ruthless Heavens. But they might swap out their body parts with those of a dragon, or forcibly instill themselves with rare and powerful bloodlines. They are mad scientists using their own bodies as laboratories,” Ogras said.

“How is that possible? Does the System allow such a thing?” Zac asked skeptically. “If it’s possible to become stronger like that, won’t everyone do it?”