Chapter 32: External Skin

I do not want to die here.

I thought I could understand, if an AI could have a mood, what kind of mood it had spent these several hundred years in.

I gave a slight nod, slung the metal case onto my back, and said quietly, “I agree.”

As the Halo lit up, a spinning circular display appeared before long in the lower-right corner of the HUD.

When the voice sounded, a waveform filled the circle. 

[“Thank you, User 0109 Yulin. From this moment on, I will run within your Halo as your dedicated auxiliary AI. You may wake me at any time.”]

[“If possible, please allow me to address you directly as Master, or as Yulin. May I?”]

“Then… Yulin is fine. Just call me Yulin.” I set out again for the medical room and nodded once more.

[“Understood, Yulin. I look forward to working with you.”]

Working with me was putting it a bit strongly.

For me, having an auxiliary AI would inevitably make surviving in this world much less difficult.

Useful knowledge, useless knowledge, and how to use the inexplicable high-tech device on my back — I did not even know what it was for.

It looked as if it could be used to make things?

There were many things I wanted to ask, about Eden, about this world, and about a whole pile of words I could not understand.

But I reached into my pocket and touched the little bottle.

That thing was vital for treating Alice.

The things I did not understand could be learned slowly.

For now, it was better to focus on what was in front of me.

However I looked at it, knowing that Lingyin and I were in the same world, and that I still had a chance to see her again, was already more than enough.

Lingyin, Luna, and I seemed to have lived together once.

The device on my back was Luna’s masterpiece, designed at my request…

But whenever my thoughts turned that way, my head would throb in waves.

Something seemed to be wrong with my memory.

In my memory, right up until I woke in this world, I had been at home.

The moment before, I had still been messaging my little sister.

Or perhaps this was the world I actually lived in, and the world I used to live in had only been a dream.

Or perhaps knowing Lingyin and Luna had all been a matter of a previous life…

Baseless guesses.

There had never been any grounds for them to begin with.

I only happened to think of something like the Black ○ Empire, and before I knew it I had already flown across the road and up onto that flight of stairs.

If not for the map, I would probably have gotten lost long ago in surroundings that all looked the same.

Watching the marker not far ahead, I passed through a door, then a corridor, and at last returned to this medical room.

Behind the glass cover, Alice’s expression looked gentle.

Looking more closely, her skin was still broken, but the wounds were no longer so deep.

With her calm breathing, her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

[“NTK02 Fully Automatic Surgical Pod. Primarily used to treat trauma and complications arising from trauma. Equipped with deep-scan and tissue-cell production capabilities. Capable of performing the majority of surgical procedures involving foreign-body extraction.”]

The moment I approached the surgical pod, a brief introduction popped up in the HUD along with the AI’s prompt.

Eh…

It really was convenient.

So this was probably a product the factory could manufacture as well…

I glanced again at the operating instructions displayed on the outside of the surgical pod.

The auxiliary AI marked the Aether Factor socket and the material inlet in my field of view.

I inserted the two bottles in my hands, one large and one small, into the slanted shelf on the wall.

With a whirr—, the surgical pod started up again and resumed the interrupted operation.

[“New [Aether Origin Factor] canister detected. Remaining contents of canister: 100%.”]

[“Material input detected. [Human Epidermal Live-Cell Composite Cluster]. Specification: 15 ml. Net content: 3.2 g.”]

[“Executing Epidermal Reconstruction…”]

A layer of aerosol sprayed into the surgical pod.

Just like the steps used to make my clothes a moment ago, a band of red light swept from the top of Alice’s head down to the soles of her feet.

Wherever the red light passed, a layer of pale skin instantly covered the exposed subcutaneous tissue.

The blood that had been seeping out was covered by skin in an instant and stopped.

Very quickly, Alice was lying on the white platform inside the surgical pod without a scratch, as if nothing had ever happened to her.

After the surgical pod’s AI issued the prompt [“Executing Final Sterilization.”] the hum of the fans brought with it another wave of disinfectant.

[“Miss Yulin, the NTK02 Fully Automatic Surgical Pod can manufacture external skin. If you provide me with a relevant design, I can upload it to the surgical pod for production.”]

Eh?

Miss Yulin?

Ah, no, that was not the point.

That term, external skin… I felt as if I had heard it somewhere.

Right. It had been when my clothes were being remade.

“Does that mean Alice’s clothes can be restored as well?” That would be wonderful.

After all, in her present state… ahem… well.

[“That is a fair way to understand it,”] the auxiliary AI said.

“But how am I supposed to design them?”

[“You need only imagine. I will provide similar blueprints based on your imagination, and you may revise the details on the selected blueprint.”]

Details, huh…

For someone who drew, that was not very hard.

Just as when I usually drew, I pictured in my mind the image I wanted.

Alice.

Her clothes.

The shape of her clothes.

The inner layer was a thin underskirt, rather like a nightdress.

The moment I thought that, a nightdress-like skirt appeared in the HUD in my vision, going from blurred to clear.

Following my imagination, the skirt became thin and light.

White lace trimmed the chest and the hem, and white straps sat at the shoulders…

The image sharpened along with the still-vague outline, just like drawing.

First a blurred shape, then the details, and then the look of the white robe over it.

It felt about nine-tenths of the way there.

If I had observed carefully enough, the outfit floating in the HUD was the same as what Alice had been wearing before.

When I nodded, the surgical pod’s AI issued a prompt. [“New request received.”]

[“Executing External Skin Construction…”]

[“Relevant cell models loaded. Arranging. Complete.”]

[“Aerosol preparation in progress. Complete.”]

[“Executing External Skin Construction…”]

With a puff—, the same process that had made my clothes played out over Alice.

Cells.

Arrangement…

Even I understood that much.

So-called “external skin” was probably not clothing made of cloth in the traditional sense at all.

I could not help looking down at the tie hanging over my chest.

The way it felt to the touch… it could not be, was it actually skin…

But thinking it over, the leather bags, belts, shoes, and furs humans wore were themselves very often animal hide and fur.

Perhaps it was not that strange…

At least for Eden’s technology, it was not strange at all.

The glass cover of the surgical pod opened toward both sides amid the whir of motors, and the pod itself gradually lowered to the height of an ordinary bed.

When the light strip outside the pod that read [Please Maintain a Safe Distance] went dark, I stepped closer and looked down at Alice, who seemed to be sleeping on the white platform.

Thank goodness.

She really had been healed, without a scratch.

Looking at her now, it was hard to imagine how she had looked when I carried her here, her whole body broken open, almost no longer in human shape.

She had just gone through a brain hemorrhage.

She probably would not wake that quickly.

I let out a complete breath of relief.

Along with feeling much lighter, I suddenly felt my eyelids slacken all at once.

I gave my head a sharp shake, and only then did I realize.

That was right.

When that monster swallowed us, I had probably been injured just as badly as Alice.

Only I was an angel, and she was an ordinary human being.

If this had not been Eden, if Eden had not still had medical equipment that worked, she would probably have…