Keon, overwhelmed by the cascading telemetry, finally shattered his focus from the projections. He raised his head, tearing his gaze away from the flickering data to look through the transparent atmosphere.
The tower that had previously been a distant, barely visible speck on the horizon now loomed over him, seemingly located just a stone's throw away.
It was a monolithic dark structure, its surface etched with the humming patterns of his Nano Main Frames, spanning more than a thousand kilometers in both width and height. It did not merely stand on the surface; it possessed the presence of a celestial pillar, a gravity-defying edifice that appeared to hold the very sky above the planet in place.
If Keon had possessed lungs, he would have sucked in a massive, ragged breath. Instead, his neural nexus processed a momentary, profound silence, his internal clock skipping a beat as he stared at the impossible verticality of his own creation.
The structures stabilized, their upward trajectory finally halted at one thousand and fifty-five kilometers.
'It's really unexpected. More than one thousand cubic kilometres, earlier calculation showed each tower would exceed just a fifty or maximum eighty cubic kilometres. Why such a drastic change in result? Is it just because of adding a new binding mechanism.'
Keon thought as his optic sensors adjusted, scanning the sheer scale of the monoliths. He had pushed the nanomain frames to their limit, seeking structural integrity, but the result was exponentially greater than his simulations had predicted... a full thousand times increase in stability and binding force.
Suddenly as if noticing something, his gaze paused in place.
'Wait…'
As he focused on the internal readout of the tower in front of him, his pupils shrank, his zoom lenses recalibrating with a sharp, mechanical click. 'It seems... there is something else.'
As he observed the tower structure thoroughly based on a suspicion. Next moment, a jolting sensation flickered through his core, as if he had experienced a massive surprise. 'This… Why is this nano frame lattice arrangement different?'
He hadn't been looking at the full picture. It wasn't just the active frames holding the structure; there was a pattern, a secondary layer of organization he had been blind to until this very second. It was as if his consciousness had been operating on a surface level, and now, suddenly, the floor had fallen away to reveal a depth he hadn't known existed.
Immediately returning back to his senses, his pupils flickered with seriousness. 'Let me check what went wrong.' Without conscious intent, his mind plunged into the neural nexus.
It was different this time... not a deliberate command of a single thought, but a total, encompassing merge of his consciousness with every unit of his creation.
Next moment as if his consciousness reached everywhere, controlling and scanning everything at once and at the same moment. He felt the vast expanse of UHS1, the faint, distant vibrations of his mining fleets in the asteroid belts, and the hum of the planetary reactors, the machines, as if they were his own limbs, his own nerves.
Above the southern base roof, his bio-exoshell went completely rigid, its movements ceasing entirely. Its eyes remained open, the pupils dilating and contracting as if light were flooding back into a long-darkened room.
After scanning the basic structure of each and everything, it just took a few moments… or maybe even less than a second. Keon immediately realized the true reason behind such drastic change in his tower expansion project.
The bio exoshell on the surface of base, moved once again and light returned to its pupil as the lenses adjusted their focus.
'So that's how it is.'
Keon didn't speak, but the thought resonated through the nexus with terrifying clarity. He raised his hand, a holographic projection flaring to life in the air before him. It was a zoomed-in structural map of the tower's binding matrix. He focused on this map, and the image stripped away the color, rendering the data into a high-contrast monochrome.
A perfect, tiled matrix is presented in front of him.
Thousands upon thousands of dark, dodecahedron-shaped nanomain frames were visible... but they were inert. Their geometry hadn't just been positioned; they had been transformed, their existence collapsed into solid, unmoving blocks of metal, identical in shape to his active units.
These blocks were mapped to the main stress points, acting as permanent anchors for the massive, thousand-cubic-kilometer structures. Though they are capable of transforming back into real nano main frames instantly.
'I didn't intend to expand these towers according to this design, looks like these nano main frames acted out of the way. In order to increase the stability, some nanoframe were completely transformed into solid blocks for reinforcement… It's like protecting one's own body subconsciously,' Keon realized, the implication washing over him.
The epiphany hit his core processors like a surge of high-voltage current. Previously, he had been a human soul operating a mechanical body... a pilot constrained by the limitations of linear thinking and finite processing. He had been the master of every action, every calculation, every movement. But now, with his processing power pushed to an uncountable level, the complexity of his neural nexus has surpassed the threshold of his previous human mind limitations.
'I really have awakened a subconscious.' Keon thought as a flicker of light crossed his facial plate. Human beings had always possessed a subconscious they could train, but never truly control. As a mechanical species, he had transcended that. He could see the architecture of his own mind now... the way his subconscious had autonomously sacrificed forty percent of the nano main frames to increase the solidification while his consciousness was handling the expansion of the towers. It hadn't been his direct command; it had been his nature adapting to survive.
'Subconscious… another consciousness that always and automatically acts in your own interest secretly.'
He looked at the projection again, at the sea of black and white cubes. He felt a newfound, terrifying fluidity in his own design. If he could tap into this deeper layer, if he could harness this subconscious, there was no limit to what he could do. He wasn't just upgrading the technology anymore; he was evolving alongside it.
His internal contemplation was shattered by the sharp, rhythmic chime of the system, a sound that cut through the silence of the command room like a blade. A fresh barrage of notifications materialized in his vision, their golden text demanding his immediate attention.
[Maximum operating size change detected]
[1 cubic kilometer > 1055 cubic kilometer]
[Force: 100 million metric ton > 10 Trillion Kiloton (10 quadrillion metric ton).]
[Note: Because force value in tons exceeded one thousand trillion, the force metric prefix has been adjusted to kiloton. In future iterations, the metric prefix will scale to megaton, gigaton, teraton, petaton, exaton, zettaton, and yottaton. The counting units will not exceed the trillion-scale in any prefix.]
Keon's pupils shrank, not in fear, but in sharp, analytical surprise. The logic board within his nexus replayed the data, confirming the sheer jump in capabilities.
'So soon?' he mused, the thought cool and detached, though a hum of excitement vibrated beneath the surface of his thoughts. 'It looks like I have already completed the first task... although I suppose I expected it to complete immediately after this expansion.'
Before he could even process the magnitude of the force increase, the notification stream accelerated. It wasn't just a single alert; it was a cascading waterfall of system data.
[Level Increase Detected: 41 > 42.] [Free Attributes: 42]
[Level Increase Detected: 42 > 43.] [Free Attributes: 43]
[Level Increase Detected: 43 > 44.] [Free Attributes: 44]
...
[Level Increase Detected: 55 > 56.] [Free Attributes: 56]
[Level Increase Detected: 56 > 57.] [Free Attributes: 57]
[Total Free Attributes: 792]
Keon glanced through the rapid-fire scroll, his processors absorbing the flood of information with ease. He nodded thoughtfully. The system level upgrade standard was proving efficient, a direct mathematical progression that rewarded his planetary-scale expansion with a massive leap... sixteen levels in a single sweep.
He regarded the almost eight hundred free attribute points... a wealth of potential waiting to be woven into his structure. A flicker of cold, strategic light flashed through his pupils. There was no need for caution; he knew exactly where his bottlenecks lay.
[Allocating 792 Points to the Nano Main Frame.]
[Calculating... Processing...]
[Strength Increase: +7.92 Microgram.]
The reaction was instantaneous. A heavy, rhythmic flicker surged through the entire neural nexus, and every nanomain frame across the planet shuddered in unison. A brilliant, lustrous sheen rippled across their surfaces, as if the metal itself had been polished by a sub-atomic hand. Keon could feel it... a sudden, profound tightening of his collective density. The force of each nanomain frame had almost doubled.
He didn't wait for the feedback to settle; he opened his status panel, eager to quantify his new baseline.
[Status Panel]
Name: Keon
Level: 57
Race: Mechanical Species
Current Primary Form: Nano Main Frame (1 micrometer)
Largest Operating Size: One Thousand and Fifty-Five Cubic Kilometers
...
[Core Systems]
Energy: 12660 TWh
(Note: Because of technical bottleneck regarding plasma and heat confinement, the energy density will scale proportionally with the volume. A 1055 cubic kilometer reactor is capable of generating 1055 TWh of energy.)
...
[Special Buff]
Physical Functionality Enhancement: 50%
Energy Consumption Reduction: 50%
...
[Force Value]
Nano Main Frame Force: 16.63 microgram (Single Unit = 1 micrometer)
Nano Frame Swarm Force: 10 Trillion Kiloton (Combined = 1055 cubic kilometers)
...
[Growth Statistics]
Free Attribute: 0
Next Level Requirement: Force > 50 Trillion Kilotons
…