I Am Not a Robot. Beep-bop

Chapter 7 Overseer Oriana 1

The Contact Unit is a form of penal force within Ark, designated to rehabilitate awakened individuals deemed threats to the city’s safety or guilty of serious crimes.

However, being assigned to the Contact Unit doesn’t simply result from irritating Ark’s upper echelon.

While not every member of the Contact Unit is inherently evil, the majority are people who kill as easily as they breathe and lack any sense of understanding or empathy toward others.

The vast majority of Contact Unit members are heinous criminals of the highest caliber, and anyone reviewing their charges would undoubtedly nod in agreement that their assignment to the Contact Unit is justified.

Once someone becomes a member of the Contact Unit, they experience time in vivid detail, unable to achieve stable rest or sleep through cryogenic devices.

Though it might seem cruel, even the waiting period within cryogenic devices is a type of punishment.

In that state of motionless waiting, unable to sleep, stress builds.

A longing for freedom.

A yearning for the lives they once led, where they killed anyone they disliked and seized whatever they desired.

For individuals who lived such lives, their current state is hell.

Thus, after being freed from cryosleep after several months, Contact Unit members mull over these thoughts.

‘Ah, I want to see blood.’

The stress from waiting in cryosleep could provoke even those who had never killed before to entertain such thoughts.

Of course, if a Contact Unit member disobeyed an order, the restraints embedded in their suits would inject a torturous venom.

The venom simultaneously amplified pain and activated every pain receptor in the body.

After experiencing pain sensitivity increased by 3,000 times, even the most hardened criminal would beg for death.

Nevertheless, Overseer Oriana’s command was simple: [Eradicate hostile entities. Escort humans safely.]

However, the judgment at the scene was heavily influenced by the Contact Unit members.

Certainly, the Overseer had trackers to monitor the real-time locations of the Contact Unit and the authority to share the vision of certain members.

Yet, Contact Unit members were still thinking beings.

It was an open secret among them who shared vision with the Overseer, and those stressed and consumed by murderous intent didn’t need much discussion to understand their roles.

The member tasked with sharing vision would close their eyes or deliberately avert their gaze.

Orders would be intentionally misconstrued, exaggerated, or downplayed to the extent that they would arbitrarily judge innocent individuals as hostile entities and kill them.

That’s what the Contact Unit was.

Below the surface, invisible to the public, they continued committing crimes, with only a fraction undergoing rehabilitation.

And so, today as well, the members of the Contact Unit were excited about the prospect of spilling new blood.

They had been doing this for years.

At first, there was fear of being caught, but deceiving the Overseer, who changed quarterly, had become second nature.

When the Contact Unit member discovered a white-haired girl in the forest, drenched in blood, they felt a rush of exhilaration.

Until now, the only beings they had killed were dirty vagrants or monsters found on the outskirts.

But this girl, with her bright appearance standing out even amidst the Rust Rain pouring in the forest, awakened their murderous intent and twisted desires.

Exchanging glances, the members shared their intentions.

No words were necessary.

They would violate and kill the girl.

There was no need to worry about reporting to the Overseer.

The one sharing vision with the Overseer deliberately turned their gaze to pieces of flesh and pools of blood near the girl.

By luck, the white-haired girl was already soaked in unidentifiable blood, and given the poor visibility conditions of the Rust Rain, they could report it as mistaking her for a humanoid monster.

They had done it multiple times before.

-Bang!

‘Why, why isn’t she dying…?’

At first, they thought it was a coincidence.

The girl must be lucky.

Perhaps their strength hadn’t fully returned after waking from cryosleep.

But such complacent thoughts and excuses dissipated over time.

Even an untrained Contact Unit member could sense that something was seriously wrong when none of their attacks landed on target.

‘Damn it!’

‘What the hell is she…?!’

Each time the metallic tendrils lashed out like a viper’s strike, another member was incapacitated.

Conversely, the hostile entity moved effortlessly, dodging the Contact Unit’s attacks with narrow but deliberate margins.

Even the restraining awls, which could pierce B-grade reinforced metal like paper, failed to penetrate the entity’s skin and bounced off harmlessly.

Even after reinforcing the awls with mana, the enhancements seemed to be absorbed and nullified.

‘We thought she was just an outer-ring vagrant or a lost brat…!’

One member clenched their teeth beneath their gas mask, their distorted expression hidden.

Instead of their tongue or lips, they bit down on the embedded plastic piece meant to prevent self-harm.

Even that was barely enough to keep them composed.

“Not coming?”

Now, the girl didn’t even bother to dodge.

She spread her arms as if inviting an attack.

Unable to endure the provocation, someone lunged and drove an awl toward her neck, but the result was the same.

The awl’s mana coating was entirely stripped, and the attack, unable to pierce her skin, deflected.

The girl grabbed the attacker’s neck with her tendrils and incapacitated them.

Of the 18 Contact Unit members, only 4 remained.

It was no longer a matter of defeat but humiliation.

The hostile entity, in the form of a white-haired girl, was toying with them.

‘Damn, damn, damn, damn…!’

In the end, they had no choice but to acknowledge it.

They hadn’t just stepped on a landmine.

They had stepped on a nuclear landmine.

■

■

■

■

Oriana furrowed her brow as she monitored the situation from the patrol base.

Rust Rain was a low-level calamity, where rusted iron particles mixed into rain clouds and poured down to the ground.

With the rain saturated with excessive iron, radio signals couldn’t travel far, and especially with vision sharing, it was hard to assess the situation—whether it was due to the Contact Unit deliberately showing useless screens or not.

“Those bastards are slacking off, aren’t they?”

“Sorry? What do you mean?”

“The ones sharing vision with me keep looking elsewhere. Judging from the situation, it seems like they’ve engaged a target in combat, but all I see are trees and bloodstains.”

“Then…”

“Are they always like this?”

Oriana hadn’t earned the title of Overseer for nothing.

Even being a Third-Class Overseer placed one in high-ranking positions, but Oriana, a First-Class Overseer, was a woman well-versed in the bloody life of Ark and its city.

She wasn’t a woman without ability; she simply lacked ambition.

While previous Overseers seemed to have paid little attention to the Contact Unit, Oriana, a First-Class Overseer, decided she might need to take a look into every Contact Unit member’s brain.

Whatever their intentions were, deliberately avoiding the Overseer’s eyes was highly suspicious.

[Khraaak!]

[Ugh!]

However, something seemed off.

‘The Contact Unit isn’t moving?’

Some of them were still circling a specific area as if in combat, but nearly half of them were frozen in place, unable to move.

The member sharing vision with her had already been incapacitated, making it even harder to assess the situation.

Still, the tracking devices hadn’t been destroyed, nor were the members dead.

If even one member of the Contact Unit had died, the patrol base’s stored bio-data would have immediately reported abnormalities.

“Sigh, I guess I’ll have to go myself.”

“You’re going there yourself, Overseer?”

“If too many members of the Contact Unit die, I’ll have to report directly to Ark. I’d rather avoid that hassle. I just want to lounge at home this weekend.”

Punishing the Contact Unit members for deceiving and mocking her could wait.

For now, she needed to grasp the situation accurately.

Ideally, it would all resolve without any fatalities, but judging by the current circumstances, she suspected that a few might suffer cardiac arrest before she arrived.

“Here, take it.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Oriana handed the coffee mix she was about to prepare to a subordinate and slung the coat that had been haphazardly tossed over a chair onto her shoulders.

“Overseer, please be careful. If anything happens, we’ll come right away with reinforcements.”

“Don’t bother. If I’m in trouble, you should activate the emergency system instead of coming after me. If it’s bad enough for me to be in danger, you’d just die pointlessly.”

“Still, considering everything you’ve done for us, Overseer, just running away wouldn’t sit right with us.”

“Ugh, flattering me like that. Well, there’s nothing to worry about…”

Above Oriana’s head, a small sphere with razor-sharp blades emerged.

“Those Contact Unit bastards. Go ahead and prepare the papers to crack their skulls open.”

“Understood.”

The sphere unfolded numerous legs like a centipede, each ending in a gleaming blade.

It was an artificial spirit.

Oriana’s ability allowed her to incarnate artificial spirits, modified and enhanced with all kinds of scientific and magical technology, into her body.

Ark’s technology could reinforce and alter spirits in extraordinary ways, and Oriana could become infinitely stronger as long as she had the money.

The reason she often lamented her lack of funds despite being a high-ranking Overseer was due to her artificial spirits.

With the artificial spirit imbued into her body, Oriana opened the window and leapt out.

“Come back safely~!”

Hearing the distant shout of her subordinate behind her, Oriana dashed into the forest, cutting through the Rust Rain.

With the spirit possessing her body, each stride propelled her through space rapidly.

In an instant, she covered the 10 kilometers from the patrol base, arriving at the location of the Contact Unit.

The battle had already ended.

“Sigh.”

Oriana’s expression darkened.

Was it because she’d have to write a report about the deaths of Contact Unit members?

No.

None of the Contact Unit members were dead.

Her device still hadn’t received any cardiac arrest warnings from their bio-data, which meant that the “hostile entity” that had engaged them was likely an unexpected type of being.

“…”

“I found it.”

Oriana spotted someone amidst the fallen Contact Unit members.

Small and delicate.

A girl.

She appeared to be in her mid-to-late teens at most, sitting atop a subdued member of the Contact Unit.

From afar, the scene might have looked like an intimate and suggestive position, but the grim backdrop of masked corpses scattered around painted a starkly savage picture.

‘Could it be a calamity…?’

Among the calamities that threatened Ark and the city, many of the highest-risk ones were humanoid.

Monsters and calamities in human form were highly intelligent and possessed overwhelming power, making them Ark’s greatest concern.

If such beings infiltrated the city, posing as humans to destroy Ark from within, the ensuing chaos would be catastrophic.

‘If it truly is a calamity…’

A massive blade emerged from Oriana’s hand.

The blade hovered in midair, circling Oriana as if controlled by telekinesis.

“I’ll handle this here and now.”

Oriana’s gaze turned cold and sharp.