Chương 511: 243.Hyperactive AI 1

House Kushima's transport, seen from the outside, looked like a sentence. Not a pretty one. The kind a technician scrawls across the top of a maintenance log — ugly handwriting, but nobody dares ignore it. Flies. Carries. Gets there alive. That was it. Compared to the row of private transports lined up outside the spaceport — each one looking like it would happily engrave its family crest straight into the engine nozzle if allowed — House Kushima's ship was stubbornly plain. No decorative excess on the hull.

No budget wasted on sweeping metal curves. No glass observation blisters announcing look how refined we are. From the outside it didn't look like a great house's transport at all. It looked like a steel warehouse someone had welded pure pragmatism onto, then bolted a drive system to as an afterthought. It wasn't until I stepped onto the boarding ramp that I understood this wasn't austerity. It was a different flavor of rich-people showing off.

The kind that says: we don't need to announce ourselves, because from the bones to the screws, this ship costs more than yours. Two rows of Kushima Heavy Industries staff stood just inside the hatch. Matching coveralls, dark grey, house crest and department code stamped on the chest, machine-oil stains ground into the cuffs that no amount of washing had ever fully lifted.

Their expressions were more official than the tournament committee's own — calm, neither warm nor dismissive, the look of people confirming that a shipment of high-value, mildly dangerous passengers hadn't arrived with any limbs missing. Technicians wove between them with carts, diagnostic modules and toolboxes strapped down neatly, occasionally trading low-voiced arguments about interface calibration on some AS unit or another. I understood about half of it.

The other half belonged to a category of language humanities majors probably shouldn't be exposed to for long.

"Please collect your ID tag according to your room number." The woman at the checkpoint delivered the line in a tone so level it bordered on unkind. She handed me a metal keycard and a small ID chip. I glanced down. My name and room number were already engraved on both — with an efficiency that suggested they'd decided yesterday we'd absolutely be sleeping here tonight, no discussion required. That was the truly frightening thing about family enterprises like this.

You're still wondering whether things are moving too fast, and they've already worked out what you're having for breakfast tomorrow. I followed the signage toward the residential block, passing through a public corridor, an equipment bay, and a wide passage leading to the mess. The interior was far more spacious than the hull suggested.

The lighting was restrained, easy on the eyes, and the walls and floors used warm, dark-toned metal paneling and wood-grain trim, forcing a trace of livability out of what was fundamentally an industrial shell. What actually stopped me was the mess hall. I'd expected the standard military-ship galley layout. It wasn't that. House Kushima had somehow crammed a textbook Japanese dining hall onto a spaceship. Wooden lattice dividers. Low, warm-yellow lighting. Textured walls. Long tables lined up in neat rows.

Even the serving counter was clean enough to shoot a commercial in.

It wasn't quaint enough to make you think you'd wandered into a hot spring inn by mistake — the bones were clearly still shipboard — but the overall atmosphere was convincing enough to produce a genuinely absurd thought: That we weren't heading toward an endurance course brutal enough to make people cough blood, but on some kind of school charter trip, where the destination just happened to feature high radiation, Spore Haze, and a surface environment that might take an active interest in eating us. How thoughtful.

I nearly laughed at the sheer humanitarian consideration of late-stage capitalism. Further along, a deck schematic was posted beside the residential block entrance. Alongside the individual rooms, briefing rooms, prep bays, and mess hall, there was a dedicated bathhouse and an artificial hot spring zone. Not the halfhearted version you'd get in a standard communal facility — fully segregated wet and dry zones, complete with posted usage hours and maintenance notes. I stood in front of the diagram for two seconds.

This wasn't a transport ship. This was a premium containment unit, built to keep competitors in peak condition specifically so they could be shipped out tomorrow to suffer properly.

"Oh — you saw it too?" Jess had drifted over at some point, staring at the schematic with a deeply conflicted expression.

"I was hoping for one decent shower before we hit an alien planet. Now that I've seen the artificial hot spring, I'm honestly more worried."

"Because it means even the time you spend soaking yourself soft has already been factored into the budget."

"That phrasing does not belong anywhere near the words hot spring."

"Then call it the pre-deployment thermal immersion tank instead." She shot me a look that made it clear I'd just killed the last bit of comfort the idea had offered. Room assignments turned out to be cleaner than I'd expected. One room each. No bunking, no lottery, none of that share a room to build team cohesion nonsense that makes you want to flip a table. For that alone, I was genuinely grateful to House Kushima.

The tournament was aggravating enough without also having to negotiate someone else's sleep schedule every time I wanted to roll over. Jess gave her keycard a little wave.

"At least there's one thing to be thankful for."

"That you finally get somewhere private to lose your mind over tomorrow's rules?"

"Wrong." She looked solemn.

"That I finally get somewhere private to put on a sheet mask." I looked at her.

"The night before dropping onto a high-radiation mega-fungal death world, your priorities are admirably clear."

"Thank you. I call it the last line of civilization." I didn't answer. Mostly because she had a point. When I reached my own door, I stopped. Not out of nerves. Because the door looked just a fraction wider than everyone else's. The keycard registered, and the panels slid apart. One look at the room inside confirmed my instinct had been right. It wasn't a luxury suite. But it was clearly a grade above the standard single. More floor space. More complete storage. A full desk and terminal setup.

The bed against the wall was a size larger than regulation, made up so flat it looked like it had no intention of tolerating anyone rolling around in it. There was even a low sofa and a small side table, and enough clearance by the window that turning around wouldn't mean clipping a cabinet corner. I set my bag down and looked at it quietly for a moment. Then made the entirely rational decision not to ask. Because asking about something like this only ever produces one of two answers.

One: Maki, expressionless, saying it's the standard configuration for the Vice President and a primary competitor. The other, worse option: she calmly turns it around and asks —"You don't like it?" And I lose on the spot. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. So the smartest move was to treat this blatant favoritism as a routine variation in cabin layout, and let my conscience quietly pretend it hadn't noticed a thing. I tried looking at it from another angle. No.

Wasn't fooling myself. But I could still play dead. The en-suite washroom was generous too, with direct access to the residential block's dedicated bath corridor. The whole design felt like it was saying: you're going to have a miserable time tomorrow, so at least show up clean. In its own way, that level of consideration was faintly unsettling. I'd barely set my keycard on the desk when the ship-wide PA came on.

"All competitors, please assemble in Briefing Room Three in twenty minutes for the final pre-departure briefing. Repeating—" I sighed. Wonderful. Not even five minutes to sit and stare at a wall. Briefing Room Three was exactly what I'd pictured — clean, cold, thoroughly functional, the kind of place a lot of money had gone into specifically to ensure no one felt at home. We weren't late. A few people were already seated. Harvey and Roy weren't official competitors, but they'd been waved in to observe.

Harvey's eyes lit up the moment the equipment prep flowchart appeared on the projection wall — a kid finally allowed into the candy factory. Roy sat quietly off to one side, his attention already drifting toward the bullet points and serial numbers. Akari clearly hadn't finished processing tomorrow's environment yet. She sat bolt upright, using her own skeleton to keep her nerves in line.

Jess still managed a surface-level smile, both hands wrapped around a thermos of hot tea sourced from somewhere, holding it like it was her last shield against a hostile universe. Hedwig, Lan, and Irena filed in one after another. The mood wasn't exactly tense — closer to a fragile balance of we all know tomorrow's going to be bad, so let's at least stay composed until then. Maki came in last. The moment she stepped to the front, the room went quiet on its own. That kind of thing was fundamentally unfair.

Some people have to bang a table, raise their voice, browbeat a room into shape before a meeting feels like a meeting. Maki never needed any of that. She just had to stand there and pick up her notes, and everyone handed their attention over without being asked. Infuriating. Also, undeniably reliable. Her final briefing was short — short enough that it didn't read like a briefing at all. More like a verdict. Equipment inspection and crating were complete.

Every AS had been fitted, per committee regulation, with one distress flare and two basic isolation barriers. The fleet departed at 0300. All competitors were to complete prep and assembly no later than forty minutes before departure. No personal loadout beyond what had been declared; each AS remained locked to one ranged weapon and one close-combat weapon, survival knives exempt. On arrival, staged assembly and handover prep would follow further committee orders. She didn't dramatize any of it.

She didn't soften any of it either. She just laid everything that needed to be known flat on the table and let us see for ourselves exactly how much trouble it was. At the end, she paused.

"Tonight, priority is rest and confirming your own condition. Don't modify your equipment on a whim. Don't stay up doing pointless heroics. And don't go to sleep telling yourself you'll deal with it tomorrow." She looked across the room, voice still level.

"No one will have the margin to clean up that kind of mistake for you tomorrow." No one laughed. Because everyone understood she wasn't trying to scare anyone. She was trying to keep people alive. Once the room broke up, I headed for the door — and a staffer intercepted me.

"Vice President Hoshino. Synchronization testing for AS-00 is scheduled. If you're free, please follow me to Test Bay Two." I closed my eyes. Wonderful. The seat in my room hadn't even had time to warm up, and the next problem was already calling my number. Test Bay Two was quieter than I'd expected. Not empty — just the specific quiet of people who all know exactly what they're doing, so there's no wasted noise. Technicians in Kushima coveralls sat at their terminals, confirming figures.

Restraint frames and cable arms sat neatly stowed on either side. At the center, on the lift platform, stood a white-and-grey frame — perfectly still, and yet carrying the kind of presence that made you lower your voice without quite meaning to. AS-00. 素戔嗚. Or, as it now preferred: SUSANOO. It was nothing like the black ASURA units racked nearby. The ASURAs looked like tools purpose-built to solve problems in the dark — sleek, fast, contained.

SUSANOO was heavier, more direct, with obvious mass through the shoulders and chest plating. The comms antenna swept back from the head, giving him the sharp, unfinished edge unique to experimental units — as if the designer had written survive first across the top of the blueprint and only gotten around to everything else afterward. Standing in front of the platform, I understood something. Once a machine like this imprints on you, it becomes something like a difficult relationship. You don't have to like it.

But from that point on, pretending you have nothing to do with each other gets a lot harder.

"Welcome, Lieutenant." The voice came from inside the frame — already familiar enough to grate. My eyebrow twitched.

"Let's settle this now. Don't call me Lieutenant."

"Understood, Lieutenant." I stared at him. The two technicians nearby kept their eyes locked professionally on their terminals, pretending they'd heard nothing. I suspected they'd taken a specialized course. Probably titled something like How to Keep Your Job When an Expensive Chassis Annoys Its Pilot. I took a breath.

"Are you doing this on purpose?"

"If you're referring to the form of address," SUSANOO replied, in a tone too earnest to justify hitting him for it, "the onboard etiquette protocol dictates that using formal rank with the designated primary pilot supports command structure and combat discipline."

"I don't like it."

"Logged. Lieutenant dislikes formal address."

"Then change it." He paused for a fraction of a second, as if running some complicated calculation.

"Apologies, Lieutenant. Under the current etiquette and discipline framework, I am currently unable to complete that modification." I almost laughed. Not from amusement. The kind of laugh that happens when you're too annoyed to do anything else.

"What exactly did the Doctor put in your head—""If you mean Dr. Heinrich von Steiner: multiple environmental adaptation parameters, a tactical assistance module, a Spore Haze correction algorithm, and a partial semantic personality mapping derived from existing data."

"Every word of that raises my blood pressure."

"If it meaningfully improves your survival odds, I consider that an acceptable cost, Lieutenant." Of course. Military logic. Rigid, aggravating, and remarkably good at sounding like it hasn't done anything wrong. Under the technicians' direction, I connected to the basic sync interface and stepped onto the platform. This wasn't a full sealed run — just preliminary shipboard calibration and voice-interaction confirmation.

The point was simply to establish whether he and I could coexist without actively sabotaging each other before tomorrow. The forward display lit up. Initial readings scrolled by. Neural feedback: nominal. Posture feedback: nominal. Visual handshake: nominal. External sensor suite: standing by.

"Beginning phase one synchronization," a technician said. SUSANOO's voice came in immediately.

"Lieutenant. Please relax your shoulders and jaw. Your current physiological readings sit somewhere between entering combat and looking for something to throw at me, neither of which supports stable synchronization." I kept my eyes forward, expression flat.

"You'd better hope that second reading doesn't keep climbing."

"Received. Adjusting vocal pacing to reduce hostility."

"Can you be more annoying?"

"Theoretically, yes. Not recommended."... Someday I was going to lock the Doctor in this test bay with him for two hours, alone. As the sync deepened, SUSANOO began feeding external sensor data into my field of view in a format I could actually use — not a raw dump, but layered, giving me the most critical environmental markers first and leaving the rest for me to pull up if I wanted. That was better than I'd expected. At least he wasn't the type to shove the entire manual in your face mid-fight.

"Proceeding to Spore Haze simulation," a technician said. The moment the words landed, the projected environment around the bay shifted. The clean outlines of the room blurred under a wash of grey-white interference. Visual edges softened. Heat signatures and reflected returns bled together, like the whole space had been shoved inside a damp, faintly disgusting, semi-transparent layer of fungal breath. I frowned on instinct. And this was only the simulation. On Orpheia's actual surface, it would only get worse.

"Lieutenant. Activating Spore Haze correction mode."

"Do it." The next instant, a pale blue-white assist line swept in from the right edge of my vision, and the chaotic noise began sorting itself into layers. Heat sources were flagged as first-order interference. Floating spore density stacked up in color blocks. Terrain outlines were redrawn by the algorithm, and even the reflections of obstacles nearly swallowed by the haze got dragged bodily back into visibility. I blinked.

"... Okay. That's actually useful." SUSANOO's voice came back with the composure of someone stating an obvious fact.

"Your acknowledgment is appreciated, Lieutenant. Dr. Steiner rewrote portions of the radar filtering logic and applied multi-path cross-validation to correct for scatter error caused by the Spore Haze. In simple terms: I am now considerably less likely to mistake a moving threat for drifting dirty air." I was quiet for a second.

"That last part — you're perfectly capable of talking like a normal person when you feel like it."

"I am currently learning the optimal method of communicating with you, Lieutenant."

"You're doing fine. Except for the address."

"That parameter remains locked, Lieutenant." Here we go again. The second half of the test moved into basic posture linkage. I raised an arm, rolled a shoulder, stepped, ran a short-distance stop-and-restart. SUSANOO's response was fast — none of the half-beat lag you'd expect from an unfamiliar frame. On a couple of turns, he even pushed predictive balance data to the edge of my vision a fraction before my weight actually drifted. He wasn't fighting for control.

More like someone standing at your shoulder saying, you're probably about to do something stupid, and I've already circled the pothole for you. Annoying. Genuinely useful. When the test ended, I stepped off the platform, a faint residual buzz still humming in my fingers. The technicians logged the numbers quickly, traded a few lines of jargon I mostly didn't follow, and then one of them turned to me.

"Synchronization rate is stable. One more short calibration before official departure should be sufficient."

"Meaning he won't just lose his mind halfway through the course?" The technician paused, choosing his words with real care.

"Based on current results, AI function is within normal parameters." I understood. Translated: no guarantee he won't snap, but he passes inspection for now. I looked back at SUSANOO, standing at the center of the platform. The white-grey armor sat quiet and heavy under the lights. Not the kind of machine that impresses you at first glance — the longer you looked at him, the more he looked like work, the more you understood how much effort adapting to him was going to cost.

And yet, standing inside that sync loop, watching the correction filter carve clean outlines out of a total mess of an environment, I had to admit — The bastard had teeth.

"Lieutenant."

"What."

"Rest assured. If tomorrow's environment is as hostile as the data suggests, I will do everything in my power to help you come back alive." I'd meant to tell him to stop saying things that sounded like a death flag. The words got as far as my tongue and stopped. In the end I just made a short sound through my nose.

"You'd better mean that."

"Of course, Lieutenant." I turned and walked out. Wonderful. Tomorrow I wasn't only dealing with an alien surface, ten legs of course, and a field of competitors just as unwilling to lose as we were. I also had to get used to a chassis AI capable of harassing me to death via full military protocol. Life kept getting more efficient by the day.