A while later, "How is it going?" Cipher asked.

"It's much harder than I thought. I still have nothing," she said.

"Well, it's going to get a whole lot easier," he said.

"What do you mean..." she asked, and at that moment, one of the walls burst and debris came flying everywhere. Cipher instantly appeared before Iris and destroyed all the flying debris.

Iris looked at the robots entering through the opening past Cipher. "Well, that definitely does make it a whole lot easier," she said.

"Right?" he asked as he charged at the incoming robots. It seemed they'd finally noticed what was happening here, he thought.

The battle was intense but one-sided.

Cipher moved like a whirlwind through the incoming wave of robots, his movements precise and efficient thanks to the upgraded battle instinct. He dismantled them one by one - ripping off limbs and other mobility parts like wings, leaving them just barely alive before throwing them back to Iris for her research.

Unlike the weaker ones from before, these ones were much more powerful. There were even B-ranks among them. But it didn't matter. He continued easily dismantling them, holding his position at the entrance while preventing any mobile robot from entering the building where Iris was working.

More and more robots kept coming, flooding in from the opening. It seemed they were being summoned from other areas. Well, it didn't matter to him either way. As long as they didn't bring any S-ranks, which he doubted they would since they were busy protecting Julie.

"How is it going back there?" he asked Iris as he held off the robots.

Iris sighed. "I think we've gotten as much as we can from here. Let's return for now."

"Alright," he responded as he disconnected from the robot he was fighting and charged towards her, catching her and passing through to the safezone easily.

"Did you find out anything interesting?" he asked.

"Yeah, but it might not be what you want to hear," she said.

"Let's go back first and talk about it," he said as they both disappeared.

Just as they disappeared, hundreds of robots came flooding into the safezone.

…

"What did you discover?" Cipher asked once they were out of the gate.

Iris's eyes lit up with excitement. "This is such a huge discovery! What I initially thought was 'holy magic' is actually an extraordinarily sophisticated mana circulation method that mimics - dare I say - consciousness itself! The recursive feedback loops, the self-sustaining energy matrices, the adaptive response patterns - it's all there! If I can study this properly, decode the underlying principles, and reverse-engineer the algorithmic framework, I could theoretically create AGI! Actual artificial general intelligence!"

He just stared at her blankly.

She paused, catching her breath. "Do you understand the significance of this discovery? This is on the same level as practically discovering fire!"

"It sounds pretty interesting," he said, "but I don't understand why you said I wouldn't want to hear it."

"Well, weren't you asking me to study the behavior so you could find the source of the mana? The summoner of the robots?" she asked.

He nodded slowly.

"Well, it's impossible. The moment the mana is cut off, it survives for just a second before it's completely destroyed. There was no way to track it," she said.

Cipher sighed. He wanted to know if after killing the robot, the consciousness inside would return to the owner, but it seemed not to be the case.

"~What do you think?" he asked the Heavenly Demon.

[Well, it makes sense. The robots can be seen as housing the mind, so if it dies, the mind has nowhere to go and dies shortly after. That being said, if it was indeed alive for a short time after the body's death, there might be a possible solution.]

"What is it?" he asked.

[You need to find another body. Create a body that can capture the scattered consciousness before it disappears forever, acting like some sort of temporary soul. Then you can do that for all the other robots - killing and absorbing the consciousness. You should be able to put the Saintess girl back together that way. Well, at least what's left of her, assuming she hasn't lost multiple strands of consciousness from her robots fighting the creature underground. What do you think? Worth a shot?]

Cipher thought this was definitely worth a shot.

"Do you think we can find a way to trap this consciousness before it disappears?" he asked.

Her expression brightened. "Aha! That's the exact thought I was having. I didn't know you were such a genius," she said.

He smiled nervously. "So, do you think it's possible?" he asked.

"In theory, yes, but in practice? The technological limitations are staggering. We'd need a containment matrix capable of interfacing with pure consciousness - something that can maintain coherence at the quantum level without any physical substrate. The energy requirements alone would be astronomical, and we'd need precision timing down to the microsecond to capture the dispersing patterns before decoherence sets in. Not to mention developing a storage medium that can preserve consciousness without degradation... It's fascinating from a theoretical standpoint, the implications for consciousness studies, cognitive architecture, the nature of identity itself…"

He interrupted her rant. "So it's impossible?"

"Yeah, pretty much," she said, deflating. "I'll conduct some research on this and contact you if I figure something out," she added.

Cipher sighed. "Alright, please do. I won't be accompanying you," he said as he jumped into the air and flew at maximum speed.

In the spiritual sea.

"Are there any alternative methods?" he asked.

[Well, theoretically... one could split their soul into a soul partition and use this partition alongside a soul cultivation method to absorb the consciousness strands. Then you destroy your own consciousness inside the soul partition, letting the new strands of consciousness take over the partition and become some sort of pseudo soul, which should be fairly similar to the original.]

"That sounds brutal," he said.

"That's because it is," she replied. "I would've used my soul to help you as it's quite strong, but since I don't have my spiritual sea anymore, performing such a move might destroy my soul," she said with a sigh.

"How do I form a soul?" he asked.

"You want to try it? You can forget about it. Ignoring the fact that you can't form a soul unless you reach the Soul Formation realm, I simply won't let you risk both our lives for a chance of waking up that girl who might as well be brain-dead even after you revive her. I'm not budging on this," she said as she turned away.

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