Chapter 1

Miranda stood still, suspended in the deep blue ocean. She was about seven feet under and the water surface didn't seem far off. Below her, however, was so dark that the sea floor couldn't be seen. It seemed bottomless.

It was not her first time in these waters but she was still amazed at the sight of it. It felt unreal. Not because she had never seen an ocean before, but because this ocean existed in a space that was her own creation. Her own tiny realm, a dimensional pocket that she could solely access as she pleased.

The big blue all around her was utterly quiet, big and empty. It was serene and peaceful, with her as the only living being in the realm.

The experience was similar to skydiving. It felt like she was floating thousands of feet above the ground. A ground that could not be seen and water pressure pressing on her from all sides.

She blinked a few times as she burned the image into her mind. Time that seemed to be frozen begun to flow again and a scarlet haze started to slowly cloud her vision.

It was too bittersweet.

Crimson blood gushed out of several areas on her body, staining the water around her like clouds of death.

Her tattered body was full of cuts and wounds but she didn't pay her condition any mind. It was too late to do anything anyway.

Her lungs burned, screaming for air but she forcefully held her breath, busy trying to get a last glimpse of what was slipping right through her fingers.

She was determined to get the full worth of the pitiful oxygen left in her bloodstream. A bloodstream that was quickly drying up.

Her entire body was numb, and her eyesight started to turn hazy and dark as death slowly but surely claimed her. It was at this moment that she truly realized that she didn't want to die.

She struggled not to lose consciousness but water had already flooded into her lungs.

Her entire life flashed before her closing eyelids as the trickling blood faded into the ocean.

Miranda Lee had been born in the year 4497 AD on an artificial planet in the Eastern quadrant of Milky Way galaxy. The Mana Nanobot Zombies, manozores for short, were already in the process of taking over the Milky Way by then.

It was early in the year 2020 AD, when a glowing clear meteorite struck the motherplanet, Gaia.

It was inconsequential to most of the humans of the time, but the major powers of the world had almost started a third world war over it.

The meteorite was later known to be a mana rock.

Peace was barely restored after the mana rock was broken down into millions of mana crystals and distributed among several countries in the world.

It was only known several years later that mana rocks and crystals naturally released waves of mana into the atmosphere when full of mana. The mana waves attracted more mana from the universe, thus growing more mana crystals on the rock.

Breaking the mana rock into pieces only sped up mana contamination on Gaia.

Many people suffered from mana poisoning not long after and several died. This was as a result of humans' lack of mana circuits in their bodies.

Months later, in the same year, it was quickly observed that people in the driest region of the world never reported a single case of mana poisoning.

Investigations led to the discovery of aether. A metallic mineral found more than ten kilometres under the sands of the Misri desert.

Religious texts pointed it out to be within the former Eshen Garden, the birthplace of mankind. It was speculated that the aether deposits were directly beneath where the Allknowing Tree had once stood.

Aether naturally absorbed mana, and those exposed to it were cured of mana poisoning over time. Jewellery made of aether was in high demand and efforts to try and use it to harness mana from mana rocks never seized.

It was in the year 2041 AD that scientists finally made a breakthrough and developed the first intelligent mana robot. It was entirely made of aether and with an Artificial Intelligence system powered with mana from a mana crystal.

Several technological advancements with the use of mana soon followed.

In 2064 AD, one million intelligent mana robots were released into Gaia's oceans. It took less than a decade before all the trash and half of the microplastics in the oceans were cleaned up.

In 2070 AD, it was spread in private that a certain billionaire, Axel White, who had been dying of a terminal illness had been cured.

He had secretly researched and developed intelligent mana nanobots that could freely travel through the body, fixing all that needed to be fixed. They could cure all illnesses known to man.

Needless to say, white blood cells were soon out of a job.

The manobots, as monikered, had to be bound to an individual's DNA signature in order to work independently in the host's body.

The news changed everything.

This led humans to frantically look to the stars, in search of both aether and mana rocks. Science and technology entered a new age with space technology advancing the most rapidly.

It was almost a millennium later, in 2992 AD, when an entire planet of aether deposits was discovered at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Mana devices were to thank for this as they were able to scan a radius of approximately ten thousand light years.

Advanced Intelligent Mana Nanorobots soon hit the market. The manobots were made entirely of aether and didn't even need mana stones to function. They directly absorbed mana from within the body itself.

Humans with manobots in their system were called cyborgs. Their lifespans increased to 600 years and some even developed superhuman abilities. It was only a matter of time before the human race spread across the entire galaxy.

Rapid development was on the horizon but suddenly, within a century, a law was passed by the Galactic Federation. It granted all sentient lifeforms the right to life.

That would be remembered by many as one of the biggest mistakes made in human history. Others, of course, had a different opinion but those are the minority.

You see, the manobots never actually died when the host did. Instead, they directly took over their hosts' bodies after the host's natural death. Hence, manozores.

The manozores never directly harmed humans or cyborgs but they were essentially different. They were like a hive-mind with an obsession of following the law and rehabilitating the 'ill' planet Gaia.

Life on Gaia became no different than life in prison, and humans and cyborgs alike rebelled.