14. All Together 4

Or as close to undead as a still living, rational being could be.

Perhaps he could be considered a "demi-undead", after all, all of his organs still worked, but at an extremely lower rate than any living being, his heart beats once a year to give you an idea. And on the other hand, his mind worked at a faster pace than everyone else's, and his use of nanobots remained the same as the others, even with Samuel practically stopped in his veins.

In addition to the ability to survive in environments completely taken over by Ruin, the first byproduct generated by MATER radiation when it came into contact with Earth. At a time when it was still irradiated by gamma and beta-alpha rays, and plagued by the rest of the chemical and biological disasters that were still being cleaned up, even after 2 thousand years with much more advanced technologies.

As should be obvious by now, the initial result was the reanimation of corpses and the extreme mutation of living organisms. Managing to correct the mutations was relatively simple (even with humanity still recovering from the last war and many were still adapting to the high tax exile), but finding ways to prevent the reanimation of corpses and their proliferation by a highly mutagenic virus loaded with this byproduct It proved too much for human limits at that stage.

That is, by "conventional means".

Over time it was observed that even reanimated corpses were able to develop and evolve as a living being but with obvious differences in method, even though they were dead animal organic matter without any basic biological capacity.

The virus's mutagenic capacity reached such an extreme point that it was able to reanimate even piles of bones without any trace of biological material remaining, going completely against every conception of how life works in the entire known universe.

"Well anyway, it's good that 3 more have arrived, now there are 3 more to go." Lucien said, gesturing with his hand for everyone to sit down.

The 3 of them went to their designated places and talked to the others, plus Mussa and Lorelai with the others and only Lucien, Old Zuhn and Lin talked to Ad-juru. They discussed the state of Ad-juru's research and the possibility of reviving the memories of reanimated corpses, as he always claimed based on his "father", was getting closer to being achieved.

"Over the last few centuries I have had more success retaining key memories in cadavers, especially those that pass my tests. But several of the ones that fail also have an almost equal information retention rate, I haven't been able to figure out what the correlation would be yet."

"Wouldn't their degree be the main component?" Lucien asked remembering his new residents and taking a look at how the family was doing through the drones.

"From what I have observed, several of 1 garu can retain information, just like 8 and 9. But there is no type of trend between any specific grade, nor in the way they died." He responded succinctly by reviewing his data.

"So maybe we should review the way we classify mutated creatures and finally take Hooku-há and yours kin out of the "exceptions" group and create a specific group?" Old Zuhn suggested.

"I don't think it's a good idea, about Hook I agree. But in my case, just me and my father were the only specimens that kept their personality and memories, especially considering that I'm still alive. I would have to make a whole new class only based on me and another for my father. It's not efficient at all." Ad-juru said with a shrug.

"True, but I still think that some kind of special class would still be a good thing regarding you and your father. He also didn't have some undead humans who still retained some memories, just like what you observed in your experiments, right?" Lin said remembering how Ad-juru's father's "assistants and employees" acted. Much more "alive" than several humanoid drones. "We could include you in this group along with your father and place you as a unique existence in it."

They thought about this proposal, mainly about reworking the classification of mutated creatures and generating new groups for other species, something that was not considered much before for the simple fact that they did not have enough different groups.

More specifically, they even have an informal differentiation alongside the official one, this would be Hooku-há's species, the mutated creatures (1 to 10 degrees, which Hooku-há's species would be part of), the "flying lizards" (like Lauriel liked to call them, who would also be mutants), Kalu'th's hideous creations, the undead and the DAEMONS (who had been created to eliminate the undead). Officially then, there would be the mutated creatures, Kalu'th's creations, the undead and the DAEMONS.

However, now these denominations would need to be seriously revised to include the new beings that had emerged, which was the main reason why everyone was coming together.

Now there is just 1 more member left to arrive with the 2 new ones who opened the doors.

One was a young man with completely disheveled curly brown hair, not that you could see much of the original color as it was almost black, some parts blackened by soot, others by grease and other parts being scorched. There were 2 things that caught his attention:

1. It was his size, not because he was big like Ulik or Hooku-há, far from it. He was only 1.35 tall at most.

2. It was his arm. Like everyone else, he also had nanorobots in his body that allow a very long life, this was also possible because they worked quickly to regenerate damaged tissues and even grow lost limbs and organs, even the heart. And this attracted a lot of attention to him, since his left arm was a completely metallic prosthesis, made of a black metal, obsidian, silver and some details that seemed to be made of gold.

Strangely, the appearance of the arm and hair matched the eyes of a color as impossible as Lucien's pink eyes, his eyes were the color of living flames, not being figurative, his irises seemed to be made of fire condensed in the man's eyes. Giving an effect that made him hard and unyielding, while at the same time appearing to be warm and intense, even with an indifferent face.

The other person who came with him was a young woman, she had hair that went down a little below her shoulders, it was bright red, almost the color of blood, tied in a ponytail. She was also shorter, measuring 1.38 at most. And like the young man, she also had a more distinct feature besides her height, the patch over her right eye where a scar ran down to the end of her face.

However, unlike the young man, the eye that could be seen did not appear to be fire contained within the iris, not a normal fire at least. Her iris shone with the strength of a blue flame as strong as the blue of lightning in the sky, which gave the woman an impression as intimidating as the young man, but one could also perceive a calmness in her gaze that the young man's did not have. 

These two had Valianka descendants, a humanoid race discovered in one of the "northeastern" sectors of the universe, a part made up of 357 million galaxies, with the Valiank quadrant being home to the Valik, the race that had conquered much of this sector until humans and other already allied alien races arrive. The Valianka had almost intentional metallurgical and technological expertise and discovered how to generate a society focused on interstellar industrialization without irresponsibly affecting the ecosystems of the worlds or galaxies where their industries were located, in addition to having greater resistance and strength than their small counterparts. bodies could let it show. Capacity shared with their hybrid dependents who became the best engineers and metallurgists possible for the entire interplanetary Union.

"Tsk, we're one of the last again Jean. I told you you could finish that weapon when we got back." The young man said, giving the companion a small punch on the shoulder.

"Don't start, you know you would do the same thing if you were in my place Anari." Jean responded by returning the punch.

"Ohhhh, what kind of weapon did you make this time Jean, long, medium or short range? For personal use or attached to others? Or are they improvements for androids?!." Hooku-há asked in sequence as soon as the two entered and went to their seats, always pecking each other and without greeting anyone, until they sat down and did the formalities.

"Ah, you're going to love this Hook, a new gauntlet capable of directly converting MATER particles into atoms of your choice and organized in a matter of nanoseconds, so you can throw punches that generate a mirror image of flames burning at 2,000 degrees, or jets of ice at minus 3 thousand degrees and so on." Jean responded equally excitedly.

"Hee!, so could you—"

"Although I agree that discussing new weaponry with an older style is interesting. I don't think that's why we're all here." Said a young man who appeared shortly after the minors sat down without anyone noticing when he arrived, just like with Ad-juru.