So long as they belonged to the same tribe as him, Ves felt responsible for them and their works.
As long as Ves was not a completely selfish bastard, he could never ignore Hugo’s plight.
"Damnit." He muttered under his breath.
Ves was not going to start to turn Hugo into his direct disciple or anything. He still remembered that he needed to remain vigilant towards the Cybers, especially after finding out that the Polymath’s control over them was more absolute than he could have imagined.
How these Cybers remained completely fine with knowing that their ’benevolent’ dictator could unilaterally wrest control over their bodies at any time, Ves did not know.
So long as that remained the case, Ves needed to treat them as extensions of the Polymath rather than completely separate individuals.
The Cybers actually had more in common with the mutated voribugs than Ves initially thought.
Both of them had fallen under the sway of absolute rulers!
The voribug queen permanently controlled the actions of every voribug.
The Polymath’s control over her own subjects was a lot less direct, but no less scary.
Ves needed to think about this a lot more. For now, he needed to wrap up his meeting with the Cybers.
"I believe it is best to discuss the specifics of our upcoming collaboration projects on another day." Hugo Fournier said in his normal voice this time. "Since you have yet to embark on either projects, we can take the time to prepare for them properly. We will need time on our end to select the most relevant technologies and organize support from the relevant research teams."
"I understand." Ves said with a nod. "Much has changed today. The new deal has many implications for everyone involved."
"Before you go, we would like to bestow you with an additional gift."
"Didn’t you already give me one?" Ves asked while pointing his thumb at the floating container box.
"This is different, sir. We did not originally intend to transfer the item to your possession, but the magnitude of our new agreement calls for an additional gift."
A bit of time passed before the entrance slid open.
A pair of heavily armed Cybers moved forward while escorting a larger and much coldeer container.
It was clear that they had just retrieved it from a cold storage vault.
Once the guards had come close enough, they stopped.
The chilled container came to a stop as well.
"What is this?" Ves curiously asked.
Hugo did not answer straight away. He moved forward and fiddled with the electronic locks.
The box soon slid open to reveal... a wooden doll.
No.
That was not quite it. Ves frowned as he tried to figure out what he was looking at. It looked like a small elf whose body was made completely out of wood.
Despite the inherent rigid properties of normal wood, Ves bet that this creature’s biology was somehow flexible enough to make movements without relying on hinges, just as was the case with the Arboreal Project.
"Meow?"
Lucky looked confused.
On the one hand, he could trace metals inside the creature’s wooden construction.
On the other hand, what was he supposed to do with a miniature life form, and why did it end up stuck in a chilly container?
"What you are looking at is a life form that has spontaneously come into existence as far as we can tell." Hugo seriously said. "It did not originate from our star empire. We cannot claim credit for its identification, capture and dismantling. We do not know as much of them, but we did discover that they are not born from older ’elves’, for lack of a better term. This creature spontaneously formed into existence."
"How many of them exist? How prevalent are they and do they require special environments to grow to an enormous tree."
Hugo smiled as he gazed down at the elf. "I was not aware of their existence, but according to the information package that I have received, these mysterious elves are exceedingly rare, to the point where there are less than 5 properly documented encounters. This particular specimen did not originate from Bridgehead One. We actually managed to obtain it through one of the grand auctions that we attended."
"I see. So what can this ’elf’ do for a mech designer such as myself?"
"We are not entirely clear of this, but we believe that we can make optimal use of it in our research. However, this is not a matter that deserves our full scrutiny. We are still willing to present it to you as a gift. We believe that you can find a means to add its strength and special properties to the birthday gift that you have reserved for your firstborn."
The Cyber Journeyman made it sound as if Ves was running a protection racket or whatever.
He distinctly disliked this analogy.
"I will accept this gift, just like I have done with the other one." Ves said as he solemnly closed the lid of the freezer container again. There was no need to tempt fate and risk escape. "I would appreciate it if you can transfer as much information you have on it as possible. I will look for references in the RC’s internal library, so you do not need to check it on my behalf."
"That is acceptable."
The meeting finally ended after Hugo dismissed Ves from the chamber in order to send all of the messages.
As Ves and Lucky boarded their armored shuttle, the two kept staring at the pair of floating containers.
Now what?