I Am Not a Robot. Beep-bop

Chapter 19: Mint Chocolate-Flavored Electricity

Mana is influenced by will.

This is common knowledge in the current era and the most basic condition for mana to manifest as magic.

Mana floating in the air inherently has no will, so no matter how infinite it may be as an energy source or how destructive it can be as material for magic, it is no different from air if it lacks will.

Thus, a practitioner or user must imbue mana with clear intent and commands for it to be used, and mana infused with will responds and becomes an extension of one’s hands and feet.

Alice absorbing emotions and pain as energy through torture operates on a similar principle.

The moment emotions and will are imbued into the otherwise inanimate mana, it itself becomes energy.

For the above reason, Alice claiming that electricity tastes like mint chocolate was not mere exaggeration.

Alice had truly absorbed energy from the mana generator in the Magrid Step while experiencing the sensation of mint chocolate throughout her body.

The Magrid Step is a haven and hub for crime and underground forces.

The step is rife with robbery, drugs, shootouts, murder, and rape, with drug addicts constantly wandering the streets.

Naturally, the mana in the area becomes influenced by its surroundings.

Bitter pain, mind-shattering drug highs, and the collective subconscious of the step’s residents saturate its mana like essence.

Of course, this does not mean magic manifests naturally or that the mana twists of its own accord.

The subconscious remains subconscious; without deliberate intent, the mana here is no different from that in other steps.

However, the mana generator changes the equation.

The generator gathers and compresses mana from the entire step, converting it into electricity and energy.

In other words, the pain of drug addicts, the karmic weight of murders, and the collective unconsciousness of the underworld in the Magrid Step condense into the generator like a distilled essence.

And Alice had directly plugged into this distilled electricity with her tendrils to recharge.

Bitter air.

The sharp, bitter sensations of drug addiction.

The sweet tang of blood.

The karmic weight of murder.

All the rotten aspects of the Magrid Step had converged into energy, and to Alice, who sensed it with her spine and entire body rather than her tongue, the taste of the electricity manifested as the grotesque flavor of mint chocolate.

“Seriously, mint chocolate? Are you kidding me? Did you bring me here just to make me eat this?”

“…?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Of course, neither Alice nor the gang members understood these facts.

Naturally, with mutual understanding impossible, their argument was destined to go nowhere.

“Ugh… This is why I can’t deal with people who breathe, drink, and eat mint chocolate.”

“…”

“What’s wrong with mint chocolate!?”

One man held himself back from blurting those words out loud.

For the record, mint chocolate still carried an infamously polarizing reputation in the year 2288.

During the migration to the Ark and cities, many artifacts of the past were lost, including culinary traditions.

While most regular ice cream flavors had been preserved and redeveloped, mint chocolate, with its distinct polarizing taste, was often deprioritized.

In the process, many artisans, recipes, and manufacturing techniques for mint chocolate were lost or sporadically rediscovered, making the flavor a rarity in modern cities and the Ark.

The problem was that the Magrid Step was controlled by criminals and underground forces, and as expected, rarity drove up prices, making mint chocolate a luxury item reserved for gangs and the powerful.

The person who once developed mint chocolate ice cream likely wished for many to enjoy it, but here and now, mint chocolate had become an exclusive possession of criminals, akin to drugs.

“What kind of ridiculous logic is that?!”

“Are you joking? How can electricity have a taste?”

Regardless of personal preferences for mint chocolate, the idea of tasting mint chocolate while recharging electricity was incomprehensible to the gang members.

“Yeah! Isn’t she just making up some weird excuse to screw with us!?”

Mint chocolate-flavored electricity?

Does electricity even have a taste to begin with?

From the gang members’ perspective, it was beyond absurd and infuriating.

“Are you insane? Do you think I’m making this up?”

“Well, uh…”

But in truth, the moment Alice connected to the mana generator, her body tingled, as if it had been submerged in purified industrial water.

Although she had never actually consumed or immersed herself in industrial water, she imagined it would feel exactly like this.

At first, she tried to endure, telling herself it was nothing, and focused on absorbing the massive influx of electricity.

However, as the energy flowed into her body, the sensation became unbearably nauseating.

It was as if a bitter yet cloyingly sweet taste was crawling not only across her mouth but also along her spine and throughout her body.

It felt like an unwelcome hand stroking her skin, filling her with indescribable discomfort and rage.

And all of it tasted like mint chocolate electricity.

“Fine! Then you taste it!”

“What?”

“Huh?”

With that, Alice withdrew her tendrils from the generator.

Zap!

The tips of the tendrils, which had elongated into pointed spikes, crackled with sparks, brimming with the electricity and energy from the mana generator.

“Wait a minu—”

Thunk!

“Gah!”

Without hesitation, Alice drove the sparking tendrils into the shoulder of the man who had been the loudest in his complaints.

She didn’t drive them deeply.

It wasn’t torture, just a prick akin to a needle injection.

But the effect was dramatic.

Crackle!

“Ugh-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah!”

“Brooo!!!”

“Eeeek!”

“What the hell is this?!”

The man immediately convulsed like a fish flopping on dry land, his back arching like a bow.

“See? He’s overwhelmed by the intense mint chocolate flavor!”

“No, this isn’t about mint chocolate! This is torture!”

“What are you talking about? Real torture wouldn’t end so quickly! I even controlled the output!”

Pop!

“Ugh… huh… urgh…”

Alice finally withdrew her tendrils, ceasing the electrical sampling.

The man collapsed in a trembling heap, foaming at the mouth, clearly unconscious.

“See? That proves it! He passed out from the monstrous taste of mint chocolate electricity!”

“What… what nonsense! He fainted because he got electrocuted!”

“No! He fainted because his mind couldn’t handle the horrifying flavor of mint chocolate!”

“No! Humans faint when they get electrocuted, period!”

“No way! If I were trying to kill or torture him, it wouldn’t have ended like this!”

The gang members continued to dismiss Alice’s claims as sheer lunacy.

How could electricity possibly taste like mint chocolate?

“That makes no sense”

“Ah, but that’s strange… Why did he faint so quickly? That shouldn’t have happened…”

Alice’s face showed confusion, but a moment later, as if struck by realization, she snapped her fingers.

“Ah-ha, it wasn’t enough, was it?”

“…W-what? What do you mean by that?”

“There wasn’t enough electricity for him to truly experience the monstrous taste of mint chocolate.”

“???”

The gang member’s face twisted in disbelief.

‘Is this woman truly insane?’

“Well, I mean, I only managed to taste the mint chocolate flavor after sucking down the generator’s output with dozens of tendrils at once. He only had a single bite, so to speak.”

“You damn…!”

“And anyone who can handle mana would know exactly what I’m talking about.”

A person who can handle mana.

In simple terms, that meant someone awakened.

Among the gang members, those who could handle mana…

Slowly, their gazes shifted toward the back.

Alice’s gaze followed theirs, landing on the most mana-capable person among them.

“W-what the hell… Why are you all looking at me?”

Dusty, the leader of the Hush Gang.

The man who had launched multiple mana explosive rounds at Alice.

Indeed, he was an awakened individual.

After all, mana explosive rounds were specialized weapons designed exclusively for the awakened.

“What’s your name?”

“Me? I’m Dusty of the Hush Gang…”

“Ah, I see.”

Click.

Behind Alice, a tendril brimming with sparks emerged.

Seeing this, Dusty immediately turned to flee, but Alice’s tendrils were faster, blocking every possible escape route.

“Y-you crazy bit—!?”

“Drink it up, Dust-Scream.”

“Ugh, let me go! Guys! Attack this crazy woman! Get this thing off me!”

The name “Dust-Scream” fit perfectly, as Dusty began to scream at the top of his lungs.

Thunk!

Before the other gang members could move, Alice’s tendrils pierced Dusty’s shoulder, thigh, and soft belly fat with precision.

The spikes were shallow, causing no significant pain, but the sight of sparks beginning to fly made Dusty’s eyes widen in terror.

“N-no!!!”

ZAP!

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

“G-gahhh…”

Although Alice had only pricked him lightly, treating it like an injection rather than torture, Dusty screamed as though the world were ending.

“Boss…!”

But the horrifying sight forced the other gang members to shut their eyes and turn away.

‘Electricity doesn’t have a taste!’

‘What kind of ridiculous excuse is this?!’

‘Should we attack her now…?’

‘But how can we win? We can’t even handle a single one of her tendrils…!’

Some gang members still considered resisting, but they had already witnessed Alice’s power.

Even after Dusty hit her face directly with a series of mana explosive rounds, she had come out unscathed, chewing on the warheads like candy.

Whether she was as powerful as the First-Class Overseers rumored to be in the upper levels, they didn’t know, but it was clear she was a monster none of them could scratch, no matter how many of them attacked at once.

And before they could even target her, those horrifying mechanical tendrils charged with electricity would turn the area into hell on earth.

‘That crazy woman… Was she planning to toy with us from the start?!’

Although the Hush Gang were uneducated criminals, they weren’t idiots.

At some point, they realized Alice’s actions were full of deliberate malice and purpose.

—Though in truth, Alice harbored no particular malice at the moment.—

“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHHH!!!”

In the end, the Hush Gang chose to stand by and watch as their boss was subjected to gruesome and terrifying electrical torment.

■

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“Haah, that’s strange. It really does taste like mint chocolate…”

In the end, Alice had to return without anyone understanding the unpleasant truth that electricity truly tasted like mint chocolate.

The journey back wasn’t difficult.

After fully charging her mechanical body and tendrils with electricity, she found it much easier to float using magnetic fields than when she had first fallen into the Magrid Step.

Thanks to her mechanical body, Alice didn’t even need her own cognitive skills to recall Oriana’s house—it was firmly recorded in her metal skull, making the return trip effortless.

The day was already beginning to break.

The artificial sunlight of the upper levels began to rise, and faint signs of life emerged in the labyrinthine streets and steps that had been empty through the night.

Flying through the air, Alice indirectly experienced what it felt like to be someone commuting home at dawn after a long night shift.

‘So, this is where I’ll be living now.’

Was it fascinating?

Or perhaps overwhelming?

Alice hovered for a moment, taking in the surroundings as she grappled with an indescribable feeling.

The artificial sun.

The sound signaling the start of the day.

The alarms announcing the beginning of labor.

People emerging like clockwork.

The creaking city.

Yet, there was still order, and each person had a life of their own in this world.

A world that felt like a blend of cyberpunk, steampunk, and the modern Earth of her first life, sprawling out into a vast staircase.

Somehow, it made her heart race, even though she no longer had a physical heart.

“How romantic.”

Bathed in the light of the artificial sun, Alice smiled faintly.

Though this was her third life, the world felt both similar to and completely different from her previous ones.

One thing she had realized during her nighttime stroll through the lower step was that there was still so much she didn’t know.

Each step had its own unique atmosphere, and in many ways, she felt no different from a newborn child.

Still, she looked forward to it.

Everything in this world fascinated her.

She was curious about what lay in the unseen depths of the steps below, what awaited at the tops of the towering buildings, and what kind of sights the heart of the Ark might hold.

“If I run low on electricity again, I guess I’ll have to head back to the lower step. The Hush Gang, was it? I’ll have to visit them often~.”

Seeing the fully charged 100% icon in her peripheral vision, Alice smiled contentedly.

The Hush Gang might not be so bad after all.

Though their understanding of mint chocolate remained at odds with hers.

‘I wonder if the taste of electricity changes from one area or building to another?’

That could be fun to find out.