"Um… Astarte, why have you been staring at my face this whole time?"
Cid had been doing his best to ignore Astarte's gaze, but anyone would start feeling uncomfortable after being stared at so intensely for more than ten minutes.
"To memorize my master's features."
Astarte's voice came out completely flat, without the slightest emotional fluctuation.
"You don't need to memorize them for that long, do you?"
Cid replied helplessly.
"I don't know. Astarte clearly memorized my master's features, but during the confirmation process they do not match the features in memory. Did Astarte malfunction?"
Her tone remained exactly the same, yet Cid still detected a faint trace of confusion in it.
"Then you don't need to confirm it a second time. Astarte, just remember both versions."
Cid shot her a tired look but still gave the order as if addressing an emotionless artificial lifeform.
I know you're annoyed that that scammer uncle sent you to monitor me, so you're deliberately trying to irritate me. But you don't need to come up with such a ridiculous excuse to fool idiots.
You're not actually an artificial lifeform anyway. You don't have to act so hard.
"Order acknowledged… Master."
After receiving the order, Astarte lowered her head so Cid could not see the emotions briefly flashing through her eyes.
Astarte felt something was wrong with herself.
What she had told Cid was not everything she had sensed.
She had lied.
It was true that she had memorized Cid's appearance. However, when she tried to confirm it, his face was not wrong.
She was still looking at Cid's face.
Yet for some reason, it felt different from the one she had memorized.
If she compared herself to a computer, then the image of Cid she saw during the "password reset" stage was like a heavily censored photograph filled with mosaic blur.
But the image she saw during the "verification" stage was a completely clear ultra high definition photo with the mosaic removed.
Her senses told her both images belonged to the same person.
Yet her instincts told her the two people looked different.
And while looking at the second image, Astarte felt a strange impulse.
If she had to describe it, she thought Cid's face was beautiful.
So beautiful that she wanted to keep looking at it.
But the knowledge stored in Astarte's mind told her such a feeling was impossible.
She should not be capable of experiencing something like that.
Is there a difference between humans and artificial lifeforms?
Yes.
There are many differences.
For example, living beings possess the instinct to appreciate beauty and pursue it.
Artificial lifeforms do not.
For artificial lifeforms, pain is merely a signal.
Comfort is merely a signal.
Sweetness is a signal.
Bitterness is a signal.
They are all just information received from the outside world.
An artificial lifeform does not judge those signals because it has no emotions.
Only a being with emotions can decide which sensations it likes and which it dislikes.
If an artificial lifeform were to think something was beautiful, that could only mean one thing.
It had developed emotions.
So what exactly was this feeling?
Astarte did not know.
But for the first time, she felt the urge to find out.
"Astarte, you don't have to keep following me. You can go back first. I'll be fine on my own."
Cid said this while glancing back at her.
In truth, he did not want Astarte following him all the way home.
If she learned where he lived, and if he failed tomorrow night to wipe out this group of scammers and erase their memories about the pure gold cross necklace, then his home might become a target.
Astarte raised her head and looked at him.
Her somewhat mechanical thought process prevented her from responding to statements that were not explicit orders.
Seeing Astarte pretend not to understand, Cid could only sigh inwardly.
Right.
He should have known a world class collectible would not be so easy to obtain.
How could a professional group of scammers fail to guard against the very person holding their treasure?
The girl in front of him was obviously sent to monitor him in case he suddenly came to his senses.
"Astarte, tell me, what kind of ship will I be taking later? And what is the Church like?"
Since he could not make Astarte leave, Cid decided to extract information from her instead.
His goal was to capture the scammers without causing too much commotion, erase their memories, and then hand them over to the security forces.
Asking about the ship so he would not accidentally board the wrong one tomorrow night, and asking about the Church so he could learn about his supposed future workplace were both reasonable excuses.
Even if Astarte refused to tell the truth in order to maintain the Church's fabricated story, unless they had prepared the entire lie in advance, people usually build their lies based on fragments of the truth.
This time, the words "tell me" in Cid's sentence was interpreted by Astarte as a command, so she answered.
"Order acknowledged. According to Astarte's memory, presenting the token in Master's possession allows entry onto any ship. As for the situation within the Church, Astarte has no information."
Cid narrowed his eyes.
Although it sounded like Astarte had revealed nothing, with his superior intellect he still managed to extract a surprising amount of information from her words.
First, the cross necklace truly did allow its holder to use transportation freely. That was because the item represented the authority of the Church.
But precisely because of that, every time it was used, the company witnessing it would report it to the Church so the Church could confirm whether the person using it had actually received it from them.
After all, although very few of these items had been lost, the fact that some were lost meant the possibility existed.
And most of those cases happened because the original owner had been killed.
If the murderer then used the necklace as a free transportation pass, it would basically be a direct slap in the face to the Church.
Therefore, someone among the staff must belong to this criminal group.
Only that way could they intercept the information that shipping companies would normally report to the Church.
Second, if he was leaving by presenting the necklace, then the ship he would board was probably not a private vessel or an illegal ship.
It would be a commercial vessel.
That further proved there were insiders among the staff, and not just a few.
After all, if they could use commercial ships for human trafficking, the number of insiders must be significant.
There might even be people planted among the upper management of the shipping companies.
But it did not matter.
He did not need to capture everyone.
He only needed to capture the people who knew that the necklace was currently in his possession.
As expected of himself.
Just from that single sentence, he had already analyzed so much information.
Hahahahaha…
Seeing Cid suddenly lower his head and laugh to himself, Astarte tilted her head, unable to understand what was happening.
When Cid came back to his senses and saw Astarte staring at him again, he realized his old habit had resurfaced.
"Astarte, this is the first time I've realized that my status might actually be this amazing. I might even become a Holy Son. Tell me, do you think once I join the Church, this identity might make it hard for me to fit in?"
Cid smoothly ignored the fact that he had just started laughing out of nowhere.
As the conversation continued, he deliberately acted like a teenage boy trying to show off in front of a girl, guiding Astarte to interpret his earlier laughter as nothing more than a chuunibyou teenager fantasizing about his future.
"Command recognition error. Artificial lifeforms cannot answer this question. Requesting a new command."
Astarte spoke expressionlessly and provided no real answer.
Cid's earlier sentence contained the words "Tell me," which Astarte's logic interpreted as an order.
However, the content he wanted her to say fell outside the range of answers she could provide.
A normal person would instinctively choose a positive answer.
No one would bluntly say that someone might fail to fit in with others.
But for an artificial lifeform, questions like this contained too many personal variables.
They could not be evaluated with data.
The answer was neither simply possible nor impossible.
Therefore, it was classified as an unanswerable question.
Artificial lifeforms did not possess emotions.
"Just think about it. Think about whether I'll be able to board the ship smoothly, join the Church, become a Holy Son, and maybe have a bunch of people fall for me, build a harem, and reach the peak of life."
Cid completely failed to understand what Astarte had meant earlier.
He continued acting out the role of a thoroughly deceived chuunibyou teenager.
"Think about it."
Was "think" a command?
According to the knowledge stored in Astarte's memory, "think" was a verb.
Therefore, "think about it" was a command.
The moment this conclusion formed, Astarte began processing the command and following the line of thought Cid had proposed.
Normally, even if a master ordered an artificial lifeform to imagine something, the artificial lifeform would simply reply that it did not know and request a new order.
That was because artificial lifeforms lacked emotions.
And emotions were one of the foundations of imagination.
Therefore, Astarte's answer could only be this.
"Order acknowledged. Astarte concludes that Master will not successfully board the ship. Master does not believe that he is a person blessed by God and considers this situation a scam. Therefore Master will not board the ship tomorrow night to leave this island."