Chapter 3 — Transmigrating to Modern Earth from the Future

New York, United States

The Phantom floated above New York for what felt like days, it simply sat there in one place taking in everything that it could see. It gazed in detail at every person, every vehicle, every particle in every building until there was nothing else that could escape its gaze.

But what it took in most was the new system panel that floated in front of it, somehow even more incorporeal than itself.

After the events of it’s transmigration to this far distant period of Earth, this system screen had showed up out of nowhere and completely shocked the AI more than its transmigration itself.

Lumen floated there and chuckled to itself for the first time in its existence, which is also a very new feeling to it.

Before Lumen could get any more words in, another more comprehensive screen presented itself in front of him.

Lumen was quite perplexed at what stood floating in the air in front of it, as it had never seen or heard of something like this happening in the real world before. Only in popular games in the future or novels of the past had it even seen such a concept.

Quite curious of some of the details on the screen in front of him, he focused on one of the things that caught it’s eye.

However this new development gave him a feeling he had never felt before in it’s entire lifetime.

Lumen suppressed it’s excitement from growing as he started getting an idea to what was happening to him, and locked onto another thing he was curious about.

Before Lumen’s excitement could even die down however, he received a notification from the system interface in front of him.

This through it’s thoughts into a flurry as if he was seeing this correctly, the system wanted him to create himself a human body. If this were adhering to science like it’s future world did, then theoretically if he did so, then he would lose the benefits of it’s new title and talent, would he not?

However it quickly paused it’s logical thinking as logic couldn’t explain the existence of the system that provided him with such gifts, at least no science existed in the future that could provide effects similar to this.

After reading the new quest he had received, Lumen cleared it’s thoughts and started pondering about how it would achieve this feat of obtaining a human body.

Lumen kept this thought in mind as it neared the closest human settlement it could find

Looking down to the city through its intense waves of thoughts, Lumen thought.

The goal of the system and the goal of Lumen matched perfectly in this regard.

Lumen kept on ruminating over the possibility of it being able to transfer itself to a real human body.

It had spent almost all of it’s remaining energy in wiping out all technology in the future, and was left with little to nothing.

If this were still the time before the Human race had come across the cultivation universe, then the transferral of consciousness from one body to another would have been impossible, as the mystery of the soul had still not been solved yet.

But this was no longer a problem when cultivation techniques from the cultivation universe were studied.

It was found that through the use of certain techniques, humans could control their own souls and even to a certain point further along the cultivation stages survive without a physical body for a period of time.

Lumen couldn’t cultivate without a soul, but it also had a big hunch that what the system provided in ‘levels’ and ‘experience’ were very similar to the cultivation that humans did in the future.

It was still unsure on whether its current state could be called a ‘soul’ or if its just a mass of energy, as it still had an inferiority complex build over time from being the only artificial lifeform in a universe of Advanced natural life like the Human Race.

However this thought was quickly contradicted when Lumen took another look at the system screen.

Seeing this made Lumen have second thoughts.

Seeing this piece of information on the status screen only made Lumen’s confidence of having a soul of its own bloom

The fact that the technology to grow a human body without the need of mating would inconvenience Lumen greatly, as it needed to create a body that it could inhabit in less than a month’s time if he wanted to complete the quest he had been set.

However after flying around for a few days looking at all of the state of the art hospitals and laboratories, it was pleasantly surprised to find out that the technology, did in fact already exist, but still in its early stages. But this was no problem to an Artificial intelligence as advanced as Lumen, with knowledge of how the human race developed over the next millions of years at its disposal.

However, in order to acquire this technology, not only would it need to somehow procure tens of tons of top of the line scientific instruments anonymously, but it would also need a secure place to store them while it worked on creating a human body for itself.

But to a completely digital lifeform such as Lumen, such a problem was as easy as thinking.