PART IV: AFTER THE DEFEAT OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 11: Angler Company

(A/N: Angler Company is the second epic dungeon released in the game during the Milestone update. Similar to how High Mountain let you roleplay as Mitra during the story, this dungeon lets you play as Senya Angler. This storyline is set after the events of Odium, but since the stuff with Shangri-La happens immediately afterwards in the main story, I placed this section right after Shangri-La with the disclaimer that these two events are happening concurrently. Similar to High Mountain, you can start the Angler Company epic dungeon by speaking with the traveling bard Selazar in Odium.)

Soon after the invasion of Odium, Senya Angler ordered a Lab Tech bot to play back a recording from her father ordering his Angler Company forces to capture Cosim, who had returned back to Company headquarters, and to restore him. After learning what her father had requested, Senya grew suspicious about why he would merely want to repair Cosim after going to such lengths to capture him, causing her to suspect that he had an ulterior motive. Nevertheless, she vowed that she wouldn’t allow things to go his way before ordering the Lab Tech to teleport her to Company headquarters.

Senya was then transported to headquarters – a large building enclosed behind a cracked glass dome in the middle of the stormy seas of Grandis. At the front entrance, Senya began wondering why the Company had still kept the ruined structure intact, as well as why Cosim would have returned back on his own. As she attempted to enter the building, the security sensor was immediately triggered upon scanning her, causing her to realize that her father must have anticipated her betrayal. Senya quickly broke down the door and entered the building, where she discovered masses of Angler Company robots guarding the interior.

Using her proficiency in combat and technology, Senya began destroying the robots and harvested their energy to use a nearby terminal and hack into the system, thereby allowing her to bypass the controls and enter the next area. Inside, she found more Angler Company robots, as well as the powerful Angler Duke, guarding the door. In order to disable the Angler Duke’s powerful shields, Senya redirected the electricity currents in the wiring to overload the shields, allowing her to easily destroy the machine and move ahead.

Senya then hacked into the mainframe and confirmed that Cosim was indeed at headquarters, after which she used the communication system to make contact with him. Cosim was surprised to see her and asked whether she had come to extract his heart, adding that their father could not have it under any circumstances. Senya assured him that she hadn’t come on her father’s orders, pointing out that she wouldn’t have had to hack into the system if she were still loyal to the Angler Company. She then asked Cosim why he had come back to headquarters, and whether being captured was part of his plan.

However, Cosim ignored her question and instead asked Senya why she had come if it hadn’t been on their father’s orders. Senya joked that perhaps she had gotten to the age that one would start rebelling before admitting that even if they had been programmed to think so, they were still family in the end. She noted that it would be strange if one were to keep losing one family member after another and still not feel anything, as that would mean that they were either a sociopath, or that they had never thought of the others as family in the first place. Her words caused Cosim to realize that Senya had decided to rebel against their father because of her feelings for her fallen siblings, noting that despite their loyalty being programmed, her emotions had won in the end.

Cosim then admitted to Senya that even if they had been turned into machines, they had still been human to begin with, which was why they needed to do whatever they could to stop things. After a pause, Senya asked Cosim why he had turned on their father, to which Cosim asked her whether she remembered anything about her past. He revealed that before they had all become cyborgs, their father had implanted them with memory chips which had overwritten their memories. Though Senya refused to believe that such a thing was possible, Cosim explained that he had a fragment of his old memories from before he had become a machine.

In order to prove his words, he asked Senya to hack into him and see for herself. Curious about why Cosim had betrayed their father, Senya agreed and hacked into his memory chip, allowing her to see Cosim’s earliest memories as a cyborg, in which he had implicitly recognized his creator as his father, likening it to a baby bird imprinting on the first face that they saw, and feeling a programmed desire to gain his father’s approval. Soon after opening his eyes, Cosim was given his name by his father.

Senya then jumped ahead to see another memory of Cosim reporting that several people had come to headquarters, claiming that they had been following the trail of their missing friend. Cosim’s father asked him what he believed was the right action to do, noting that Cosim had been programmed to have impeccable judgement. Though Cosim admitted that the intruders had no malicious intent, he nevertheless recognized that anyone who had discovered Company headquarters needed to be eliminated at once. Because of this, Cosim successfully carried out his first mission to eliminate the intruders, much to his father’s satisfaction.

Following this memory, the scene changed to Cosim’s father triumphantly holding a purple imitation Godsphere modeled into his cybernetic heart, laughing that he had finally completed it at last. In order to be made whole, he realized that he needed to fill the heart with a large amount of power. He then summoned Cosim and informed him that he was leaving the Company’s affairs in his hands, as it would be too risky for himself to leave headquarters with the heart. He explained to Cosim that if someone were to come after him, it would be to take the heart, but more specifically, the power contained inside the heart.

(A/N: Although it’s never explicitly stated that this heart is a Godsphere, it lines up perfectly with what we know about the Company founder, as his single-minded obsession is to become an Adversary and fulfill the programming that the elders instilled into him. Interestingly, the heart that he’s created is just a purple recolored version of the World Heart, and it even has the same animation sequence from when the World Heart absorbs power from higher beings.

Given that the World Heart is a relic made by the Overseers themselves, it’s incredibly unlikely that this imitation Godsphere is anywhere close to that kind of power, and it’s more likely that it’s just a man-made attempt at creating something that comes somewhere remotely comparable to the power of a Seal Stone or an actual Godsphere. It’s also left up in the air as to whether this Godsphere would even work, since everything we know so far about the power of the gods is that humans have never truly managed to reach those heights on their own. On the off-chance that it does work, it would be hilarious if both Freud and the Company founder could make Godspheres when Kaling, despite being a researcher of Odium, couldn’t.)

Cosim expressed his confusion, as he had been programmed to believe that his father’s memory chip was the most important thing, though his father impatiently dismissed Cosim’s words and emphasized that the memory chip was nowhere near as important as his father. He then declared that there had been many failures along the way, though he added that even those failures had been useful, which he could see just by looking at Cosim. Reveling in his success, he laughed as he wondered aloud what the elders up above would say if they could see him now. After placing the Godsphere heart inside him, he ordered Cosim to begin harvesting more power, to which Cosim obediently agreed. Cosim and his siblings then began undertaking missions to harvest more energy, no matter how risky, as they had been programmed to obey their father no matter what.

Cosim’s memories then shifted ahead to him walking in the Arcus desert for an energy-gathering mission, just as he was shot in the back of his head by an unknown sniper. After waking up, Cosim realized that the sniper must have been part of the Primacy, recognizing the Grandis resistance militia as formidable enemies. Just as he began turning back to report his failure to his father, the damage to his memory chip caused him to see a memory of his father capturing a rabbit Anima as several other rabbit Anima hid and watched in fear.

(A/N: The Primacy is a major faction in the continental Grandis storyline, which was first revealed by name in the Carcion storyline. The Primacy is a militia that seeks to overthrow Darmoor and the High Flora, and they make their first major appearance in the Tallahart storyline. The person responsible for attacking Cosim is Eileen, the sniper of the Primacy.)

Meanwhile, back at the Angler Company headquarters, Senya’s remote hacking session was prematurely terminated, causing her to lose access to Cosim’s memories. Just then, her Lab Tech bot reported that an enemy was approaching, with a powerful discontinued Angler Company superweapon called the Centurion arriving to destroy Senya. However, Senya was unbothered by its appearance, declaring that she had been designed to be her father’s most powerful creation. After destroying the Centurion, Senya – though curious about why Cosim had betrayed their father – resolved to rescue him first, deciding that saving him was more important than anything else.

As she reached the next levels, she noted that there were far more robots guarding the area, though she nevertheless defeated them and hacked into the controls to move forward and disable the shields on the Angler Duke sentinel guarding the room where Cosim was being kept. Upon entering, she discovered Cosim restrained in a large machine. Senya immediately began hacking into the machine to free him, though she noted that it would take some time. As she began wondering whether it would be simpler to just destroy the machine entirely, Cosim told her that he didn’t matter, as his heart was nearly restored anyway, warning her that their father’s body was somewhere nearby. He added that if the heart were to enter their father’s body, everything would be over.

Senya asked Cosim what exactly he meant, noting that if the heart’s restoration was nearly complete, it was imperative that they escape even faster, as their father was coming in-person once the heart was complete. As she began hacking into the machine controls, however, Senya’s memory chip began to glitch, causing her mind to be flooded with memories that did not belong to her. Senya began wondering whether her memory chip had been damaged in the battle, and whether it would allow her to see someone else’s memories, or whether somebody had tampered with her memory chip. However, she then began to consider the possibility that those memories were hers from before she had become a cyborg, and that they had been suppressed by the memory chip until it had begun glitching.

Nevertheless, Senya began seeing the memories of a rabbit Anima and his friends leaving the safety of their refuge to explore the flower field in the outside world, where Senya’s father had kidnapped him, calling it a lucky thing to find a rabbit Anima outside its burrow. Senya then watched the memory of the rabbit Anima being torturously experimented upon by her father, with his limbs and organs being torn apart and replaced by machine equivalents. Senya then heard Cosim’s thoughts as he came to believe that he was the rabbit Anima who had been kidnapped by their father, and that he had brutally killed his rabbit Anima friends who had come to headquarters long ago looking for him, leaving him unable to forgive himself or his father.

Senya then witnessed Cosim’s memories from after he had been shot by the Primacy sniper, in which he had awoken in the desert with the memories of the rabbit Anima. He then looked to find that a toad floating in a hoversuit was standing over him. The toad, realizing that neither of them could reveal their real names, decided to instead introduce himself by his nickname, the Hand of God, claiming that such a title was no exaggeration after he had managed to single-handedly repair a machine as curious as Cosim. Cosim asked the Hand of God whether he was part of the Primacy, to which the toad replied that he had forged an alliance with them.

(A/N: The Hand of God is a reference to a detail that we learn in the Hotel Arcus side quests, which is that Archelon described the friend who built his robot body as having the “hand of a god”, which is the power to create something that didn’t exist before. Although this is a reference to his friend’s engineering abilities, we later get confirmation that the Hand of God is actually an Ancient God named Gob who escaped the war between the Ancient Gods and the Adversaries by hiding in a pocket dimension. Gob would later return to the outside world to give Rusty the missing screw for Archelon to reconnect with his true body, which is when Darmoor attacks him and steals his power, causing him to form an alliance with the Primacy by offering his pocket dimension as a hideout in exchange for their protection.)

Cosim noted that he and the Primacy were enemies, to which the Hand of God explained that he already knew, and that he had merely been curious about Cosim’s internal structure, which was why he had fixed him. At Cosim’s confusion, the Hand of God clarified that Cosim’s base structure was robotic, yet with mechanical replacements for organic parts, as though they had once been human parts which had been modified into cybernetic equivalents. He explained that though he had come across people who had replaced certain parts with machinery, he had never seen anyone who had been replaced fully into a cyborg, as it didn’t make sense to do so just for the end result to essentially be a robot.

The Hand of God also added that what was more unusual was the fact that Cosim had a tracking chip placed inside of him, much to Cosim’s surprise. Noting that Cosim was from the Angler Company, the Hand of God wondered whether this was how the Company founder treated his creations. However, Cosim angrily refused to believe the Hand of God, claiming that his father had no need to place such a device on him when he trusted him completely. Just as he spoke, however, Cosim suddenly had a recollection of something that his father had said to him long ago after perfecting his heart – that the many failures along the way had still been useful, and that he could see it just by looking at Cosim.

As he thought about it, he began wondering whether his father had meant the words literally, and whether it was possible that he had been implanted with his father’s failed creations, including a failed attempt at the Godsphere heart. Confused and overwhelmed, Cosim began wondering whether he was really the rabbit Anima whom his father had turned into a cyborg, and whether he was originally a human, an Anima, or perhaps just a robot all along. Nevertheless, Cosim began feeling overwhelming anger at his father for what he had done to him, for which he immediately returned back to headquarters and hacked into the system, causing the Angler Company robots to turn on each other and destroy the building.

Back in the present, Senya awoke from seeing Cosim’s memories as Cosim declared that restoration of the heart was complete. Senya then turned to Cosim and told him that there was one thing that she still didn’t understand, as she was confused why their father wanted his failed heart when he already had his perfected heart. Cosim revealed that the reason why their father wanted him was because he had stolen the power source inside the perfected heart and placed it in the failed heart. Senya then asked him why he had chosen to return back to Company headquarters knowing that their father was after him, just as a large rumbling began shaking the room.

Senya asked Cosim whether their father had arrived, to which Cosim shook his head and explained that the Angler Triton failsafe had gone active. He then revealed that the reason why he had returned was to both destroy the power source and their father’s body simultaneously. However, he revealed that he had ultimately failed because he had been unable to separate the power source from his heart, for which he asked Senya to help him by destroying his heart. A shocked Senya refused to do so, lamenting that she couldn’t leave without him. However, Cosim assured her that she had the power to stop their father, as she possessed a human heart. He then made one last request of Senya, which was to ask their father about where he had truly come from, as he wished to know who he had been before their father had experimented upon him.

Cosim then extracted his heart, causing him to switch offline, as Senya ordered her Lab Tech bot to teleport her and Cosim to safety. With the Lab Tech unresponsive, however, Senya lowered her head in resignment as she accepted the heart and promised Cosim that she would learn the truth about his origins. As she placed it inside herself, the enormous anglerfish-shaped Angler Triton robot appeared to destroy her. After a fierce battle, Senya managed to defeat the Angler Triton before escaping the building with the heart. As she sailed across the stormy sea, memories of Cosim flooded into her, just as memories of the rabbit Anima had once flooded into Cosim.

In the memory, Senya witnessed Cosim confronting their father after ordering the Angler Company robots to turn on each other. Their father noted that he seemed to have made a mistake, as Cosim still appeared to have some memories of his old life left. Cosim immediately demanded to know whether the memories that he had seen belonged to him, and whether his father had forced him to kill his friends with his own hands. Cosim’s father laughed as he claimed that Cosim was merely a robot that he had created, adding that it wasn’t in Cosim’s programming to feel anger towards him either. A furious Cosim demanded to know how his father could feel no guilt over his actions, to which his bemused father pointed out that Cosim was the one who had killed his friends himself.

At Cosim’s shocked expression, his father noted that it wasn’t because he had been programmed to follow his orders, but because he had made the choice to do so himself after being asked what he believed to be the right judgement call. He noted that only one rabbit Anima’s sacrifice was needed to complete the Company’s research, and that it was Cosim who had created the needless deaths of all the others, as it had all been his own mechanical decisions. Furious, Cosim unleashed energy attacks at his father, who easily dodged them and noted that he seemed to be behaving irrationally, just like a human.

He then reminded Cosim that it didn’t matter if his main body sustained a small amount of damage, after which he offered to forgive Cosim for damaging the Company if he fixed his actions immediately. Cosim noted that it would be the rational thing to do by begging for forgiveness and fixing his actions, noting that doing so and continuing on with his usual life would be the mechanical thing to do, as only humans would risk their lives in a fight that they knew they couldn’t win. However, he declared that he could no longer live like a machine anymore, as his human heart was starting to come back to life.

At Cosim’s words, his father merely laughed and replied that he was nothing more than a robot with a modified heart, though Cosim retorted that he was different from him. His father admitted that he didn’t want to kill Cosim, claiming that hunting rabbits wasn’t easy, and that he had also poured valuable resources into creating him. As he moved to attack, Cosim noted that he knew that destroying his father’s main body wouldn’t achieve anything, as the Angler Triton failsafe would activate the moment that he tried to take the perfected heart, and that his father’s memory chip and heart would simply be moved into a new body.

Cosim’s father was surprised to learn that Cosim knew about the failsafe protocol, for which he regretted giving Cosim so much oversight on the Company. Just then, Cosim teleported behind his father and used a laser beam to push him away before taking the power source within his perfected heart and escaping. As Cosim fled the exploding Company headquarters, he concluded that he must have once had a human heart, as he would never have been programmed to have the capacity to feel guilt or anger or betrayal if he had only been a machine, making him certain that he must have been the rabbit Anima whom his father had kidnapped.

With those final thoughts of Cosim entering Senya’s mind, however, Senya realized that Cosim’s memories had entered her upon taking in the heart, just as the rabbit Anima’s memories had entered Cosim after he had taken the power source into his failed heart. Because of this, Senya concluded that since the memories flooding into her had belonged to someone else, rather than them being her own repressed memories from when she had been human, it meant that the memories of the rabbit Anima didn’t actually belong to Cosim at all. Though she regretted that Cosim, until his very end, hadn’t been able to learn his true roots, Senya realized that what mattered more wasn’t Cosim learning his roots, but him having the desire to live as a human, whether he was a machine or not.

(A/N: In the end, it’s never explicitly confirmed who the rabbit Anima was that the Company founder kidnapped. However, the most likely theory at the moment is that the rabbit Anima was killed and had his body turned into the robotic Constable that the Company founder uses when he masquerades as ‘Alter’ in Odium. The reasoning behind this theory is that Alter needed an Anima to turn into a Constable in preparation for the day that the path to Odium opens up, allowing him to infiltrate the laboratory and obtain a Godsphere to become an Adversary. Looking closely, the images of the rabbit Anima actually looks very similar to Alter in terms of hair color and style, and even the fact that Alter is a rabbit Anima Constable.

It’s likely that the Company founder transferred his memory chip and heart into Alter after his body was damaged in the explosion that Cosim set off at headquarters, after which he began sending his remaining children on missions to create a new power source after Cosim stole his. The rabbit Anima thing also adds another layer to Cosim’s name in KMS, Lepus, which is the Latin word for ‘hare’. Even though Cosim isn’t the rabbit Anima, his father does make references to ‘catching rabbits’ as a twisted joke about the rabbit Anima that he kidnapped before Cosim, even letting Cosim believe that the memories of that Anima are really his own. The fact that the imitation Godsphere contains the rabbit Anima’s memories might mean that it was the rabbit Anima’s literal heart which was used as the base for the Godsphere, which got passed down to Cosim, and then Senya, as their hearst melded.)