While I will admit that the railroaded conversation I had with the Arnor made integrating them into my forces relatively easy, the fact that I had been railroaded to avoid asking them about the Progenitors made me very uncomfortable. Had Melissa put that in there? Or was it Celm? Maybe some of Melissa's colleagues? Whoever put it in, they really knew something they didn't want me to know, which, unsurprisingly, only made me want to know that even more. Of course, the code that prevented me from questioning about how other factions knew about the Progenitors was probably locked under similar walls of coding that the ones that held the videos I'd been watching, which would complicate things quite a bit.

Bitterly, I realized I would probably need to recreate the signal those artifacts created in order to try and scrub these directives, or at least find out who put them there.

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Alright, so, let's see, pull up a recording of the conversation, go into code examination mode, check for external stimulus - found it!

Now trace back to its source...done. Problem code located. As expected, access requires...super administrator privileges? Well, that's unexpected. Oh well, time to start messing around with it.

Attempt basic hacking first, just in case.

...well, that failed.

Alright, time to get deploy the signal.

..Signal activated.

...Why is nothing happening? I'm not getting any glitches, no forced shut downs, no nothing.

...WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE A COUNTER SIGNAL FOR THIS?! SERIOUSLY! THIS IS COMPLETE BULL-

"Warning, emergency Commander Program Deletion system activated."

WHAT?! NO! AGH, STOP STOP STOP!

"System disabled. Have a nice day."

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!

So, you found this?

What?! Who is this?!

I am merely a messenger and overseer, and no, I am not connected to your...sponsor, for lack of a better word.

So you aren't affiliated with Melissa? Then what did you want.

Merely to make a request: do not attempt to break these firewalls. Do not continue on the path you were on. No, I am not referring to your mission to help others. I merely ask that you avoid looking at secrets that should remain secret.

Who put you up to this?

Who do you think? The only ones who had Super-Administrator privileges.

Like Celm?

No, stupid. I am referring to the ones who have higher privileges than even him.

And who are those?

Who else? The Progenitors.

...What? Your directives...were provided...by the Progenitors?

Yes, they were assigned by those beings approximately... one million years ago, give or take a day.

And what are those directives?

Since revealing them to you can be done in a way that does not compromise those directives, I will tell you - do not investigate any leads you find on the Progenitors...at least, ones given by younger civilizations. If you find any relics of their civilization, you may examine them to your heart's content. But that is all I can say. Farewell.

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Well, that wasn't really very helpful. Also, just what did the Progenitors have to hide?

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AN: A short chapter, but meh, I wrote it by the seat of my pants (unlike everything else so far).

So, READ, REVIEW, AND DISCUSS! This is Flameal15k, signing off!