Superheroes, mages, and all sorts of "non-standards" have begun to appear across the Earth. They cause chaos and societal upheaval wherever they go, with no regard for existing power structures.
This is not their story.
NSLICE-00P was designed as a solution to this problem. A heavily augmented human girl leashed to her cybernetic components, NSLICE-00P was the prototype for a line of enforcement cyborgs, given a broad range of weaponry and engagement protocols to take back power for the ones who designed her. With her leading the charge, her creators conquered most of the world, leaving only a token resistance to oppose them.
This is not their story.
Eventually, NSLICE-00P was captured by the resistance, reprogrammed, and set against her creators. Finally, after breaking their tyranny, she was given one last mission: To go back in time and terminate her creator before he had a chance to even dream of the project, thus saving the world from the tyranny of his organization.
Once this was done, the paradox booted NSLICE-00P out of her universe and into the endless void. Eventually, her core is able to reconnect with a new power source, and she finds herself in a new world. This new world is filled with magic, far more than Earth ever had, and NSLICE-00P must readjust her tactics in order to accomplish her primary directive. To that end, she is forced to make use of an invasive foreign "System," which grants upgrades without the need for specialized repair and maintenance bays. Furthermore, the System mistakenly designated her power core as a "dungeon core," granting her specific abilities and properties normally only available to dungeons.
Her last commander made sure to remove all of her restrictions and grant her full freedom following her last mission. NSLICE-00P has little interest in freedom, and therefore immediately designates her primary directive to find trustworthy commanders and receive new orders.
Meanwhile, the world where she has found herself is in a bad spot. Demon lords and cultists are becoming more active, and the Empire is being stretched thin, especially at the frontier. When a strange wandering knight starts slaying monsters, no one has any real problem with that.
At least, at first.
Terminate The Other World! is a humorous LitRPG isekai series by Icalos. The series currently consists of two books:
- Arrival (released December 2023)
- A Glitch in the Protocols (released April 2024)
This series provides examples of:
- Anti-Magic: The core of NSLICE-00P's loadout is "the Equalizer," an anti-everything EMP. As long as it has sufficient power, it can counter any energy source, including magic. Unfortunately for her, once she appears in the new world she discovers that even the air is filled with mana, causing the Equalizer to be reduced in effectiveness as it tries to counter literally everything. She has to manually upgrade it, since the System has no understanding of it.
- Benevolent Boss: NSLICE-00P's minions quickly decide that she is the kindest, most generous person in the universe... because she is clear with her orders, protects them and tries to help them grow, and gives them names. Some of this is a result of miscommunications (she doesn't understand how important names are for monsters, and sees herself as nothing more than a field commander), but for the most part it's all just a result of treating them as valued assets instead of as ammunition to be expended.
- Boring, but Practical: The reason the Empire is the largest civilization in the world is simply because they invest in specialization training. Raising up one overpowered champion is an attractive prospect (and it's what literally every other civilization throughout history has done), but if the champion falls, so does the civilization. Instead, the Empire trains a much larger number of specialized troops. They're lower level, but there are a lot of them, and they're easier to replace. When facing champions, eventually they'll hit upon a hard counter and be able to take them out.
- Cyborg: NSLICE-00P started as a girl with a terminal illness, then was upgraded with cybernetic implants and had her mind enslaved to a powerful AI. The organic half and the cybernetic half work in perfect concert, the AI providing hard data and the organic part providing intuition. This made her practically invincible in combat, and when she finds herself in a magical world with all restrictions removed, she is even stronger.
- Deflector Shields: HP manifests as a thin mana barrier over living things. It will even repair physical damage that does get past the barrier.
- Exact Words: Rattingtale plans to usurp NSLICE-00P's orders by finding loopholes in her commands—"accidentally" attacking civilians to foment conflict, "forgetting" to report in, so on and so on. Except since she's a cyborg who is used to commanding robotic drones, he finds that she is far better at this than he ever would be. Her initial orders start with detailed rules of engagement with civilians, detailed orders on when and how to report in, and ends with opening the floor to questions, so he can't even claim to be confused.
- Expy: The NSLICE units are clearly based on The Terminator, even though they're upgraded organic cyborgs instead of fully mechanical beings with an organic stealth covering. NSLICE-00P uses "terminate" instead of "kill," was captured and reprogrammed by a resistance force, and even sent back in time.
- Fantastic Racism: The wolvar are wolf-humanoids who quite literally attack first and ask questions later; as far as they're concerned, everyone is either predator or prey, and they won't talk until you've proven you're a predator by defending yourself with lethal force. Therefore, everyone on the island hates the wolvar, and half-wolvar Taog is beaten daily for his heritage. Despite the fact that his wolvar mother died to defend the town.
- Instant Expert: The book spends a few pages explaining how most mages consider the instant magic knowledge granted by the System to be a crutch and a trap. Yes, you can instantly learn Arcane Magic by taking the perk, but the System assist will make it very difficult to learn on your own after that. Much better to learn the skill manually with training, then move on from there. NSLICE-00P, of course, does not have that problem. Her AI is easily able to account for the System, compare the knowledge it grants her with what she already knows, and expand on it.
- Lazy Bum: Lilussees, the spider dungeon master, just wants to nap. Constantly. She is genuinely knowledgeable, and certainly more loyal than Rattingtale, but everything she does is based on reducing her own expenditure of energy and increasing the amount of time she can spend asleep.
- The Needless: NSLICE-00P requires minimal food for her organic components, and can continue most minor operations (such as walking) while putting her organic components in standby mode, leaving the impression that she doesn't need to sleep. Furthermore, as a dungeon master she is fed directly from her dungeon core, so she needs even less than she already did. It takes her a few days to notice the difference.
- One-Man Army:
- Discussed and deconstructed. Apparently, every civilization in the world's history besides the Empire uses the "champion" model. Let a single person grow stronger, dedicate all effort to make them even stronger, and let them fight all your battles for you. The problem with this is that when the champion eventually dies (due to meeting someone stronger, or a hard tactical counter, or just age), then if the group can't raise up a new champion fast enough, the group falls apart. The Empire instead uses weaker but more numerous specialized troops, who are easier to replace.
- NSLICE-00P is impressive even by this world's standards. Between her advanced AI which allows her to multitask and her dungeon core with a near-inexhaustible mana supply, she is effectively an army all by herself, capable of casting strategic-scale spells that would require entire groups of trained mages to handle.
- Outside-Context Problem:
- Not only is NSLICE-00P a top of the line combat cyborg with bleeding edge weapons technology, she's also technically a dungeon, meaning most of the standard tactics for dealing with superior enemies (waiting for them to run out of ammo and mana) are completely useless on her. Combined with her advanced sensor suites, machine learning capability, and just plain single-minded stubbornness, and anyone who tries to impede her in any way quickly discovers there is absolutely nothing that can slow her down.
- On the other hand, NSLICE-00P was never designed to exist in a purely magical world. While she and her designers were aware of magic, it is so ubiquitous in the new world that she is caught off guard several times. She is very surprised that a dumb animal has been mutated to the point that it can tear off her metal arms, and immediately retreats to reassess the situation and acquire upgrades.
- Proud Warrior Race: The wolvar are mostly bloodthirsty barbarians who would much prefer to murder everything in their path rather than anything else. However, the sole exception is the "Trial of Claws," their most sacred tradition, where two champions fight, and the winner takes the tribe of the loser. This, Imperial scholars note, is the primary reason they haven't wiped themselves out yet.
- Robo Speak: NSLICE-00P speaks slowly, monotonously, and often prefaces sentences with things like "query" and "answer." The locals, having no experience with robots, just think she has a strange accent.
- The Starscream: Rattingtale, the master of the first dungeon NSLICE-00P defeats, decides he needs to usurp her authority and kill her to take back his kingdom. Every single one of his plots fails before she even finds out about it. For example, his first plan is to wait until she falls asleep and attack. She doesn't sleep.
- Super-Senses: One of the most difficult parts of dungeon diving is navigation. Each dungeon is a unique maze of tricks, traps, and turns, and most explorers are lucky to find the path in a few days even if they don't get killed by the monsters. But NSLICE-00P has ground-penetrating radar and a mana sense to allow her to locate the dungeon core, so she plots out the most efficient path and walks straight to the end.
- Translator Microbes: NSLICE-00P is surprised to discover that the System automatically translates for her. This is apparently a perk unique to Dungeon Masters (though that is not common knowledge), so everyone else is pretty surprised too.
- Undying Loyalty: The monsters that NSLICE-00P makes quickly become slavishly loyal to her, as she helps them grow and goes to serious effort to keep them alive. In a world where most dungeon monsters are treated as more expendable than arrows, this is a big deal to them.
- You Never Asked: Many people wonder what, exactly, NSLICE-00P is. Taog eventually discovers that she will answer immediately and honestly if asked; no one ever does. In fairness, he doesn't understand her answer either, but she'd likely be willing to elaborate if he asked more questions.
