As fire and explosions came from the distance, Booker stopped in his tracks.
"What happened over there?"
He looked in that direction and frowned.
Nothing happened, it was just a depth 4 adjuster fighting a malicious program marked as a high threat.
Looking at the two red dots intertwined on the activity map, Jiang Zhou thought to himself.
It's a pity that he couldn't tell Booker this information.
"Want to take a look?"
So, he asked.
Booker hesitated for a while, watching the continuous explosions and roars getting farther and farther away from their destination, and finally he said:
"Forget it... let's give priority to our goal this time."
Malicious programs have virus-like properties. In the abyss and dark web, different malicious programs corrode each other, and it is not unusual for them to upgrade and iterate themselves.
Since they have more important goals at the moment, there is really no need to get involved.
At this moment, there was another burst of explosions, and the violent shock wave caused the windows around them to shatter. At the same time, a stream of blazing white ions that looked like dragon's breath suddenly lit up in the distance. It is like a paintbrush soaked in paint, painting a flowing bright red trace on the buildings along the way.
Is this the strength of Depth 4?
Seeing the devastating destructive power, Jiang Zhou couldn't help but take a breath in his heart.
Originally, he had already estimated in a more outrageous direction, but he still did not expect that the opponent's strength was even more terrifying than his worst imagination.
Although I have heard that the Cerberus Path is an adjustment direction for the specialized type of heavy firepower annihilation warfare, but the expressiveness is really too exaggerated...
Also, Wutou-23's three-meter-tall figure is indeed tall and powerful compared to humans. But as a war weapon, its load is not necessarily very large... So, how did the opponent pack such strong firepower into it?
Forget it, it’s better not to try to understand it based on your common sense from a hundred years ago.
After all, it is darknet technology...
Without continuing to dwell on this issue, Jiang Zhou immediately suggested:
"Then how about we go around that way?"
With the destructive power displayed by the opponent, it would be better to stay as far away as possible.
"good idea."
Booker, who was also a little frightened, nodded.
Immediately, the two of them bypassed the two streets in a tacit agreement and followed a more tortuous but safer route to the "Theseus Warehouse".
On the way, Jiang Zhou looked back at the battlefield not far away again.
On the activity map, the road leading to Theseus's warehouse is now clear - the previously marked "high threat" malicious program has been completely contained by Aconitum-23.
Mr. Wutou-23, thank you very much.
He thanked the distance sincerely.
…………
The hot wind blew with the smell of burning metal. Wutou-23 tore off a piece of completely damaged armor from his shoulders and threw it onto the road that was still glowing with dark red flames like charcoal.
"What the hell is this?"
Looking at the wreckage not far away that was shattered like glass, Wutou-23 couldn't help but curse.
In the end, he succeeded in smashing the "Crystal Celestial Globe" to pieces.
However, he also paid a high price for this - some prices that he should never pay in the depth 2 position.
The damage rate of its own body structure reaches 28%. Even if all redundant parts are used for repair, many functions of the body will still be offline in the end.
For example, the damage to the vector jet behind him caused him to lose his supersonic maneuverability...
In addition, only 30% of the fuel in the reactor heart is left. And because the heat dissipation circulation device was damaged, the maximum output also dropped by more than 50%.
As for the live ammunition weapons that were fully loaded before... now only less than 10% are left.
Even the most optimistic estimate shows that his current combat effectiveness is less than one-third of what he was at his peak.
Are you still in the position of depth 2, doing abuse at public expense?
After assessing his own damage, Wutou-23 couldn't help but wonder.
It's not just these consumptions - in the previous battle with that guy, if he hadn't realized something was wrong in the end, he would have directly used the stored live ammunition weapons to perform a stock-clearing saturation attack. Maybe, he is the one who falls here now.
Could it be that the other party is a malicious program that has risen to depth 2 from a deeper position?
With this in mind, Wutou-23 approached the pile of broken wreckage and picked up the technological blueprint that the other party had dropped.
After all, after being destroyed, the other party, a malicious program that can fight with me back and forth, can at least get some good printing permissions, right?
With this in mind, he clicked on the blueprint and automatically compared it with the database in the brain-computer interface.
this……
After comparing the database, the six infrared cameras under Wutou-23's visor flashed a series of violent light and dark flashes - after abandoning his original face, the adjuster of Cerberus's path, Infrared cameras are often used to make expressions on their own behalf.
The constant flickering of light and dark usually means confusion and shock.
The thing that I couldn't defeat without using all my strength was actually just a level 2 malicious program?
This is judged by the level of the technology blueprint dropped by the opponent - the level of that set of technology blueprint is depth 2.
Upgrade Path·Theseus, a full set of adjustment permissions for Depth 2.
For a moment, Wutou-23 seemed to realize something, and all six "eyes" of Wutou-23 "squinted".
After storing the data ball into his own memory, the red lines on his body lit up again.
Floating in mid-air, Wutou-23 flew back in the direction it came from before.
…………
"What do you know about the Theseus shipment?"
Booker asked as he walked into the warehouse and looked up at the complex three-dimensional structure like a honeycomb.
"It's a great place to set up all kinds of ambushes."
Jiang Zhou answered briefly.
Understanding what Liao Qi was referring to, Booker couldn't help but smile bitterly.
Immediately, he turned to look at the long-legged transport structure lying on the "honeycomb", shaped like a stick insect, and then said:
"Theseus Freight has no human employees. All the company's business is completely run by AI. However, it is said that there is a human shareholder whose true identity is still unknown... 90% of the world's inter-regional transportation business has been controlled by Neptune. At a time when transportation is a monopoly, it is the only company that does not rely on Poseidon’s authority to carry out freight business.”
In this era, transportation problems between various human gathering points have always been an extremely troublesome matter.
It’s troublesome on land, sea and air.
On land, 70% of the land is polluted into dangerous bad soil. It is filled with radiation, epidemics, and monsters that have fallen into the uncanny valley of the mind. Most of the resettlement areas have abolished the death penalty, so the maximum punishment for people with dementia is exile. Over time, the bad soil has formed an extremely dangerous environment. ecology.
Therefore, without strong force to protect them, ordinary people who try to cross the bad land will only narrowly escape death.
As for the sky and the sea, predatory drones and autonomous torpedoes, which are automatic replicators of Neumann machines, block them. This is one of the natural disasters that pours into the base reality from the abyssal dark web. Their numbers are overwhelming and they upgrade themselves every once in a while.
Even if you pay a great price and try to completely exterminate them, in the end as long as there is a slight omission, they will still become numerous again.
Fortunately, these autonomous machines will migrate periodically like migratory birds or schools of fish.
The Neptune Transportation Group is the only god who has mastered their "migration" laws. Also relying on this power, the god with the trident as his logo controls almost all channels in the sky and ocean.
Even other Olympus gods need to purchase navigation services in the sky and ocean from Neptune Transportation if they do not want to travel through dangerous bad lands or use expensive rail transportation.
But according to Booker, Theseus Freight, which is completely operated by AI, does not need navigation services at all. Because when they are transporting across regions, those predatory drones and autonomous torpedoes will never attack the planes and ships carrying Theseus cargo - this may be because there is something between AI that humans cannot understand. comminicate.
In short, if Theseus Freight Company had not set the upper limit of its operations when it was first established, the poor transportation capacity would not be able to undertake the bulk commodity transportation business. I'm afraid that the Neptune Transportation Group, as an Olympus god, has long regarded it as a thorn in its side and a thorn in its flesh, and it wants to get rid of it immediately.
Now that it has lost less than half of its market because of this, Neptune can still remain calm.
"In addition to this, Theseus Freight also provides storage business, or to put it another way - burial business. Such as radioactive waste, crazy constructs, friends who were accidentally torn into pieces by themselves while drunk, etc. … When people want to get rid of something they can’t get rid of themselves, they turn to Theseus Freight to buy storage business and then intentionally overdue it.”
Booker continued while looking around.
Because Theseus Freight is completely operated by AI, its behavior will be very serious and brainless in some aspects. For example, if customers store items overdue, after many reminders that the renewal is invalid, they will be destroyed in a centralized manner, and destroyed very cleanly - so many gangs like to give some corpses that are difficult to dispose of, or other things that need to be disposed of. Handle short-term storage business.
"So, do you think that the multi-purpose printer may have also been handled for storage?"
Jiang Zhou asked.
Booker nodded.
"But when the coalition government staff hid the multi-purpose printer, this warehouse must not have been built yet, right?"
Jiang Zhou questioned this.
In other words, the original circulation equipment should not even be dismantled at that time.
"But back then, Theseus Cargo had already announced its plan to enter the Nord settlement area. If I were one of those government employees, when there are not many people around who can be trusted, I would probably rather deliver the multi-purpose printer to AI.”
First send them out of the resettlement area through their logistics network, and then send them back for storage after their warehouse is built.
"Then haven't you come here to look for me before?"
Jiang Zhou asked doubtfully.
"I have been here before, but found nothing... After all, AI will not break the established principles. You cannot use threats or bribes to obtain the required information from an AI. And if you directly conduct a forcible search, what if you are not there? Here, the bridge is getting bigger."
Besides, they may not be able to defeat the defense system here.
By acting in such a public way, I'm afraid even the information about the multi-purpose printer will be exposed.
"But it's different now."
As Booker spoke, the Aegis module on his body began to transform, and his voice also had reverberation.
"This is the embodiment of Theseus' freight warehouse database, a projection of the base reality...Here, we can safely use violence to obtain the information we want."
(End of chapter)
