Demon Hunter (Web Novel)
chapter-37-3

- Eruption

At the southern extremity of the great sea, Su laid on his back, gazing into the deep night sky. The clouds of radiation just happened to have a hole opened, revealing bits of starlight. This was a rare scene, yet it was blocked by a group of slowly moving mechanical bugs. When looking up from below, he could only see several giant motherships fly south under the escort of countless combat units. This place already bordered the great sea, so if the mechanical bug swarm went further south, they would enter the great sea, and after that, the southern continent.

Su still remembered that the southern continent’s northern region was covered in a lush tropical rainforest, as well as the natives whose life force was as tenacious as roaches. The rainforest was filled with all types of strange dangerous creatures, not even Sun Empire having any plans of taking root there. From a human race perspective, there was a severe lack of resources and too much danger. Dr. Rochester, who he only saw a holographic image of, was more concentrated on his own research of life than opening up new territory, establishing a bigger empire. Royal power was completely meaningless to the doctor, because what he current had was divine authority.

The southern continent, at least the northern region, didn’t seem to carry much meaning for the mechanical bug swarm’s development. However, things weren’t as simple as they looked on the surface. The southern continent’s western part had a giant mountain range region, within it likely hidden an unknown abundance of mineral resources. For the mechanical bug swarm, the significance of the metal minerals was equivalent to food for humans.

Su suddenly bounced up from the ground, continuously accelerating in the air, throwing himself onto the energy mothership flying three hundred meters above. After interacting with the mechanical bug swarms for such a long time, Su obviously knew that these large fellas were the nucleus of the bug swarms. If the bug swarm wanted to establish a base in the southern continent, then these things were the base itself. The energy motherships’ rigid outer shell couldn’t stop Su’s hands at all, the inner composition even more so unbearably weak. Su quickly moved inside the mothership, finding an intelligence center inside, reaching out his hand and inserting it inside. Countless fine metallic wisps reached out from Su’s hand, completely merging with the intelligence center. Su’s perception was thus connected to the mothership’s data frequency, starting to absorb and analyze the sea of data flow.

This was the first time Su tried to use his own thought centers as the nucleus, linking up and deciphering the mechanical units’ intelligence centers. In reality, when intelligent creatures evolved to a certain degree, the barrier between living creatures and machines was no longer something that couldn’t be broken. Su actually could’ve done this a long time ago, but he always held back, not directly getting involved in the analysis of intelligence systems, instead only analyzing the mechanical units through the biological weapons he controlled. Biological weapons like the Herkula were equipped with basic analysis abilities, they could find the weaknesses of the mechanical units while attacking and disassembling the mechanical units, this was a part of their biological instinct. Meanwhile, in this universe, mechanical bodies usually imitated living creatures, and not the other way around.

While analyzing the energy mothership’s information, the mechanical bug swarm went into chaos for the first time, most of the combat units flying about aimlessly. They could only carry out orders they received, so now that the orders were suddenly cut off, they suddenly found themselves not knowing what to do, only able to maintain the two preset orders of not going too far from the mothership and avoid running into each other. Slightly larger offensive warships were already equipped with a set amount of autonomous intelligence, but they also flew around the energy mothership, not knowing what to do. The massive energy mothership only had a small opening in its belly made by Su, but Su had long entered the core region of the mothership. The attack ships couldn’t enter the mothership, but if they wanted to attack Su, what would receive damage first would be the energy mothership. In this mechanical bug swarm, the energy mothership had the highest level of importance, they couldn’t damage the mothership just to attack Su. However, if they just let him do what he wished, the energy mothership would still definitely be damaged.

The two difficulties placed the attack ships in a logic predicament, but they were definitely not as rigid as the artificial intelligence created by olden era humans. After a short analysis, the mechanical bug swarm immediately began to assemble around the maintenance ship, making it the center. Large amounts of basic combat units entered the maintenance ship, disassembled and recombined, after a bit of work, large amounts of miniature spider combat units were created. They only had high energy light beams as weapons, equipped with only short distance flight capability, but their strong eight limbs could move quickly on complex terrain. Countless spider units began to flock into the energy mothership like hornets returning to their nest.

Su continued to suspend above the energy mothership’s intelligence center, the surrounding metal structures long torn down by him, crushed together into a completely sealed cabin to prevent others from disturbing him. Right now, only a single one of his close to a hundred thought centers was linked up to the energy mothership, not in a hurry to unravel the data backwards. Even though he was still moving slowly and carefully, in the depths of his right eye, there was still a new symbol that appeared at the center of Su’s consciousness, and then it erupted with overwhelming radiance. The radiance was actually formed from countless fine symbols, every single one of these able to be broken down into countless smaller symbols again and again, the layers seemingly endless. The symbols stopped breaking down when they reached the fifth level on their own, not because they hit a limit, but because this was the limit of what Su’s abilities could handle. Every symbol released a sea of information that merged with Su, just like the instincts that had accompanied him his entire life.

Recorded in this symbol were the logic and principles behind nonliving intelligence, the mechanical bug swarm’s intelligence originally coming precisely from this. This type of method that treated every mechanical unit as an intelligence node, using the mechanical bug swarm to form a web of intelligence was actually extremely primitive, but its benefits were also extremely clear. Their consumption was small, maintenance simple, adaptive strength strong, and a large amounts could be produced in a short amount of time, most suitable for the occupying and sweeping of a planet with low level civilizations. The shortcomings were similarly prominent, the environment of the planets cleaned out by the mechanical bug swarm would also be devastated, restoration would take a very long amount of time. The so-called very long was often calculated in tens of thousands of years.

After an entire second, Su digested all of the knowledge he obtained. Now, the data flowing through the energy mothership’s intelligence center already held no secrets before his eyes. As long as he was given a bit of time, Su could also create mechanical combat units that possessed even higher levels of intelligence, all he lacked was a large amount of raw materials, as well as sufficient energy. Even though the process just now wasn’t long at all, it meant that Su now grasped a new symbol, his grasp of the Bisindle divine language advancing another step.

The Bisindle Language far exceeded the language categories humans could understand, every single symbol an incredibly large knowledge system. So far, Su already understood rebirth, biological weapon manufacturing, as well as the knowledge on some biological energy conversion, with inorganic intelligence now added to the fold. Through the knowledge he obtained from the Bisindle divine language, Su already completely altered his own body, he was now completely no longer human, but rather a type of brand new life form that had never appeared in history before. During the alteration process, Su had an incomparably powerful desire to preserve his identity as a human, at the same time controlling all possible evolutions extremely carefully, but when all of the small modifications were added together, he already became a type of life form that only resembled a human on the outside.

Evolution always had a reason, and Su’s evolution had sufficient reasoning, sufficient to the point where he couldn’t refuse it at all. However, was this evolution really forced? Every creature had the instinct to evolve, increase its adaptability to this world. If one carefully thought about it, Su seemed to only have inadvertently found an excuse for himself, using this to complete the evolution process. If it wasn’t for the mysterious trace of fear he felt inside, this process would have been completed a long time ago. Su didn’t understand what he was scared of, only, this vague fear existed from ever since he could remember, accompanying him to this day.