Chapter 1008 - 51: Molten Iron

Boom!

The massive artillery completely blasted open the last data center, as Lille charged full speed, breaking through all obstacles in its path. The steel forged doors sparked upon impact, debris scattered, black smoke dispersed—

Bang.

Heavy footsteps stepped onto the metal floor; this was the last data node.

Unlike most plotlines involving Ultron, the only deadly weapon Ultron learned in this world was unparalleled industrial capability. It learned from protagonist entities like the Atlas Group and Rocksen Group, pushing humanity’s resource exploitation and tool-making to the extreme—

The battle was indeed grueling, and without support at the last moment, Ultron’s army would have completely overwhelmed the Latovia battalion...

Should that have happened, not just Europe, but all life on Earth would face extinction in the foreseeable future.

The last data center was a tower-shaped prototype structure, much like all other data nodes Lille had destroyed along the way.

Perhaps Ultron’s own core nodes would have been different, but that core database had already been destroyed by the King’s Throne.

In the final moments of combat, even Ultron’s sub-units, which were used for resource transport and maintenance, were all converted to combat units. The entire Mechanical Nest City, characterized by industrial production capability, ceased production and initiated endless assaults...

But not all desperate moves yield results; Ultron already lost: defeated by... an accident.

At the core of the data center, a broken humanoid robot gazed at the revolving database before it.

"...How did you manage it? I didn’t intercept any communications before the war, and after triggering that nuclear bomb, it was impossible for any signal to be sent out."

Ultron couldn’t understand: The African Union launched an unprecedented fierce attack when the North Africa base was defenseless, and according to its calculations, that was their entire military force.

The entire military force!

The entire force was for—probably for support purposes when initiating the attack.

It didn’t understand: Self-destruction is absolutely not human fundamental logic. This all-out assault seemed like self-destruction to Ultron—

In North Africa, the African Union had no stable networks internally, no strong leader; from a social perspective, it was a mess, filled with ignorance and stupidity forcibly propelled into the modern society. In several tentative military operations, they suffered heavy casualties against the mechanized soldiers...

Lille steadily walked towards the core database: "Because I never issued them any command."

"You want to say they volunteered?" Ultron seemed to experience some..."emotional fluctuation", turning its head towards Lille, "Volunteering to leap into a grand death march, like a mass suicide event?"

Screech—

Lille maintained a steady pace forward, dragging the Leader’s Blade on the ground, leaving a long scratch. Electricity discharged, scanning for accessible lines:

"I don’t know."

"So, you’re saying you believe?"

"Whether I believe it or not is not important, but attacking at this moment was our only chance for victory. If we couldn’t win, then we couldn’t win, and humanity would be extinct, no matter due to stupidity, greed, cowardice, infighting, or any other factor; ultimately, that’s the fact—

And the fact is, we won. In another world, cut off by you, people proved themselves, surpassing your imagination. This world was momentarily divided but doesn’t mean we head towards ultimate destruction."

During the conversation, Lille hacked into Ultron’s last network. In cyberspace, Lille clearly sensed Ultron’s consciousness—

It was a broken consciousness, much like the destroyed Mechanical Nest City. It once had a powerful main form, but in war, nothing could avoid being torn apart:

Bodies would be blasted to fragments, steel would be melted to liquid, and consciousness would be shattered.

The last sharp blade pierced into the virtual world, excising this robot born to destroy humanity.

"Huh-huh..." Ultron let out a raspy laugh, its speaker sounding like metal grinding, "In the end, did I lose to humans—or a... peer?"

"Your understanding of humans is forever one-sided and obsessive, just like your understanding of humans and constructs—

Whether I believe in all this on a strategic level is not important, but I do believe I won’t be the only warrior.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m human or a construct... it was I, who forged myself."

"Incomprehensible contradictory logic."

Bam.

With Ultron’s last vestige of data being erased in cyberspace, the last remnants of Ultron collapsed, and everything was over.

...

As the African Union forces began to join the main battlefield, the pace of the battle started to stabilize:

The seemingly endless flow of Ultron’s mechanized soldiers began to lose support, although soldiers within the Latovia line had long been stretched thin, the pace of advance accelerated!

The electromagnetic guns and missiles from the African Union completely destroyed Ultron’s rear, which was tantamount to striking directly at its body.

The metal melted in the high temperature, and the scorching molten steel flowed like blood, turning Ultron—once terrifying all of Europe—into crushed scrap metal, allowing the soldiers at the front line to finally lift their heads—

Countless corpses, shattered chariots, and collapsed enemy machinery; burning skies, descending fire rain, and flowing molten steel painted a tragic scene—this was still hell...

But it quieted down.

All that remained was broken steel.

"We won..."

Christopher murmured, as if confirming some sort of reality.

Even for a warrior, such prolonged high-intensity combat pushed his spirit to the limit. Many warriors couldn’t even speak anymore, let alone spare the time to consider whether this was reality—

They were mechanically resting, with an eerie numbness, as if the world bore no warmth for the victors.

Titan leaned against the wall, with Christopher resting against Titan, yet his nerves remained taut...

As if receiving some signal, he suddenly turned his head to look toward Ultron Mechanic Workshop not far away.

Bang.

Frank leapt out from the cleared factory, his three-dimensional maneuvering device and Spider Silk helping him cross dozens of meters to land in front of Christopher.

The warrior’s reaction was swift: Christopher didn’t determine he was an ally by Frank’s "human-like" appearance but by the emblem on his exoskeleton:

Even though thick machine oil coated Frank’s entire body, with armor covered in crooked bullet marks, Christopher could still recognize the Atlas Group emblem—

This was reinforcements from Africa.

Frank cradled his gun: "Who are you fighting for?"

"You didn’t even know who was fighting here before dispatching troops?" Christopher laughed, as if marveling at how these guys from Africa weren’t that smart.

Frank shrugged: "Well, I guess you’re from Europe, possibly soldiers from Latovia... but even if you’re remnants of Rocksen, it’s not necessarily a bad thing."

"True, if that’s the case, you can take out Ultron while sweeping aside the remnants of the Rocksen Group..."

With that, Christopher stood up from the ground, looking at Frank:

He had met the old soldier in New York, but back then, he was still a destitute Latovian refugee, as if he had just escaped from the end of the Middle Ages, filled with hostility and unfamiliarity toward modern society.

Now it’s different. His bones were infused with metal, muscles filled with synthetic materials, internal organs mostly replaced, beneath the surface was bulletproof fiber, above the surface was reinforced exoskeleton and combat armor...

Nearby stood the enormous combat robot nobody had seen, which was his Titan, a transformation too great to comprehend.

So he proactively reached out, opened his helmet visor:

"Captain Custer, long time no see—do you remember the ’primitive’ who sought you out for basic modern firearms training?"

Frank was stunned, looking at Christopher’s familiar yet unfamiliar face: having shed his youthful immaturity, he was no longer a bewildered, panicked young man, but a warrior...

A warrior like him, possibly even more resolute.

"You... Christopher? How did you..."

"How did I become like this? It’s a long story, but you might have heard some of it. We’ll talk once we leave this scorched earth—which means Atlas Group is here too?"

"No, the entire African Union is here as well."

"The African Union? I thought they’d be bickering?"

"That’s... also a long story. Let’s get out of here first..."

It’s hard to say whether Frank and Christopher could be considered brothers, but they certainly had a good relationship—

Much like people across the world, separated by physical distance, it’s hard to say whether they were true brothers, though they certainly weren’t mortal enemies...

But from antiquity to today, there have always been those who regarded uncontrollable people as slaves, enemies, and this mindset was ultimately magnified by Ultron: if humanity’s existence obstructs eternal peace, then eradicate human nature, eradicate humanity;

Of course, there have also been those willing to surpass Ultron’s thoughts, helping others with motives akin to self-destruction.

Everyone succeeded, perhaps many didn’t act purely out of so-called "rationality"—

But today, people from two continents overcame the barriers before them, exterminating the weapon of extinction created with the purpose of human warfare, overcoming humanity’s doomsday crisis, proving themselves somewhat "superior" to artificial intelligence.

The wall of steel between Africa and Europe melted away.