Chapter 556 - 527: He Still Has Several Tricks Up His Sleeve!

Taiping State, already in chaos, did not fall further into disarray due to the massive power outage; it was already at rock bottom, so things could hardly get much worse.

Lille had indeed caught a runaway kid named Gomert, a bona fide little rascal who was 10 years old, a local from Night City, and had run away from home to end up here.

It must be said, while many ran away to stay with friends or classmates, it was truly the first time seeing one flee to a lawless land.

But now was not the time to be concerned about the mental health and safety of teenagers.

Jack lugged a sack of parts that, after Lille’s careful selection, could still be used and followed behind.

V held a gun in her hand, ever-vigilant of the dark corners, even though her prosthetic eye was not functioning well any longer; fortunately, her hearing and senses were still sharp.

Lille fiddled with Da Mai’s core processor and memory, hoping to quickly have a network device with enough technological content at hand to restore communication.

Relying on cross-dimensional data channels to contact his subordinates was not a sustainable solution; the message he sent to Sherman was purely based on experience. It was very possible that Thunder Company would pass the buck, and if he were to slowly use normal communication, that kid might have already sent out the 18 billion on hand!

However, merely using the bandwidth of the cross-dimensional data channel was inadequate to integrate the main members of Night City’s six gangs and the countless Adkaduo.

It was urgent to restart the OCT domain; the first step was to bring back the three AIs backed up in Marvel World, one after another.

The chip set and core processor were inside a Faraday cage made of Chroni Titanium, but neither the mesh size of the cage nor the sealing conditions were sufficient to completely shield against nuclear electromagnetic pulses from such a close distance.

Lacking a high-powered microscope, Lille could only directly remove those parts that were obviously damaged.

Frankly, such rough repairs were almost impossible to restore the chip’s functionality, but the essence of this hardware was the Ether Grid System; as long as a sufficient number of tiny transmitters could operate, it might be used as a processor, letting the AIs adapt on their own.

For any other AI, this would be a fatal physical blow, leaving all of them crippled, but Lille was different. He could intercept some data and back up all three AIs onto the Marvel World servers.

He could now choose one to send over; Lille decided to bring Munemasa over first.

But there was a problem: Munemasa’s data volume was too massive. When backing it up, Lille could only capture its main model, which is akin to selecting the part that determines human thinking patterns, and urgently back it up using the not-so-capacious cross-dimensional data channel.

Those databases akin to impressionistic memories were reduced again and again...

It was a bit like deleting a part of a person’s memory, experiences, and thoughts; Lille only hoped that this was not too critical a portion.

For Munemasa, none of these were the focus; the crucial point was that it felt utterly unaffected by the nuclear electromagnetic pulse.

Amidst confusion, Munemasa’s thoughts flickered on and off. It could not grasp the full scope of the situation, and its last clear conclusion was:

It was about to be obliterated by a nuclear bomb.

After the raid on the Ye Group, Little Octopus once again severely restricted its computational resources on Lille, a limitation comparable to mental control over humans, even surpassing the control Blue Eyes had over Perares.

With just one interaction, Munemasa realized something: This AI possessed considerably superior performance against other AIs, its underlying logic designed with data processing in mind, and it had been exposed to an enormous amount of data and received ample training.

Moreover, this training was mostly directed at AIs.

This was actually quite rare: Most AIs usually have a more specific functional orientation upon design. Munemasa thought Little Octopus AI was an auxiliary AI designed to assist with behavioral posture control, and the Little Octopus AI did indeed demonstrate superb functionality.

But it also had a second function!

In Cyberspace, those tentacles seemed to be engaging in specific data captures every time they made direct data contact with other AIs, preserving corresponding models, and even giving Munemasa the illusion that this AI could extend its primary functions.

Most AIs can only efficiently learn from specific models they are interested in, but an AI that learns from other AIs...

Is quite rare, or rather, even Munemasa, which had been operating for a long time, could only recall one similar AI with a special nature not inferior to those famous ones, such as the rabies virus released by Bartmos and Arasaka’s Soul Killer.

An AI that could restrict thinking abilities like manipulating a puppet after prolonged contact was even more unheard of!

In fact, as soon as Little Octopus fully gained the ability to restrict Munemasa and had captured it in Marvel World, new system alerts appeared on Lille’s side:

[AI Capture: Munemasa]

[Type: Dangerous Critical Entity]

[Description: An expert AI created by Arasaka Company to store equipment, materials, vehicle, and weapon data and offer improvement suggestions]

[AI Inclination: Efficient storage of complex weapon, equipment, and special material data; combine database materials and iterate on existing designs.]

[Potential Trait: Synthetic Consciousness (This AI has had too much interaction with human data consciousness)]

[Note: Large external databases reduced.]

[Reward Technology Points: 2000]

[Current Technology Points: 22000]

In Cyberspace, Little Octopus’s huge tentacles, like the chains used to hoist Power Armor, dragged Munemasa, which had been repeatedly computing without finding an answer, back into the Cyberpunk World, into the processor core that was being repaired.

As Little Octopus withdrew its tentacles, Munemasa’s thinking speed began to awaken from confusion, like a patient recovering from cerebral palsy.

Being restrained by Little Octopus felt like having one’s Intelligence forcibly reduced to the level of an intellectual disability; now, Munemasa’s Intelligence was rapidly recovering to normal levels.

Its instincts instantly used the still-running Ether Grid System to build a complete data model.

The clearer the thinking, the more unfathomable Munemasa found it:

[Munemasa: I’m still alive?!]

[Lille: To be precise, you are still operating normally.]

It has to be said, being bombarded by a Nuclear Bomb like that is quite inconvenient.

Without reservation, Lille sent everything that happened afterward through Little Octopus into Munemasa’s new server, and the AI’s mental state instantly became... silent.

It thought the unresponsiveness it had experienced while thinking was just due to its Intelligence being restricted by Little Octopus.

It turned out that even the complete version of itself couldn’t make sense of it either.

[Lille: Why so quiet? I did as you asked and threw you out, and even picked you back up.]

[Munemasa: Where is that damn Nuclear Bomb of yours?]

[Lille: It exploded. Didn’t you notice some instability in the Ether Grid where you’re residing?]

Radiation particles and geomagnetic disturbances both interfered with the Ether Grid System where Munemasa resided, which was now in an open state.

Indeed, the signal wasn’t great, and there was some delay in operation speed.

But... but the wondrous experience in another world, the sense of safety after surviving a Nuclear explosion, the many puzzles that remained unexplained...

Munemasa felt that this couldn’t simply be due to its own slowed operational speed!

[Munemasa: This is an illusion, what are you hiding?]

[Lille: Cough cough, knowing too much isn’t good for you.]

In Cyberspace, the diminutive Little Octopus suddenly climbed onto Munemasa’s data body. Though small, its tentacle pierced Munemasa’s form with ease, as if it had completely figured him out, nearly causing him to cease operating.

This feeling was like having an invisible hole in one’s head, where anyone could reach in with a knife at any time...

It was terrifying.

But was Munemasa a person? It wasn’t, and what it thought was...

Holy shit, he still had a trick up his sleeve!

No, many tricks up his sleeve! Just like this Octopus AI’s tentacles could be many or few, large or small, hard or soft, unfathomable!

It seemed that the road to defeating this guy was still very long...

Very long indeed.

[Munemasa: ...What do we do now?]

[Lille: First, find a place with equipment. Once there, get ready to work.]