Chapter 403: Magic Chip

The moment the two megaton-class nuclear bombs exploded, Murphy's tense nerves finally relaxed a little.

The center of a nuclear explosion can generate temperatures of tens of millions of degrees. Any substance at such a temperature would only turn into a bowl of particle soup.

Even if a god truly had an indestructible body, as long as it still relied on a material basis to exist, it would die all the same.

Ten minutes later, the radiation at the explosion point dropped to a level that did not affect magic detection.

The results were analyzed immediately. The nuclear explosion completely destroyed several nearby magic satellites, and dozens of innocent ordinary satellites were also within the electromagnetic pulse influence range of the nuclear explosion, thus being destroyed.

But there was no longer any magic signal response at the original location.

The power of a nuclear explosion in space is much smaller than on the ground because there is no air in space, so it cannot produce a destructive shockwave. Relying only on thermal radiation, the lethal radius is very limited. But Murphy was originally hitting an individual target, so a small influence range actually met his requirements better.

This was also one of the reasons why he used the Avada Cannon to confine the opponent in space.

He searched again with the Eye of Odin's perception, and then conducted dozens of scans of the globe through the remaining Starlink system, but found no high-energy magic reactions.

The nuclear explosion left almost no wreckage, but Murphy still searched the explosion point himself, only to find nothing, which finally made him breathe a sigh of relief.

That god should be dead.

That guy seemed to call himself "Tyr"?

The Norse God of War?

Come to think of it, bombing someone repeatedly without even letting them finish a sentence did seem a bit unreasonable, but that was also because the opponent's behavior had stimulated Murphy's vigilance too much.

He had long since preset gods as enemies in his heart, and terrifying enemies with extremely high danger and threat levels at that.

From the moment the lunar landing module lost signal, he had already viewed the entire event as an invasion and attack by the enemy, and his vigilance was instantly maxed out.

If Tyr had truly appeared openly and shown an attitude of dialogue, Murphy might have considered a more gentle way of handling it. But his extremely cautious and covert style of conduct was too much like a terrorist sneaking into an enemy country to launch an attack.

This made Murphy immediately assess the opponent's hostility as the highest level.

This was equivalent to knowing from the start that the opponent had a nuclear bomb, and now you were also convinced that the opponent was full of hostility toward you and was preparing to detonate the nuclear bomb in your capital.

There was no need to think about how to handle it; just use every means to kill the opponent first.

However, while a nuclear bomb to the face was indeed safe, it would also bring huge trouble.

Those two intercontinental ballistic missiles could be seen by any country with even a little detection capability, and the satellites destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse were shared by all; every country had a stake in it.

Almost at the same time as the nuclear explosion, countries around the world were about to explode. Especially since the missiles were launched from within the Soviet Union, the Americans had likely already invited their president into a bunker and were ready to press the nuclear button at any time.

But that was something Valery and the others would have to worry about.

Murphy, on the other hand, turned his gaze back to the moon, feeling a bit troubled about how to handle the far side of the moon.

At first, he had thought that if there were gods on the moon, he would just throw a few Tsar Bombas over, but this invasion event made him realize something else.

Clearly, the gods on the moon were alive.

But strangely, they had never tried to return from the moon.

Judging from Tyr's impatient posture, clearly, they didn't think the moon was peaceful and weren't unwilling to return.

On the contrary, in order to return to Earth, they could even spare no cost; they looked extremely impatient and determined.

And in the battle just now, Tyr demonstrated the ability to withstand the ultra-low temperature environment of space. Even when he was hit by Avada several times and riddled with holes by satellite fragments, he didn't die. His vitality was terrifyingly tenacious, almost like immortality.

Moreover, he returned from the moon to the surface in just two days, which shows that gods have the ability to perform ultra-long-distance travel across the Earth-Moon gap.

Of course, this might have involved the landing module and the orbital module, but the landing module had no fuel left, yet it was still able to break away from lunar orbit, which shows that gods can break away from lunar gravity without external power.

If they can break away from lunar gravity, they can enter space; if they can withstand the space environment, they are not afraid of dying during the journey.

Gods are fully capable of returning to Earth.

They want to return, and they can return, yet they have never returned.

Then there must be some external reason blocking them.

What is that reason?

Murphy thought of the center of the far side of the moon, that structure that looked like a deep well. Could that be a device trapping the gods?

If the gods were unable to return because they were trapped by that "deep well," then rashly throwing a few nuclear bombs over would likely not be a good idea.

Murphy really wanted to figure out the situation on the far side of the moon. Only by thoroughly understanding the situation would he know what to do to be the safest.

But wanting to figure out the situation meant he had to go to the moon again, and this invasion event—if he hadn't explored the lunar surface first, it might not have happened at all.

Should he launch another probe?

Murphy was very hesitant.

Besides that, this battle also made Murphy somewhat dissatisfied with his own strength and his ability to fight against gods.

There wasn't much to say about the ability to fight against gods; just hurry up and continue launching satellites, then build some ground fortifications as appropriate, and find ways to make some arrangements based on the intelligence about divine abilities obtained from Tyr.

But it was even harder to improve his personal strength.

He had already obtained huge computational power, but that computational power had not been directly reflected in his personal combat ability.

Murphy also understood the root cause: firstly, his overall magic level had not reached the level of a god; secondly, his perception and control of magic had not seen a greater improvement.

The improvement of magic level was relatively metaphysical, so let's not mention it for now. But regarding the second point, his magic was still only able to control phenomena at the "object" level. He hadn't delved into the finer details of matter, so he couldn't control magic more precisely and essentially.

He once planned to solve this problem through the Transfiguration path, using the Transfiguration path to enhance his own cognition and control ability. But now, before his genetic disorder problem was solved, the Transfiguration path was locked.

However, both the human genome and wizard genome projects had been completed, and coupled with the data he dug out through Total Recall some time ago, perhaps he wasn't far from solving his own genetic disorder problem.

Perhaps in a year or so, he would be able to solve this problem through genetic means.

But besides the Transfiguration path, Murphy actually had another path to increase his own cognition and control level.

That was to add some "peripherals" to himself.

After the mechanical ascension through the "Pioneer," Murphy was equivalent to already possessing a mechanical body. He could directly receive and understand electronic signals.

Then, using some technological products to enhance himself was naturally feasible.

For example, connecting an electronic tunneling microscope to the Pioneer—wouldn't he then have the means to observe matter at the molecular or even atomic level?

For example, connecting mechanical probes with nanometer-scale technology to the Pioneer—wouldn't he then have the method to manipulate matter at the nanometer scale?

This was just like in cyberpunk movies, where the protagonist installs some prosthetic limbs to augment their own abilities.

It's just that he didn't need to install these "prosthetic limbs" directly on his body; he just needed to connect them to the Pioneer network.

Come to think of it, that was just the Internet of Things.

Hmm... this shouldn't be difficult.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 404 =====