Chapter 404: Artificial Magic Net

At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

A grouper swam through a stretch of water.

This was the location where the god Tyr, possessing a sea fish, appeared through spatial teleportation.

At that time, the sea fish exploded into flesh and blood fragments because it couldn't withstand the pressure of spatial teleportation, but with the currents washing through the ocean, there had long been no bloodstains left in this area.

The grouper swam past peacefully, but shortly after, its body suddenly bulged, and the fins on both sides of its body stretched outward, even changing form, gradually becoming the appearance of two scaled claws.

Its swimming speed suddenly increased by more than double. It suddenly pounced on a school of sardines, opened its mouth to suck, and actually swallowed two fish directly into its belly. Then, a scaled claw reached out, grabbed another sardine, and stuffed it into its mouth.

While it was gorging itself, its body size was also constantly expanding, as if the flesh and blood it ate were being converted into its own tissues.

However, just as it was gorging itself, a large net was suddenly dragged over. It and dozens of other sea fish nearby were scooped into the net, hoisted up, and then dumped onto the fishing boat deck.

A person wearing a full set of protective gear picked up the grouper's tail with rubber-gloved hands, ignoring its frantic struggling, and lifted it up.

"Mutant species, the third batch, still hasn't disappeared..."

As he spoke, he and several others counted various fish, threw the species that had mutated like the grouper to one side, and then took a tally.

"A total of fifty tons of various sea fish were caught, forty-six mutant fish, totaling 2.3 tons. The mutation rate is 4.6%, which is only a 2% decrease from the previous batch, and the contaminated area seems to be still expanding."

"Report it to the laboratory," another person said.

"The magic level is very low," in the Magic Research Institute, a researcher was reporting to Murphy, "Even with on-site testing of the contaminated water area, it is only slightly higher than the magic level of ordinary water bodies, not even as high as the Black Lake at Hogwarts."

"The magic level inside those mutant fish groups is quite considerable, but at most, it is only equivalent to ordinary magical creatures. Most mutant fish species' magic levels are not even as high as a gnome."

"After adjusting the magic detection algorithm, we can roughly distinguish the range of the contaminated area, but this kind of range detection can only be accurate to the hundred-meter level. It is difficult to perform precise monitoring on small water currents and those mutant fish species. Trying to prevent the spread of pollution is almost impossible."

Murphy nodded. These flesh and blood components seemed to be different from "Prime Matter" or what they previously thought was god's blood; the energy levels were too different.

This might be because these things were not god's blood in the true sense, but only contaminated by the aura of a god.

A drop of Prime Matter the size of a blood drop was enough to make a Magic Stone, but the flesh and blood left behind by creatures possessed by Tyr, although still possessing magic, were only equivalent to the level of magical creatures. In Murphy's magic vision, they were at most "green."

Low energy level, small energy. If one wanted to track these flesh and blood particles in the ocean, the detection precision and intensity of the detection satellites would have to be increased by dozens of times.

And even if they could truly be detected, wanting to track the movement trajectories of those tiny substances in the water body would require a computational amount that even the Pioneer could only sigh at.

It was indeed as the other party said; this was like nuclear wastewater that had already been discharged into the ocean. Trying to stop the spread of pollution was basically impossible. Even throwing a few more nuclear bombs wouldn't be able to evaporate the billions of cubic meters of water in the contaminated area.

"Then what are the possible hazards?" Murphy asked.

"From the biological perspective currently contaminated, they might undergo some physical mutations, becoming stronger and more irritable and bloodthirsty. But their numbers are negligible compared to the entire ocean ecosystem. Currently, there have been no examples of super-individuals. Our comprehensive assessment is that it should not cause too much ecological harm."

"However, it is still in the early stages. What changes these mutant creatures will have later needs continuous observation."

Murphy actually had no idea whether Tyr was truly completely dead. After all, a Holy Mother was so hard to kill back then, let alone a real god?

If for those trapped gods, this was an opportunity that could only be waited for once every thousand years, Murphy felt that they would likely not let it slip through their fingers just like that.

Those flesh and blood particles of the contaminated fish schools might just be a backup plan of Tyr's. Perhaps he could break into pieces, aiming to avoid Murphy's monitoring and stir up trouble.

But Murphy really had no good way to deal with this; he couldn't sift through the entire Atlantic Ocean.

"That's all we can do. Notify me in time if there are any abnormalities."

Setting aside the Tyr god problem, Murphy started the prosthetic limb project.

It was just installing a networked control chip on existing high-end equipment; implementing it didn't have any great difficulty.

But after connecting things like electronic microscopes and ultra-micro probes to the Pioneer network, the thing he imagined about stepping into another level didn't happen.

The perception level was fine. Although the information seen through various lenses like electronic microscopes, radar, and telescopes needed to pass through a layer of complex translation logic after being transmitted to the Pioneer as electronic signals, making it difficult to use these sensory tools intuitively like using his own eyes, he only needed to adjust the algorithm slightly and adjust the information of these sensory tools into a form he was familiar with.

It felt roughly like wearing VR glasses for a virtual trip. The realism was certainly worse than seeing it with his own eyes on the spot, but it wasn't unusable.

However, at the operational level, he found that he couldn't use things like "probes" to improve his precision in controlling magic at all.

The reason was also very simple: his magic could not be transmitted through the Internet.

He could indeed control finer objects through probes, but that was at the mechanical level. His magic still remained on the "Pioneer" Horcrux. The exchange of information between the Pioneer and the probes still used light and electrical signals.

He could also change the operating tools to magic equipment, but such equipment was still driven by Magic Stones. In essence, it was an automated machine; he was just sending a work signal to the machine.

It was just like how he currently used magic satellites.

And wanting to achieve the purpose of improving Murphy's own magic control precision, he had to use his own magic to treat those operating tools as extensions of his own magic, similar to a "wand," to operate them as he wished.

In other words, for him currently, those operating tools were still things like a small knife, a gun, or a remote control; they hadn't become a part of him.

The solution was actually ready-made: connect a precision device driven by magic to the Pioneer through magic metal wires.

However, the crux of the problem was also here: currently, there was no high-end precision equipment driven by magic.

This mainly involved the replacement problem of magic materials. Many materials used in precision equipment could not be directly replaced by magic metal.

The most core component was the control chip, which would be affected by the "possibility amplification effect" of magic.

The reason the "Pioneer" could operate normally was that it was Murphy's Horcrux, equivalent to Murphy's body, belonging to the extension of Murphy's wizard self-consciousness, protected by the absolute domain of Murphy's mental singularity. The uncertainty brought by magic fluctuations could not affect it; otherwise, wizards would have long since died of genetic disorder due to the uncertainty caused by magic.

But unless Murphy made all the equipment he wanted to connect to the Pioneer into Horcruxes, these electronic chips would still be affected.

Because they didn't belong to "part of Murphy's body," they hadn't been soaked in Murphy's magic to become a whole.

Wanting to control magic precisely required precision machinery, and the operation of precision machinery required control chips, but ordinary electronic chips were not compatible enough with magic and could not be driven by magic.

Therefore, only one solution remained: manufacture magic chips.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 405 =====