Chapter 287: 287 Declaration of War

"Wait! Please don't do this!"

Seeing that Leon seemed determined to light the fire and take her with him, Arthefi 128, facing a life-and-death crisis, had to settle for the next best thing, pleading with a young girl's voice tinged with panic:

"If you must blow up the airship, can you take me away? Don't blow me up with it?"

Take this "artificial intelligence" away?

Upon hearing Arthefi 128's proposal, a look of interest couldn't help but appear on Leon's face.

Although the Kingdom didn't have anything like the "Internet," and with the extreme lack of infrastructure, taking her away wouldn't allow him to do much; at most, she could only be used as a chat machine.

But this was, after all, a machine with intelligence, and even for the Kingdom of Kroke, it was the kind of precious asset that couldn't be replicated. If he could take her away, it would naturally be better than destroying her.

Not to mention that he still had the badge system. If he could get some "Father of AI" or "Master of Intelligence" badge after taking her away...

"Lead the way!"

After snuffing out the burning match in his hand, Leon warned:

"You'd better not play any tricks, and don't even think about dragging it out to wait for those guards to come up and save you. The whale oil on the airship has already started to volatilize. As long as there is a spark, it will explode instantly. Once the guards come up, as long as they fire a shot, you will explode directly!"

"I know."

Arthefi 128 said somewhat aggrievedly:

"I just don't want to be completely destroyed now. I won't try to make these high-risk attempts... Please go to the control room as soon as possible. My most important core components and data are in the black fifteen-proof box behind the main control console."

Leon frowned upon hearing this, and then, while rushing toward the control room, asked:

"What on earth is that fifteen-proof black box?"

"It is a black fifteen-proof box. It is a large box that is high-temperature proof, waterproof, shockproof, ionization-proof, impact-proof... dust-proof, and low-temperature proof. It is a storage container specially customized by Arthefi 01 to prevent us sub-bodies from being damaged."

"But it can't prevent an explosion of this scale, and being smashed directly down from the sky at 700 meters, right?"

"Yes... when the fifteen-proof box was designed, it didn't consider that it would encounter such an overly extreme situation."

"No wonder."

Leon couldn't help but sneer upon hearing this.

"I was wondering why you didn't come out to speak before, and had to wait until I had finished pouring the whale oil to show your face. It turns out you spent time calculating carefully and found that you definitely wouldn't survive if you were blown up and then smashed, and that's why you were anxious, right?"

"Mr. Leon, your expression is not precise enough. We sub-bodies are just a kind of operational logic that is difficult to replicate. We don't have the concept of life and death. It should be called destruction and maintenance."

"From now on, do it my way. If it's destroyed, it's dead; if it's not destroyed, it's alive."

"Okay, I will modify some of the corresponding rhetoric when communicating with you."

"Not bad... I've already reached the conference room. What should I do next?"

"There are three anti-detachment buckles behind the main operation console."

Arthefi 128 said at a very fast speed:

"Next, please take the key according to the operation manual, then open the buckles in order, and completely dismantle the panel..."

"Crack!"

Using the power of the Holy Spirit pendant directly, he scraped around the operation console, tore off all the buckles, and then Leon used the strength of both arms to lift the entire front panel, revealing a black box about 50 centimeters long and just over 30 centimeters wide underneath, which was connected to a pile of strange equipment.

"The panel is dismantled. What now? Pull this box out directly?"

"According to the operation manual, the next step should be to handle..."

"Be straightforward. Pull it or not?"

"Pull a part of it..."

After helplessly directing Leon to dismantle the sound-receiving instrument connected to the copper pipe, the hammer set used for making sound, and the multi-faceted crystal on the operation console that looked a bit like a camera and could be twisted at multiple angles, Arthefi 128 used the last small section of the copper pipe connected to the sound-making hammer:

"Mr. Leon, next I will enter a short sleep. As long as you insert a set of energy storage blocks specially for power armor into the circular interface behind the fifteen-proof box, you can wake me up again."

"Got it. Go to sleep."

"Okay, then I..."

"Wait a moment."

Leon held the box containing Arthefi 128 in his hand and waited for a while, but no badge like "Father of Artificial Intelligence" was triggered. Leon couldn't help but hesitate slightly, and then opened his mouth to make a request:

"Can you call me Daddy?"

"???"

……

"Boom!"

Accompanied by a deafening explosion, the huge airship, with a total length of over 300 meters, at the top of the 7-shaped airship tower, instantly erupted with incomparably violent flames.

In just over ten seconds, the entire 300,000 cubic meters of hydrogen were ignited completely. The pale blue flames with a temperature of over 2,000 degrees shot up nearly a hundred meters high, and while scorching more than half of the sky, they also illuminated the terrified faces of the soldiers below the airship tower.

"It's on fire! The airship is on fire!"

"God..."

"Retreat quickly! Don't move forward, retreat quickly!"

Even though the officers were already shouting and trying to stop them, looking at the terrifying scene above their heads that resembled a natural disaster, some soldiers with not-so-resilient minds still couldn't help but open their mouths wide, staring blankly at the top of the tower in the distance.

Under the scorching of the flames that surged like a tidal wave, the thick gasbag of the airship, which might not even leak if stabbed with a knife, only lasted for a few breaths before half of it was burned away, revealing the supporting frame made of light alloy spliced together on the inside.

Immediately afterward, even the metal supporting frame couldn't hold on. Under the terrifying high temperature, it quickly deformed and broke. Some of the metal with a lower melting point was even burned directly into a liquid state, spilling down like raindrops.

And with the burning of the internal supporting frame, the airship, which was nearly half the height of the airship tower when upright, could no longer maintain horizontal floating. It began to tilt uncontrollably, seemingly slowly but surprisingly fast, falling toward the airship tower, and finally actually wrapped itself around it, turning the upper half of the airship tower into a blue torch pointing toward the sky.

Finished... completely finished.

Looking at the blue flames nearly a hundred meters high at the top of the "torch," the guards responsible for guarding the airship tower suddenly turned deathly pale.

This time, not only was the airship parked in the secret port burned, but even the most important airship tower was creaking under the burning of the big fire. Even if the material of the airship tower was special and not afraid of burning, and it wouldn't be completely destroyed, just cleaning it up would probably take several months.

And what was even more fatal was that such a large-scale accident had occurred, yet they, the guards responsible for guarding the tower, knew nothing about it. The fault in this could no longer be described as simple dereliction of duty.

……

"Go! Follow me over!!!"

After the hydrogen in the gasbag was basically burned out and the fire weakened, the officers, whose futures were already bleak, immediately greeted the soldiers under their command, their eyes bloodshot, and ran wildly toward the airship tower, preparing to see what on earth had happened.

And just at this critical moment, an unusually loud shout came down from everyone's heads.

"My name is Nathan, and I am the leader of that radical rebel faction you speak of!"

A figure whose face could not be seen clearly stood in the middle of the airship tower and shouted loudly toward the bottom:

"I announce that I, Nathan, am responsible for this attack!

In addition, from now on, I am declaring war on the entire Kingdom!" ===== CHAPTER 288 =====