Chapter 745: They Are Merely Temporary Victories

Inside the Giant Weapon Factory of the First Defense Zone Inner City - Core Processing Area.

Mechanical arms hold various parts, currently assembling the skeleton of a Giant Soldier.

Rows of compartments are embedded in the factory walls.

Each compartment is no more than two meters, the front of the compartment is transparent reinforced glass, and inside are living people.

They are forcibly fixed to metal brackets, with countless neural probes and conduits extending from behind the brackets, piercing deep into their spines and the backs of their heads, connecting to dense, tangled wiring.

These wires converge into a huge pipe behind the compartment, ultimately connecting to the mechanical arm control units that assemble those behemoths.

Compartment 7-B.

A middle-aged man, eye sockets deeply sunken, pupils dilated and unfocused from long-term neural stimulation.

His body is twitching slightly.

Sweat and tears, mixed with saliva flowing from the corner of his mouth, drip onto the floor.

Compartment 12-F.

A young woman, who might have been beautiful once.

Now her face is twisted in pain.

Her head jerks back, hitting the metal bracket with a dull "thud," then her body spasms violently, her pupils roll back to white, and only tears from the corners of her eyes well up.

Two Cyberk engineers record data and begin activating a new backup unit.

B-52Q walks into the compartment, confirms the processor in front of it is useless, and speaks.

"Unit 12-F biological signal zeroed. Confirmed scrapped. Initiate recycling procedure."

"Command confirmed. Release fixation locks, prepare for removal."

B-32E's arm lifts, the skin on the forearm opens, a Data Pad pops out, and after simply inputting a command, the metal plate behind the compartment opens, and two mechanical arms reach in to begin processing the scrapped processor.

Pincer-like tools pop out from the ends of the two mechanical arms, locking onto the metal fixation rings on the girl's shoulders and waist.

"Click."

A few soft sounds, the restraints are released.

Several other more precise mechanical arms reach toward her nape and spine.

The probes at the ends light up with a faint blue glow, performing precise reverse operations.

The probes rotate and unlock rapidly at the neural interface, emitting a faint "zizz" sound, pulling out those probes and conduits that were deeply pierced into the tissue one by one!

Every time one is pulled out, the girl's lifeless body instinctively twitches slightly.

"Neural connection completely severed. No contamination risk. Prepare to remove biological unit."

The pincer-like mechanical arms firmly clamp the girl's armpits and waist, lifting her out from the metal bracket that had imprisoned her short and painful life.

Her body sways, her feet dragging across the compartment floor.

The mechanical arms, clutching the girl's lifeless torso, turn steadily toward the back of the passage—where it leads to a heavy airlock marked with the words "Biological Waste Recycling."

Engineer B follows closely behind, recording data.

"Unit 15-D recycling complete. Initiate backup unit 15-E activation procedure."

"Command sent to reserve area. New unit will arrive in 2.7 standard minutes."

They slide through the passage, turning a blind eye to the other "processor units" in the adjacent compartments who witnessed the whole process, their pupils dilated with fear and their bodies trembling violently from despair.

Those silent sobs and muscles tensed from extreme fear are, in the sensors of the Cyberk engineers, nothing more than irrelevant biological noise and interference signals that might affect computational efficiency.

The girl is taken away, like a battery that has been drained and discarded.

Her short and painful existence had the sole value of driving that cold war behemoth for an insignificant amount of time.

And her place will soon be filled by the next survivor dragged out from the reserve area.

Arriving beneath the Giant Soldier, the two see a Cyberk Patrol bringing in several active processors from the Outer City Garbage Dump; B-52Q's pupils shrink slightly, and it speaks.

"Are these the processors found in the garbage dump today? Just in time, one of our Assault Type Giant Soldiers is almost finished, and it needs this kind of high-quality processor to improve the Giant Soldier's computing power.

Although there are many of those captive processors, their activity level cannot compare at all; we can only rely on quantity to make up for the deficiency in this area."

The Captain of this Cyberk squad, C467M, speaks to the two Cyberk engineers.

"Processors from the Outer City Garbage Dump require an application to the S-Class Administrator; we are under orders to take these newly captured processors to the next district.

The strength of the Xiuluo Holy Indigenous has progressed by leaps and bounds over the past two years; their Super Soldiers have caused heavy losses to our frontline Fortress units, and they even have ways to deal with various models of Giant Soldiers."

B-52Q's fingers tap lightly on the metal passage wall, emitting a rhythmic "tap, tap" sound.

"Xiuluo Holy Indigenous changes... abnormal.

Giant Soldier weakness database needs urgent update.

These active units..."

It aims its sensors at the captives again; one young man struggles to lift his head, hatred burning in his eyes, and lets out a muffled roar.

"Xiuluo Holy Indigenous combat data can be acquired more for analysis, which can target and optimize their counter-algorithms, likely increasing battlefield survival rate by 11.5%."

C467M is silent for several seconds.

Only the "tap, tap" sound of B-52Q's fingers remains in the passage.

"No, according to the latest news, except for the data from the first Giant Soldier battle, whenever other Fortresses are attacked by the Xiuluo Holy Indigenous, the opponent blocks the upload, causing us to lose the Fortresses while the combat data is not updated."

C467M finally speaks, breaking the Silence, and continues.

"The Sage's analysis is that the Xiuluo Holy Indigenous have countered our upload network mechanism, which makes us unable to even understand the initial battle situation, and we can only watch the Fortresses on the map disappear one by one."

"Our Consciousness Network can actually be countered?"

B-52Q's tapping stops, its pupils contract, and it says with some disbelief.

"Indigenous... must be cleared. If the data is accurate, then they are becoming a true threat."

B-32E retracts the Data Pad that popped out of its arm and speaks in a flat tone.

C467M nods in agreement.

"Furthermore, even the natives in the Outer City Garbage Dump have learned to use the trash we discard to make Interferers, weapons, and so on, although the Sage claims this can effectively develop their CPU performance."

"But currently, the activity level of these natives is getting higher and higher; in just these past two days, there have been no fewer than 10 communication signals sent outward from the Outer City Garbage Dump, and we have also captured quite a few high-activity processors—their high activity is three times that of the captive processors!"

After a brief exchange, C467M took these newly captured processors and headed toward the factory district next door.

"Who would have thought these natives would have such great potential?"

"However, their victory is only temporary; the final victory will surely belong to us!"