Volume 6 Chapter 32.2: Overture
- Overture
On the light screen was a black and white sketched portrait, a young man whose entire body was wrapped in cloth strips, on his back a giant sniper rifle even taller than himself as he walked into the distance. Everything around him was the wilderness, full of a desolate feel. There was no road below his feet, yet he still walked towards the distance. The sky was half black, half white, unknown if dawn had just arrived, or if night was about to descend. However, behind the young man was light, while before him was an eternal darkness.
Snow looked at this portrait seriously, her expression extremely, extremely focused. Even though it was hand-drawn, unknown who it was that drew this, the charm of the scene was preserved. Helen was also looking at this picture with Snow, right now no longer hiding anything, instead revealing a complicated expression.
Snow stared at the light screen, completely entranced. Even though it was just a sketch, only his rear figure drawn, it carried endless charm. The pixels were reflected in its compound eyes and broken down, and then after complicated calculations, it was reformed in its consciousness, producing precisely Su's holographic image, endlessly close to Su himself. This wasn't something Snow produced completely subjectively, but rather made of the data originally contained within the sketch, just that only Snow could see it.
This was its paternal parent... Snow trembled, its instinctive fear almost making it suffocate!
It had previously seen Su, but that time, it was from extremely far away, and it was also during an intense battle, so the feeling wasn't as powerful as it was at this moment. When facing Su, it would always tremble all the way down to its soul, only wishing to run. If its willpower was even slightly weaker, forget about resisting, it wouldn't even have the bravery to run. Snow didn't understand why it was this scared of its paternal parent, yet was so fondly attached to Helen. However, the fear truly existed, for example, if its paternal body wanted to kill Helen, Snow wouldn't even have the ability to resist. However... Snow worked hard to subdue this fear, staring at this image of its paternal body without taking its eyes off. If it missed out on this chance today, it might never have a chance to look at its paternal body so wantonly again.
While gently caressing and stroking Snow's body, Helen could sense that it was ice-cold and shaking. As a result, she sighed, and then closed the light screen. After the source of data was severed, Snow gradually calmed down, no longer saying anything, instead quietly looking at Helen. Then, it curled up, huddling into Helen's embrace.
During wartime, energy was always on short supply. The laboratory's lightning was dim, so when the light screen was turned off, they pretty much entered absolute darkness. Time, for Helen, was incredibly precious, every second of time she spent in earnest thought was equivalent to several decades of an olden era veteran researcher's work, perhaps even more. After all, research, this thing was something that might not produce any results even after decades of it. In the world of science, diligence was essential, but it wasn't necessarily effective. People who were diligent yet achieved nothing deserved sympathy, but that was all. Meanwhile, Helen, once she began to think, results would appear as if it was inevitable and right. Her intelligence that surpassed this era was currently starting to shine bit by bit.
However now, she didn't do anything, sitting in the darkness, hugging Snow, extravagantly keeping her brain that was comparable to an array of super computing centers completely blank.
---
The dark night quietly passed, dawn unwillingly arriving. The dusky sky was almost no different from the darkness of night, and now, it was already ten in the morning. Outside Black Dragonrider General Headquarters' gates, a square-shaped robust man appeared. Because of his proud and untamed nature, as well as his distinctive physique, Captain Curtis' reputation could be said to be widespread throughout the Black Dragonriders. Even those who never saw him before, when they saw his body that was like a chunk of black steel, they would immediately recognize the captain. That was why the two privates guarding general headquarters bowed respectfully towards Curtis, not showing any signs of standing in his way. Curtis was still a dragonrider captain, and he had some unclear relationship with the few generals. However, Curtis didn't plan on entering general headquarters, instead giving the guards a letter, having them pass it on to General Morgan, and then turned around to leave.
A moment later, General Morgan opened the letter on his own office table, producing a small storage device from within, and then inserted it into the light screen's port. A few seconds later, the three-dimensional holographic image of a mechanical bug appeared on the screen, slowly rotating, moreover breaking apart into components. As the image played out, Helen's sweet and mechanical voice sounded:
"These mechanical combat units come from a brand new civilization, from the cosmos beyond. This is the most basic combat unit, from their composition diagram, it can be seen that propulsion, recognition, weaponry, and defense are the four main functional elements, at the same time retaining the ability to quickly integrate with each other. When needed, they can merge, forming war machines that are even stronger. However, what is most noteworthy is their intelligence system. The so-called mechanical units' intelligence systems are made up of a few intelligence unit chipsets that have no upper bound, the language used a language that up until now, has been impossible to decode. Two mechanical units can form a network, and they always move out together, which is why a group of combat units actually forms an even larger complete body of intelligence. A single mechanical unit can become the intelligent form's hand, feet, eyes, or other organs, from this becoming a part of a whole entity.
Now, let's look at their mechanical constitution again. In summary, 99% of the materials come from commonly found elements on earth, for example, iron, copper, lead, and other things, as well as a few trace elements that have created new alloys. However, there is a small amount of elements our planet does not have, and which exist through special methods as alloys, thus greatly increasing the alloy's performance. From these unknown elements, it is speculated that their compositions aren't complicated, just that a large amount of energy is needed for their production. However, the most important part of a technologically advanced civilization is energy, which is why I have reason to believe that energy, for them, is a limitless supply, moreover the manufacturing costs close to zero. If one looks at it from this perspective, the production costs of a mechanical unit are extremely low, and the materials needed can be found with unbounded supply on this planet. In their system, perhaps the production costs are even lower than what it takes us to create a microwave oven.
Even though a higher level mechanical unit has not been discovered yet, it can already be deduced from the present specimens that these mechanical units can be assembled into a mother battleship of several kilometers or even longer, perhaps even piecing together into a starship that can journey through the star systems. However, they aren't alive, there is definitely an intelligent biological body commanding them from behind the scenes. Currently, there is still no way of speculating the intelligent life form's composition or origins.
However, a portion of his goals can already be deduced from these mechanical units. One important objective, should be the purge and purification of this planet.
The above-mentioned, are the contents that I needed to illustrate."