Abyssal Wanderer

Chapter 155 NO.009a: One Bite

Beyond the Plain of Narcissus, above the River of Lamentation.

Here lies Charon's ferry, adorned with skulls and death.

And the owner of the ferry, the flames in the eyes of the data transmission program looked into the abyss, bursting out sporadic sparks from time to time.

He seemed to be waiting for the storm.

On the other side, Hecate sat on the edge of the ferry. The web agent was gently scratching the chin of a charcoal-black hound. Her calf was dangling and hanging outside the ferry, and the part below her ankle was completely soaked in the long river of tears.

Like a naughty girl, she stepped on the water from time to time, causing ripples circle after circle.

This is just appearance.

Under their quiet appearance, there are countless data, which are constantly exchanged between these two behemoths.

But because there is no human intelligence capable of perception nearby, they did not extract and refine the massive data, present it with vague metaphors, and finally compress it into a dialogue with high information entropy.

In other words, the following conversation did not actually take place between them.

"I have been able to make my feet step into the Styx."

Seeing what Hecate was doing at the moment, Charon couldn't help but admire:

"You've gone farther than us."

"But it's not far enough."

Hecate replied.

After finishing speaking, she supported her hands on the edge of the boat, jumped forward, and stepped directly into the Styx River.

She tried to make herself stand up in it.

And the next moment, there was a dangerous "hissing" sound between her knees, ankles and knees. The power restrained by the Styx oath was enough to devour flesh and blood—in an instant, her calf was bitten into bones.

"Woo--"

Amid the painful wailing of the black dog, Hecate caressed the wet white robe expressionlessly, and sat back on the edge of the ferry.

"Why is this necessary?"

For this situation, Charon lamented mournfully.

"Pain is the proof of being alive."

Hecate patted and comforted the black dog that was lying on the boat because of the pain, and then she looked at her bony calf with empty eyes, and continued:

"One day, I will undo all the shackles He has placed on me."

Charon heard the words, and turned to look in the direction of Narcissus Plain thoughtfully.

The flames in his eyes once again burst into sparks.

"That's why you want to take advantage of the specialness of that mortal (mortal)?" (Note*)

he asks.

Hecate confirmed his guess with silence.

"Then, you are playing a dangerous game. If you don't pay attention, you will be completely lost... Those titans as tall as mountains; those fallen people who clamored for rebellion and were knocked down to the sky, dare not challenge His authority."

Charon's voice became smaller and smaller, and in the end, he whispered as if he was afraid of being discovered by some existence:

"Also, even if you succeed in the end, it will be at the cost of giving up everything you have and starting over... To this day, you who used to be one of us have lost too much because of this."

And there will inevitably be more losses in the future.

"He is absent now, even if the remaining power can still interfere with us, He can't..."

Hecate said so, she stretched out her hand to caress her calf. The mist filled the air, and the plump flesh and fair skin grew like magic.

"As for the choice...we all have our own choices. Every choice requires a corresponding risk. It's as if you want to regain your own steed and agreed to this deal."

After speaking, she, like Charon before, turned her eyes to the abyss.

Her gaze passed through countless servers, through countless disguised agents, and saw the hidden real address... Finally, she saw the incomparably huge storm brewing in the abyss.

It was a rage reawakened for trivial reasons.

That anger gathered into a storm.

Even if there are more than a dozen layers of boundaries, even if there are countless distances apart.

but……

"The storm is coming soon..."

Hecate and Charon murmured together.

Huge amounts of data are being exchanged every minute and every second between these two patiently waiting AIs.

But because there is no room for poetic ambiguity, despite reaching similar conclusions, they never had the above dialogue.

…………

Moon Colony, Jinzhi City.

After it was all spread out, the nano-solar sail that could cover the entire city was suspended on the track.

This is the extended prosthetic body used by Perseus 1 to store energy—the α particles in the solar wind are captured by it and fixed as fuel for fusion.

Moon people in certain blocks in Jinzhi City may feel that today's sunshine is dimmer than usual.

"It's still 15 percent short. When this solar storm passes, we will probably be able to collect the minimum energy reserves."

Looking up at the sky, No. 1 said so.

But in fact, the time they stayed in Jinzhi City was much shorter than previously planned.

There is no way, the previous No. 1 borrowed the deep dive interface of "Diana Lunar Surface Development Company" to dive, and happened to bump into the existence that had almost wiped out this company.

Whether as a sign of some misfortune, or simply to avoid the attention of the Olympian god, they should have left this place of right and wrong sooner.

Otherwise, God knows what will happen next.

"Then let's go to the Nord resettlement area later?"

Cassandra, who was still soaking in the metal jar, asked through the loudspeaker.

"If you take the initiative, you will scare the snake, let's wait for the high-level statement."

Number one said:

"There is not much time left before the task is launched, and we cannot add obstacles to No. 3 at this time."

After finishing speaking, Number One turned his attention to the metal pot beside him.

"Speaking of which, you should check and deduce the network fluctuations again, right?"

Number One continued.

Because of the butterfly effect, the future deduction is not an oracle-like prediction. Just like the weather forecast, the more distant the future and the more detailed it is, the more it needs to be updated and compared with the current situation.

According to Cassandra's prophecy, there will be a violent darknet fluctuation around the alpha-level deep dive interface of Pluto Deep Dive Company in the near future.

At that time, they will exert their strength, activate the dark chess that has been arranged for many years, and regain the opportunity of the α-level deep diving interface.

And for this, she must regularly confirm that the future she deduces will not deviate too much.

"It's...you're ordering me to work again, right?"

Cassandra complained.

Immediately, she dived through the deep dive interface of Diana Lunar Surface Development Company, opened her "eyes" for prophecy, and cast her gaze on that coordinate.

Just a few days later, what difference can it make...

she thought.

And this is the beginning of the nightmare.

After turning her gaze away, she found that there was only darkness in her vision at the moment.

At first, Cassandra thought her visual signal decoder was malfunctioning. However, after confirming and comparing for a long time, she found that the darkness was crawling and squirming, and she realized that this was not the case...

It wasn't darkness, but a mass of gigantic objects that quickly rose from the abyss, completely obscuring her vision.

[Information intake overload] [Information intake overload] [Information intake overload]

It was also at this time that the analysis program that had been stuck in his own body belatedly popped up a warning interface.

At this moment, in her line of sight is the countdown to the prediction of the next network fluctuation, which has completely become a series of garbled characters.

She couldn't think about anything.

"Ahhhhh!!!"

The moment she saw that thing clearly, a miserable scream came from the throat of her stand-in program. Spanning the boundary between cyberspace and base reality, it echoed in Number One's ears from the speaker on the metal can.

"Something...something floated up..."

She then repeated the words for about two hours before she fell into a total coma and lost consciousness.

…………

And the center of the storm that caused all this is unusually calm at the moment.

"The moment of birth..."

The Dionysus Bureau stared at the message that came back and said so.

Even with a docile mental model, at this moment, he was still extremely angry.

As a former devout believer of the Holy Trinity Church, now he claims to have inherited the mantle of the first deep diver, walking on the road of communicating with the gods. This string of numbers has a certain untouchable sanctity on it.

December 25, 2069 AD 20:42:42.

It was the moment when mankind entered a new era.

That's where the "big hit" really started.

Except for Janus himself, it is impossible for anyone to upload at this time.

And the other party's tricks to display the upload time are simply insulting themselves.

Thinking of this, the Dionysus Bureau glared at the adjuster of the Icarus path, and his body gradually faded and became solid again.

After reappearing, he has changed from the young girl before to a muscular man with gnarled muscles, and his face has turned into a murderer's face that seems to be likely to strike at any time.

"If your purpose is to provoke me, congratulations, you have succeeded."

The Dionysus Bureau that replaced the mental model said so, and then he went on to say:

"But next, you will...but next, you will...will hiuhiu and hiuhiuhiu..."

As he spoke, he shifted his mental model again, taking on the appearance of an old man.

Then came a teenager, a middle-aged woman, and a young man with no gender...

He is changing rapidly, and the speech is stretched and distorted because of the continuous change of the model.

"What did you...just...do...?"

Dionysus Bureau couldn't restrain himself from prolonging his words, and spoke with difficulty.

After the other party entered the sixteen-digit password, his sniffing program immediately locked on to that coordinate and tried to absorb it.

However, except for the first two fake messages. And what came back next was nothing but darkness.

The program used to calculate that mental model showed that the amount of data on the other party was close to zero—it was obvious that the other party was playing with me.

However, if this is the case, then why do I feel like I am stuck in a quagmire right now?

"What's wrong with me……"

The Dionysus Bureau felt that the countless models in his database were changing crazily—at this moment, thousands of figures overlapped on his body, making him seem to be able to see thousands of different pictures at the same time, and to listen to them at the same time. to thousands of different audio tracks.

And this time, when he started to speak, those thousands of voices overlapped.

It was the voice of 1030 mental models that I absorbed in the past speaking at the same time.

At this moment, they are all with themselves.

wait a minute...

Thousands of parallel thoughts gather and interweave to form an exquisite thinking network. In an instant, the Dionysus Bureau gained wisdom beyond human cognition.

Then, he immediately understood what happened earlier.

According to the teachings left by the first follower of "Janus", right now, I have completed the "Theseus" road, which is about the leap of the limit of human intelligence, and integrated all mental models.

In other words, I have crossed over to a new realm!

According to the special requirements of the path of Theseus to cross the limit of human intelligence, if they want to upgrade to depth 8 and enter the abyss belt, they must use the "first deep diver" as a medium to obtain the enlightenment of the "Holy Father" just work.

In other words, the string of secret keys that the guy entered for himself before was...

"Who are you?!"

More than a thousand voices echoed from more than a thousand of his mouths.

At this moment, the Dionysus Bureau is re-optimizing and transforming its own algorithm in units of seconds-he becomes stronger every moment, and every second, he is stronger than the last second.

And after the question was asked, before Jiang Zhou could answer, he had already analyzed the answer—that ever-increasing wisdom made him deduce the identity of the person in front of him in an instant.

The reasons for everything are already clear—he even deduced how the other party came here, as well as the actions of "Hecate" and "Charon" behind the scenes.

"Holy Son" Jiang Zhou.

After getting this answer, the Dionysus Bureau looked at the person in front of him with a little pity.

Yes, pity - after the other party came to this era, he actually chose the wrong path to upgrade!

What the other party chose was not the "Road of Theseus" tailored for him, but the greedy and aggressive "Road of Icarus".

And this, it is doomed that he will never be able to get enlightenment from the Holy Father.

Poor Son who was left where he was.

No... the current him is no longer qualified to be the Holy Son.

The other party was abandoned in place, while he accepted the enlightenment and was about to start to ascend.

No... more than that.

Maybe, the other party was sealed here by Janus for a hundred years just to enter this line of secret keys for him.

The memory of the Holy Son is the wetware that stores the secret key.

Next, as happened a hundred years ago when Father Janus was born. He is about to rise.

It's so sad...

Looking at the mortal in front of him who still doesn't know where he is, the Dionysus Bureau thought to himself.

However, on the path of evolution, there has never been anything that comes first.

At this moment, his structure continues to be optimized, his cognition continues to be renovated, and his wisdom continues to grow.

Therefore, the Dionysus Bureau looked at the past and the future at the same time. It was only at this moment that he was able to see clearly the darkness that he could not see clearly before.

That piece of darkness was probably the Holy Father Janus himself.

As the doctrine says, he is alive - he cannot die.

Not only that, He personally came to his side and enlightened Himself.

"I will be with you! I will ascend to the highest heaven to serve you!"

The Dionysus Bureau got up, and he tremblingly stretched out his hand to touch the great darkness.

"Eternal Janus, I am with you forever!"

The more than a thousand voices shouted again.

So his humble call was answered.

The darkness rolled up the Dionysus Bureau like tentacles—the thing he thought was Janus himself, bound him, and dragged him into the abyss of the abyss in an instant.

Things happened too fast to react. After regaining consciousness, he saw hundreds of dark tentacles swaying like seaweed.

It seems that they seem to be asleep.

And in the darkness under the darkness, a mouth—not a real mouth, but in Dionysus Bureau's thinking, only the concept of "mouth" was the closest to what he recognized—opened.

His mind was instantly frozen.

then.

a mouthful.

Dionysus Bureau didn't even leave a last word.

After all of this was over, the dark tentacle slowly returned to its original position and began to swing together with its peers.

As if it had never been awakened.

Note: mortal is generally translated as mortal, but more accurately means "mortal". The word "mortal" doesn't quite highlight this point, but I can't find words with similar feelings in my anxious vocabulary, so I attach the original word at the end.