Start with a Mechanical Hunter

Chapter 670 Cryptopunk

Just when the Scimitar was suspended on the sea, a group of "old hunters" happily accepted the transformation.

In the outer space of the same planet, in the asteroid belt two satellites away, a huge space fortress is moving rapidly.

Although this fortress does not move at the speed of light, it also lights up the "subspace technology". Meteorites as big as mountains and as small as basketballs all disappear inexplicably wherever it passes.

What's even more frightening is that this mechanical fortress, which is comparable to a mechanical city, is not only huge in size, but also has various types of third-level weapons hanging on it - railguns, laser cannons, various turrets, as well as space torpedoes and celestial body delivery weapons. , small combat spaceships, etc., there are so many, tens of thousands, that even some giant space stations of level three civilizations cannot match its firepower. Compared with it, the weapons of interstellar pirates are like using fire sticks. of.

This 'mechanical fortress', with the force of disowning its relatives and running rampant, powerfully entered the defense range of the machine-splitting star.

The next moment, not only a large number of mechanical octopuses were swallowed up from the radiation layer of the Mechatronic Star, but even Cybertron was in a posture of dispatching interstellar spaceships.

 “Haha, hahaha, get out of my way, I’m here to get a wife!”

On the mechanical fortress, various mechanical parts split and combined to form the image of a mechanical giant thousands of meters high. The giant grabbed it with both hands. The next moment, a pulse with a range of hundreds of kilometers swept out. Wherever it passed, the mechanical octopus fell. Like rain.

At the same time, the turrets on various armed space stations around the satellite all turned, and dense energy beams like rain were fired at the mechanical giant.

“How can a mere strike with a low-orbit weapon hinder me!”

On the mechanical fortress, engines of various types began to run, defense towers slowly rose up, and then, a terrifying tide of energy flooded everything.

“What kind of monster!?” A middle-level manager of a military contractor said in astonishment. In the holographic projection, his energy weapons did not cause any harm to the opponent.

“I won’t care about you on my happy day, otherwise I would have torn these little things to pieces with my bad temper.”

 The mechanical old man turned his head sharply and looked at one of the 'armed space stations'. Under the terrifying aura, all the channels of the space station exploded.

 And the ‘energy level’ displayed on the last energy monitoring screen that exploded was 300 million!

 A third-level civilization building has a mechanical energy of only over 100 million.

 And the opponent's casual blow was 300 million.

Ordinary Battlestar cannot do this.

This can only explain one problem. The opponent's 'fortress' is equipped with higher-level weapons, such as a fourth-level civilization building.

 “Why didn’t the mother city respond?”

 The owner of an armed space station muttered.

 “Replying to the master, probably because of this picture.”

Following the voice of the artificial intelligence, a word "thank you" that looked like ancient writing appeared in a blurry picture, which seemed to be the base of a battle fortress.

 “Xie family, high-orbit Xie family!?”

As a cloud noble among cloud nobles, the Xie family is not the trash of Cloud City, but a real planet noble. According to rumors, he is the force responsible for the defense of the star sector for the mother city.

 “This is a real space monster!”

 “How did it get back to the planet?”

 “What did it just say? It, it’s here to get married?”

 “Does it have a reproductive system?”

The operators of the armed space station were almost crazy on their satellite phones. Why did the other party appear at this time, what was its purpose, and whether it would interfere with the balance of combat power on the planet. All questions were unknown.

However, they did not notice that ten mechanical giants with a height of 100 meters also sneaked in along the passage where 'Xie Lao' entered the planet.

 In space, distance has become a terrifying number. Without a monitoring system, one is no different from a blind man.

These ten mechanical giants are Cybertronians and are professional law enforcers among them, responsible for dealing with some specific 'planetary hazards'.

 As they say, catching bugs.

 Their levels have exceeded level 60, which is the upper limit of the second-level civilization. There are 65, 63, and 67.

 The second level is the upper limit of species on this planet, but it is not their upper limit.

 At this time, the same thing was actually being discussed in the internal channels of these ten giants.

 “Old man Xie got up again.”

“He has been mad for more than a day or two. It is said that mechanical life forms that have been forcibly transformed by external forces all have this problem.”

 “By external force, what external force?”

"I don't know. It is said to be some civilizations outside this star region. As you know, our cyber testing site is also called a cesspool of civilization. If you don't give people any benefits, what will you do if they go to the Civilization Council to sue you?"

“So, the Xie family are actually representatives of alien civilization?”

"The situation is more complicated. Social transformation is a difficult task. Many times, people will disappear if we try to change it. Therefore, we need to learn from civilizations that have successfully transformed them and get some data on civilization transformation. After repeated changes, there will be business dealings."

 “Ambassador?”

 “What’s the big deal? I think the trade representative is more reliable.”

 “Is that so?”

"Okay, stop the water, you won't forget why we came here this time, right?"

 “Let’s find the lost Scimitar.”

“This thing is easy to find, we have a locator, and a starship is so big, there’s nowhere to hide it.”

"Instead of caring about this, it's better to care about who Old Man Xie is planning to marry when he clamored to get married." "It has become mechanically alive, how can it still marry a wife?"

"Why not? I heard that some mechanical civilizations can not only marry wives and have children, but also evolve by marrying wives."

“What kind of civilization is this? Can we Cybertronians get married?”

 A group of Cybertronians who seemed to be on a mission but were actually gossiping leisurely entered the radiation layer.

 …

 And outside the real world.

 In the fragments of a virtual world.

 The group of people found what they were looking for.

 The place of simulacra

 An image-generating world.

 This is an encrypted data node known only to a few top hackers. Here, all data, signals, sounds, and smells are converted into ‘images’, all kinds of images.

  There are even images that are themselves ‘viruses’, wandering around here and trying to infect others.

The further you go, the greater the chance of becoming “pictured”.

 Once the ‘imageization’ is completed, you can never get out again.

 ‘Personality Simulator’ was born from here.

I can’t remember exactly how it was born, but I vaguely know that it was created by a few hackers who entered this place, performed a task, were contaminated by images, and merged with the remaining hacker codes.

It also tried its best to escape from here.

 But this time, the hackers who entered were no longer as unlucky as the previous ones.

 In fact, it is difficult to kill hackers who rank in the top 20, even if they are hunted down by super corporations.

 They have more data clones, upload consciousness, hidden codes, and taboo virtual transformations than executives.

What’s more, entering here this time is an ‘information life’ who has been promoted for some time.

Becoming an ‘information life’ has a great advantage, that is, at the ‘low-level information level’, no matter how complex the changes are, you can see through them at a glance.

So, after cleaning up the image monsters, expelling several clones who may have been left here by other hackers, and folding a large-scale image, the Birds of Paradise and the others got what they wanted by relying on their strength.

"This is it?"

Bird of Paradise looked at the thing in his hand, an old-fashioned player.

At this time, the bodies of these hackers were covered with colorful snowflakes.

 Somewhat similar to "Avalanche", but more colorful, this is "Code Simulacrum", a possession software temporarily created by several hackers to adapt to this place.

"There seems to be a line of writing below," Poisonous Scorpion said.

Bird of Paradise turned the player over, and sure enough, there was a line of words on the base—

  House 320, Third Street, East London District, donated by the Punk Family.

“‘City of Lunt’ seems to have been the financial center of the ancient Northern League, and the District of East Lunt is one of its neighborhoods.”

 “What is a punk family?”

“It is said to be a killer virus in ancient times.”

“Interesting, today’s hackers are looking for ancient viruses. Are they going to be retro?” a hacker complained.

Bird of Paradise turned on the player, put the "Avalanche" tape in, and pressed play.

 Dangerous avalanches and images that make people forget their memories did not appear. Instead, there were lines of ancient letters, which seemed to be some kind of underground organization’s action plan—

We are committed to building anonymous systems. We safeguard our privacy through encryption, anonymous mail forwarding systems, digital signatures and electronic currencies.

 Cryptotechnology allows for the necessary loss of control that hive culture craves in order to remain flexible and agile in the evolution toward ever-deepening entanglement

 In the age of civilization, we create these tiny worlds on a larger bandwidth, and make them more interactive and deeply embodied. We have evolved from small static images to dynamic ‘virtual cities’.

 To become a **** - you must give up your throne of **** and give way to the masses at the bottom.

 “Looks familiar.”

“Virtual cities, encrypted nodes, and cyber hackers, don’t they look familiar? Did our industry begin to develop in the civilized era?”

Bird of Paradise took out the ‘negative’ again, and this time, the surface of the ‘negative’ was no longer garbled, just a line of text - Cryptopunk 331.4131 file

"Anyway, we have found the clues for the second phase, let's continue investigating."

“House 320, Third Street, East London District, check its current ‘location’.”

 …

At the same time, an illusory figure slowly appeared in the data processing center of a super enterprise.

Gao Yuanyuan glanced around and walked directly towards the wall. As soon as she approached the wall, a door opened.

Gao Yuanyuan pushed open the door and walked in. What she walked into was not a fork in the road, but a human brain.

 (End of this chapter)