Volume 10 Bugs Chapter 106: The most helpless corner of the world
In the boundless ocean of data, a deadly frenzy was rushing towards me at an unimaginable speed. Shocked by its might, every character in this magnificent digital world was flashing in fear, struggling desperately, and leaping in despair, as if they had realized the desperate situation they were facing, but were still trying to break free from the fate of being obliterated.
The desire to survive made me curl up in the shadow of the data and tremble. A transmission channel that could allow me to transfer to a safe area instantly had opened up beside me. With just a thought, in less than 0.001 seconds, I could escape from this extremely terrifying place. For a moment, I was determined to do this - I had even thrown three quarters of my body into this channel. As long as I was more determined, I could completely escape from this dangerous situation and go to a safe place that I had arranged in advance.
But when I looked at the data area where Marian was for the last time, and discerned her beautiful face, serene, quiet and unaware from the jumping changes in the data, I changed my mind.
Because I suddenly realized: I can't leave!
I can't leave. I can't allow the disaster caused by my inability to control my desires to run rampant.
I can't leave. I can't bring destruction to everything I love in the name of "love" and then walk away as if nothing happened.
I cannot leave, because the reason why people are "people" is that they will encounter many things in their lives that are more important and more worth cherishing than their own lives. If I escape from here, I will lose them all - I will lose all of this because of my cowardice in seeking survival. I don’t know what position I have to identify myself as a "person" with a complete soul.
I can't leave, because if I am timid, cowardly, disappointing, and shrinking in the face of such a choice, from then on, I can only "exist" but no longer "live".
In this world, I have things to cherish and protect, and that is the meaning of my existence. If I can only curl up in a corner of the ocean of data, watching the great power of this world destroy everything I can cherish and protect without doing anything, then what is the meaning of my existence?
If I run away here today and abandon what I cannot abandon, then tomorrow, somewhere unknown, I will also be afraid and give away everything I cherish.
If I run away now, it will be the beginning of an endless escape. I will eventually lose everything I can lose, and finally become penniless, a soulless, homeless ghost in the data world.
Yes, the world is boundless and data is endless. Although my body can go anywhere, my soul has nowhere to retreat.
How can you withdraw into a world that has nothing to do with you?
If it is not refundable, then no refund!
I made up my mind and instantly inserted my data stream directly in front of Campnavia City. No one would know that on a sunny afternoon with blue sky and blue sky, on a plain full of birdsong and flowers, when all living things were enjoying a peaceful and tranquil time, behind all this, in the endless digital world, a desperate offensive and defensive battle was unfolding. Attacking here is the supreme authority and irresistible rules of this world, which has the power to create and maintain the normal operation of the entire world. In a sense, this world can even be regarded as just a part of it.
There is only one person defending this battle, and that is me. I am the only commander and soldier. On this line of defense where I cannot retreat, I have no companions fighting side by side, and it is impossible for me to wait for reinforcements from afar.
I faced the surging killing force head-on. The tempting mechanisms I had set up before were still entangled with it, but in front of it, these tricks could only attract its attention briefly and delay it for a very short time, but they were completely powerless to resist.
I reached out and grasped thousands of data streams, and used the strongest structure I could imagine to forge thousands of giant shields, which were erected layer by layer before the mighty force. However, in front of the power of nothingness that obliterated everything, the word "solid" was completely meaningless. In the blink of an eye, the thousands of layers of giant shields were swallowed up by the terrible tide, without even the tiniest bubble of data rising.
I struggled to stir up the huge data flow around me, continuously throwing out more confusing data fog, hoping that they could continue to help me delay the pace of this destructive force, while trying to create some programs with strong cutting effects, trying to use them to peel off that force bit by bit.
The flashing data represented that the raging wave of power had only been slightly damaged, and the simple fields that had been stripped from it were all harmless, and before they could even become completely independent data fragments, they had already been swallowed up again and turned into nothingness. At the same time, the sharp tools that had cut into its body disappeared in the blink of an eye, and could not play any effective role.
Another second passed, and the baits I successfully set were far less than the traps it had broken. At this rate, in at most another 4.35 seconds, the bait data I set would be completely broken by it, and then I would face this destructive force head-on.
However, in this battle where the gap in strength is so huge that you can't imagine, I am not without any advantages. Although my strength is so weak that the opponent can almost completely ignore it, compared with the opponent's stereotyped "search - discover - track - erase - rebuild" battle process, I can choose different methods more freely to try.
In this source world piled up with digital data, I waved my giant palm, stirring up a bunch of turbid data vortices, and then let these huge and disordered vortices swallow up and disturb each other, tearing apart the entire data space.
Unprecedented chaos occurred in this source world. The original data was disrupted, and even some minor phenomena in the surface world were affected: at this moment, the time in a space with a radius of more than a thousand feet was turned back by 0.5 seconds. A total of 37 space travelers who were touring there launched abnormal critical strikes. Three data text messages were shattered in the turbulence, and two of them turned into unrecognizable garbled codes...
But it was soon quelled. The absolute power advantage meant that this huge force of nothingness did not need to react to my temptation. It crushed me without even a glance, shattering the chaotic turbulence without leaving any room for it, and then destroying it piece by piece.
Strictly speaking, this can no longer be considered a battle, but a war of unprecedented scale. In the face of this war, the meaning of time and quantity has been greatly distorted. Every battle is a magnificent surge of billions of data; every battle only takes place in a few seconds. Those endless data are our cities, our weapons, our warriors, and also our battlefields.
There are no corpses, no blood, no debris. The cruelest thing about this war is that it leaves no traces. There is no so-called "great sacrifice" here, because all sacrifices are meaningless; there is no so-called "heroic courage" here, because for those soulless data, they only know to obey and have no idea what courage is. The definition of war is rewritten here, and those huge waves of data swallow and subvert each other. Even a microsecond of advantage or disadvantage can bring billions of losses.
I threw out those termites that sucked the original power of the world - not towards the huge force of nothingness, but threw them in all directions. While throwing these termites, I also programmed them with a new ability, that is, all the original power they absorbed wherever they went would be used by me, providing me with faster computing and writing capabilities.
In order to better distinguish between the enemy and me, I let the data I controlled be displayed in red. As I continued to throw out these greedy termites, the area displayed by the red code became larger and larger - of course, compared to the green area of my opponent, these red parts are as insignificant as a small bubble in the vast ocean. However, this little bit of red represents a kind of firmness and determination, which means that from this moment on, I officially raised the flag of resistance that belongs only to me. I will no longer hide or flee, but officially declare my existence to this world that has ruled me illegal!
This may be the first voice of resistance since the birth of this world, and it is also the only way for me to declare my existence with all my strength.
With the help of the red areas I occupied, I immediately felt that my abilities had increased exponentially. I was throwing out baits faster, and I could think and use more methods at the same time. I even programmed new programs for the baits, making them more concealed and able to change and move easily with the changes in the surroundings, instead of staying stupidly in the same place, waiting to be wiped out.
The occupied red area gave me more breathing time. Although the speed at which the bait was broken was still faster than the speed I set, the gap between the two had narrowed a lot. I bought myself almost an extra second - even if I was destined to be unable to resist the annihilation of the giant force of nothingness in the end, believe me, it would be the most spectacular and magnificent second you could imagine.
However, the good times didn't last long. Soon I found that another force suddenly appeared on the battlefield. It wasn't a very powerful divine power, and it couldn't cause me any harm. But what made me hate it was that it seemed to be a special tool used to deal with those termites. From the moment it landed, it was like a ghost, extinguishing the fire I scattered everywhere, and its speed was so fast that I couldn't keep up. Sometimes the termites I threw out were caught by it before they even landed on the ground, and then killed. Where it passed, the green wave flooded again. At this time, it seemed to me that it was as ferocious as the pupils of a wolf hidden in the darkness. It seemed that countless giant beasts were hiding behind these data, ready to jump out at any time, tear me into pieces, and devour me clean.
The destructive force was getting closer and closer, and I seemed to be able to hear the bells of destruction ringing in my ears.
I desperately waved all the data I could influence, dancing frantically. These data changed madly and hastily, and I didn't know how much turmoil and chaos it caused in the surface world. But even at this time, I still carefully removed all from this vortex, controlling them not to be affected by me. I hoped that after I was destroyed, the destructive power of nothingness would be satisfied and no longer try to destroy this innocent city.
Even in the source world, for a desperate person, a few seconds can pass very quickly. In the blink of an eye, the irresistible killing force has rushed in front of me.
The moment it approached, I roared in anger, turning the pieces of my body into the most angry blades, shooting them in all directions. At the moment when my body was shattered into pieces, that force pounced on me and completely turned my body into nothingness.
The world just became quiet.
…
You know what? That should have been the end of this story. And if it had been, this story would have ceased to exist. I would not have had the chance to tell it to you, and therefore I would have been completely destroyed before this.
The reason why you can still see this story is purely due to a coincidence - a coincidence that even I don’t believe can happen.
I have already told you that the moment I was completely swallowed up by the power of nothingness, I tore my body apart, turning it into fragments that flew out in all directions - it should have been a meaningless flight, it was just an outburst of self-destruction at the last moment of my life.
Moreover, most of my fragments were swallowed up by the power of nothingness.
But by chance, one piece escaped - it could be more than one piece, but the only one that really matters is that one piece. I guess the reason why it escaped is probably because of this:
That nihilistic force that obliterated everything was targeting my existence. When I completely disintegrated, it meant that I no longer existed, and at the same time it devoured and obliterated most of me, so I guess at that moment, it must have thought that it had completed its mission, so it stopped its subsequent actions. However, you know, the flying fragments I turned into were meaningless, but they also had a sequence. I guess the fragments that were scattered at the end were lucky, and when they flew away, the force had already finished its work and left.
Fortunately, this is not a stubborn power, it actually understands the profound life principle of "retire after success". If it had erased and rewritten a huge area around it regardless of whether it completed the task or not, then I would have no chance of recovery.
If it ends here, the part I shot out will become meaningless data fragments in this ocean of data, and will either be cleared up by the rules of this world, or drift to a distant place unknown, until being deleted the next time the world restarts.
Fortunately, however, my fragment fell into an area where a termite was inhabited that I had thrown out.
Logically, the areas occupied by the termites I threw out should be red, and they were all extinguished by my enemies, but strangely, this area was not. Although it was thrown out by me, the channel connecting it to me was broken in the melee just now, so it could not be activated. Therefore, it was half dead and turned into a piece of abandoned harmless data, escaping the search just now.
Perhaps the flying debris activated the power transmission function of the worm, and it actually hid from all search systems after the war and started to work quietly again. It began to inject power into the debris and repair it.
Do you know where the most interesting part is? That is the position occupied by this termite. As a pair of unactivated discarded data, it showed no hostility. It passed through the layers of guards of the search force behind this world without any threat, and finally attached to a tiny plug-in in the middle of the information transmission channel between the search force and the obliteration force, and embedded itself deeply into it.
This plug-in plays a very interesting role: when the search force finds a suspicious target that needs to be searched, it should notify the nothingness force that obliterates everything, telling it that I have found the target, where the target is, and you need to destroy it... etc., but they are just data after all, and cannot be passed on by word of mouth like humans, or heard by shouting. Therefore, the search force must transfer the information to an intermediate channel, and then send it to the nothingness force through this channel.
To put it simply: the power of searching and the power of nothingness are like two guys who do not speak the same language, and the channel in the middle is like a translator, playing the role of communicating between the two.
The position where this termite is located is exactly the communication channel between the two - and this brings a huge convenience to its safety.
With the omnipresent power of the Searching Force, when the termite is activated, it is entirely possible for it to discover the existence of this foreign invader. But the problem is that it works just like the Paladin's "Detect Evil" spell, which can only search for the enemy, but cannot attack after finding the enemy.
So it can only desperately cram information into the information transmission channel, hoping to tell his brother who has extremely strong fighting power: Wake up buddy, kill him!
What is extremely embarrassing is that this information transmission channel happens to be occupied by the termite it found - do you think it will be so bored that it will run to tell that empty power: "Your brother found me, I'm here at your doorstep, please beat me to death"?
Of course not!
So, when this message was transmitted, it was changed to something like "Be safe and have a good sleep."
In fact, this problem is not unsolvable. Assuming that there is another kind of divine power with similar properties in this source world, they have another set of search, transmission and elimination systems, and they can naturally easily eliminate this defenseless little termite.
But this world does not allow assumptions about things that have already happened.
So, this remaining fragment of mine gradually grew stronger in a helpless corner of this world...
