Chapter 1557 The Silent Fortress

The moment the three Tau guards were destroyed, Hao Ren felt something was wrong.

Because the opponent has no reaction.

Hao Ren firmly believed that the three titanium guards did not react at all, rather than being too late to react - although he, Vivian, and Yzaks' attacks were very sudden, they were not fast enough to ignore the distance, at least Yi Zack's big fireball was delayed by less than a tenth of a second before hitting the opponent. During this time difference, even if the three guards had no time to dodge or counterattack, they would at least make a little move.

However, in fact, Hao Ren felt that he was hitting a fixed target. Until the attack landed on him, the three titanium guards did not react at all.

Not only Hao Ren could feel this, but Vivian and Yzaks, who were experienced in combat, also noticed the abnormality immediately. Yzaks immediately leaned down and whispered: "Something is wrong."

Lily also took out her ice and fire claws, and pointed her ears in all directions as she said: "It seems that no alarm has sounded."

Hao Ren was alert for a moment. He neither saw the Tau guards who came after hearing the news nor heard the alarm that should have sounded in the base. He exchanged a look with Vivian beside him, and the two nodded tacitly.

"Be vigilant, the atmosphere here is a bit strange," Vivian said softly, "Big man, please help pay attention to what's going on behind."

Easily defeating the three guards not only did not make everyone feel relaxed, but made the atmosphere here even more weird. The group of people kept their spirits up and continued to the depths of the fortress along this lifeless steel corridor. Go.

After groping forward for a short distance, Hao Ren suddenly saw a few more figures out of the corner of his eye. Almost at the same time, Lily, who had good eyesight, also exclaimed in a low voice: "There are Titanium guards ahead!"

"Wait a minute," Hao Ren held down the Husky girl who was about to rush forward brandishing a weapon, "Watch."

After speaking, he took out a metal handle from his portable space and threw it hard on the floor in front of the titanium guards in the distance.

The metal block fell on the ground of the alloy corridor, making a crisp sound. In this dead place, the sound was as harsh and loud as if it hit people's hearts. However, the strange thing was that the few people holding weapons tightly seemed to be fighting. The titanium guards who were on alert seemed to be deaf and blind and had no reaction to this.

After confirming this scene, Hao Ren propped up the rigid shield and boldly walked to the side of the titanium guards.

The steel warriors, whose bodies glowed with cold metal, stood upright at the sentry post, holding the special electromagnetic rifle tightly in their chests. Their faces made of alloy seemed to be covered with a shiny shell, with only the eyes on the metal shell. A narrow slit that emits a white shimmer. This is the Tau Guards, the most powerful elite warriors in the Advocate society. Their appearance is worthy of their ominous name.

However, they now stood here blankly as if they were frozen, turning a blind eye to the intruders dangling in front of them.

Lily also slipped over with her tail between her legs. After confirming that there was really no movement from the Titanium Guards, she let out a sigh of relief. She flicked her tail with a proud look on her face, and poked one of the Titanium Guards in the chest with her paw: "What? After working on it for a long time, it turned out to be a bunch of fake models! My hair was so scared that my hair exploded."

However, N-6 had a look of shock on his face: "It shouldn't be like this... This is illogical! The Titanium Guards are the most vigilant warriors. How could they..."

Vivian casually pulled aside the husky spirit, which was weak and timid when faced with strong situations. She stepped forward and tapped one of the titanium guards on the iron head with her fingers: "It feels like...sleep mode? Or standby mode?" Already? They seem to still have energy, look at their eyes and the lights on their bodies are still on."

"There must be energy. The data terminal has detected energy readings. It's just that there is no action signal, so it's just motionless." Hao Ren frowned and reached out to push the steel warrior in front of him. The tall titanium guard fell straight down. , making a loud noise when it hit the alloy floor, "Maybe we should take a look inside this thing?"

Yzaks scratched his bald head: "Maybe I should bring Elizabeth with me."

"Don't mention her. She was doing destructive disassembly. She penetrated the motherboard with a screwdriver." Hao Ren quickly waved his hand and took out a beam dagger from his pocket. It took him a while to cut the titanium guard's chest. The armor was removed, revealing the complex circuit structure inside and a shimmering cube core. "Terminal, do you think you can read the database of this thing?"

After hearing this, the data terminal flew over and used a scanning beam to connect itself to the core of the Titanium Guard: "It should be no problem."

Vivian warned from the side: "As soon as possible, we don't have much time to waste on these iron knots. If we can't crack them within three minutes, we have to move on."

"It won't take that long. You all know the performance of this machine... Although you guys usually use this machine to play movies," the data terminal muttered while starting the reading process. The result was not much at the beginning. Within seconds, it exclaimed, "Huh? There are only garbled characters?"

There is no logical program in the core of the Titanium Guards, and all that the data terminal can read is a lot of gibberish.

Lily immediately glanced at Hao Ren: "Could it have been demolished by the landlord..."

"I don't think so," Hao Ren frowned and turned to look at N-6, "You mentioned before that the Titanium Guards are all directly controlled by the mastermind?"

N-6 nodded: "That's right."

"Then if the main brain malfunction reaches a certain level, will it cause this situation in the Tau Guards?"

N-6 didn't answer, but his eyes widened.

"It looks like it's correct," Hao Ren breathed out and looked down at the Titanium guard who had completely lost the ability to move and turned into a pile of scrap metal. "The main brain's fault is deteriorating rapidly, and his error code has broken through. The firewall built into the server has spread to the Tau Guardsman. If no action is taken, sooner or later he will become a source of infection and contaminate your entire agent network."

The group of people left the Tau guards behind and began to accelerate towards the interior of the fortress.

"When do you think the strange behavior of the Titanium Guards appeared?" Vivian asked N-6 curiously on the way.

"It's hard for me to judge." N-6 felt that her logic circuit was heating up. The unprecedented sense of crisis made her completely forget about her previous worries about Hao Ren's group of powerful and unpredictable "aliens", "Fortress It is like two worlds from the lunar base outside. The security system established by the mastermind prohibits any individual with insufficient authority from accessing the inside of the fortress. Normally, only a large number of automated systems are responsible for maintaining the daily operation of the fortress. These are the freight trains we saw before. Part of the automated system. The only ones allowed to move freely in the fortress are Tau guards and humans, but they never leave this place..."

"In other words, agents like you have never been able to directly understand what happened inside the fortress, right?" Vivian frowned, "So these Tau guards probably stopped their activities a long time ago. But people outside don't know it at all... But according to N-4, shouldn't there be a group called 'maintainers' who are responsible for the routine maintenance of the main brain hardware? Didn't the maintainers notice the abnormality of the situation here? ?”

In this regard, N-6 could only shake his head: "I don't know this part of the situation. Although maintainers will be active inside and outside the fortress, they do not often appear in front of ordinary agents, because they are also part of the fortress system. "

Moving forward, Hao Ren and his party discovered more Tau Guards in a down state.

These specially-made fortress guards become more common the deeper you go, but without exception they have lost their ability to move. Some Tau guards are still standing at their sentry posts, but most of them are just staggering in a corner. These soldiers They seemed to be patrolling the route before losing their ability to move, but a sudden system crash caused them to fall straight down and turn into debris on the ground.

There are various indications that the system error of the mastermind reached a critical point at a certain moment - this critical point arrived so quickly that all the Tau guards in the fortress stopped functioning at almost the same time.

This critical point should be the moment when the main brain's faulty server exceeds the normal server.

The system used to maintain various hardware facilities inside the fortress runs automatically under the control of low-level AI. These things are like the "vegetative nerves" of the fortress operating based on the underlying protocol, and this structure just allows them to escape Due to the fault cluster caused by the mastermind's logical confusion, the infrastructure in the fortress is still functioning normally today, including the lighting and exhaust systems, but other than these things, the function of the entire fortress has actually come to a standstill.

The guards are down and the surveillance system is offline. There is only an out-of-control mastermind in this silent fortress, and a group of humans who have not yet shown their faces.

Hao Ren didn't know what the so-called humans living in the Palace of the End were doing, but he knew that the out-of-control mastermind was still issuing instructions one after another, even if these instructions were being There are more and more logical errors, and the agents outside who follow the orders completely will not realize the changes in the fortress - or even if they are aware of the problem, they are unable to change everything.

The offline security system made everyone's supposedly tense journey seem particularly peaceful. They crossed all the checkpoints and gates almost carelessly, and finally arrived in a hall with a large number of cables, pipes and servers.

This hall is one of the large number of secondary server rooms supporting the main brain's thirteen main servers.

Vivian shook her head after seeing the situation in the server room: "It seems... we don't need to study why the maintainers didn't warn the outside world."

Among the tightly arranged pipes, cables and servers in the hall, there are many mechanical remains that have turned into coke. Those things with alloy shells and beetle-like shapes are the maintenance that N-6 and N-4 once mentioned. those.

They were all killed—from internal detonations caused by powerful electromagnetic pulses.

The hand of the Lord moves.