Super Mothership
Pioneering Legion, Sea Clan Flagship.
After concluding his negotiations with Ishar, Gustav immediately began issuing fleet deployment orders to strengthen the blockade of Kara Star.
To ensure absolute security, he even dispatched his own flagship to the front lines, preparing to personally oversee the blockade.
Due to the emergence of the Water of Life, Kara Star's strategic value had drastically increased, drawing the attention of the council. Gustav, naturally, did not dare to be careless.
After a period of intense activity, Gustav began to feel a bit fatigued.
"I'm going to rest for a while. Report any unusual activity on Kara Star immediately!" Gustav instructed his adjutant.
"Yes, Commander!"
…
Back in his quarters, Gustav had barely laid down before an overwhelming drowsiness swept over him.
"Hoo~ hoo~" Before long, the room was filled with the sound of deep, thunderous snores…
"Squeak!"
A mechanical prosthetic limb suddenly lifted slowly, emitting a faint mechanical whir. However, its owner remained sound asleep.
The limb dexterously pried open Gustav’s eyelid, seemingly checking his pupil dilation, then—slap!—delivered a firm smack to his face.
"Hoo~ hoo~" The snoring continued.
Hmm! Deep sleep confirmed!
Though... the confirmation method was a bit rough.
"Click!"
The entire prosthetic limb detached from Gustav's body, landing steadily on the floor with a five-fingered handstand after a nimble leap.
Gustav’s so-called "Kirin Arm" had long been an undercover chess piece placed by Nie Yun—a tiny spy that had secretly stolen significant intelligence about the Twin Stars for quite some time.
Originally, this prosthetic limb had only been infiltrated by a small mechanical spider released by Nie Yun. But after an extended period of assimilation, most of its internal structure had now been transformed into mechanical insects.
Of course, given the current number of mechanical insects inside, it was impossible to devour and compromise the massive Sea Clan flagship in a short time without further reinforcements—the sheer scale difference between the two was simply too vast.
However, when it came to controlling Gustav personally… its influence was nothing short of absolute.
If Nie Yun wanted him awake, he'd wake up. If he wanted him dead, he’d die. And that was just the starting point of Nie Yun’s control methods. If he wished to kill someone using mechanical insects, he could come up with a hundred different bizarre ways to do so.
After all… watching 900+ episodes of Detective Conan wasn’t for nothing!
That said, controlling a person like a puppet was far more challenging than simply eliminating them.
Take just now as an example—making Gustav fall into an unshakable sleep. To an outsider, Nie Yun’s approach seemed effortless, but in terms of technical complexity, it could probably win seven or eight Nobel Prizes!
Simply put, Nie Yun's ability to manipulate Gustav’s sleep functioned similarly to administering a powerful sedative.
The activity of the cerebral cortex operates in two states: excitation and inhibition.
- When a person is awake, cortical excitation surpasses inhibition, leading to alertness.
- When asleep, inhibition exceeds excitation, resulting in unconsciousness.
Sedative-hypnotic drugs primarily suppress the central nervous system to dampen cortical excitement, inducing sleep.
Nie Yun, however, took a more direct approach—using neural stimulation techniques to enhance the brain’s natural inhibitory functions, forcing it into a state of deep sleep.
From a biological perspective, it was as if Gustav had simply drifted off naturally. Even a toxicology screening wouldn’t detect anything unusual in his system.
Of course, Nie Yun had other ways to render Gustav unconscious:
- Neuroparalysis—akin to the effects of extreme intoxication.
- Physical impact—also known as "whacking him over the head."
But today, Nie Yun hadn't activated the Kirin Arm just to tuck Gustav in for a cozy nap.
He had a mission—deploying a virus.
The moment the detached prosthetic landed, it balanced itself on its "hand," then began scuttling across the metal floor in an eerily nimble crab-walk fashion.
"Ding-ding~ ding-ding-ding~"
If one listened closely…
The metallic tapping of its fingers on the floor was keeping rhythm with "Serenade."
A bare mechanical arm scuttled across the floor in an eerie crawling motion, stopping in front of Gustav's personal desktop terminal. It powered on the device and entered the password with practiced ease.
For Nie Yun, who had been lurking for so long, Gustav no longer had any secrets. He even knew the exact account and password for Gustav’s private stash of funds.
Once everything was ready, a silver data cable extended from the metallic prosthetic, plugging directly into the terminal’s data port. A new 10GB virus was silently transmitted into the system…
The virus package was then stealthily forwarded to another terminal inside the flagship, instantly transforming the unsuspecting system into a zombie computer—a dormant, compromised machine awaiting activation.
Then, the true infection began.
- Replication.
- Mutation.
- Spread.
- Repeat.
The virus continued evolving as it propagated, until, after multiple variations, it circled back and reinfected Gustav’s own terminal.
This was a brand-new supervirus—a fusion of Earth’s cyber threats and Gemini’s advanced malware database, freshly developed for this mission.
Its defining traits?
- Extreme stealth: It remained completely undetectable until activation.
- Mutation capabilities: Each infection altered its code, preventing pattern recognition.
- Cyclic infection: It spread in loops, making it nearly impossible to trace back to its origin.
With time, the virus began expanding its infection radius, slowly infiltrating the flagship’s internal communications network, then spreading to other ships within the star system.
But the operation wasn’t over yet.
The mechanical limb flexed its dexterous fingers and started typing rapidly on the holographic keyboard.
Lines of complex data streams flashed across the screen—
- Erasing file transfer logs.
- Masking IP addresses.
- Setting up anti-tracing firewalls.
A perfect cover-up to minimize exposure.
"Tap, tap, tap!" The soft keystrokes continued as the virus’s footprints were wiped clean.
The prosthetic’s speed wasn’t overwhelmingly fast—it wasn’t blurring into afterimages—but it operated as efficiently as two hands working in sync. Nie Yun had carefully calibrated its speed to match Gustav’s own typing limits…
Yes, he had set another trap for Gustav.
Nie Yun had deliberately chosen to implant the virus through Gustav’s personal terminal—because he intended to make Gustav the final line of defense.
No matter how many zombie terminals were compromised, one day they would be discovered.
But Gustav himself? He was Nie Yun’s ultimate physical “air gap” super-zombie.
TL Note- Physical Hacking....
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