Super Mothership
"Finally, a proper starship! It's decided—starting today, the name 'Sea Wolf' will be yours to inherit!" Nie Yun slapped his thigh and declared with determination.
From small fishing boats, big fishing vessels, medieval sailing warships, aerospace battleships, and space warships, to this massive supercarrier, the Sea Wolf had continuously devoured, dismantled, and reorganized itself—yet Nie Yun had always preserved the name.
The Sea Wolf had witnessed over a decade of Nie Yun’s life. It had also borne witness to the rise of a once barren planet under his efforts. Nie Yun hoped that one day in the future, this name would resound across the sea of stars alongside the greatest fisherman in history!
The moment Nie Yun made his decision, Immortal and several other battleships disappeared from every system. The next instant, they all changed to "Sea Wolf," with a line of small text beneath: Flagship of Earth Civilization!
After finishing the renaming operation, the little girl finally turned to Nie Yun, her expression solemn.
"Captain, during your previous rest period, there was an abnormal situation. I believe I need to report it to you."
"An abnormal situation?" Nie Yun asked in confusion.
"Yes! While you were asleep, several mechanical worm decomposition pools in the Solar System’s bases experienced simultaneous unstable fluctuations. This is the recorded footage!"
The holo-screen lit up, showing the image of a decomposition pool in a space base. Several engineering robots were dumping large quantities of steel ingots into it. Under the devouring effect of the silver liquid mechanical worms, the steel ingots quickly dissolved in the pool.
These decomposition pools were where Nie Yun bred mechanical worms. Whenever necessary, Nie Yun could call upon the worms in the pool for equipment manufacturing or modification. They were essentially the core foundation of every base.
At first, the footage looked completely normal. But in the next moment, Nie Yun’s expression froze. The originally calm silver surface suddenly rippled, and then the ripples grew, like waves surging up.
The silver waves almost spilled out of the pool’s container, but soon, the strange fluctuation calmed down rapidly—as if nothing had happened.
However, the container walls were now covered in dents and holes, as if the mechanical worms had devoured parts of it directly.
The silver tide shifted from stillness to motion, then from motion back to stillness—all within just a few seconds, yet it made Nie Yun’s scalp tingle.
A sudden outburst, immediately suppressed…
That was Nie Yun’s first impression after watching the footage!
Looking at the timestamp, it was precisely when he had been in deep sleep…
Previously, after controlling five Houyi-class warships to undergo simultaneous "transformations," Nie Yun was exhausted to the brink of collapse and fell into a short but deep sleep. He hadn’t expected the mechanical worms to undergo some unknown change without any command during that period.
These days, Nie Yun hardly needed sleep anymore. With his gradually strengthening mental power, just a brief moment of resting with eyes closed was enough to refresh his mind. A true deep sleep hadn’t happened in a long time.
From past experience, even during deep sleep, while Nie Yun entered an "unconscious" state, his subconscious still instinctively controlled the mechanical worms. They would continue to work according to his preset commands.
But this abnormal incident shattered his understanding.
Could it be… that he was sleepwalking just now?
No consciousness, yet his body acted on its own… That was the strange feeling Nie Yun had right now.
"How many locations experienced this phenomenon?" Nie Yun frowned and asked.
"A total of eight, all in decomposition pools."
"All in decomposition pools?" Nie Yun lowered his head in thought.
Normally, his mechanical worms served three main purposes: to assemble equipment, to manufacture equipment, and to devour for reproduction…
Clearly, the worms that went into a 'sleepwalking' state all belonged to the third category.
After thinking it through, Nie Yun realized the commands he set for this type were the simplest: eat, then sleep, then eat again…
"Could it be they’ve just overeaten and gone crazy?" Nie Yun muttered in puzzlement.
Mechanical Worms: "…"
The fewer command constraints there were, the easier it became to lose control?
In fact, as the mechanical worms expanded geometrically, their numbers approaching the tens of millions of tons range, Nie Yun had vaguely sensed a certain limit of his own.
Controlling mechanical worms required mental power. The greater the number, and the more precise the operations, the more simultaneous commands Nie Yun had to issue at any given moment.
Take, for instance, this recent case of simultaneously controlling five warships to "transform." This wasn’t as simple as giving an order to fire a cannon. The number of mechanical worms Nie Yun had to command at the same time was measured in trillions, an utterly terrifying drain on his mental strength.
Lately, a significant portion of Nie Yun’s energy had been devoted to studying mental power, and among his findings, one spiritual skill had caught his attention—what seemed like a simple ability: telepathic communication!
From a scientific perspective, this skill implied that mental energy could be used to transmit information.
A telephone transmits information by consuming electricity, but telepathic communication transmits information by consuming mental energy!
Viewed this way, the mental energy consumed in controlling mechanical worms—could that be more than coincidence?
Nie Yun boldly speculated: could the mechanical worms’ communication method itself be an extremely advanced form of telepathic technology? Perhaps even a hybrid of quantum technology and psychic technology!
After all, controlling mechanical worms consumed not only mental energy but also physical energy. If one reverse-engineered the power source of this communication system, this hypothesis seemed very close to the truth!
Given the technological level of the Iris civilization, it wouldn’t surprise Nie Yun at all if they possessed technology related to psychic energy.
If this speculation was correct, then controlling mechanical worms required two things: energy and mental power!
Energy was no issue for Nie Yun—not under current conditions. Even with communication spanning several light-years and involving nearly tens of millions of tons of mechanical worms, the energy cost was negligible. However… mental power seemed to be becoming a bottleneck.
Although the expansion of mechanical worms continuously pushed the upper limit of Nie Yun’s mental strength—reaching a level that even Immortal found astonishing—it was clear that his mental growth still couldn’t keep up with the worms’ geometric reproduction rate.
In other words, Nie Yun’s CPU could no longer handle so many mechanical worms…
If he insisted on doing so, occasional system "freezes" were inevitable.
During deep sleep, his ability to control the worms dropped drastically. With only his subconscious restraints in effect, it was no longer enough to perfectly control such an enormous swarm!
Which meant that part of the mechanical worms had spilled beyond Nie Yun’s control…
For worms that had been given the simple command of “eat and sleep”, losing their controller meant they would instinctively seek out new food—and devour every piece of metal in sight…
Fortunately, this time the issue was discovered early, before any major damage occurred. If their numbers had grown further, who knew—he might wake up one day only to find Earth chewed full of craters…
Earth: "…" (o（（⊙﹏⊙））o)
"Has it already reached the limit?" Nie Yun sighed inwardly.
Unless his mental power increased drastically, the current number of mechanical worms was pretty much his control limit.
"The strategy of sweeping across the universe with a worm tide… looks like it needs some adjustment," Nie Yun admitted helplessly.
Though regretful, he immediately gave the order for all mechanical worms to stop their blind proliferation.
To prevent them from going out of control, their growth rate would have to match his mental power. The exact balance—Nie Yun would need further experiments to determine that.
With the order issued, the mechanical worms’ expansion shifted from market-driven growth to state-controlled regulation!
“Sigh! So much for no family planning… Sorry! I broke my promise…”
Mechanical Worms: "…"
TL Note- Family Planning...
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