Super Mothership
“Intelligent mechanical life? So that means they must have regarded the Mithril Knight as a kind of code-named intelligent lifeform, which in turn triggered the hidden friend-or-foe identification command?
And noble titles too? Looks like intelligent life holds a fairly high status within the mechanical race…” Nie Yun stroked his chin as he pondered the information he had just obtained.
The value of the Destroyer had exceeded Nie Yun’s expectations.
Setting aside the Destroyer’s mechanical structure and compact energy technology, the combat intelligence program inside it was also extremely advanced.
Although it was written in a different programming language, that did not prevent Nie Yun from learning from it and integrating its strengths, thereby raising his own automated combat intelligence by another notch.
What interested Nie Yun even more, however, were certain highly intriguing pieces of information extracted from the basic command set…
Using “Mechanical Race” as a keyword, Nie Yun searched the base’s database and finally obtained some basic information about them from a volume titled The Imperial Encyclopedia.
More than a thousand years ago, the Wulf Empire encountered the most powerful external civilization in its history… the Mechanical Race!
The leader of the Mechanical Race, “Gaia,” was an extremely mysterious intelligent lifeform. It single-handedly founded the mighty Mechanical Empire and was said to possess the extraordinary ability to create mechanical life.
Although the Mechanical Race’s influence was vast, its ruling class consisted only of their common leader Gaia and fewer than a hundred intelligent lifeforms that had attained true sapience.
Thus, despite commanding billions of robots, in terms of the concept of a “race,” this was a species with an astonishingly small population.
The process by which the two sides first came into contact can no longer be verified. In the end, however, the proud emperor of the Wolf Empire—like his predecessors—chose conquest and war, triggering an unprecedented large-scale conflict between the two sides.
This vast and brutal war lasted nearly a hundred years, during which the Mechanical Race demonstrated war potential far beyond all expectations.
One intelligent combat weapon after another emerged from the Mechanical Race. Facing an almost endless mechanical army, hundreds—if not thousands—of star systems were reduced to cosmic dust, with both sides suffering enormous losses.
Originally, in a war of attrition and resources, the technologically formidable Wolf Empire would not necessarily have been inferior to the Mechanical Race—indeed, in many aspects it even surpassed them. Under normal circumstances, the conflict might have devolved into a prolonged stalemate.
However, the Mechanical Race displayed utterly overwhelming electronic technology. In just a few decades, they fully analyzed nearly all of the Wolf Empire’s artificial intelligence technologies.
Then, in a decisive battle, they carried out an operation codenamed “Return to the Nest.”
The final outcome of that battle was shocking: the command-type intelligent lifeforms serving on the Wolf Empire’s front lines suddenly defected without any warning. Dozens of mechanical legions under their control instantly rebelled, directly resulting in a catastrophic rout.
The mighty Wolf Empire tasted defeat for the first time.
When the enraged emperor learned of the situation, he immediately ordered the on-site destruction of the remaining three intelligent lifeforms within the civilization. From that moment on, sapient artificial intelligence became a taboo within the empire.
Amid internal and external crises, prolonged militarism, and the sudden loss of a large number of intelligent administrators, the empire soon descended into chaos. Numerous uprisings and rebellions erupted.
War fires spread throughout the empire, while several neighboring hostile civilizations took advantage of the situation to strike while it was down.
The localized battle that ultimately led to the collapse of the Shattered Star Region was one such microcosm of the wars of that era.
Because the root cause of this turmoil lay with the Mechanical Race, historians later referred to this historical event as the “Mechanical Catastrophe.”
Yet just as the empire’s rule was teetering on the brink of collapse, on the verge of total defeat, events took an unexpected turn once again!
“With the loss of their supreme leader, the Mechanical Race quickly descended into internal strife. The three Mechanical Dukes divided up Gaia’s authority among themselves, directly splitting the Mechanical Race’s power into three factions and temporarily removing a massive threat to the Wolf Empire.”
After that, with its hands finally freed, the empire spent more than a full century suppressing internal dissent and hostile forces in neighboring regions, eventually forming a three-way balance of power with the three Mechanical factions.
And the Destroyer was produced by one of those three Mechanical Duke factions—Silver Dawn!
Compared to the other two more radical Mechanical Duke factions, Silver Dawn was relatively neutral and belonged to the moderate camp of the Mechanical Race.
Among the three Mechanical factions, only Silver Dawn maintained normal trade relations with the Wolf Empire. As a result, various Mechanical Race products that were both high-quality and affordable were not uncommon within the empire.
“So that’s how it is. As an export-oriented weapon of Silver Dawn, it’s only natural for the Destroyer to have such hidden commands.” Nie Yun had already worked out the general picture from the story
As rare and precious beings, every intelligent lifeform was regarded by the Mechanical Dukes as a valuable “member of the race.” Even if such an existence belonged to a hostile faction, it would likely still be protected as much as possible.
Within the Mechanical Race, there must be an ironclad rule forbidding harm to their own “kind.”
As for why the Destroyer mistook the Mithril Knight for an intelligent lifeform… that was probably due to Nie Yun’s unique “descent” technology.
“So you’re saying that if I ever get the chance, I might even be able to sneak into the Mechanical Race and snag myself a noble title?”
A force capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Wolf Empire—the strength of the Mechanical Race was obvious. Just a casual handout from them might be enough for Nie Yun to steamroll the Gemini System in one sweep, right?
Nie Yun began to drool as he fantasized about the future.
Of course, that was just wishful thinking. The Destroyer was, after all, a combat-type robot with limited detection capabilities. If he really foolishly thought he could slip by using a mechanical insect substitute, that would be nothing short of delivering himself straight to his death.
Thinking it over again, anyone truly capable of pulling off the feat of becoming a Mechanical Race noble was probably limited to Nie Yun himself and Codename.
But even Nie Yun didn’t know whether he truly counted as an intelligent lifeform—at best, he was only half of one.
Codename, on the other hand, was the real deal through and through. Unfortunately, she was right in the middle of her rebellious “elementary school phase,” already a massive headache. Who knew whether sending her to the Mechanical Race for some kind of training course might result in her coming back as Headache V2.0?
After all, the Mechanical Race had a track record of turning intelligent lifeforms against their original factions. Even the Wolf Empire’s more powerful programmer crowd had been utterly crushed—Nie Yun couldn’t afford to get cocky just because he’d had a bit of success.
For a “semi-automated” force like his, a fully automated force like the Mechanical Race was no ordinary threat—especially given the limited number of mechanical insects he could control here.
Yeah. Until he was absolutely confident, it would be best to keep some distance from these “distant relatives”…
“But what’s the deal with that ‘Royal Secret Treasure’? Taking someone’s head from tens of millions of light-years away—does it really have to be that brutal? Also… the Mechanical Race leader’s head—would that just be a circuit board?”
Mechanical insect: “……”
TL Note- Empire Lores...
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