Moment of Crisis

At that thought, cold sweat streamed down Zhang Qi's back.

This didn't feel good.

Not just bad—very bad.

It felt like playing games at an internet café, only to suddenly find the dean standing behind you to catch you, with your parents in tow.

A super AI devoted to solving the ultimate answer of the universe had encountered a BUG it could never calculate.

What was the best way to deal with that?

The next second, the massive mechanical planet proved his guess through its actions.

On its surface, composed of hundreds of millions of modules, the crimson light at the center of the recessed area suddenly swelled, like the instant before a supernova exploded.

Vast Path energy, enough to nearly burst this mental dimension apart, turned into countless invisible chains that nailed Zhang Qi firmly in place. Then, that power connected to his mind.

This was not a metaphor.

Zhang Qi could "see" a probe made of pure data precisely slice through the surface layer of his thoughts like a scalpel, beginning to drill deeper.

At that instant, Zhang Qi's special space outside the universe began to tremble.

The Zhang Qis from the other worlds instantly sensed the change and appeared within the space, beginning to resist Nous's invasion. "Damn! What the hell is this mechanical ball? Its computing power is even stronger than Yggdrasil's!"

Koushiro—or rather, Zhang Qi from the Digital World—immediately cursed out loud.

This was the first time they had encountered such an existence...

"Should we sever the connection to this world?"

Masaki Keigo spoke up. If this continued, it would only be a matter of time before this thing broke through their defenses.

If that happened, that mechanical head would likely seize upon the connection between them and then use it to invade the other