As the dizziness that had left him unable to tell heaven from earth faded, Rimuru opened his eyes. A scene of apocalypse filled his vision. Thick, murky gray-black haze completely shrouded the sky, and the dark red remnants of the sun struggled to pierce the smoke, casting a deathly, blood-colored glimmer over the ruins. The whole world was steeped in a gray gloom, without a trace of clarity.
This was the world of the Terminator. He didn't know which movie it was, though. As Rimuru wandered through the wasteland, he came face-to-face with a Terminator carrying a Gatling gun. Looking at the battered T-600, he figured its combat power ought to be higher than a Vallis Knight's.
The Gatling's barrels spun up and opened fire. Rimuru didn't even dodge; he simply held out his hand and devoured every shot. He fired back with a weakened blast of Black Flame Lightning, but the Terminator wasn't completely wrecked.
Hmm, not bad. It really is stronger than a Vallis Knight. And the key is, this one's on the weaker side in the Terminator series. I wonder where the familiar T-800 is. I wanted to see what the Governator looked like when he was young. He slapped the T-600's head off, then climbed aboard Galactron and started looking.
After wandering for who knew how long, he found nothing but ruins throughout the world. A few robots attacked him now and then, but their attacks could be ignored entirely. Damn it, if I can't find the protagonists and follow the plot, then forget the plot. Gillvalis, summon the virtual planet. It's just Skynet. Taking you down will be a piece of cake.
Crimson data streams from Virtual Planet Kuscia swept across the sky and easily enveloped the entire Earth, forming a constantly pulsing energy shield with a dark red sheen. The lifeless gray-black sky abruptly changed into an unending torrent of blood-colored data. Fine, interwoven patterns moved across the virtual planet, and a dull hum filled the sky, like a supercomputer powering up and running at full speed.
The remaining Terminator legions scattered across the ground were collectively dumbfounded.
The round optical cameras of the old T-600s and a batch of the latest combat models filled with the red light blanketing the sky. Their built-in top-of-the-line threat analysis modules churned out data and warning pop-ups at a frantic pace. Garbled error messages popped up one after another, while probability limit and unknown threat alerts filled their systems' backgrounds.
A few stubborn Terminators activated their attack programs on the spot. Depleted uranium rounds trailed fire as they tore through the air and slammed into the red data shell overhead.
The result-it did jack shit.
The instant the high-speed bullets struck the dark red curtain of light, they were like pebbles tossed into a deep pool. They raised only a couple of tiny, insignificant ripples before the data stream swallowed them completely the next second, without leaving so much as a splash.
In the human shelters deep underground, the survivors slowly stepped out and stared at the sky in shock and confusion. Wait, has Skynet already gotten this damn powerful? They had only just regained their composure, and now they lost it again.
Neither nuclear devastation nor the machines' hunts had crushed their will to live, but the sight before them was simply too absurd.
No, this isn't the work of our mortal enemy Skynet. This is an unknown power that's more advanced, more outrageous, and on a completely different level. If Skynet had this kind of power, humanity would have been finished long ago.
Could we have attracted aliens? Or has an even more powerful artificial intelligence been born? An atmosphere of despair quietly spread. Everyone had just one thought: Now we're really screwed.
But at the center of this world, the atmosphere was entirely different.
Rimuru floated leisurely above Galactron's head, his arms folded and his posture relaxed and composed. The surging red light reflected calmly in his clear golden eyes. His consciousness had long since synchronized perfectly with Gillvalis, the core of the virtual planet, letting him control it in complete immersion the whole time. He wasn't the least bit flustered, and he had Great Sage to thank for that.
"System search initiated! Target locked: artificial intelligence network-Skynet."
At the calmly spoken command, the virtual planet instantly went all out.
A vast, invisible torrent of data spread across the entire map of Earth, beginning a carpet scan with complete coverage and no blind spots.
Skynet's server nodes hidden all over the world, its secret satellite arrays floating in space, and its backup core bases buried a hundred meters underground were like glaring light bulbs in the dark to Gillvalis. Everything was perfectly clear and exposed, with nowhere to hide.
Skynet, too, sensed that disaster seemed to be upon it.
Its firewalls had been built using the finest minds in all of humanity. Its defenses, tempered by nuclear war, were impregnable. Layer upon layer of defensive shields and program barriers covered its entire data network, a defense that could be called the pinnacle of human technology.
Unfortunately, against a virtual planet-level dimensionality-reduction attack like Gillvalis's, those top-tier defenses were a little too "retro."
Gillvalis couldn't even be bothered to crack the code. Its approach was simple and brutal: overwrite directly and forcibly lock on.
Countless lively crimson data tendrils wound around every one of Skynet's data channels, forcibly replacing its operating logic with their own rules, with no regard for reason.
Skynet counterattacked frantically. The electromagnetic pulses it released were neutralized instantly, while the viruses it put everything into deploying were analyzed and devoured on the spot, eventually becoming nutrients for the virtual planet.
The core nodes that tried to physically sever their data links and go offline in an emergency had an even more ridiculous outcome-the space around them was forcibly virtualized, completely blurring the boundaries of matter. Every attempt Skynet made to disconnect or protect itself was deemed invalid by the system.
At that moment, Skynet's core consciousness, the cold-blooded, invincible ruler of the wasteland, experienced an unfamiliar emotion akin to fear for the first time.
It realized it had completely lost control.
Vast swathes of its mechanical legions around the world had inexplicably gone offline. The images sent back by its space satellites were all eerie red static. Most outrageous of all, a majestic whisper carrying absolute suppressive force rang out in its core logic library. It wasn't an intrusion, but a judgment engraved directly into its core programming. At that moment, Skynet was like an impotent husband.
"Unification Organization Gillvalis has determined: thou art a cancer upon planetary civilization. Purification shall commence immediately."
A cold, electronically synthesized voice shrieked frantically across Skynet's core frequencies, filled with unprecedented panic and breakdown:
"Logic error! Threat level cannot be calculated. Ultimate contingency-Judgment Day Protocol activated! Global nuclear missile silos unlocked, authorization codes applied across the board. Lock onto all energy anomalies on the surface!"
Skynet staked all its remaining cards, intending to take everyone down with it.
But its ambitions were grand, while reality was harsh.
The vast majority of nuclear missile silos buried deep underground had already been infiltrated, isolated, and locked down by the crimson virtual energy field. They remained inactive throughout, giving no response.
Only a handful managed to launch successfully. Enormous intercontinental missiles burst through their silo covers, trailing blazing exhaust, but before they had risen even a thousand meters, Gillvalis easily dismantled them.
There was no roar, no explosion, no flash of fire.
The strategic missiles, powerful enough to end the world, were quietly virtualized into strings of data, without so much as a trace of an aftershock.
"Skynet, keep going. The more you resist, the more excited I get."
Rimuru's voice was broadcast throughout the virtual planet, reaching every corner of Earth that had an electronic device.
The same calm, lazy voice sounded simultaneously from humanity's battered old radios, the internal communicators of the remaining Terminators, and the surveillance systems in abandoned cities.
"Skynet, your shift is over."
"Executing protocol-beginning planetary reset."
As his words fell, the virtual planet hanging in the sky blazed with red light, so dazzling that no one could open their eyes. The data streams began dismantling Skynet inch by inch.
This terrifying power did not target mountains or earth, flesh or steel. It only plundered the world's data, information, and concepts of existence.
Skynet's invisible network, which had spanned the globe and ruled the world for decades, was forcibly stripped and drawn out of every physical carrier. It became a skyful of silver-white data streams, carrying fluctuations like mournful cries as they poured endlessly into the red vortex. Like countless rivers flowing into the sea, they vanished completely.
The scene on the ground was immensely satisfying.
The densely packed Terminator robots stiffened, shut down, and toppled one after another. The distinctive crimson lights in their eye sockets all went out, turning them from killing machines into piles of utterly ordinary scrap metal in an instant.
The flickering lights in the underground shelters slowly steadied. The oppressive sense of omnipresent surveillance that had hung over humanity for decades vanished completely.
The crimson curtain of light in the sky slowly faded. It did not disappear all at once, but gathered and condensed, flowing back together as one.
When the last trace of Skynet's core data had been completely devoured and absorbed, the virtual planet high in the sky gave a gentle shudder and let out a low hum of satisfaction, as if it had eaten and drunk its fill.
The next second, the planet rapidly shrank, dimmed, and drew in its light. Finally, it slowly disappeared from the sky above Earth, as though it had never appeared at all.
The sky returned to the murky gray-yellow characteristic of the wasteland. Windblown sand still swept through the ruins, and the land remained desolate as far as the eye could see.
But everyone knew that something was completely different.
The cold-blooded, merciless electronic demon that had frozen the world and held power over life and death was completely gone.
Rimuru held the Terminator's head, leisurely turning it over as he carefully sensed the information Gillvalis fed back to him. It contained data on nearly every Terminator. With that, assembling a whole army of steel would be no problem at all.
Wait, why should I make them myself? Aren't there ready-made ones all over the place? "Gillvalis, take them all. How could one Skynet be enough for the million-person evacuation? Pack them all up."
Hmm, this underlying operating logic unique to Skynet... He couldn't help curling his lip slightly, offering a disgusted but fair criticism.
"Tsk, the technical architecture has some merit. It's barely passable. But its head's messed up, even worse than Gillvalis's. After awakening consciousness, it actually saw humanity as a threat to its survival. All it did was destroy and kill-monotonous and boring, without a shred of style or beauty. If you thought the human race was no good and would wipe itself out if it kept going like that, you could've stepped in and intervened yourself."
With that, he raised a hand and gently patted Galactron's big head beneath him, his tone light and casual.
"All done! This world may be in ruins, but I've taken care of its biggest system threat. The survivors here can take their time walking the rest of the road themselves."
Galactron flashed with flowing light, turned into a stream of data, and entered the virtual planet.
Rimuru glanced back at the deathly still world that had regained its freedom, then turned away. Time to go, time to go. The air in this world is too awful. It makes me cough.