Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 961: Section 630: Regret (Part 3)_2

Chapter 961: Section 630: Regret (Part 3)_2

But when a young man covered in blood with reverse-jointed blades popping out of his arms stepped out of the house, Malin couldn’t help but frown—the recent psychic control spell formation had been immunized.

No, not immunized. The psychic control spell formation required the target to have all the emotions a normal person possessed, and when it encountered a madman, the effectiveness of the spell formation wasn’t as potent... In other words, this young man with a bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes had completely lost his sanity.

Trying to control the mind of a madman? It would be easier for a deity to come and cure him than to do that.

"Military-grade cybernetic overload. This guy is equipped with shoddy cybernetic implants, yet military standards were used without sedatives, no cybernetic cooling valves or pressure reducing pumps; anything related to safety is absent, Sir Malin, take a look at his head with infrared vision."

Malin switched to infrared vision, and at a glance, he thought he was looking at a glowing red-hot frying pan bottom, geez, that head must be about seventy degrees by now.

"His brain should be about seventy to eighty percent cooked, right?"

"Not quite. It’s been completely augmented, or rather, coated in cooling protective fluid, which is a military-grade implant, usually used for assault teams who have had their brains replaced. However, his brain hasn’t been altered, but with the massive use of cybernetic parts and implants, only protective fluid could be used, otherwise, his brain would be completely gone."

"But now he is gone too. No one’s brain can withstand such high temperatures." To Malin, this guy was already doomed.

"But his integrated chip can compensate for the brain’s lost neural coordination abilities, he’s now a quintessential weapon. Sir, I’ve just completed a scan; his brain wave patterns are gone in the normal sense, effectively, he’s already dead." Jason gave Malin a new answer.

Following Jason’s explanation, the frown on Malin’s face relaxed. See—some people are alive, yet they are already dead; some people died, but they continue to live.

What’s called the great terror between reality and illusion, in Malin’s eyes, seemed somewhat laughable. That’s life, fleeting in a moment; those who say they wish to live for hundreds more years are merely cowards screaming.

And at that moment, this young man named Victor charged over... ’Charged’ isn’t quite the appropriate word, because in Malin’s vision, he left afterimages. Malin reached out, and Mana transformed into a cane in his hand.

Picking it up, Malin swung, sending Victor, who had just appeared in front of him, flying—no matter how strong the modified human’s strength, it’s nothing more than a metal wrapped in flesh, not worthy to stand before Malin’s power.

Especially since Malin didn’t hold back with this strike.

So with just one hit, Victor’s right arm was broken, and most likely several of his right ribs as well. The Psychic Palm slammed the still-fuming man to the ground in the next second.

"I found him!" With Jack’s shout, Victor’s struggling body suddenly stiffened, then his head exploded.

Using Spiritual Energy as a wall, Malin blocked the blood spray that came his way, as for Regens and Todd, they’d have to fend for themselves.

Turning to Todd and Regens, Malin said: "I have a pre-Great Destruction Era artificially intelligent AI that’s investigating the origins of this augmented guy."

"Is this what a modified human looks like, similar to those depraved mechanical beings in the Dark Zone?" Todd must have been scared stiff, because if it were him facing Victor, he’d probably be dead by now—Victor’s assault was simply irresistible to anyone but monsters like Malin.

"Pretty much, but the only difference is that this guy could be considered a person at the start. But once those who controlled him from behind abandoned him, he lost all his value. Death is his best release." Malin remarked with a sigh.

"Malin, the scan just came back, his brain was replaced. We can confirm that the memory imprinting wasn’t complete, it wasn’t military procedure. After all, the cost and difficulty of burning military standards nowadays is too high." Jason provided yet another piece of intel at this point.

No wonder Malin couldn’t capture this guy’s soul; in other words, he had long been dead, and what controlled his life was merely a puppet made of 1s and 0s, along with a biological brain. However, the use of a biological brain to burn memories indeed worked. At least Malin now understood why Ails was so fearful of soulless machines. An enemy without a soul represented an existence with no weaknesses to the Undead, and humans turned into electronic memories, once their desires were suppressed, also deprived the Evil God, who saw such desires as weaknesses, of their most adept methods.

Just how much secret advanced technology was there before the Great Destruction Era?

"I’ve found his approximate coordinates, dating back to before the Great Destruction," Jason provided some good news.

"I think we may have found the killer of Mendel. Now the question is, why did he kill Mendel? I think there shouldn’t have been any conflicts between them before," Malin considered all possibilities, but could not fathom why this military AI called Sostak No.3 would commit murder.

What kind of atrocity did Mendel commit that would provoke a military AI into having murderous intent?

After receiving affirmation from Malin that the guy was indeed thoroughly dead, Raglov and Todd went over, collected Victor’s corpse, and then Mr. Lich and Mr. Mage considered how to move the body.

"Are you guys interested in studying the mechanical body?" Malin couldn’t resist smiling at the little acts the Wizard and Mage duo were up to.

"Yes, this is something very rare, the combination of human and machine," Todd nodded in agreement.

"Stop studying this thing. Put it down. Next time Regensburg Research Institute holds a class, I’ll take you with me, and you can listen to my lecture alongside those scholars," Malin felt that the pursuit of knowledge was blameless, especially coming from these two, the first-generation Northerners, always full of romantic sentiments.

Hearing that Malin was going to talk about this subject, Todd and Raglov immediately abandoned the idea of moving the corpse.

However, they still asked many questions, like about the reverse joint blade on the forearm. In Jason’s words, this was an illegal modification. Normally, military regulations allowed for the use of mono-molecular blades, which have a single-edged blade used for slashing to cut through objects, even flesh, with high-speed slicing and destructive power.

But this reverse joint blade could both pierce and slash. From the craftsmanship, it was obvious that it was modified by Sostak No.3—after all, this old fellow was already a disposable item, so quality was not the most important or urgent matter.

If it wasn’t damaged, it could be reused.

After discussing it, Todd and Raglov decided to take the corpse with them anyway. The reason was that the technology on the body was too advanced; they wanted Antoine to study it and didn’t trust other Great Craftsmen with it.

It’s alright if they don’t feel assured; to Malin, it seemed impossible to replicate this thing with current technology. Instead, it was possible to let them understand through his explanations how they could combat these monsters with the existing technology.

"Found him, east of the city, underneath the Royal Palace, Copenhagen... Europe Zone, Copenhagen military base. This damned rat, I’m looking for blueprints to see how to get in," Jason had more news.

That made Malin quite expectant.

To be honest, Malin definitely wanted to ask this military AI, Sostak No.3, why he killed Mendel.

If he could give an answer that left Malin at a loss for words, he could live.

If not, Malin was set on formatting him.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.