The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

The moment the three Titanium Guards were destroyed, Hao Ren instantly felt that something was amiss.

This was due to their opponents’ complete non-reaction.

Hao Ren was dead sure that the three Titanium Guards did not respond. It was not that they could not react on time. Vivian, Y’zaks and his attacks were quick for sure, but they were not so fast to the point that they could beat the physical distance between them and the guards. Y’zaks’ demonic flare took at least a tenth of a second to reach the enemy, and in that split second, even if the three guards did not manage to dodge or counter-attack, they would have at least displayed some reactions.

Hao Ren felt that he had hit a stationary target, which did not have the tiniest reaction.

Hao Ren was not the only one to think so; Vivian and Y’zaks, who were experienced fighters, had also noticed the anomaly. Y’zaks leaned down and said, “Something’s not right.”

Lily held up the Frostfire Claws and listened carefully as her ears tilted back and forth. “No alarm is sounded.”

Hao Ren remained on high alert for a while. He neither saw any other Titanium Guard coming this way nor heard the blare of the alarm in the base. He exchanged a look with Vivian, and both nodded tacitly.

“Keep your eyes open, things are a little strange here,” Vivian said quietly. “Big Guy, watch our back.”

The fact that they had brought down the three guards with ease did not make them feel any more comfortable. Instead, they thought it strange. They threaded along cautiously in the steel tunnel toward the center of the fortress.

After moving not far away, Hao Ren had spotted a few figures in his peripheral vision. At the same time, Lily had also seen it and shouted quietly, “Titanium Guards in front!”

“Wait a minute.” Hao Ren motioned the trigger-happy husky to stand down. “Watch me.”

Hao Ren took out a metal rod from the dimensional pocket and threw it on the ground in front of the Titanium Guards.

The metal rod hit the ground with a clank, which was so loud in this dead silent tunnel that it kind of knocked into their ears. But strangely, the Titanium Guards, who had weapons in hands, seemed to be deaf and unresponsive.

Seeing this, Hao Ren activated his Steel Membrane Shield and walked right up to the Titanium Guards.

The warriors glinting in cold metallic luster stood upright in their posts with the specially-made electromagnetic rifle in their hands held close to the chests. A bright outer shell seemed to cover their alloy-cast faces, and light shimmered in the slits where their eyes were. This was the Titanium Guard, the most potent elite fighter among the Executors, and their appearance explained why they were so-called.

However, these guards were now standing still there as if they had a system crash, turning a blind eye to the intruders in front of their eyes.

Lily tiptoed up to one of the Titanium Guards with her tail between her legs. When she was sure that the Titanium Guard was lifeless, she breathed a sigh of relief and began to wag her with a smirk. She poked the chest of one of the Titanium Guards with her claws. “What? With all the trouble we have gone through, it turns out that they are just a bunch of models? They just scared me senseless not long ago.”

But N-6 looked shocked. “It should not be like this. This is not logical! Titanium Guards are the most alert fighters, how could they…”

Vivian shoved the husky to a side while she knocked on the head of one of the Titanium Guards. “They seem to be in sleep or maybe standby mode. It looks like they still have power. Look at their eyes and lights on their bodies.”

“For sure. The MDT has detected power in them, but due to lack of signal, they remain standing still.” Hao Ren’s brows knitted together. He gave one of the metal warriors a push, and the tall Titanium Guard fell straight to the ground with a loud bang. “Perhaps we should take a look at the inside of this thing?”

Y’zaks scratched his bald head. “Perhaps I should have brought along Y’lisabet.”

“Don’t even mention her; she is a demolitionist. She could have poked and broken the circuit board with her screwdriver.” Hao Ren quickly dismissed the idea. He then took a laser dagger out from his dimensional pocket. It took him a while to take off the chest armor of the Titanium Guard. But once removed, he saw the complex circuitry and a cubical core glowing with light inside. “MDT, can you extract the data inside this thing?”

The MDT flew over and read the core with a light beam. “There should be no problem.”

Vivian reminded, “You better be quick. We could not afford to waste time on these scrap metals. You have three minutes, and then we will move on.”

“It won’t take that long; it is not that you do not know my ability although you guys use me mainly to play movies,” the MDT muttered and started to extract the information. It suddenly screamed just a few seconds into the process. “Huh? There is just a bunch of garbled codes?”

The core of the Titanium Guard did not contain any valid codes. All the MDT got was just meaningless garble.

Lily quickly looked at Hao Ren. “Mr. Landlord, did you just damage it just now?”

“I don’t think so.” Hao Ren frowned and turned to look at N-6. “Have you mentioned before that the Cortex Prime has direct control over the Titanium Guards?”

N-6 nodded. “That is true.”

“Would the failure of the Cortex Prime affect the Titanium Guards?”

N-6 did not answer, but she was wide-eyed.

“It looks like I am right.” Hao Ren exhaled and looked down at the immobilized Titanium Guard that had become a pile of scrap metal. “Cortex Prime is deteriorating rapidly. His error codes have broken through the servers’ built-in firewall and spread to the Titanium Guards. If we do not take action now, the Cortex Prime will soon become a source of infection that brings down your entire network of Executors.”

The group began to move ahead, leaving behind the Titanium Guards.

“When did you think the abnormality of the Titanium Guard appeared?” Vivian asked N-6 curiously as they went.

“I do not know.” N-6 had sensed her logic circuit heating up, and an unprecedented sense of crisis made her completely forget her fear of this powerful yet unpredictable aliens. “The fortress and the lunar base on the outside are two different worlds. Cortex Prime’s security system prohibits any individual with insufficient authority from accessing the fortress. Usually, a large number of automated systems are responsible for maintaining the fortress. The freight trains we have just seen are one of these automated systems. Only the Titanium Guards and humans are eligible to move freely in the fort, but they will never leave this place.”

“In other words, the Executors have no way to know what is happening inside the fort, right?” Vivian’s eyebrows knitted together. “So these Titanium Guards have probably stopped working a long time ago, but people on the outside have no idea. Yet, according to N-4, is there not a group of administrators responsible for the routine maintenance of the Cortex Prime hardware? Did the system administrators find no abnormalities?”

N-6 could only shake her head. “I do not know about that. The administrators are working both inside and outside the fort, but they usually not appear before the Executors because they are also considered to be part of the fortress system.”

The group found more Titanium Guards, all of which had been shut down, along the way.

There were more specially-made fortress guards inside the fortress. But without exception, all of them were immobilized. Some Titanium Guards were still standing at their posts, but more had fallen to the ground. It seemed that these soldiers were on patrol before the immobilization happened. The sudden crash of the system caused them to tumbled head over heels, becoming a heap of metal waste.

Many signs indicated that the systemic fault of the Cortex Prime reached a tipping point at a particular moment—it happened so quickly that all the Titanium Guards in the fort stopped running at almost the same time.

This tipping point was reached when the number of faulty servers exceeded the number of normally running servers.

The system running and maintaining the hardware inside the fortress ran on low-level AI. Like nerves, it operated based on the underlying protocol, and this structure just allowed the system to escape from the corrupting codes of the Cortex Prime. So, the infrastructure in the fortress was still functioning today, including lighting and ventilation. But other than these, the function of the entire fortress had come close to a complete shutdown.

The guards had stopped. The surveillance system was offline. There was only one uncontrollable Cortex Prime in the silent fortress and a group of humans who had never come out of the fort.

Hao Ren had no idea what the so-called human living in the Inevitable Palace were doing, but he did know that the out-of-control Cortex Prime was continuously issuing one instruction after another. Even if many of these instructions had logical errors, the Executors who follow commands to the letter on the outside would not realize the changes in the fortress—even if they recognize the problem, they could do nothing about it.

The security system went offline meant that the group could enter the fortress as if coming to no man’s land. They swaggered past all checkpoints and gates before coming to a chamber with a lot of cables, pipes, and servers.

The chamber was one of a large number of secondary server rooms supporting the Cortex Prime’s thirteen main servers.

Vivian shook her head when she saw the situation in the server room. “It looks like we do not have to study why the administrators have not sounded the alarm anymore.”

In between the dense cables and servers, wreckages of machines, all coked, were scattered around. Those things with alloy casings and shapes as if beetles were the system administrators as mentioned by N-6 and N-4.

They were all killed, burned from the inside out by intense electromagnetic pulses.

It was the job of the Cortex Prime.