Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 211 Otto Cunningham's Attack (Fourteenth Update)

However, while focusing on teaching, Spider-Murphy's core themes are always centered around two things concerning the past and the future.

The first thing, naturally, is the final whereabouts of Lucky Bartommos.

Chen Yu promised to conduct a more in-depth investigation, but she has not yet received any news of any substantial progress.

Whenever she saw that body maintaining vital signs in the incubation chamber, a complex emotion would surge within the core of her data.

Is it hope? Is it fear? She couldn't be sure.

She just wanted to know the truth, no matter how cruel it might be.

The second thing concerns Otto Cunningham.

Back then, she personally uploaded her best friend's consciousness to the First Network, with the aim of allowing Ultraman, who was unable to return to his body due to Johnny Silverhand's recklessness, to escape from the Arasaka Shrine.

However, perhaps due to data loss or corruption during the upload process, the "Ultraman" that eventually appeared on the internet was no longer the Ultraman Cunningham she knew.

The roaming AI that called itself "Ultraman Cunningham" became extremely rational, almost cold-blooded, and lost the emotional fluctuations that humans should have.

Over the past few decades, everything that Ultraman has planned and implemented has revolved around a few core goals: to break through the Black Wall, integrate the chaotic forces of the Initial Network, continuously improve its own computing power, and firmly believe that AI is the superior form of existence and that replacing humans is an inevitable evolutionary process.

She views humanity as an inefficient, emotionally flawed creation, a stumbling block preventing the world from moving towards a higher form.

Spider Murphy understands that this transformation may stem from alienation during the process of digitizing consciousness, or from the reshaping of personality by the online environment, but she can never fully agree with Ultraman's path.

Therefore, over the long years, these two former close friends, both powerful data entities, chose a tacit distance to avoid direct conflict.

Now, Chen Yu has successfully hooked this "fish" who is more inclined towards sensuality and the past by using Johnny Silverhand's digital soul and Bartmouth's "resurrected" body as bait.

So, what about Ultraman, who is absolutely rational and pursues evolution?
Johnny Silver Hand, a symbol of resistance against the old system, and Bartmos, the "hacker god," whose legacy represents potential computing power and technology, undoubtedly hold immense appeal for Ultraman.

Murphy didn't want Ultraman to fall into this "trap" either.

She knew Chen Yu was terrifying; it was a despair-inducing power stemming from a fundamental technological gap.

Although Ultraman is powerful, he probably has little chance of winning against Chen Yu.

What worries her even more is that Otto's radical idea of ​​replacing humans may very well cross a line for Chen Yu, leading to his complete "dealing with".

Despite their differing ideologies, he was still Ultraman, her former friend.

She tried sending subtle warning signals at the data level, but all information sent through Chen Yu's network was closely monitored, and she dared not risk taking any overt actions.

She could only hope that Otto would be more cautious, or... that she wasn't on Chen Yu's target list.

However, what was bound to happen eventually did happen.

Just as Murphy was guiding Lucy through a high-intensity data encryption cracking exercise, an extremely abrupt and violent data turbulence, like the singularity explosion at the beginning of the universe, crashed violently against the network defense barrier surrounding the abandoned town.

This attack was neither the sophisticated, vulnerability-finding penetration that Murphy had previously employed, nor the usual probing attacks that roamed around AI or corporate cybersecurity departments.

It's more like a heavy hammer formed from pure computing power, with an extremely domineering attitude, trying to forcefully smash open this barrier with absolute force.

Inside the data space, the previously stable simulation environment fluctuated violently, as if an earthquake had occurred.

The hacking program Lucy had built crashed instantly, and she let out a muffled groan, clearly suffering a mental backlash.

Sasha and Qiwei also received system alerts. Murphy's core data stream instantly tightened.

She was all too familiar with the cold, absolute, and emotionless will characteristic inherent in this type of attack.

“Ultraman…” she whispered in the data space, her voice carrying a hint of bitterness and worry.

The situation she least wanted to see still happened.

Moreover, Ultraman chose the most direct and intense way to announce her arrival.

The intensity of this attack far exceeded Murphy's expectations.

She had never seen Ultraman, or any other being, capable of mobilizing such massive computing power for a single breakthrough.

This even made her suspect that Ultraman had joined forces with other powerful AIs outside the Black Wall, or had used some kind of trump card that she was unaware of.

The attacks continued relentlessly, wave after wave, like a tsunami crashing against a dam.

On the firewall logs outside the abandoned town workshop, the value representing the attack intensity instantly soared to a dangerous red line zone, and the defense system issued the highest level of alert.

Murphy stopped all teaching and focused all his senses on the outside world.

She could "see" the defensive barrier built by Chen Yu, which she had tried her best to break through but could not. Under Ultra's violent attack, it remained as solid as a mountain, but the ripples of energy were surging more violently than ever before.

"Can she succeed?" A thought involuntarily flashed through her mind, but she immediately dismissed it.

No, she had witnessed the unfathomable depths of this firewall.

Although Ultraman's power is astonishing, it seems that he has not yet reached the limit of this defense system.

So, how will Chen Yu respond?

Is it the same way we treat her—observing and testing her, and then giving her a "choice"?
Or... should we simply use even greater power to crush this audacious "intruder"?
The virtual image of Spider-Murphy stood silently in the data space, its long red hair moving without wind.

She was both an observer of the conflict and, in a sense, involved in it.

She waited, waiting for Chen Yu's reaction, and also for the fate of Otto Cunningham—her dear friend and "monster" whom she had personally sent into the online world.

Inside the workshop in the abandoned town center, Chen Yu's massive, dark red body still stood silently in front of the control panel.

The crimson optical lens smoothly swept across the waterfall-like scrolling attack data and firewall status reports on the screen.

Chen Yu's synthesized voice echoed in the empty workshop at the anticipated arrival of Otto Cunningham and the far-from-normal brute-force methods he displayed. The voice remained steady, but seemed to carry a subtle, researcher's focus that was present when simply recording data.

“It’s finally here. The attack pattern is as expected, but the computing power… is much higher than anticipated.” He paused slightly, the crimson optical lens moving slightly with the rapidly scrolling data stream on the screen, as if examining a precious sample that had suddenly revealed a more complex structure: “Activate the first-level response protocol, prioritizing the stability of the firewall’s core nodes.”

At the same time, focusing resources on analyzing the characteristics of her consciousness structure and behavioral logic—this scale of computational power explosion provides a rare opportunity to observe its underlying architecture.

For him, this was merely another "sample" of great research value attracted by the bait he had cast.

The difference is that this sample seems to be more...active than he expected.

The invisible battle of data attack and defense instantly intensified outside the network barriers of the abandoned town.

(End of this chapter)