Every city has its genius.
Some never blossom because they don’t know their talent, are too lazy to prove their skills, or are secretly nurtured in the shadows of the city.
Back in the day, there weren’t many things this genius could do. Even a genius has just one body and two hands. It was an era where a brilliant mind alone couldn’t spark new inventions; you needed both talent and prolonged effort.
But then, AI came along and made these geniuses bloom.
Bloomed like crazy.
“─We did it!”
Boring, nauseating manual labor, annoying calculations, and unmanageable chores that hindered talent blossoming—AI took care of it all, allowing geniuses to pour their talents into their craft without holding back.
Based on the technologies created, every city got its hands on the coveted items: androids that Evilus and Dragons had tightly gripped and never let out. Soldiers to sweep away the villains in place of heroes.
[Angel 1, activating.]
[2, activating.]
[3……]
[……1001, activating.]
“With this, our city will be free from villains!”
Of course, the performance of these androids barely matched a B-grade hero, let alone a C-grade. They were laughably overpriced compared to the $99 models from Evilus or the Dragon Bone Soldier…
But still, they were soldiers that wouldn’t refuse orders, could be infinitely reproduced even if destroyed, and cost far less than what would need to be paid in compensation to a hero. You couldn’t help but be greedy.
The Utopia Group immediately deployed their soldiers. Armed with cutting-edge weapons, thousands of androids began moving to capture the villains scattered across the city.
The results were outstanding.
“Mission accomplished! We’ve caught the A-grade villain, Blade Ghost!”
As a steel soldier, unfazed by fear, charged ahead without a care for his life, even A-grade villains found themselves utterly helpless and getting captured.
Of course, the AI played a huge role. It tracked down the villains’ locations, analyzed their abilities to find weaknesses, and overpowered them by targeting those tender spots.
“One more—!”
“Nice one!”
“Alright!”
“At this rate, we could wrap this up by the end of this month, no, even this week…”
The people gathered in the operations room erupted in cheers. Freedom from the villain. That had been everyone’s long-held dream.
To think we could finally get rid of that trash that hinders progress, causes unnecessary casualties, and does nothing but leech off society.
Words couldn’t describe how monumental that was.
“We’ve tracked another villain!”
“Oh really? Send the angels immediately!”
“Yes! Understood!”
As they were frantically sending androids after the villains, the signal from one android suddenly vanished. It was approaching the newly discovered villain.
Just when the agents in the operations room sensed something was off, the signals from the surrounding androids began to disappear one by one, as if paint were spreading out.
“Uh, uh-?”
“What is this…”
“Could there be an S-class villain around?”
As everyone in the operations room stared at the monitor in confusion, a successful connection with the CCTV at the scene revealed the androids meticulously lining up.
At the end of it stood a villain fiddling with a smartphone all alone. After a few taps, he clicked his tongue and waved his hand.
As if instruments were playing along with a conductor, the angels began their advance in sync with his movements.
“What the…”
“Just now, he definitely controlled our angels…”
“That’s impossible-.”
The very one the Evil Scientist had been so wary of.
The Father of Machines, Deus ex machina, was making his appearance.
* * *
Wuuuwwww-!
A bizarre noise echoed, spewing heat everywhere.
Ayle, who entered the laboratory, was so surprised by the intense heat that she instinctively took a step back.
“Ouch, hot-.”
After opening the door and letting some heat escape, Ayle hesitated before stepping inside. Then she cautiously spoke up.
“U-um, Scientist? I think you’ve got the heater on too high…”
“This isn’t the heater.”
“Eh? But it’s so hot…?”
“I’m using the computer.”
“The computer…?”
I pointed silently to the rectangular box in the corner of the laboratory. Made of gold, that box was shaking violently and puffing out heat. The heat was so strong that this small box, light enough to be held with two hands, could make the whole room swelter.
I pointed to the square box that was placed there. The box made of gold was shaking wildly and spewing heat. The intensity of that heat was so strong that a small box that could be lifted with both hands made the room feel warm and cozy.
Seeing the box, Ayle tilted her head in confusion, looking at me. I shrugged my shoulders as if it was no big deal and replied.
“It’s a computer processing AI calculations.”
“AI? Then this is…?”
“Yeah. The mother of all AIs.”
Inside the sphere was the infinite power device I had created shortly after falling into this world. Of course, just because it was named infinite power didn’t mean it could really produce limitless energy; there were still limits to the energy it could emit per hour…
However, when I created the gate to head to this world with Arima, I was able to completely eliminate temporal constraints. Time and space are one, so if you can manipulate space, you can manipulate time as well.
Of course, since it had to be used right next to the gate, it was nearly impossible to create a super robot spewing infinite energy, supply energy to the whole world, or create a weapon capable of destroying planets.
“Then, with just that, you can… use as much AI as you want…?”
“Ayle, focus on your studies, okay? Or use the AI in something more appropriate for a member of an evil organization.”
“I am using it! But I ran out of tokens…”
“I removed the token limit for the executives, so what are you talking about? You must be using it for something weird.”
“N-no I’m not!”
If I asked her to show me what she was using it for, she wouldn’t hand it over so easily, yet Ayle protested confidently. I waved my hand dismissively, as if to say, “I get it.”
And at that moment, the golden cube started buzzing like crazy and belching out heat. Ayle, who had adjusted to the warm temperature of the room, let out a little groan.
“Oof…”
“Oh, it’s doing that again.”
“Is it going to break?”
“It won’t break. It’s just that some idiots keep trying to hack it.”
“H-hack? We need to stop them!”
I stood in front of Ayle, who was flailing her feet in a panic. She continued to stare anxiously at the golden cube.
“Don’t worry, I’ve secured everything.”
“That’s a relief then…”
“And they can’t hack it at a level like the kids here. It seems to be blocking superpowers just fine too.”
“I feel like I’m married now.”
“Can you really hack with superpowers?”
“Yeah. They’ve been trying all sorts of things. Hypnosis, brainwashing, mind control, and it seems like they’re even poking around with some ghost-summoning ability.”
Artificial intelligence is a coveted technology worldwide. Especially since it was distributed for free to everyone across the globe, they surely know that if they get their hands on the Evilus Agent, they could control the world. Because of that, we were receiving an uncountable number of hacking attempts every day.
On the computer hacking side, it’s relatively better. No matter how much you crunch numbers with any computer around here, it wouldn’t even come close to 0.0000…1% of the computing power that operates the Evilus Agent. But the superpower side was quite tricky.
The golden cube that boasts infinite energy is emitting heat every day precisely to block superpower hacking.
“Why not just give up if it’s not working? Even if they succeed, it’d be impossible for them to handle it with their own abilities…”
What if someone manages to hack into the evil AI using a superpower? The AI doesn’t exist alone. It’s always communicating with other AIs. Even in zones where the internet isn’t working, as long as it’s somewhere on this planet, it doesn’t matter.
An AI communicating with billions of others for 24 hours means that the moment it gets hacked, it’ll be normalized by countless other AIs. Unless the superpowered individual is strong enough to simultaneously hack billions of AIs, hacking it physically is impossible.
Obviously, there’s no ability that can manipulate billions of AIs in fractions of seconds. If such a person existed, they would’ve already been ruling this world alone. The existence of A-class villains or S-class villains would be pointless.
“So? Ayle, why did you come? Did you come to ask for more tokens?”
“Ah— if you do, I’d be really grateful… but that’s not the reason I came.”
“Then what is it?”
“I think you should see this…”
Ayle said this while handing over her smartphone. On the screen, there were pictures of androids advancing through the city along with some descriptions.
At the bottom, the description read:
‘They said it was operated by AI, but it got hacked by a villain and stolen lol
Where are all the idiots who said AI was safe? Come out and apologize!’
It was a line that seemed to target someone specifically.
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