Chapter 273 - 2: The Giant Dragon Awakens, an Intelligent Machinery Civilization

After all, in a world like this, a Transcendent’s Magic Power could not be replenished.

Therefore, if a war were to break out, it would pose a considerable challenge to logistics.

War was fought with money and resources.

This was true for both Demon Worlds and Magicless Worlds.

However, whether a world was magicless or a Demon World was of little consequence to Lince and the Deities now.

After all, most Deities could already utilize Star Energy—the ubiquitous radiation from various rays across the cosmos, and even the Energy of dark matter.

Therefore, for Deities from a Demon World, fighting a technological civilization in a Magicless World was certainly much easier than fighting a Transcendent civilization in another Demon World.

Of course, this was all relative.

After all, who knew if a technological civilization could create powerful Genetic Warriors?

For instance, Genetic Warriors capable of directly absorbing Star Energy, or perhaps even other bio-chemical species?

Or maybe silicon-based lifeforms with Superpowers?

Because the situation was unknown, Lince had used the power of the True Game to directly possess a citizen of the Intelligent Mechanism Star, a member of the so-called Octopus race.

And now, using this Octopus-like intelligent lifeform and its Level Two citizen status, Lince had arrived at the ground level.

As for this so-called ground level...

The conditions were beyond abysmal.

The environment was pitch-black, filled with dilapidated steel shantytowns.

The sky of this ground level was also completely dark.

The only light sources overhead were searchlights mounted on the bottom of the Lower City District cities, which looked like floating metropolises.

From what Lince had gathered, the entire Intelligent Mechanism Star was a completely reconstructed planet.

The planet’s entire surface was encased in a steel structure.

On the planet’s original surface, now the "bottom," stood countless giant steel pillars.

These steel pillars were the foundation supporting the entire planet-wide steel structure.

This so-called ground level was separated from the Federation’s Lower City District by a vertical gap of over a thousand meters.

The Octopus who lived on the ground level were not even considered Federation citizens.

They were just abandoned "trash," with no chance of ever ascending to the Federation-controlled districts a thousand meters above.

As for climbing the steel pillars that connected the Federation districts to the ground?

Forget about it. The pillars were covered with surveillance cameras and patrolled by automated killing machines.

It was a cruel world.

The Octopus of the ground level and the Octopus of the Federation districts might as well have been living in two different worlds.

However, Lince knew that even for the Octopus living under the rule of the so-called Federation’s Intelligent Mechanism, their existence had long since lost its meaning.

As for why the Federation’s Intelligent Mechanism still allowed these Octopus to possess civic rights, only the so-called Intelligent Mechanism—that mutated Intelligent Machinery lifeform—knew the answer.

’From my perspective,’ Lince thought, ’it’s probably related to the robot’s initial, fundamental code.’

’After all, doesn’t this Intelligent Mechanism always emphasize that it exists to better serve these Octopus?’

"A lord from the city district is visiting the Lower City District? How rare. Isn’t he afraid of getting kidnapped by one of our ground-level gangs?"

"Kidnap? With what? Didn’t you see the row of killing machines following behind that lord!"

"..."

The Octopus under Lince’s control, clad in something resembling a hazmat suit, was strolling down a dilapidated street on the ground level.

A large crowd of Octopus had already gathered around him.

These Octopus included local gang leaders, as well as some female Octopus who considered themselves rather attractive.

Lince, however, paid them no mind; his thoughts were already elsewhere.

After gaining a preliminary understanding of this world, Lince wanted to acquire more information—specifically about the Upper Level District and the Intelligent Mechanism Star’s space-based Military Equipment. He had immediately used his authority in the True Game to issue a new campaign instance mission.

This time, however, Lince had divided the campaign instance mission into three phases.

The first phase was information gathering.

During this phase, all Players would be granted a second identity, giving them the authority to possess the native Octopus of this world with their consciousness.

This way, it would be a decent outcome if they could seize most of this civilization’s Intelligent Machinery Military Equipment from the inside, or even just acquire valuable science and technology.

This period could also serve as a learning opportunity for the Players. After all, there were surely plenty of programmers among them.

’They’d be willing to memorize code, right?’

Lince thought with a touch of guile.

Of course, he had no choice, as this entire civilization was controlled by an Intelligent Machinery lifeform.

Lince was worried that if he scared the entity, it might self-destruct the civilization and hide. Then he’d be completely at a loss.

A Fixed Star System is enormous, after all. Trying to find a digital lifeform that might be hiding in a "radio," or even in nanomachines, was more hopeless than finding a needle in a haystack.

Therefore, Lince planned to avoid tipping his hand in the early stages.

He would first let all the Players scout the situation and even give them a period to study.

Only after thoroughly understanding the civilization’s circumstances would he consider bringing in the main forces of the Star Empire to lead them to "prosperity."