Chapter 801: Chapter 798: The Hardcore Pioneer II Chapter 801: Chapter 798: The Hardcore Pioneer II In fact, the moment Pilot Two spoke, Duncan had already sensed that this “God of Wisdom” was significantly different from the Storm Goddess — this was not due to the “contaminated” state shown by its mainframe arrays, but because it was still maintaining “consciousness”.

Duncan didn’t hide his curiosity: “We have met Gomona, who sealed her ‘death’ and ‘decay’ inside a temple to prevent erosion within the Shelter. I thought you all were in similar situations, but it seems your case is different?”

“We all face similar problems — decay and corrosion spread within our ‘existence’,” came the buzzing vibration from the central computer, “It’s just that we have different methods to slow down the process.

“As the ‘substrate’ of the world, Gomona bears the greatest pressure, so she had no choice but to split herself ‘in two,’ an extreme measure. Tarrikin’s method is to sleep in fire, imprisoning himself in a closed-loop dreamscape to slow corruption. Bartok built a prison for himself, an endless wilderness from which he can never leave…”

“As for me, I am probably the most unique of all — as you see, I am merely a machine constructed by mortals, it’s just that the Great Oblivion has given me the traits of life and decay; Thus, to combat it, my method is ‘iteration’.”

The central computer’s lights flashed, and Duncan’s face showed surprise after hearing these words: “Iteration?”

“I am currently version v16.08.102-beta,” said Pilot Two, calmly and seriously, then noticing the subtle expression on Duncan’s face, explained patiently, “The first number indicates generation, the middle is major version number, and the last number is minor update. Beta version because I recently updated my lighting driver, which is still unstable — those are the lighting effects that flicker continuously on the surface of the secondary servers, now capable of 4096 custom flashing patterns.”

After it explained, Duncan’s face bore an even subtler expression: “…”

A few seconds of stupor later, Duncan finally couldn’t help a twitch of the mouth: “I thought those lights were important status indicators…..”

“I can speak for myself when it comes to my status, or it used to be output through an external monitoring unit — of course, that was when my creators were still around, now no one comes to check my operational status anymore,” said Pilot Two, seemingly unaware of the change in Duncan’s tone, still maintaining that calm and serious demeanor, “As for those lights, they were ‘added’ by one of my creators after I was born.”

It paused for a moment, as the buzzing in the central computer fluctuated.

“To this day, I still can’t understand his intention for doing so, but he seemed to think it was important. I remember the look of joy on his face when he saw me learn to ‘flicker,’ so over the years I’ve been earnestly learning more ‘flickering’. No matter how many iterations of version I go through, I keep those lights.”

Behind the central computer system, the lights on the surfaces of those tombstone-like series of secondary servers began to flicker, their intermittent points of light resembling twinkling stars.

But Duncan suddenly recalled the scene he had witnessed in the Mysterious Deep Sea, remembering those countless indiscernible lights on the monstrously huge, mountain-like body of the Mysterious Deep Sea Saint-Pilot One.

Alice’s eyes widened slightly; she watched the flickering little lights on Pilot Two’s body surface with delight and couldn’t help but exclaim softly, “How beautiful!”

“Yes, very beautiful, that’s probably their purpose,” said Pilot Two in a soft voice.

Just then, Morris, who had been quiet for some time, finally couldn’t help but speak up. He had been restraining his own excitement, and now found an opportunity to speak: “So, you delay your own ‘corruption’ by relying on ‘iteration’… But I don’t quite understand what you mean by ‘iteration’… what exactly does that imply?”

The red light above Pilot Two shifted slightly, it seemed to “look” at Morris, and from within came a gentle vibratory voice:
“Shells are fragile, but knowledge is ever-new — so only through the constant transformation and renewal of the self, can those eternal truths be borne…”

Rumblings and vibrations suddenly came from all directions, and in the distant ocean, countless large and small shadows began to shake in the mist. Astonished, Morris hastily looked around, and the next second, he saw a scene he would never forget–
Those numerous black crystal clusters standing on the calm ocean surface were gradually “blooming”, splitting and cracking like a jungle of blades, and from the depths of those clusters, many previously blurred silhouettes were revealed — those were countless, tombstone-like massive black mainframes.

They lay crisscrossed, buried among the crystal clusters and sea water, many showing serious distortion and twisting, with metal and flesh remnants piling up, dead eye-stalks and nerve cords entwining the server mainframes, broken shells from some tremendous impact lay bare the unrecognizable inner structures filled between slots and panels with overgrown biological tissue.

Those sprawling, seemingly spectacular and mysterious crystal cluster “mountains” were, in fact, countless tombs!

“Those are all old versions of ‘me’,” Pilot Two’s voice suddenly rose, waking Morris from his profound astonishment. The voice of this “God of Wisdom” seemed to always be so,”Every version iteration creates such discarded matter.”

Morris turned his head back, his face still bearing immense shock.

Not far away, Lucricia was equally stunned — when she set out, she had braced herself to face the ancient gods, even the remains of ancient gods, and had indeed seen the immense corpse of an ancient god in the palace of the Storm Goddess, but even with her wildest imagination, she hadn’t fathomed that she would see such a scene… a landscape where corpses of ancient gods piled up like mountains!

“This iteration process… is astonishing,” even Duncan was a bit bewildered at this moment; the scene before him was clearly not what he had imagined when he first heard Navigator II say the word “iteration,” “My impression of a version upgrade certainly didn’t involve such a big fuss…”

“Yes, the commotion is indeed significant,” Navigator II said calmly, “With every version upgrade, I must find a way to eliminate the old version of myself. But on very rare occasions, the new version may lose, leading to an upgrade failure and a version rollback — although I usually prepare several alternative upgrade plans. If an upgrade fails, I activate an alternative plan, and then multiple new versions together beat up the old version, ensuring I eventually succeed in upgrading…”

Duncan: “…?”

Isn’t Navigator II’s “system upgrade” process a bit too hardcore?! So it’s a physical upgrade, a true “hardware update,” right?

However, while Duncan wore his puzzled expression, Morris and Lucresia beside him had already lost their initial shock, and even Nina beside him nodded thoughtfully, murmuring under her breath, “The teacher did say that the path to pursuing the truth unavoidably requires a robust physique and a dueler-like will…”

Hearing this, Morris smiled with satisfaction: “The process of mutual pursuit with knowledge is the process of battle, and you have come to understand this truth.”

Sherry, hearing this, couldn’t help murmuring to herself, “I’m quite good at fighting too, but I haven’t seen knowledge rush into my brain…”

A-Dog immediately emerged from the shadow beside her feet, muttering, “Your case is different, knowledge can’t keep up with you…”

Alice looked at Navigator II, her gaze shifted between Morris, Sherry, and A-Dog; it was unclear whether she had understood the current topic, but she just chuckled to herself.

Standing at the stern, Fenna crossed her arms and shook her head resignedly with a sigh.

Duncan suddenly felt subtly amused, his gaze sweeping between Sherry and Alice (and glancing at the sighing Fenna), giving rise to a series of odd associations in his mind–
In this world, scholars chase after knowledge, and knowledge like a fierce beast chases after mortals. Yet, for his companions, the situation always seems a bit off–knowledge can’t catch up with Sherry, it can catch up with Alice, but can’t find a place to burrow into the head of the doll miss, and as for Fenna…

Fenna is powerful; she probably beat knowledge to death in the year she graduated from sports school.

Duncan shook his head vigorously, casting out the increasingly absurd thoughts from his mind.

He then raised his head, his attention returning to Navigator II.

Now, he finally understood something — he knew from whence came the flamboyant style of the scholars in this world.

The perilous environment is probably just a part of the reason; the real root might well be the Wisdom God physically upgrading itself by opening its own skull…

Navigator II at this moment also “lowered its gaze,” seeming to have noticed something. The red light spilling from the central computer moved slowly across the small boat where Duncan was, and eventually settled on A-Dog.

“…This dog head, it looks familiar.”

A-Dog flinched, and it seemed like it only then suddenly remembered some past events, quickly retracting its neck and hiding behind Sherry.

Sherry also quickly reacted, immediately grabbing the chain near A-Dog’s neck before looking up nervously at the strange “deity” in front of her.

“There’s no need to be so tense,” Navigator II said in a soothing voice upon seeing this, “Now that you’ve come here, you don’t have to worry about any force separating you — I’m just quite surprised that among the flawed offspring created by Navigator I… such a special individual would emerge.”

Its red light slowly became brighter, and for the first time, there was a hint of a change in its tone.

That was curiosity.

“What exactly has happened to you?”

It asked softly.