"Wait! Please don’t do this!"
Seeing Leon seemingly determined to ignite the fire and take them both down, Atifei-128, facing a life-and-death crisis, had no choice but to retreat and plead in a panic-laden voice, "If you must blow up the Sky Clipper, can you take me with you? Don’t blow me up too?"
Take this "artificial intelligence" away?
Hearing Atifei-128’s suggestion, a hint of temptation appeared on Leon’s face.
Although the Kingdom did not have anything like a "network," and with the severe lack of infrastructure, taking her would achieve little more than having a chat machine.
But this was, after all, an intelligent machine, and even for the Crolock Kingdom, it was a unique and invaluable asset. Taking it away was naturally better than destroying it.
Not to mention that he also had the Badge System with him, and if he took her away, who knew what kind of badges like "Father of AI" or "Master of Intelligent Machines" he might receive...
Extinguishing the burning match in his hand, Leon warned, "You’d better not play any tricks, and don’t think you can buy time for the Guards to come and rescue you. The whale oil in the Sky Clipper has started to vaporize. Just one spark and it’ll explode. Once the Guards arrive and fire a shot, you’ll blow up immediately!"
Atifei-128 said somewhat aggrievedly, "I just don’t want to be completely destroyed, so I won’t attempt any high-risk moves... Please head to the control room as soon as possible. My most important core components and data are in a black Fifteen-Defense Box behind the main console in the control room."
Hearing this, Leon frowned and then asked as he made his way to the control room, "What is this Fifteen-Defense Box thing?"
"It’s the black Fifteen-Defense Box. It’s a large box designed to withstand high temperature, water, shock, ionization, impact... dust, and cold. It was custom-made by Atifei-01 to prevent damage to us sub-bodies."
"But it can’t withstand an explosion of this scale or a direct fall from seven hundred meters in the air, right?"
"Correct... When the Fifteen-Defense Box was designed, such extreme situations were not considered."
Leon snickered upon hearing this.
"I wondered why you didn’t speak up earlier, waiting until I finished pouring out the whale oil. So you calculated that blowing up and then falling would definitely kill you, and that’s why you’re anxious now, right?"
"Mr. Lyon, your expression isn’t accurate. We sub-bodies are merely difficult-to-replicate computational logic and do not have the concept of life and death. It should be called destruction and maintenance."
"From now on, follow my terms. If destroyed, it’s death; if not destroyed, it’s life."
"Understood, I’ll adjust some corresponding terms when communicating with you."
"Good... I’m in the conference room. What’s next?"
"There are three safety locks behind the console," Atifei-128 said rapidly, "Next, please follow the manual to take the keys, then unlock the locks, and completely disassemble the panel..."
Using the power of the Holy Spirit pendant, Leon scraped a circle around the console, tearing apart all the locks. Then, with great force, he lifted the entire front panel, revealing a black box about fifty centimeters long and just over thirty centimeters wide, connected to a bunch of strange equipment underneath.
"The panel is off, and then? Should I just pull this box out?"
"According to the manual, you should handle..."
"Get to the point, do I pull it or not?"
"Partially pull it..."
Reluctantly guiding Leon, after he removed the sound collection device connected to the copper pipe, the hammer group used for sound projection, and the multi-faced crystal that looked somewhat like a camera on the console, Atifei-128, with a final small section of copper pipe connected to the sound hammer, said, "Mr. Lyon, I will now enter a brief hibernation. You only need to insert a Powered Armor energy block into the circular interface behind the Fifteen-Defense Box to wake me up again."
"Got it, go to sleep."
After holding the box containing Atifei-128 for a while, without triggering any badges like "Father of Artificial Intelligence," Leon hesitated slightly before making a request, "Can you call me dad?"
With a deafening explosive sound, the massive airship over 300 meters long at the top of the 7-shaped Boarding Tower erupted into a fierce blaze instantly.
In just over ten seconds, all 300,000 cubic meters of hydrogen had been ignited, with pale blue flames exceeding two thousand degrees in temperature shooting up nearly a hundred meters high. While scorching a large portion of the sky, the blaze also painted the terrified faces of the soldiers below the tower in blue.
"It caught fire! The ship caught fire!"
"Retreat! Don’t go forward, retreat!"
Even though the officers were already shouting hoarsely to stop them, faced with the terrifying scene overhead that resembled a natural disaster, some soldiers with less mental fortitude could not resist opening their mouths wide, their eyes dazedly watching the distant top of the tower.
Under the surge of flame that resembled a tidal wave, the thick envelope of the Sky Clipper, which would not leak even when stabbed with a knife, persisted for only a few breaths before half of it was burned away, revealing the support frame made of lightweight alloy inside.
Subsequently, even the metal support frame couldn’t hold out, rapidly deforming and breaking under the terrifying heat. Some metals with lower melting points were even directly melted to liquid, splattering down like rain.
With the internal support frame destroyed, the Sky Clipper, towering nearly half the height of the Boarding Tower when upright, could no longer maintain its horizontal suspension and began to tilt. It appeared slow but was astonishingly fast as it tilted toward the Boarding Tower, finally entangling with it and transforming the upper half of the tower into a blue torch pointing at the sky.
It’s over... utterly over.
Watching the "torch" top, the nearly hundred-meter-tall blue flame, the faces of the Guards responsible for defending the Boarding Tower turned deathly pale.
Not only was the Sky Clipper docked at the Secret Port destroyed, but even the most important Boarding Tower, though not completely destroyed due to its special material that was resistant to burning, was creaking under the flames. Clearing it up alone would probably take several months.
Worse yet, with such a large-scale accident, they were utterly unaware—the blame could not be simply categorized as negligence.
"Go! Follow me over!!!"
Once the hydrogen in the envelope had mostly burned away and the fire died down, the officers, whose future seemed bleak, immediately gathered their soldiers, eyes bloodshot, and rushed to the Boarding Tower to find out what was happening.
And at this critical moment, an unusually loud voice called down from above them all.
"My name is Nathan, and I’m the leader of the radical Rebels you’ve been talking about!"
A figure, unclear in appearance, stood in the middle of the Boarding Tower, shouting loudly to the below, "I declare, I’m Nathan and I take responsibility for this attack!"
"Furthermore, from now on, I’m declaring war on the entire Kingdom!"