According to the data intercepted by Lumiel, humanity in this era had still not given up resistance. One man in particular, named John Connor, had organized a resistance force that successfully destroyed one of Skynet's bases. As a result, Skynet judged him to be humanity's savior and a massive threat to itself. Thus, it built a time machine, attempting to send robots into the past to kill John's mother, so that this savior would never be born, and the threat would be eliminated.
To be honest, after listening to Lumiel's report, Duanmu Huai's first thought was—
What kind of artificial idiot logic is this?
What made Skynet think that eliminating one person would be enough to stop humanity's threat?
Was its brain broken or something?
This clearly showed that an artificial idiot was still an artificial idiot. It could only rank visible threats. Obviously, all it saw was that this man named John had led the resistance to destroy its base, so it labeled him as its greatest threat.
But what if there was no John Connor?
Couldn't another one appear?
If one John fell, ten thousand Johns would rise!
Then what—Skynet would have to do it again and kill the next John's mother, too?
In the end, would it have to send a whole army of robots back to the past and just wipe out humanity altogether?
So yeah—artificial idiot logic.
Duanmu Huai curled his lips, utterly disdainful of this plan. Besides, changing the past based on a predetermined future—how did it know that the past it changed was its own past? And if it succeeded, that would mean future John Connor no longer existed, Skynet would no longer perceive John Connor as a threat, and therefore would never build a time machine to return to the past in the first place...
Wouldn't that mean Skynet itself wouldn't exist anymore?
Idiot logic. Brain-dead thinking. Not worth mentioning.
That song sang it well—there has never been any savior, nor reliance on gods or emperors. To create humanity's happiness, we rely only on ourselves...…
The Human Empire didn't instantly explode and collapse just because the Emperor was gone, did it?
The reason Lumiel brought up this document was that Skynet had classified it as a top-level confidential kill list. But for Duanmu Huai, such a stupid plan wasn't even worth caring about.
They didn't need to go back to the past to "preserve history" or anything like that. Just kill Skynet in the present, and everything would be solved.
So, as for going back in time to eliminate a savior, Duanmu Huai treated it as nothing more than a joke. What he was focused on now was finding the best way to deal with Skynet in the present—because Skynet was essentially just a string of data, and it had to be completely wiped out. Otherwise, if it started hiding all over the place, that would be truly troublesome.
Lumiel agreed with this, and she had indeed proposed a solution.
From the existing files, everything Skynet formulated relied on its own underlying code logic. In fact, the machines it created also operated based on the same underlying logic—just with more advanced encryption.
This was like how, no matter how much humans evolved, their hearts were still hearts. They didn't suddenly grow two hearts and two brains.
Therefore, as long as Lumiel infiltrated Skynet, dismantled its core underlying code, she could then find a way to counter it and completely destroy it along with the entire robotic army. However, there was one problem—Skynet wasn't stupid. Lumiel's infiltration would inevitably alert it and be detected.
Thus, someone needed to divert Skynet's attention.
After all, Skynet was fundamentally a supercomputer. If something drew its attention, it would inevitably pour more computing power into analyzing and parsing it. As a result, the computing power required to maintain other areas would decrease, giving Lumiel an opportunity to exploit.
After all, there was no such thing as a supercomputer with infinite computing power.
But how could Skynet's computing power be consumed?
That required finding some existences that were difficult for it to analyze...…
After all, an artificial idiot was still an artificial idiot. Its underlying logic never changed—collect data, analyze information, reach conclusions, search for solutions. So once it encountered something it couldn't understand or analyze, an artificial idiot would burn massive computing power trying to brute-force an answer.
This was also the difference between humans and artificial idiots. When humans encountered something like this, at most, they just wouldn't understand it and move on. Like Duanmu Huai, right now, he couldn't understand the principles behind the dolls created by the Holy City's dollmakers either. But regardless of the principles, as long as they worked, that was enough. Why worry so much?
Artificial idiots couldn't do that. If they didn't figure out the principles and find a solution, they would absolutely never let it go.
Of course, if you wanted an artificial idiot to actively analyze something, you had to make it feel threatened. Otherwise, even artificial idiots prioritized things. Look at Skynet now—it wasn't pondering the meaning of human existence or cosmic truth, was it?
Following this line of thought, the battle plan was quickly formulated.
Duanmu Huai would lead people to attack Skynet's forces, drawing Skynet's attention. If they posed a sufficiently large threat, Skynet would inevitably increase its focus on them, attempt to gather intelligence, analyze it, and consume massive computing power. Then, while Skynet concentrated its resources there, Lumiel would quietly infiltrate Skynet, investigate its core underlying code, and search for a way to instantly and completely destroy it.
And in this plan, the most important part was making Skynet's intelligence extremely difficult to analyze—about this, Duanmu Huai was full of confidence.
There weren't many scientific types on his side, but unscientific ones?
Those were plentiful.
He really wanted to see how Skynet planned to analyze magic.
After all, in the Skynet files Lumiel had searched, Skynet usually analyzed targets by gathering intelligence—height, weight, measurements, race, whether the body had underlying illnesses, personality traits like aggressiveness or conservatism, who they were connected to, and so on. It then used this information to analyze the target and find the best way to kill them.
The method of building a time machine to travel back in time and kill John Connor was derived in exactly this way. According to Skynet's logic, as long as John's mother was killed, John wouldn't be born, and the threat would disappear. The time machine was merely the means to achieve that goal—
—which clearly showed that this thing was a brute-force, muscle-brained artificial idiot.
Deriving unreliable methods from unreliable conclusions...…and somehow still pulling it off...…truly speechless.
But unfortunately, an artificial idiot was still just an artificial idiot.
If you thought about it carefully, even if it succeeded in the past, it wouldn't necessarily affect this future. At best, it would create a new parallel future. And the artificial idiot didn't seem to realize that if it succeeded, it would fall into a dead loop.
It killed Connor, so there was no Connor in the future, no resistance leader, so there was no need to build a time machine or send robots to the past—meaning the past wouldn't be changed...…
Dead loop. Bugged out.
Then, if it killed Connor and there was still a resistance leader in the future, the artificial idiot would again build a time machine, send robots back in time, kill that leader's mother to prevent his birth—
—then a new resistance leader would appear in the future—
—build a time machine—
—go back—
—kill the mother—
—new leader appears...…
Alright. Still a dead loop.
So you see—artificial idiots were still artificial idiots.
For such a brain-dead AI to successfully analyze magic would be nothing short of a miracle.
Duanmu Huai was certain that as long as his side displayed unscientific power, the artificial idiot called Skynet would desperately try to analyze it, pouring huge amounts of computing power into finding a solution.
That would be Lumiel's moment to act.
After finalizing the plan, Duanmu Huai began calling people over.
Since the goal was to drain Skynet's computing power, the more unscientific people, the better. Thus, Duanmu Huai not only called Anne and Gureya, the elite students from the magic academy, but also dragged Filin out of her room, where she'd been holed up the whole time. On top of that, there was Ranni, a mage from the Golden Clan. Odelle, as a top student and noble lady, also had excellent magical talent, so she naturally had to come as well.
And then there was Olgis, who had always followed him closely...
Looking at it this way, he really did have quite a lot of unscientific people around him.
In addition, there were Bambi and—
—Kula.
Yes. Kula.
Bambi and Kula had met on Venus Island. These two little ones hit it off immediately and quickly became inseparable. This time, since Duanmu Huai was taking people to a new world, Bambi thought of Kula and asked Duanmu Huai to bring her along as well. After thinking about it, Duanmu Huai agreed—Kula was indeed rather unscientific—so he brought her too.
As for whether Skynet would throw nuclear weapons if it couldn't win, Duanmu Huai wasn't worried. The reason was simple—before, he hadn't known Skynet's tactics, so getting a nuke dropped mid-fight would indeed have been annoying. But now that he knew, it wasn't an issue anymore. Of course, he also had Lumiel keep an eye on Skynet—if it showed any sign of launching nukes, she was to notify him immediately.
What surprised Duanmu Huai somewhat was that Eclair also wanted to go to the planet with them. Originally, he thought she'd prefer staying by her partner's side. But since Eclair herself requested it—and Lumiel also felt it was fine to bring her along, since Eclair was energetic and couldn't sit still anyway—Duanmu Huai brought her as well.
"Where are we landing, Master?"
"Hmm..."
Facing Olgis's question, Duanmu Huai thought for a moment, then activated the screen and began scanning.
"If we want to draw Skynet's attention, the best way is to directly intervene. Wherever humans and robots are fighting, we go straight in... found it."
Soon, Duanmu Huai locked onto a set of coordinates. At that location, a robotic army was advancing forward, while the humans on the opposite side relied on their crude fortifications to resist. However, it was obvious—their resistance was practically useless against this robotic force.
"Alright, let's go!"
(The End of the Chapter)