章 639: 78
Date
2011 April 7th - Wednesday - Earth Bet Time
Day 6146 - Wednesday - Administrator Network Time
The fight with Eden, even if the Entity was 98% dead, was no joke. The defenses were present, both 'digitally' and in the physical world.
In the physical, some Shard-remnants even tried to fire all sorts of things (thankfully the corpse didn't have the brainpower to fire Sting) at the dimensional entrance where he connected to the corpse, while also bombarding him with the drones present in the body.
They weren't an enormous threat, but he still had to handle every attack, every device or equipment aimed at him as it would kill him because he couldn't be sure.
This resulted in a lot of double-checking, monitoring before he even tried to touch the corpse.
In the digital world, the software protecting Eden was magnitudes more complicated and secure than the software he found on the other Shards. He had to fight through that, and it didn't help that because of the crash, and the butchering Cauldron did. The entire thing was a chaotic mess.
Sadly, that didn't mean it was easier.
This chaos allowed for a lot of mutations in the algorithms as processes went unchecked and modules and routines went rampant. He had to defeat them carefully one by one, then make sure nothing remained that could slip into his Network and wreak chaos there.
There were even half-dead Shards who in their 'delirium' tried to declare themselves the new Entity. This resulted in several fights between said Shards, resulting in enough damage and chaos that only exacerbated the problems.
How much was the crash, Abaddon and Cauldron he didn't know, but what he knew, that even if he 'resurrected' Eden, she wouldn't be the same after. Too much damage and change happened for that…
Thankfully, he came to kill her, not to help her.
After the initial defenses were defeated and overcome, and the most obvious fires (literally, there were caverns of infernos deep in the body) were put out, he began with setting up the defenses.
He made sure that no other Shard could access it, but for now left the dimension where the body of Eden protruded and where Cauldron collected their vials, though with powerful defenses.
Before even touching the databases and see what survived, he had to connect an energy generator to the corpse to top it up, and then he had to sort out the Shards.
He was in the process of connecting an energy generator that was built in an isolated dimension when his warning alarms began to blare.
A quick look showed that he was receiving an attack from his very own Network.
Cursing at the timing, he left an automated process in charge of the generator and went to take a look at the unknown attacker.
It only took him less than a second to find where the attack came. While he was cursing the parentage of Valefor, he did a quick review and was relieved to see that his defenses stopped the first barrage. Though on further notice, someone obviously designed it to go through the defenses of an average Shard. Maybe even specialized for Eden and Zion…
Before the next attack could commence, he hastily traced the attack, wanting to eradicate whoever decided that it was a good idea to attack him. He only hoped it wasn't Path to Victory. Though it seemed rather sloppy for that Shard.
Finding that it originated from the Butcher's Shard, he was initially confused.
How did that Shard get access to one of his Shards even through the quarantine?
Then he wanted to smack himself hard. Apparently, when he was setting up the quarantine, he only made it so that the Shard couldn't have outgoing communication. Nothing stopped the Shard from accepting incoming communication, and nothing stopped a Shard from communicating with the Butcher's Shard.
Naturally, he would have noticed it and stopped it before it could escalate into a problem, but he was distracted by the fight with Eden's corpse and while his monitoring routines logged the communication they didn't consider it as an emergency so they didn't warn him.
And now the Butcher's Shard absorbed Valefor's and the others, and for some reason, decided the wisest choice would be a full-frontal attack on him.
While he was contemplating the utter stupidity of the Shard, another attack came. He quickly sent off a request to see if anything with a similar level of danger happened while he wasn't paying attention, then he turned his attention to the attack besieging his firewalls.
It was entirely different from the previous attack, showing once again that the Shard was based on different principles (or over the eons evolved differently, or even was designed differently). Still, he hadn't spent the last few years to advance and upgrade his crystalline body for nothing.
His firewall stopped the incoming viruses and other assorted 'things' that the enemy Shard threw his way cold. Then ground them into nothingness. Though he had to make sure that none of that gunk got into the Network because had no need for endlessly chasing crazy ghosts in there.
Thankfully, a quick review proved that the Shard was solely focused on him. He still put together an update package and sent them out to all the Shards on his Network, because after reviewing the code of the attack he was sure they were designed to counter the defenses that the Eden/Zion Shards developed.
He also quickly put together a plan for a new Shard, that would be simply the firewall of the entire network, taking care of security and fighting intruders if he wasn't available.
Sadly, the execution had to wait, because he needed to take care of the Butcher's Shard.
He first tightened the quarantine around the Shard, not wanting to let it escape before his own attacks slammed into its defenses like a particularly angry asteroid. At first, he just wanted to use Sting to erase the thing, but in the end, he wanted to know what the hell happened.
Shredding the firewalls on the Shard took no time, but he still got attacked while doing that. It was haphazard at best, clearly the Shard's last-ditch efforts to stop him.
But it didn't.
The moment he was in, he sought out the consciousness of the Shard and cut it off forcefully from everything. Then he did the same to the almost two dozen Shards it was connected to, fearing that it could have infected those too.
When he got the all-clear signal back from his monitoring routine, he sighed in relief (or at least emulated a sigh) and started on his usual data mining.
The only difference was that this time he wasn't gentle. He had no plans of keeping this Shard alive or whole. As soon as he was done with it and learned everything he could, he would be turning it off and recycling it for materials.
His first step is to cut the Shard off from the others it was connected to. It was rather surprising what he found there. He knew Valefor's was there because of the attack, but the rest surprised him.
Carefully reviewing the events that happened, he couldn't help but shake his non-existent head.
Really, Path to Victory? A distraction?
He ignored that part, for now, wanting to deal quickly with this mess before he confronted the other Shard.
Thankfully, none of the lesser Shards had anything resembling consciousness, so he simply wiped them, cleaned their systems from the gunk Butcher's Shard added, and added them to his Network (except the late Blasto's Shard; that went to Shaper) though all of them were still in quarantine.
Then he turned his full attention (the search came back negative about similar events, thankfully) to the Butcher's Shard.
Going through the data he managed to get from the non-crazy part of the Shard was a revelation about how something can be really stupid and ingenious at the same time.
There was absolutely no evidence in the databanks of the Shard that it came from Abaddon. All of it was wiped away, though he noticed because the third Entity made it look suspiciously clean.
Its task was to connect to a host, then when that host died take the learned experiences and knowledge, jump to a new host, integrate that knowledge and experience, and see what happens.
On the surface.
Deeper in the code, hidden behind several layers of encryptions, were processes that would allow someone who had the codes to instantly take over the Shard and the Shards it was connected to, giving them a very nice backdoor to Eden and Zion.
It was a clever idea, but then came the usual Entity stupidity.
Probably fearing rebellion, Abaddon didn't really make the Shard intelligent. He gave it enough to execute its task, but not enough to get ideas. And it seemed his paranoia didn't really pay off.
When the Shard's first host died, instead of taking a copy of its knowledge, it copied the entire man and added it to the database. Then when it jumped to the next host, it tried to integrate the entire copy with the new host.
Which turned out to be a bad idea. The Host was driven insane, and even the Shard got a little of it. By the time it reached the tenth host, the Shard was on the same level as Ciara, being half-human and half Shard. Unfortunately, its human half was bat shit insane. Not that Ciara and her partner were the paragon of sanity, but compared to the Butcher, they were saints.
Around the thirteenth host, it decided that the best way to take over as many Shards as it could was to become an Entity. However, because it was insane, it decided that the best way to do that was to have the host die to stronger and stronger people, thus slowly improving his power, while staying hidden, completely ignoring the fact no sane person would dare to kill the Butcher.
And then Valefor came.
The Shard immediately noticed that the parahumans serving its host were controlled, but it thought that somebody wanted to kill the host, and it wanted to access to a master power so it let it happen. Then it received an anonymous message that told it that the best Shard to take over would be the Administrator Shard.
Ignoring where the message came from, it decided to see how the Master planned to kill the current host, then it would work on finding the Administrator Shard, namely him.
When Valefor showed up with a controlled Blasto, it immediately figured what the plan was. It might have been insane, but it was still a Shard, with all the processing power to prove it. So, it let the hastility thought out and frankly insane plan to go forward, even turning off the Brute enhancement when it was Valefor's turn to shoot.
It reasoned that with more Shards (resources) it would have a better chance at taking over the Administrator Shard. So, instead of letting the takeover process run for weeks, as usual, he simply brute-forced the process, effectively killing the people it took over. So, the moment before he attacked the Butcher, Valefor's body was piloted by a Shard that was driven insane by the integration of 19 successively more insane human minds.
He contemplated the sheer craziness that happened for a few seconds, before sighing once again, and began data mining the entire Shard for anything useful.
While that was going on, he took a look at what was happening on Earth Bet. During the two days, Butcher managed to drag all the dead bodies of the parahumans (and a few animals who tried to take a bite out of them) to an abandoned shack where using the knowledge it gained from Blasto's Shard it upgraded Valefor's body.
The new body was twice as big as a regular human, a little hunched and the entire thing bursting with reinforced and enhanced muscles. The teeth were exchanged to fangs and the hands now ended in claws.
And for some reason, the entire thing was blood red with luscious silver hair…
He took a snapshot of the monster, then sent it over to Shaper before thinking about what he should do with it.
The body was alive for now, but the moment he killed the Shard it would collapse as the processes that kept together would fail.
Having the Butcher vanish wasn't a solution, just like with the Nine. People would wonder, and would never rest until they figured out the mystery.
Sadly, he couldn't really arrange for anyone to kill it, because then they would be labeled as the next Butcher, neither could he come out and say: "Hey guys, I killed the power, no need to worry about it anymore!"
So, in the end, he went with the lesser mystery.
He disconnected the monstrosity from Butcher, causing it to die, yet kept the body itself together with his own processes. He then took a random Thinker Shard that worked for Watchdog and set it so they would get a clue about the whereabouts of the shack.
When the investigators arrived, he would simply let the body slowly fall apart.
They still would worry about the Butcher, but if it doesn't show up for a while they would slowly forget about it…
Thankfully, his data mining finished as soon as he decided what to do with the monstrous creation, so he simply shunted them to a temporary server where he could go over the data in detail and began disassembling the Shard.
He needed to return to Eden, finish what he started, and then have a rather thorough talk with Path to Victory.
Date
2011 April 8th - Thursday - Earth Bet Time
Emily was rather agitated.
Ever since she and the other relevant directors got the email about the predicted S-class event, the entire ENE PRT and Protectorate were run ragged. They had it a little easier than the others because Dragon was here, but after two days of constant searching, the entire team was dead tired.
Velocity was tasked with running through the countryside, hoping to find something, while the others checked hot spots on foot, in vehicles, or with drones.
All to find nothing.
Meanwhile, she kept receiving updates from other directors about their progress, who reported the same thing.
It was maddening…
A quick review of the usual S-class threats showed the Nine was last seen north of Texas, Ellisburg was no more, Eagleton was still behind walls and the Endbringers were still inactive.
She was about to check if there was any update from the search parties when her computer chimed, signaling a new e-mail.
Seeing the same header 'URGENT - WEDGDG', she immediately opened it.
Attention all relevant departments! The catastrophic event predicted on April 5th is no longer a concern. Department 24 managed to find the body of the Butcher (see attachment) near Boston. All Thinkers confirm the catastrophic event was thwarted.
For further information…
Emily blinked in surprise, then quickly sent out a quick recall to her people, and with morbid curiosity, logged into the system and opened the case file.
She wanted to know what the hell riled up the Thinkers this much…
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