Abyssal Wanderer.

Although he still retains human cognition, this is the first time Jiang Zhou has felt that he is no longer Homo sapiens.

Theseus's path depth 3 adjustment and modification emptied most of his internal organs.

The entire digestive system, as well as most of the circulatory and respiratory systems, have been replaced with more efficient bionic enhancements; the nervous system has also undergone a comprehensive upgrade.

With the "broad-spectrum energy core" as the central hub, the "Marathon II bionic enhancement system" took over the weak athletic ability of his original flesh and blood body, enabling him to reach a level that ordinary people could not achieve, whether it was instantaneous exertion or continuous endurance - such as lifting a car weighing several tons, or jumping four or five meters high with ease.

Moreover, the upgrades in endurance brought about by these adjustments and modifications are even more astonishing: the "broad-spectrum energy core" has far superior energy storage and conversion efficiency compared to bioenergy, and charging is extremely convenient - even in the wilderness, he only needs to put a photovoltaic panel on his head to meet the minimum level of physical energy consumption.

In an emergency, it can even remove the core and throw it into a furnace to recharge it via thermoelectric conversion.

Of course, as the price for more efficient energy intake, Jiang Zhou, having lost his digestive system, is also deprived of gourmet food. In the future, he can only rely on purchasing pre-made delicious experiences and reliving past feelings through a brain-computer interface.

As for the "Ariadne-type nano-neural intrusion wire," it not only gave him the ability to implant third-order temporary puppet circuits into others through short-to-medium range physical intrusion, but also improved the speed and accuracy of his whole-body neural signal transmission.

Although it doesn't reach the extreme level of superconducting signal transmission like "Night Marrow," it still greatly enhances its reflection speed.

In addition, there is the "Pseudo-Sea God's Gift Type Active Armor" which enhances his defense.

The so-called "pseudo-Sea God's Gift Type Active Armor" is a special non-Newtonian fluid that can rapidly seep out according to his will and instantly cover the body surface to provide all-round protection.

This liquid armor can withstand direct fire from most commercially available kinetic energy weapons, regardless of whether the attack is accelerated by chemical energy or electromagnetic force. Furthermore, due to its non-Newtonian fluid properties, the higher the speed and kinetic energy of the attack before reaching its defensive threshold, the better the defensive effect.

On the contrary, this armor would not be able to defend against a slow, stabbing cold weapon.

Against energy weapons such as plasma, pulse, or thermal melt, the "Pseudo-Poseidon's Gift Active Armor" is less effective—it requires a continuous generation of new heat-insulating layers to mitigate the damage. This works well against weapons like lasers that require sustained, slow output, but it has a significant weakness against burst energy weapons.

But no matter what, these physical enhancements alone would have been enough to make Jiang Zhou a second-tier superhero in some comics a hundred years ago.

Moreover, the Theseus Path is not known for its direct combat.

The true core of Depth 3 is the "Personality Distillation System," the "Third-Order Puppet Circuit," and the "Pegasus-Type Bioprotein Chip," which involve three brain modifications related to the puppet system.

"Pegasus" goes without saying; its brain repair function allows it to continuously scan mental models, leaving behind backups of its own mind at all times. While these backups don't go so far as to allow a puppet to be fully resurrected after death, they at least allow it to remotely control the puppet from the cloud, achieving a kind of "pseudo-resurrection" mechanism.

Of course, this function is somewhat useless for someone like Jiang Zhou who already has the "Janus Program," but Jiang Zhou urgently needs this ability to cure his radiation sickness.

The second function of "Pegasus" is to achieve the so-called separation of spirit and body.

Simply activate the zombie switch, and Jiang Zhou's body will be managed by "zombie mode." Its behavior will completely mirror the original body, and it will even be more powerful in impromptu combat. Meanwhile, Jiang Zhou's consciousness will be able to enter the World Wide Web or the Dark Web to simultaneously carry out other online actions or missions.

Besides being able to multitask, this ability also brings additional advantages in combat—he can exert his strength both online and offline, fully utilizing his abilities in both the real world and the internet.

The "Third-Order Puppet Circuit" allows Jiang Zhou's direct puppets to control up to six sub-puppets. At the same time, the direct puppets can share all of their knowledge and experience, and also grow a portion of the main body's brain bio-protein chip.

The current stages of Depth 3 include edge enhancement systems, flash-type biochips, and Rubik's Cube spatial perception enhancement systems.

At the same time, Jiang Zhou can also directly implant temporary third-order puppet circuits into others through "Ariadne-type nano-neural intrusion wires".

Although these tiny puppet circuits do not have the function of plasma self-destruction and their effective time is not long (ranging from a few seconds to several hours depending on the strength of the immune system), once implanted successfully, they can completely control the behavior of the other party for a short period of time.

Finally, there's the "Personality Distillation System," an ability somewhat similar to the virtual personality ability of the Narcissus Path—perhaps Janus copied it from Nyx, Jiang Zhou thought to himself as he read the feature description.

In short, this ability is similar to a virtual personality, but it can only be used on puppets directly connected to the main body. After the puppets develop their own personalities, Jiang Zhou can distill and store these personalities.

If a puppet dies, he can inject his personality into a new clone to achieve another form of "pseudo-resurrection," which greatly speeds up the process of cultivating new puppets.

On the other hand, the main body can also temporarily load these personalities in order to find a more suitable way to break the deadlock when encountering different difficulties. This function is called "personality armament".

In the real world, the "personality weapon" function is rather useless, since there aren't many things that can be accomplished simply by loading a personality without the corresponding hardware. However, on the World Wide Web or the Dark Web, this ability is upgraded to "stand-in weapon"—when switching between different personalities, the puppet's stand-in can also be switched over at the same time.

In other words, the larger the puppet pool Jiang Zhou accumulates in the future, and the stronger each puppet becomes, the more flexible the tactics he can choose in the Abyss Dark Web will be.

No wonder Christie was captured by the Dionysian Bureau on Narcissus Plain back then...

Jiang Zhou thought to himself.

Although Theseus at Depth 3 can only switch between "stand-ins" by himself, once the depth of adjustment is further increased, he will probably be able to pull out all the puppet personalities in reserve and become an army all by himself.

For those non-network warfare-specific adjustment paths, it would be difficult for the opponent to withstand a sudden deployment of a large army of substitutes for a righteous mob attack.

Finally, the Theseus Path Depth 3 also includes adjustments and modifications to the "Periphert Inertial Anchor"; although the description says this is just a functional modification, Jiang Zhou thinks it's all to compensate for the main body's destructive power...

Just as he was thinking this, a series of notifications popped up one after another, like debt collection text messages.

Each pop-up window is marked with the Janus logo of the Janus program.

[Confirmed, user permissions have been granted to the Hermes realm]

[Expanding the search scope of controllable elements, scanning for entities that meet specific requirements...]

[Scan complete. Number of connectable and controllable elements: 474678 (including 474531 high-risk unconscious individuals)]

[Calculate the current adjustment depth; recommended number of controllable features to connect: 3]

[Currently connected controllable elements: 2]

[Connection depth 7 Sibyl, continuous spacetime retrograde jump permission unlocked (tentative)]

The current spacetime continuous steady state has returned.

[The current maximum steady-state time that can be stored is 00:07:57 (current maximum steady-state time that can be stored is 24 hours)]

[Connection Depth 7 Orpheus (Jim Ritter), Second Wish Recycling Permission Unlocked (Note: Unlocking this permission requires 1 Controllable Element Slot; after unlocking, the Second Wish Carrier will completely lose its infection drive)]

[Unlock or not: Y/N]

474,531 high-risk unconscious individuals...

In other words, besides the more than 200,000 in the Nord resettlement area, there are more than 200,000 super zombies scattered outside...

Upon seeing this number, Jiang Zhou couldn't help but slightly open his mouth.

So, do those superhuman zombies really not tell a single truth?
He had thought that the discovery of over 200,000 superhuman zombies in the Nord resettlement area, which he had previously scanned, was already outrageous enough.

However, according to the Janus program's scans, there are a staggering 470,000 Superman zombies that have been completed worldwide!
When Hanell was negotiating with Jim, he said there were only a few hundred Super Zombies outside the Nord settlement. The actual number is more than a hundred times higher!
Even without the certification of mandalas, they have already infiltrated human society to an unknown extent over the years.

Jiang Zhou simply searched using the keyword "Olympus Order" and found that nearly ten thousand people had infiltrated the inner workings of those super-corporations.

Of course, due to the fatal flaw of the mandala certification, almost no superhuman zombies have been able to rise to the top levels of the company; most are at the bottom or outsourced members.

But given their intelligence and emotional manipulation abilities, Jiang Zhou was certain that many of them were actually ordinary people working for them, who had risen to the middle and upper management positions in the company, providing intelligence and resources for their mission to replace humans.

Otherwise, where did they get their doomsday prophecy measures about the Jupiter Group and their knowledge of "The Great Thunder"?
They might even have dealings with a lot of malware on the dark web...

Looking at the string of numbers, Jiang Zhou felt as if he were seeing a web of conspiracy laid out within human society—a web that had now completely seeped into the very fabric of society. Heaven knows how many major social events, conflicts, and wars originated from the conspiracies of this web.

If the Jupiter Group were to discover the existence of this conspiracy, the massive purge that would result in the deaths of 500 million people would be an understatement.

It will at least be a massive upheaval that could exceed the casualties of the Second Cyber ​​War.

It can be said that the second wish left by Nyx has never truly ended; it has accompanied human civilization as it is today, like a shadow.

But now, it's finally coming to an end.

Jiang Zhou looked at the permissions he had unlocked after connecting to the Depth 7 GM and thought to himself.

Second, the right to reclaim the legacy.

Just as they blended into human society silently, their eventual end will also be silent.

There will be no violent purges, no collateral damage... and even those who are unaware of the truth will not discover it.

In fact, apart from the man who has now lost everything, no one will feel sad about it.

The number of Superman will be fixed at 474,531, and will only decrease naturally in the future, not increase.

Those zombies who have become superhumans will continue to maintain their perfect disguise and live with their families and friends. They will behave like normal humans, expressing just the right amount of joy, surprise, happiness, sadness, and anger in appropriate situations…

They might fall in love, but there would be no love at all; they might quarrel, but there would be no anger at all; they might be sarcastic and bitter, but there would be no jealousy at all…

But their performances are perfect, and no one but themselves knows the desolation deep within their hearts.

No, not even they themselves would know.

There might be instances where entire families are transformed into superhuman zombies. Perhaps after enthusiastically greeting their neighbors and returning home, they would close the door, immediately shed their disguise, and become expressionless, emotionless zombies.

They might sit down in the empty living room and stare at each other with blank stares.

Jiang Zhou was unaware of this.

But in any case...

[Unlock or not: Y/N]

Jiang Zhou and Jim Ritter—or perhaps it doesn't need to be so clear—in any case, he or they pressed "Y" together.

The extra controllable element slot that Jiang Zhou gained after upgrading to Depth 3 was sacrificed, and almost the instant he pressed the button, the deepest part of the Abyss Web boiled over.

The being in the Abyss accepted their sacrifice and responded to their choice.

Soon after, the Olympian Order will refer to this day as "The Day of Ascension from the Abyss".

…………

As the saying goes, there are no wrong nicknames, only wrong names; the reason she was called "The One Who Sees the Abyss" is because Carol Christie had actually seen the abyss.

More than once.

The first time was after she defeated Prometheus. Using the Alpha deep-sea interface of Pluto, she descended to the limit under Charon's persuasion and protection, reaching a position close to the superabyss.

The old man told her that as long as she connected with that being in the Abyss, all her wishes could be perfectly fulfilled.

Then, she saw that being beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

Boundless, vast, complex...

That was all she remembered about that being.

That's all.

Even though the other party had no hostility towards her... Christie only caught a glimpse of that being before she completely lost consciousness due to data overflow.

As for Charon, who confidently claimed he could connect with Him, he vanished without a trace in an instant.

Then came the city of sages.

Although she still cannot be completely sure whether the being that inspired Liao Qi is the same abyss she once saw—after all, she finds it hard to imagine that a Depth 2 Icarus Path Adjuster could continue to live after being inspired by that being.

But in any case, this time, the Abyss finally revealed a characteristic.

He has tentacles and a mouth, or something similar, or a function.

He swallowed the Dionysian Chamber whole, and then submerged again.

As for the "paradox" she encountered later, although Christie believed that the "paradox" should be a powerful artificial intelligence, she never equated it with that abyss in her heart.

The "paradox" seems far too human-like no matter how you look at it.

Therefore, in Christie's view, she had probably seen the abyss twice in her life.

And she didn't want to see it a third time; she'd had enough.

But this world always seems to have a tendency to go against our wishes.

Currently observing Theseus's ascension, she will solidify her title as the "Abyss Keeper" today. (End of Chapter)