Honkai Impact 3: Saving the former civilization by rubbing the black technology

In front of the laboratory table, a woman repeatedly checked the program on the computer, trying to find some areas for improvement.

She looked to be in her twenties, but her face was haggard, with a messy head of hair with a few red highlights, and she was wearing a wrinkled and stained white coat. She didn't look like a genius scholar from the Third Science Department at all, but rather like a mad scientist from some entertainment work.

Opposite her was probably the only clean and tidy place in the entire laboratory - it was a large equipment platform, on top of which was a humanoid robot that looked only 80 centimeters tall and was designed to imitate humans.

She has long golden hair and a pair of triangular ear-like devices on her head. Her torso and limbs are covered with armor, and she looks like she was designed for combat.

However, her diminutive height and head that looked almost as big as her torso made her look like an exquisite toy doll, more suitable to be held in a child's arms than to go to the battlefield.

This is the "Armed Doll", an autonomous war weapon used to assist humans in fighting the Honkai, thereby reducing human casualties.

As the person in charge of the "Armed Puppet" project, even when her assistant went to attend the highly anticipated science and technology exchange meeting, she still stayed at her post and carried out the project.

Today's armed puppets are almost successful, but there are still some problems with the AI's self-regulatory logic. Before this problem is solved, Einstein has no intention of paying attention to any scientific and technological exchange meetings.

Although, although I heard that even the legendary Dr. Ai Yue will attend this exchange meeting... Damn, I still really want to go!

Einstein pushed up his red-framed glasses, a hint of struggle in his eyes.

Dr. Ai Yue is a super genius who suddenly appeared more than half a year ago and then streaked across the night sky like a meteor, shocking everyone.

As an internal member of the Fire Moth, although Einstein was tens of thousands of miles away from the Fire Moth headquarters, Dr. Ai Yue's news still reached her ears through the internal network.

It was said that he not only invented the Honkai Energy Adsorption Device, but also optimized the Fusion Warrior formula, greatly increasing the success rate. He even solved the problem of artificially synthesizing the Honkai Disease Serum. Even more outrageous was the rumor that he personally solved the Eighth Herrscher. Even Kevin and other Fusion Warriors played only supporting roles in this war.

Of course, even without the news, Einstein could understand how powerful Dr. Ai Yue was. After all, the prototype armed doll in front of her could truly achieve the effect they wanted, relying on the first generation of soul steel invented by the other party.

If I could see such a brilliant person in person and have a conversation with him... no, even if I could only say a few words to him, I would probably benefit a lot, right?

But in the end, this slight hesitation turned into determination.

The armed puppet plan has reached the most critical moment, so she naturally has to hurry up to complete it as soon as possible so that it can be put into mass production. After all, the confrontation between humans and Honkai is becoming more and more intense, and Honkai disasters are occurring every day. The sooner the armed puppets can be put into the battlefield, the fewer human sacrifices can be made.

After Einstein finished checking the program and pressed the start button, the armed puppet, having received the command, finally slowly opened its eyes: "Armed puppet system activated, initializing—"

Soon, the armed puppet's eyes lit up, and then slowly aimed at Einstein standing not far away: "Target locked, identity confirmed... human, friendly unit."

Under Einstein's nervous gaze, the doll slowly floated up and flew in front of her: "Human, what do you need?"

Einstein glanced at the computer screen and then said, "Armed puppet, please state your 'rules of conduct.'"

The law of behavior is the basic logic that must be followed by the AI that controls the operation of armed puppets, and it is also the restrictions and requirements that Einstein imposes on armed puppets.

"First, treat Honkai as your enemy. Second, do not harm humans," the armed puppet mechanically repeated. "Third, survive."

The success rate...at least for now.

"Very good. Next..." Einstein tapped on the keyboard, "Connect to the data space and conduct a simulated battle."

The data space is a special local area network designed by Einstein for combat simulations. It stores a large amount of data on Honkai beasts, as well as humans' previous experience in battling Honkai beasts. It is a place to test whether the performance of armed puppets is competent for battlefield duties.

The armed puppet quickly returned to the device platform and connected its own AI to the data space with the help of wired transmission. Soon, the figure of the armed puppet appeared on Einstein's display screen.

The next second, a team consisting of five tank-level Honkai beasts and ten assault-level Honkai beasts appeared opposite the armed puppets.

"Target locked, identified as... Honkai Beast, hostile." The voice of the armed puppet came, "Equipment activated, ready to engage."

Einstein nervously watched everything that happened in the data space - the Honkai beast that the armed puppet was facing was just slightly stronger than her in overall strength, and was an enemy that the armed puppet could not defeat using conventional tactics.

To defeat them, you either have to sacrifice yourself or use targeted tactics.

In the experiments before this, each time the armed puppet rushed forward head-on, and after running out of ammunition and food, it would die together with the remaining Honkai beasts by self-destructing its core. This fighting method obviously cannot be used in actual combat. After all, the armed puppet is not a disposable prop and cannot be consumed at will.

That's why Einstein added the "survival" behavioral rules to the armed doll in the end, in an attempt to allow her to fight while keeping her life.

This time, the armed puppet finally did not let her down. After comparing the combat power gap between the two sides, the armed puppet first searched for a while, and then decisively widened the distance, allowing the agile and fast-moving Assault-class Honkai Beast to be disconnected from the Tank-class Honkai Beast. Then, using its own more flexible and maneuverable advantage, it eliminated all the Assault-class Honkai Beasts in close combat when the Tank-class Honkai Beasts could not interfere, saving a lot of unnecessary ammunition.

In this way, without the cover of the Assault-class Honkai Beast, the bulky weakness of the Tank-class Honkai Beast was exposed, and it was destroyed by the armed puppet's firepower. Until the end, the Tank-class Honkai Beast did not even touch the corner of the armed puppet's clothes.

It worked!

Seeing the armed puppet using a tactic it had never used before, Einstein immediately covered her mouth excitedly - she had tried to use pre-input tactics to avoid the armed puppet from choosing to self-destruct, but the pre-input method was not flexible enough after all and could not fully simulate the chaos of the battlefield. Once the situation exceeded the response range of the pre-input tactics, the armed puppet would still use self-destruction to end the battle.

This time, without using pre-input to interfere with the armed puppet's decision-making, she was able to actively choose to use tactics based on the contents of the database, which means that the opponent's autonomous combat logic has been optimized due to the "survival" law.

In this way, all that remains is some detailed debugging!

"Not bad, what's this little guy's name?"

Just as Einstein was about to start debugging, a strange voice came from the side.

"Her name is Elf." Einstein answered subconsciously, then suddenly realized, "Who are you?"

How could he enter his laboratory quietly?

She turned around and saw a familiar green-haired figure and a strange man standing behind her.

"Hello, nice to meet you." The man extended his hand with a friendly smile on his face. "My name is Ai Yue."

Ai, Ai Yue?

Chapter 39 I have received professional training

Is it hallucination caused by staying up late?

This was Einstein's first reaction.

She had seen photos of Ai Yue on the intranet. Although most of them were secretly taken from the side, she could recognize that the person in front of her was definitely not a fake. What's more, Dr. Mobius beside him could also prove his identity.

But why is the real Ai Yue here? Aren't they going to attend a science and technology exchange meeting?

Einstein, who had been enduring for two days, obviously didn't know that things had changed. But even if she knew, she probably wouldn't have thought that someone like Ai Yue would appear here.

"Hello?" Seeing Einstein's expression constantly changing but no response, Ai Yue couldn't help but speak again.

"Oh, hello, hello." Einstein finally came to his senses at this time. He immediately held Ai Yue's hand with both of his own and shook it continuously, as if to confirm the authenticity of the scene before him. "My name is Nicola Einstein, you can just call me Aiyin!"

Noticing the glance from Mebius, Einstein realized she had been shaking hands for a bit too long. She quickly withdrew her hand and began to look around the room. "Hello, Dr. Mebius. Um, you can just sit wherever you want!"

After saying this, she felt a little embarrassed. After all, the laboratory was a mess, so where could she sit casually?

"Don't worry about these trivial matters," Ai Yue didn't care. "Let's get straight to the point. I'm very interested in your project. Can I take a look?"

"Are you interested in the armed puppet?" Einstein's eyes suddenly lit up, and then he quickly withdrew from the data space and showed Ai Yue the detailed data of the armed puppet. "Please take a look!"

She didn't seem to be on guard at all - what a joke, would Dr. Ai Yue covet a project of this level? Don't underestimate him!

After giving her seat to Ai Yue, she stood aside obediently, like a student handing in homework to the teacher for correction. If an uninformed person passed by here, they would probably think that Ai Yue was the leader of this laboratory and Einstein was his assistant.

Faced with Einstein's warm hospitality, Ai Yue did not hesitate to browse through it directly. From the basic design concept to the structural drawings, and then to the final driver, Einstein really revealed everything about the armed doll to him.

"Um, Dr. Ai Yue?" Looking at Ai Yue, whose face remained expressionless, Einstein couldn't help but ask, "Is there any problem with my project?"

"Be more confident. You're not defending your graduation thesis." Mobius sighed. "I remember you, Aiyin. You weren't like this when you faced me, were you?"

"That's different, Dr. Mobius," Einstein said seriously, "Do you really think you and Dr. Ai Yue are equal?"

Mebius couldn't help but roll his eyes: "You're talking a bit too much."

Of course she knew that what Einstein said was true, but it was still difficult for her to remain calm when someone said it directly to her face.

Come to think of it, when I used to judge others recklessly, they probably had the same idea. But Mebius certainly could not have imagined that one day a genius unimaginable to humans would suddenly fall from the sky like a meteor and smash his pride to pieces.

"It's like this, Aiyin." Ai Yue quickly finished reading the entire content, so quickly that Einstein felt that this person was perfunctory. "Next, I want to tell you something. Don't be afraid, okay?"

"Don't worry, I'm a scholar and I'm not afraid." Einstein nodded, prepared to be criticized.

"Okay, then," Ai Yue connected the Prometheus extension to Einstein's computer. The nanorobot-made, transformable body caught Einstein's attention again. "I'll play a video for you."

Under Prometheus's operation, a new picture soon appeared on the screen - it was countless Honkai beasts wandering in the ruins of a city.

"Is this... Australia?" Einstein quickly deduced the location in the picture from various details, and couldn't help but look at Ai Yue in confusion, obviously not understanding why Ai Yue wanted to show her this.

Could it be that he was telling her that armed puppets would be of little use in the face of a large number of enemies?

Soon, accompanied by the low roar coming from the video, Einstein understood the true meaning of this video.

As the camera gradually zoomed out, a huge shadow completely enveloped the herd of animals.

Honkai Beast is not the protagonist of this video, the owner of the shadow is.

At first, Einstein thought it was just the shadow cast by the clouds blocking the sun, but she soon realized she was wrong, because the roar became clearer and clearer, and she could clearly hear the sound of the engine and propeller.

That's not a cloud, it's a dark cloud made up of countless drones!

When Einstein realized this, the swarm of drones in the video had already dived towards the herd of beasts. The originally dense formation quickly dispersed during the dive. The whole process was like flowing water, as if it had been designed in advance through programming.

But Einstein is also an expert in this area. She soon noticed that these drones were able to perfectly avoid all obstacles on the path, and there would be no collisions between drones. This was definitely not something that could be achieved through pre-input means. If there was no large control team behind the scenes to control these drones, then only artificial intelligence could achieve such on-the-spot performance.

However, a rough estimate shows that there are at least thousands or even tens of thousands of drones in the video, which basically rules out human control. But even artificial intelligence would find it difficult to control so many drones so easily at the same time.

Even Einstein couldn't imagine what level of computing power would be needed to meet such complex computing needs.

However, the shock the video brought to her was not over yet. As the drones dived, the upper and lower parts of many of the seemingly bulky drones actually separated. The upper part continued to maintain a flying posture, while the lower part fell to the ground. After just a few seconds, it transformed into a drone that could walk on the ground!

Although the "underbody" of these drones cannot fly, they have two modes of movement: tracks and spider-like limbs. Even in extremely complex environments such as urban ruins, they can move quickly and their speed is not much slower than that of flying drones.

Just like that, within just a few tens of seconds, the drone swarm completed a comprehensive blockade of the Honkai beasts. Whether in the air or on the ground, drones could be seen everywhere.

When all drone units entered their designated positions, the war—no, a one-sided massacre—began.

Chapter 40: Are you interested in becoming a toy designer?

Compared to the smooth and perfect encirclement of the drone swarm before, the war segment was the part that Einstein could accept the most.

Because in such a precise and detailed encirclement, the remaining operations are actually very simple. All you need to do is for all the drones to fire at the same time, and these Honkai beasts will be killed or wounded all over the ground in no time.

Einstein even suspected that this swarm of drones could accurately assign an independent small encirclement to each individual Honkai beast, ensuring that more than 90% of the Honkai beasts could be eliminated after the first round of firepower.

And in fact, this was indeed the case. The entire battle process took only a few minutes longer than the advance deployment of the drone swarm. When the first round of fire coverage by the drone swarm ended, there were basically only about ten Honkai beasts that could move.

In comparison, although the drone also suffered damage, it was insignificant compared to the herd of Honkai beasts.

Of course, the firepower displayed by these drones still surprised Einstein a little. Because of the size of the drones, she thought that the firepower of these drones would not be very strong, but she did not expect that they were not using live ammunition weapons, but energy weapons.

As weapons that use energy as ammunition, energy weapons do not need to consider ammunition reserves like live ammunition weapons, which greatly reduces the weight and volume requirements of drones. Although they also have the disadvantage of being difficult to exert their power in special environments, at least they are indeed better than live ammunition weapons in ordinary environments.

However, Einstein did not remember that all of Fire Moth's current research on energy weapons was still in the experimental stage. As for putting them into actual combat, mass production and miniaturization, that would have to be a very long time in the future.

But considering that these drones were probably made by Ai Yue, it’s not surprising.

Einstein thought the video ended here, but he didn't expect there was another part after that. The drones that had finished the operation to eliminate the Honkai beasts regrouped and started new work.

Some of them were collecting the wreckage of destroyed drones, some were dealing with the corpses of Honkai beasts, some were sticking out strange devices from their bodies and wandering in the air, and others were drilling in and out of the wreckage of buildings, occasionally digging up the collapsed ruins, as if they were simulating the action of rescuing trapped people.

Compared with all the previous stages, the aftermath stage was the one that took the longest time. It took a full half hour before these drones finally gathered into a dark cloud and left here, just like when they first arrived.

Only the remnants of war in the ruins can prove that a special battle had just taken place here.

The video ends here.

When the screen dimmed, Einstein saw his own expression - fatigue caused by long-term overwork covered this relatively delicate face, but other than that, there was not much emotion on it.

"A swarm of multifunctional war drones, capable of independently completing tasks like clearing out Honkai beasts, post-disaster rescue, and environmental cleanup, is truly impressive," Einstein said softly. "Is this your project?"

Ai Yue nodded: "Yes."

“So how long will it take for it to go into mass production?”

"Mass production has already begun. The video just now was shot this morning."

"Really?" Einstein took off his glasses and rubbed his dry eyes. "That's good. This way, we can avoid many people from being killed, right?"

The armed puppet plan is no longer meaningful.

This is what Einstein was thinking at the moment.

The Armed Doll Project was originally intended to reduce the sacrifice of soldiers and ordinary people, and thus designed a special autonomous machine that could assist humans in fighting the collapse. However, in front of the drone displayed by Ai Yue, apart from its cute appearance, the Armed Doll had no other features that were superior to its opponent.

Whether it is cost, technological maturity, AI intelligence level, or difficulty of mass production, they are all completely defeated. Such a project obviously has no value to continue. The only consolation is that Einstein at least produced a prototype, which can be used to prove that this technology once existed.

At least, losing to Dr. Ai Yue wouldn't be too shameful, right?

Einstein glanced at Elf who was in a dormant state and couldn't help rubbing his eyes.

In just less than two hours, the armed puppet project went from being on the verge of success to being terminated, and Elf, who was created, couldn't even understand what was going on.

Sure enough, I still feel a little reluctant.

Mebius saw all of Einstein's expressions. She turned her head to glance at Ai Yue and couldn't help but elbow him: "If you have something to say, can you just say it? Do you find it interesting to see other people's expressions like this?"

Spending a long time with Ai Yue did not make any qualitative leap in Mebius's scientific research. On the contrary, because she played the role of an ordinary person for a long time, her empathy ability was greatly improved.

Einstein's expression was probably similar to the one she had when she first discovered that the fusion warrior formula had been easily optimized.