Free Web NovelChapter 273: Chapter 267: Informant
Four metal components were arranged neatly on the analysis table.
They had been extracted from the skulls of four different types of Low-Tier Magical Beasts: two sand lizards and two young rock-armored scorpions. Each piece was only about the size of a fingernail.
On the other side of the table lay the frequency modulator and Perception Amplifier previously extracted from the Snail Monster’s body.
Their sizes were vastly different, yet their craftsmanship was identical. The disparity was obvious at a glance.
The Snail Monster’s component was complex and intricate, with nested, multi-layered circuits and wiring as dense as a spiderweb. In contrast, the structure of these four small pieces was relatively simple.
They had no Magic Power overclocking circuits, no perception amplification modules—just a single functional unit inside.
Under the remote control of Allen’s seventh sub-thread, three workshop automatons had spent six hours completing the reverse-disassembly.
The conclusion was in.
It was a miniature Magic Power signal transmitter.
Its operating principle didn’t seem complicated: the implant connected to the Magical Beast’s visual neural center, converted the optical images received by the eyes into Magic Pulses on a special frequency band, and then continuously broadcast them outward at extremely low power.
The signal was encrypted and compressed into faint fluctuations, nearly indistinguishable from ambient noise.
Without disassembling the physical object for observation, it would have been impossible to distinguish the signal from the background Magic Power.
To test this hypothesis, Allen reactivated the most well-preserved of the four implants and began sending signals to it from various angles and across different frequency bands.
High-frequency pulses, low-frequency oscillations, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation.
Coded sequences, random noise.
It took an entire afternoon.
The result: no reaction whatsoever.
This confirmed that the implant had no ability to receive signals, nor did it contain a signal processing unit. It was transmit-only.
’One-way broadcast.’ The seventh thread recorded the test results in the experiment log.
These Low-Tier Magical Beasts weren’t remote-controlled bombs, nor were they Trojan horses waiting for a command to go berserk. They were simply mobile surveillance probes.
Reaching this conclusion, Allen’s tense nerves relaxed for half a second.
The worst-case scenario he had envisioned had not come to pass.
He had been guarding against one possibility—that among the hundred thousand Magical Beasts were a large number of living bombs with control modules implanted in them. If the Black Wizard gave the order, the beasts that had already infiltrated deep into the various war zones would go berserk simultaneously. In that case, the war would be utterly unwinnable.
Now, it was confirmed that the implants in this batch of Low-Tier Magical Beasts, at least, were incapable of receiving commands.
But even a one-way broadcast was cause for alarm.
Over four thousand remaining Magical Beasts, carrying hundreds or thousands of metal probes, had already scattered and infiltrated every corner of Zone 18 during the previous rout.
The terrain, the thickness of the fortifications, the Golems’ firepower configurations and patrol routes, even the precise coordinates of his workshop.
All these images were being converted into encrypted signals and broadcast unceasingly.
Hiding in the shadows, the Black Wizard was using these puzzle pieces to slowly reconstruct a complete picture of the war zone.
Allen attempted to reverse-trace the signal’s destination.
Three high-sensitivity Magic Power detection arrays were set up around the workshop’s perimeter. They were aimed at the activated implant, attempting to capture the signal’s propagation path and locate the receiver.
The results were disappointing.
The signal power was too low, and it suffered from rapid atmospheric decay. Its theoretical transmission distance was no more than ten kilometers.
The Black Wizard couldn’t possibly be listening to the signal of a single implant from hundreds of miles away.
He must have a relay.
Allen’s gaze shifted to the remains of the Snail Monster’s Perception Amplifier on the analysis table.
The answer was obvious—certain special, highly-modified Magical Beasts were acting as signal aggregation nodes, collecting and integrating the information from hundreds of surrounding "eyes" before retransmitting it at high power.
The Snail Monster had been one of them.
It was dead, but who knew how many more "relay stations" of the same type were still out there in the beast tide?
That path, following the clues back to their source, was a dead end.
Allen closed his eyes, accepting this fact.
The enemy’s accumulated expertise in the field of signal processing clearly surpassed his own.
This Black Wizard specialized in biomechanical modification and had likely spent decades, perhaps even a century, researching the fusion of flesh and metal. Allen, on the other hand, had built his own technological framework from scratch in less than twenty years, all told.
It was normal to be lagging behind in certain sub-fields.
But normal didn’t mean he could just let it be.
Allen laid out two parallel paths in his R&D log.
Path One: Frequency Jamming. Develop a wide-area jamming field to cover the implants’ operating frequency, blinding all the "eyes" within range.
Path Two: Rapid Scanning. Develop a portable detection device to identify the metal implants inside Magical Beasts without dissection, allowing for the prioritized elimination of the "eyes" on the battlefield.
A few hours later, both paths hit a wall.
Frequency Jamming: The encryption method was beyond his current knowledge base, making it impossible to lock onto the precise operating frequency. Brute-force, full-spectrum suppression was theoretically possible, but the Magic Power consumption would be astronomical—equivalent to igniting a sun above the war zone.
Rapid Scanning: The fusion interface between the metal implant and biological tissue produced a weak magnetic anomaly. In theory, a modified Demon Eye Mk. III equipped with a special probe could perform a low-altitude scan. However, the probe’s sensitivity would need to be increased by at least three orders of magnitude to penetrate the Magical Beast Hide, and that wasn’t something he could build in a matter of days.
Allen stared at the two lines of red text marking the "Technological Bottlenecks," his fingers tapping unconsciously on the table.
A potent sense of powerlessness, mixed with an intense craving for higher-level technology, washed over him.
’Just how far has that Black Wizard gone down this path?’
’He can create a strategic-level weapon like the Snail Monster, mass-implant surveillance devices in tens of thousands of Magical Beasts, and design an encryption I still can’t crack—’
’And I can’t even pin down the signal’s frequency.’
The Mechanical Mind intervened, cleanly severing the surge of anxiety.
It was the exact same feeling he’d had when the Iron Star 16th Legion flew overhead: a hunger for greater technology.
’I’ll set this aside for now.’
’The current priority is advancing to Tier 2. Most of my problems right now ultimately boil down to a lack of power. Once my Spiritual Power crosses the threshold for a qualitative leap, I’ll be able to perform the kind of precise spectrum analysis that’s currently impossible.’
’The countermeasure R&D won’t stop, though. The seventh thread will continue experimenting, and Jarvis will use its idle computing power to run a brute-force spectrum analysis on the implant’s signal to find a usable characteristic frequency.’
[Commands confirmed. Background computation task queued.]
Allen sank back into his Sea of Spirit, his consciousness refocusing on the starting point of the twenty-seventh step of the Will Rune.
His breathing steadied, and his heart rate fell. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
Stray thoughts were sealed away, one by one.
The lines extended with precision along their preset trajectory, without the slightest deviation.
Outside the Meditation Room, the red dots on the sand table had advanced several more kilometers.
And among those red dots, an unknown number of silent eyes were turning everything they saw into coded whispers Allen could not comprehend, sending them deep into the darkness.
