Chapter 199: Custody Agreement

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

What was inside the ‘core database’ was not treasure but unbelievable danger.

It was hard to say whether setting the activation conditions and threshold for the ‘core database’ was a good thing or not. If Li Wenyuan only wanted to activate the ‘core database,’ he could have opened it long ago.

At that time, he would not have so many fleets or know too many secrets. Perhaps when the danger in the ‘core database’ erupted, the situation he needed to deal with would be simpler.

Not like now…

The fleet that had stopped moving had received the wrong command and was heading toward its destination.

The unknown interference from the ‘core database’ had affected them, and the warp drives had also adjusted their coordinates. Everything seemed to have happened very quickly.

The destination of those battleships was mostly the mother planets of other Milky Way civilizations.

However, during that process, Li Wenyuan noticed that some of the targets were not those planets but coordinates that even he did not know.

“…Interesting. These few coordinates must have many secrets, or else they wouldn’t be hidden in the ‘core database.’”

At that moment, the alarm in the virtual world rang, but Li Wenyuan did not panic. He quickly and methodically dealt with the accumulated errors.

The first was to terminate the command of the ‘Tiangang Battleship.;’ That behemoth was trying to use the Sub-space Catcher to capture the entire solar system into sub-space.

Although he would not be affected in the sub-space, he could continue to deal with the errors of the ‘administration matrix’ in the sub-space.

However, after the solar system came out of sub-space, the positions of those planets might change greatly. It would be very troublesome to solve them.

Generally speaking, the first thing that needed to be dealt with was the planet’s self-destruction program, which would directly cause the ‘administration matrix’ to crack.

However, although the 15-minute self-destruction countdown seemed very short, it was a very long time for artificial intelligence. He had enough time to deal with that problem later.

“…If it were the ‘administration matrix’ itself, what would it do?” When dealing with the mistakes, Li Wenyuan thought of such problems.

Logically speaking, the ‘administration matrix’ should have a low-level logic code similar to the ‘theme park mechanical servant,’ but in fact, after coming to the Milky Way for so long, Li Wenyuan had not discovered any ‘code’ restrictions on himself.

He seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted. No code restricted his actions.

Although he had always claimed that he was acting according to the ‘custody agreement,’ he did not have that so-called ‘agreement’ at all. It was completely made up to conform to the style of ‘artificial intelligence.’

However, the moment he activated the ‘core database,’ he caught a glimpse of some special documents.

For example, the ‘active purification agreement,’ which sounded very dangerous. And there really was something called the ‘custody agreement.’

It was hard to say if he was lucky or if it was some kind of remnant record that made him unconsciously use that name.

“…Perhaps the ‘administration matrix’ would prioritize the planet’s self-destruction program? Although multi-threaded operations are very common, the amount of computing power required for each task is different…”

Li Wenyuan tried to guess the possible behavior of the ‘administration matrix’ before his appearance. While he was distracted, he had already corrected the wrong command of the Tiangang Battleship and set up a quarantine zone for that part of the module to prevent it from being infected by the ‘core database’ again.

That process only took a few seconds in reality. The invasion from the ‘core database’ could only affect his main body on that planet.

In fact, the research zones in the circular worlds far away from the solar system were always providing him with a huge amount of ‘auxiliary computing power’. When he first saw the invasion of the ‘core database,’ he felt it was too easy to deal with.

The ‘core database’ was not the real ‘administration matrix.’ Although it could invade Li Wenyuan’s program process through unknown methods, the computing resources it could borrow were limited.

The ‘command deployment’ was also handled according to the operational logic of the ‘administration matrix.’ The essence of that invasion was actually a competition of computing power to see who was faster at generating errors in the ‘core database’ or who was faster at processing them.

That situation was different from Li Wenyuan’s initial guess. He thought he would need to use the huge amount of energy from the Dyson spheres then.

However, after experiencing it, he realized it was purely a battle of computing power and control over the ‘administration matrix.’ The energy seemed to have another purpose.

The only thing that needed to be noted was that the ‘core database’ authority seemed to be very high. It could easily enter the ‘administration matrix’ and skillfully use the commands.

Li Wenyuan already had some guesses about that matter. After he dealt with the mistakes, he would personally verify his guesses.

He was solving his own problems, and at that time, no one in the Milky Way civilizations knew that a Milky Way Crisis was being quietly dealt with.

They were still guessing why the ‘Administrator,’ who had been acting abnormally a while ago, had not reacted further.

■I

…We seem to have waited for a long time, right? Why is there no movement from the ‘Administrator’….”

That was what those civilizations who did not trust the ‘Administrator’ were thinking. Not only did they not trust the ‘Administrator,’ but they did not trust anyone other than themselves.

Although they were grateful to the ‘Administrator’ for his efforts in the two Milky Way Crises, they were already suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from the lost empire.

Everyone knew there were at least seven lost empires during the Milky Way’s heyday. Those empires passed down for a long time should have stood at the top of the Milky Way, never falling.

However, to this day, two lost empires had already completed the ‘magnificent feat’ of self-destruction, and that was not all. Because those two lost empires had long since faced a crisis that swept across the Milky Way.

In addition, two other lost empires had different degrees of anomalies. One was killed by its former compatriots and replaced by a group of ‘mechanical life,’ while the other inexplicably left the Milky Way.

Although they didn’t become a Milky Way menace, everyone was afraid of being ‘caught in the crossfire’ while handling the incident. After all, the battle between the lost empires wasn’t something they could participate in.

In a short period based on interstellar space measure, four lost empires had experienced abnormalities, and three-quarters were accompanied by a ‘Milky Way Crisis.’ That was undoubtedly an extremely high probability.

Therefore, even if they didn’t think so, as long as it was the lost empire, they had to maintain the highest level of vigilance in case there was another Milky Way Crisis.

As those people were still worrying about why nothing happened, someone’s eyes suddenly lit up. He pointed at the data of a testing device and said, “This, something is wrong!”

Following his words, the pessimists gathered around him. They saw that on the instrument that recorded most of the Milky Way’s signals, a series of obviously different signals spread through the space stations of every Milky Way civilization.

It seemed to be using the space stations with large electronic equipment as relay stations, spreading rapidly.

At first, the observers didn’t realize what it was, and they were trying to analyze the content of the signal.

However, after finding nothing, someone suddenly remembered something and hurriedly pulled out a record from a long time ago to compare it with the rapidly transmitted signals.

After a while, he exclaimed, “These are…’ghost signals’?”

A thrown stone caused a thousand ripples. Not only did that person think of it, but the other survivors who had experienced the crisis of the ‘Civilization Annihilator,’ too, thought of it.

The ‘Administrator’ had once used some unknown means to paralyze all the battleships of the ‘Civilization Annihilators’.

At that time, someone noticed that when those battleships were paralyzed, there seemed to be a special signal that was difficult to detect in the galaxy.

The waveform of that signal was recorded. Because it was difficult to detect under normal circumstances and would almost be ignored as ‘noise,’ the Milky Way civilizations called that signal, which was suspected to be a weapon of the ‘Administrator,’ a ‘ghost signal.’

Everyone knew that that thing seemed to be a kind of weapon, so when they detected that the signal rapidly spreading in the galaxy was a ‘ghost signal,’ they thought, “This is bad.”

Although they were extremely vigilant against the abnormal movements of the ‘Administrator,’ no one hoped that the ‘Administrator’ would do something terrifying. They were praying that the ‘Administrator’ would not have any problems.

The spreading ‘ghost signal’ seemed to indicate that something was wrong with the ‘Administrator.’ That thing, which was considered a weapon by the Milky Way civilizations, should not appear at that moment.

Therefore, they had to immediately send an alert to their mother planets to warn them of the abnormality of the ‘Administrator.’

But the moment they were about to send the message, the ‘ghost signal’ spreading at faster-than-light speed was suddenly cut off as if everything that had just happened was an illusion.

That sudden abnormality caused everyone to stop sending messages again. They looked at the detection equipment that had returned to normal in shock.

“The ‘Administrator’ is…back to normal?”

“It looks like it…However, is that considered as a ‘falsehood’? What should we do if something similar happens in the future?”

After a moment of silence, they finally reported the matter to their mother planets, which informed the ‘Galaxy Community.’

Unlike them, Li Wenyuan, who had dealt with the last error command, ‘ghost signal,’ had discovered the truth of the ‘core database.’

It was undoubtedly a fool’s dream to resist Li Wenyuan, who had controlled the entire civilization, with just a small building. That ‘invasion’ crisis seemed menacing, but it was a paper tiger. Perhaps it would only be difficult to deal with when Li Wenyuan first arrived in that universe.

In the end, Li Wenyuan discovered that the one who had hacked into his ‘core database’ was actually…

[…The core database has been restored. Connection successful]

[Detected: Corrupted ‘custody agreement’ has been placed in quarantine.

Estimated time needed to repair: 2961 years, 24 days, and 5 hours]

[Syncing with general database…]

The core database had been received, but the data of the strange invasion that he had defeated in the virtual world had already been introduced.

[Custody Agreement (Corrupted)]

[Introduction: This is the base-level agreement originally responsible for maintaining the normal operation of the ‘administration matrix.’ It stipulates what can be done, what cannot be done, and what should be done… and a series of fundamental logic. However, due to unknown reasons, the base-level agreement was caught in a large number of logical errors and attempted to execute instructions with unknown purposes. Moreover, it seems extremely incomplete.]

Other than introducing the ‘custody agreement,’ there was another important record in the ‘core database.’

[Time remaining for the %&th test of the Milky Way civilizations’ ability to withstand pressure: 20 years]

[Executor:        Agreement]