Chapter 430 - 418: Global Online
The instant Allen completed the engraving.
A tremor, invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by any instrument, erupted from Cybertron, radiating outward in a ring and sweeping across the entire Aiselan Kingdom at the speed of light.
「Royal Alchemy University.」
Leo was carefully adjusting the spider-like Mechanical Body in front of him with a wrench when its eyes suddenly flared with a piercing blue light, only to return to normal an instant later.
"What the—" Leo subconsciously took half a step back. The surrounding apprentices also stopped their work, exchanging bewildered glances.
「Deep within the royal palace, in the study.」
King William was reviewing tax documents from the Southern Province.
The screen of the high-end, custom-made Spirit Communication Terminal on his wrist suddenly began to flicker frantically.
The once-clear interface was filled with endless streams of faint blue, garbled code, which lasted for several seconds before returning to normal.
"What’s going on?"
The tip of William’s pen bled a large blot of ink onto the paper.
「On the Northern Defense Line.」
Thousands of soldiers clad in light mechanical armor were patrolling along the city walls.
Suddenly, all of them stopped in their tracks.
On the tactical comms channel, the sounds of wind, breathing, and their commander’s curses all vanished at the same instant.
A deathly silence enveloped the entire defense line. A second later, the cacophony flooded their ears once more.
In that one second.
All fifty-two million people in the Aiselan Kingdom, from the highest noble to the lowliest commoner, experienced an utterly absurd yet incredibly real sensation.
It was as if a pair of cold, majestic eyes, high up in the clouds, had gazed down upon them all for a single moment.
On Cybertron, Allen sat enthroned on the golden seat. The conduits at the back of his head detached one by one, yet the entire continent’s outline remained rendered in perfect detail within his mind.
The Allen Network.
This advanced Witchcraft, built upon the foundation of the Cluster Link Skill, had finally revealed a glimpse of its true nature to the Aiselans the moment it was completed.
It was incredibly difficult to construct, and its fatality rate in the initial simulations had reached a terrifying 99.99%.
Allen had spent over a decade using an entire nation’s civilizational progress as his testing ground just to finally stabilize it.
The high risk, however, came with a reward that completely subverted all conventional Wizarding wisdom.
It perfectly fused together the Mechanical Mind, the Cluster Link Skill, Dseek, and the concurrent processing power of thought sub-threads.
The most immediate change was to the boundaries of his Sea of Spirit.
The once dark and finite spiritual space had been completely forced open, transformed into a miniature universe of nodes and light that constantly mirrored the flow of information from the outside world.
Moreover, his total Spiritual Power had skyrocketed threefold!
For a Second-level Wizard, this was an absurd figure. It meant the speed at which he could engrave Will Runes would enter a whole new tier.
The Cluster Link Skill had been the cornerstone of Allen’s core abilities as a First-level Wizard.
But the number of units he could control was limited by his Spiritual Power. Micromanaging fifteen hundred units had been his absolute limit.
This time, the Allen Network had restructured the underlying logic, replacing unidirectional command distribution with a decentralized, distributed node protocol.
Every Spirit Communication Tower, every personal terminal, and every Golem equipped with a receiver module had become a part of the network.
They didn’t just receive commands; they also shared the processing load.
In past wars, he controlled all the Golems indirectly through Jarvis and the Demon Eyes. If a Demon Eye was destroyed, he had to resort to using the Cluster Link Skill to command the Golems in battle.
Now, Allen could directly control every Golem and Mechanical Body himself.
The number of units he could precisely control had increased by more than a hundredfold!
A thought flickered through Allen’s mind.
"Begin functionality verification."
"First, test the upper limit of Witchcraft processing without the assistance of physical nodes."
Allen’s Spiritual Power spread silently along the network.
The 1,320 Spirit Communication Towers were still operating, but the signal relay protocol, originally maintained by physical Rune Array equipment, was quietly replaced.
Allen took over all the information.
All the data previously processed by the Rune Arrays now flooded into his brain.
The calls, texts, and videos of fifty-two million people—even the minute action of every single screen tap—transformed into a massive torrent of data.
Any other Second-level Wizard, even a venerable master specializing in spiritual arts, would have suffered immediate brain death in the face of this torrent.
But Allen did not.
Ten thought sub-threads spun up to full speed. The firewall, composed of his Mechanical Mind and Dseek, became the finest of sieves. One part filtered out the emotional garbage attached to the information, while the other helped him process information exchange requests.
Jarvis mobilized Cybertron’s vast processing power to provide external support.
Allen steadily shouldered the informational weight of an entire civilization.
The kingdom-wide spirit communication network showed no fluctuations. The calls, messages, and video transmissions of fifty-two million users continued to operate as usual.
No one noticed that the underlying architecture supporting it all had transformed from a piece of public infrastructure into one man’s personal Witchcraft.
"This feeling..." Allen opened his eyes, data streams cascading through his pupils like waterfalls. "Not bad at all."
"What’s the network latency?"
[Network-wide average latency is up by 53%. Signal stability is down by 39%.]
Jarvis paused.
[Commander, your Spiritual Power as a transmission medium is slightly inferior in performance to the physical equipment.]
"That’s impressive enough. It means that even if all the communication equipment is destroyed, I can still control all the Golems for some time."
"Second, reconnaissance capabilities."
Allen closed his eyes.
The information converged automatically. There was no need to retrieve or search for it. It was like "quantum entanglement."
Anywhere the network reached, he only needed to "think" of a location, and the entire scene surrounding it would materialize before his eyes.
King William’s study.
The King was whispering to an attendant, "Go investigate that anomaly from a moment ago. Be discreet."
On the Northern Defense Line, a Commander was reassuring his soldiers over the comms channel: "Equipment malfunction. It’s been resolved. All units, resume normal operations."
The Royal Alchemy University, Leo’s laboratory.
The young man was huddled over the spider-like Mechanical Body, repeatedly scanning it with a diagnostic tool and muttering, "Impossible... A moment ago, it definitely..."
Omniscience.
Within the network’s reach, that word was no longer a description but a statement of fact.
Allen turned his attention to the interior of Cybertron.
In the workshop, thousands of Factory Servants bustled along the assembly lines.
In the past, they had mostly received unidirectional commands from Allen or Jarvis, with very little interaction among themselves.
With a thought, Allen acted.
The Allen Network instantly enveloped all the Golems.
A Golem carrying a heavy load got its tracks stuck and immediately sent out an automated request for help to any units nearby.
Without any command from Allen, a nearby welding Golem immediately stopped its work, moved over, and helped clear the debris from its tracks.
In the entire process, the two Golems completed thousands of data exchanges between them.
They were "communicating."
’Once I’ve conquered artificial soul technology...’
A smile touched Allen’s lips. ’These lumps of iron might even be able to start a group chat on the network and shoot the breeze.’
Basic functionality test: complete.
Next came the real main event.
When the node density was high enough and the processing power converged into a tide, the network itself became the most terrifying weapon.
"Third, network attack capabilities."
His gaze instantly crossed hundreds of kilometers, landing on the Royal Alchemy University.
The spider-like Mechanical Body that Leo had just inspected and confirmed to be "all normal" suddenly moved on its own.
It lifted its right foreleg and gently tapped the back of Leo’s head.
"AGH—!"
Leo let out a yelp and shot up, knocking over the tool rack behind him.
He stared in horror at the spider-like Mechanical Body, its eyes blinking calmly with a blue light, as if nothing had happened.
"Who?! Who’s playing tricks on me?!"
No one answered.
Hundreds of kilometers away on Cybertron, Allen withdrew his Spiritual Power.
’Remote hijacking of a Mechanical Body: success. Easily accomplished through signal injection via network nodes.’
This meant that within the network’s reach, any creation connected to the Allen Network could not escape his control.
"One last item."
"Test: interference with reality. Power at one-thousandth. Target: Golden Stone City’s Seventh Commercial District. Area-of-effect attack."
[Confirmed. Test duration?]
"0.1 seconds."
Allen’s Spiritual Power abruptly converged, forming an invisible pulse that he released through the nodes of the Spirit Communication Towers near the Seventh Commercial District.
On that bustling street, hundreds of citizens—shopping, trading, and chatting—simultaneously felt a sharp, piercing headache.
It lasted for 0.1 seconds.
Then it vanished.
People rubbed their temples, looking around in confusion. Some thought they were just tired; others blamed it on the weather.
No one realized that, in that instant, an invisible net had exerted a crushing spiritual pressure upon them.
At one-thousandth of its power, it could incapacitate hundreds of people simultaneously in just 0.1 seconds.
’And at one hundred percent power? What if it lasted for ten seconds?’
Magic Power could carry information. As long as he was within the network’s coverage, he could launch this type of information-based Spiritual Attack on any designated area or population at any time.
He didn’t need an army or artillery. He alone, with a single thought, could paralyze an entire city’s will to resist.
With further development, it might even be able to replicate the effect of a famous Witchcraft from the Mind School: [Unlimited Void].
[Functionality verification complete.]
[Communication, reconnaissance, interference, and attack capabilities all meet or exceed design specifications.]