Creepy Pharmacist: All my patients are scary!

Chapter 390: Swarm Consciousness and Mechanized Mass Production

The Wanderer wiped his eyes and said, "A good man."

Lynn leaned forward with a smile, adjusting his glasses, and said, "Don't get me wrong, Mister Wanderer. This isn't a freebie. Although I don't want to tear apart your body parts, you can use other things to make up the remaining payment."

"What things?"

The Wanderer suddenly felt a chill in his chest, because he truly did not know what he could offer besides all the busted scrap metal that made up his body. Looking at Lynn's inscrutable smile made him uneasy.

Then a thought struck him, and his whole body shuddered.

No... it can't be...

Could he be asking me to pay with my own body?! Indeed, in this Dark World there were many unscrupulous merchants who liked to pull that kind of stunt. Besides, they had installed so many bizarre devices on him, even turning his vocalizer into a loli voice. No matter how he looked at it, it felt like the prelude to some special kind of play between him and Lynn.

The more he thought about it, the more this possibility grew.

Finally, his expression turned serious. He clutched his hands tightly and said, "Doctor, although I admit I'm no saint, and I did consider killing you for the bounty, I'm still a proper man. Even if my vocalizer changed, I'm still a man..." He inhaled deeply, emotions tangled and complicated. "I... really don't want to do certain... perverted transactions... I actually still like girls..."

Silence fell all around.Lynn closed his eyes.

One by one, crows flew discordantly overhead.

Bang—

A bullet whizzed past his ear and struck the wall opposite.

[ Ding! Wanderer's fear of you +10 ]

The Wanderer (.;ﾟ;:益:;ﾟ;.) said, "Of course, if you insist, my orientation is actually quite flexible and changeable..."

Lynn's gun barrel immediately pressed against his mouth. He stared with a dead-fish expression and said, "You've misunderstood. I'm not interested in you in the least. I don't want to know how flexible you are. What I asked for has nothing to do with any perverted transaction. I asked because you escaped from the Mechanical Cult..."

"You should know some information and technology about the Mechanical Cult that others don't, right?"

That was Lynn's real intention. Even in the City of Night, knowledge about the Mechanical Cult was scarce. Flesh-and-blood beings infiltrating the Mechanical Cult was almost impossible, and as an organization devoted to Mechanical Ascension, their development in this field certainly surpassed that of every biological species in the world.

The Wanderer immediately raised his hands and nodded. "I know a bit about that. What do you want to know?"

Lynn thought for a moment, then smiled. "What kind of existence are they? How do they fight?"

The Wanderer gathered his words and then, with fear in his voice, replied, "If you intend to target them, I advise you not to, because their mode of existence differs greatly from ours."

"Oh? Explain."

"I don't actually know everything, because to truly join the Mechanical Cult, full-body mechanization is only the first threshold. The most important threshold is that you must absolutely pledge loyalty to their master, and upload your consciousness into the Mechanical Cult's special network as data!"

"They call that network the Hive!"

At those words Lynn's mind stirred. He had suspected something like this before: consciousness uploading, unified coordination, swarm consciousness—an extreme form of ordered structure.

The Wanderer swallowed and said, "But the scariest part is this: once you complete the consciousness upload, you become part of the Hive. As long as the Hive endures, you do not die. All the mechanized units operating in the outside world are just expendable toys to them. After a body is destroyed, their consciousness immediately uploads, so you can never truly kill them."

"So almost every time they face a desperate situation, they will unhesitatingly choose mutual annihilation, because if you die you really die, but they remain immortal."

Lynn pondered, then narrowed his eyes. "What's the price? If there were no price, you wouldn't have escaped, right?"

The Wanderer opened his mouth, then frowned. "Yes. Although uploading your consciousness lets you be immortal as data, the trade-off is that you permanently lose free will. Your actions become highly mechanical and unified; emotions and feelings are almost completely stripped away, leaving only a highly integrated collective consciousness..."

Images he had once witnessed of the Mechanical Cult mobilizing inevitably echoed in his mind.

The Wanderer (;ﾟ;:益:;ﾟ;.) said, "Of course, if you insist, my orientation is actually quite flexible and changeable..."

If you ignored them, within a few hours they could expand from a small squad into a fully armed mechanized army.

Unit spawn!

Endless mechanized production provided an inexhaustible supply of troops. Wherever they appeared, barely anything survived; not a single enemy remained. It was precisely because of this highly integrated combat method that they could gain the upper hand against the Flesh and Blood Cult's numerous factions.

"That terrifying?" Lynn raised an eyebrow. "But if it's just mass-producing units, would their combat power really be that strong?"

"You're naive!" The Wanderer's voice grew excited. "Mass production is only their basic tactic. Do you know what an integrated mechanized swarm is?"

Not only ground units. There is also a constant stream of aerial support and various high-tech war machines. Just one beacon. Seconds later, you might be drowned by countless missiles and beams. Carpet bombing, swarming aerial units, full-spectrum life detection and information scanning—detect one target, strike it precisely.

And that's still low-intensity warfare. Beyond that there are mind-shock devices for high-level evil spirits, mechanized nano-storms targeting flesh-and-blood beings, blackout devices that can change the weather, and so on.

"They've fought the Flesh and Blood Cult for thousands of years. If the Flesh and Blood Cult didn't have several Root-level figures guarding the flesh domains, they'd likely have been annihilated long ago. Up to now, in large-scale direct wars between the Mechanical Cult and the Flesh and Blood Cult, the Mechanical Cult's win rate has consistently been far higher."

He narrated solemnly, palms already drenched in cold sweat without him realizing it.

Lynn hesitated. "If the Mechanical Cult is so strong, how has the Flesh and Blood Cult held them off? Does every major battle require a Root to personally descend?"