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D.I.O - Chapter 202

Published at 18th of March 2023 06:47:47 AM


Chapter 202

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Once Dongsoo left the apartment, he fell into thought. Though he didn’t show it when he was with her, he was taken aback by Lea’s existence, as he knew who she was.

“Dang… mother… you sure knew how to pick the right person. You definitely surprised me.”

At first, Dongsoo was unaware who Lea was. Lea’s overly thin frame, bloodshot eyes, caked hair, and dirty clothing wasn’t the image that he was used to seeing whenever he saw Lea in DIO.

However, after being tidied up and fed through Dongsoo’s care, Lea slowly took on an appearance that Dongsoo was much more familiar with. Now that she was taking a shower once a day, she looked more like a teen idol than a shut-in.

“Cruze…”

She was one of the Heaven above the Heavens; she was Cruze Schmidt. In their search for a gifted and talented child, his adopted parents had adopted a child from overseas!

“Anyway, how come she doesn’t recognize me? She has such good memory… am I such an insignificant existence?”

Dongsoo grumbled. Unless one had a problem with one’s body, such as being hunchbacked or having some sort of physical disability, the image of one’s character in DIO mirrored the image of the user in real life. Hence, Dongsoo looked exactly the same as his in-game character, Lancelot. Even if one didn’t know someone well, one should still be able to recognize someone if one sees that person a few times, but Lea didn’t seem to recognize him at all, so Dongsoo hesitated and missed the timing to properly introduce himself.

“Anyway, it’s a bit strange. Her initial physical condition was in such a mess, but she instantly became better after eating well and washing up for a week.”

The many food wrappers from Lea’s dependence on delivery food had piled up all over the apartment, but that was because Lea had been confined within the apartment for a long time. She didn’t eat very much anyway, so her choice of only eating fast food had deteriorated her health. This led to her becoming dangerously skinny with a bad complexion, but in just a week, her cheeks took on a rosy color, and her skin was glowing; it was to the point where Dongsoo thought, ‘Did I feed her some rejuvenating, life-saving medicine?’.

Bang!

While he was busy thinking about this and that, the building near Dongsoo exploded while giving off an explosive sound.

“What the…!”

Startled, Dongsoo hid behind an elevated flower bed installed on the side of the road. Shards of shattered glass from the building’s windows flew in all directions.

“Kyak!”

“W-what’s going on? Was it a gas explosion?!”

“Ah, it hurts… it hurts!!”

“Someone, call 911!!”

The busy street, where many people came and went, became a chaotic mess. The explosion was so strong that it destroyed the building, and the building’s fragments shot out and hit the people nearby. Thinking that there might be a second explosion, Dongsoo lowered his stance and took out his cell phone. He was planning on contacting the fire and police department, but to his dismay, his cell phone didn’t work.

“It’s… completely dead?”

Not only did he not have a signal, but the LCD screen itself wouldn’t turn on. It was as if he had broken his cell phone after ducking behind the flower bed.

“What’s with my phone… it won’t turn on!”

“Is my phone broken? Why isn’t it turning on?”

“My car stopped running!!”

From all over the place, screams began to erupt. Hearing all this, Dongsoo felt his blood run cold.

‘Have all electronic devices become disabled?’

Dongsoo quickly got up. The situation seemed dire. In Dongsoo’s mind, if someone had artificially caused this situation, this wouldn’t be the end.

Ting! Boom!

At that moment, a nearby building collapsed. The collapse was accompanied by a mechanical sound. Soon, a giant thing made of some sort of white metal appeared.

“… Eh?”

It was a gigantic mechanical robot.

***

There were things in the world that many people think about but don’t happen. These events were an impossibility, things that only happened in movies. The probability of such things happening were less than 0.00001%, if not 0%.

For example, a UFO suddenly appearing on Earth and befriending a human boy, or transforming robots, powerful enough to shake the entire universe, descending onto Earth and fighting each other, but for whatever reason, they get crushed and smashed by tank shells and missiles fired by modern human forces.

This sort of extraordinary event was occurring on Earth. It was a response against the Union.

Zing!

Zing!

Dimensional rifts opened here and there, and mechanical machines began pouring out from them. Among them were mechanical robot soldiers that looked like humans and mechanical weapons that looked like modern tanks and fighter jets. However, the mechanical robots, in the form of humans, tanks, or fighter jets, weren’t manned by anyone, but rather, they moved automatically. The human-shaped mechanical robot soldiers held laser guns, which looked similar to modern rifles, in their hands. If a Master, who had conducted many missions, had seen these robots, they would have instantly recognized that these mechanical robots were T-41 type mechanical robot soldiers, which were often used by space pirates across the universe.

“Oh, is this some sort of magic performance? How did those things appear out of thin air?”

“Wow, look at that!”

A number of these mechanical robots landed in a busy street in Chongqing, China. They landed in front of a crowded department store, and people gathered at the sight of [Robots] appearing from thin air.

“What’s going on?”

“Is it a movie shoot?”

The local Chinese and foreigner tourists started gathering in front of the mechanical robots. Obviously, no one showed fear or avoided the mechanical robots.

“Hey~ mister robot! Is anyone inside!”

A woman, who appeared to be a Westerner, cheerfully waved her hand in front of one of the larger mechanical robots. And, following her movements, the mechanical robot soldier moved its arm.

Clunk!

It pointed its gun at her.

“Hmm?”

And fired a bullet.

Bang!

The woman collapsed helplessly as the projectile, traveling more than three times the speed of sound, blasted her head off.

“… Uh, huh?”

“That? What?”

Even after the woman’s death, the gathered people didn’t process and quickly react to the impending threat. In the first place, the entire situation felt surreal. A bipedal mechanical robot appearing in the middle of a bustling city and shooting people… it was a scene that only came out in Sci-fi movies.

However, for the mechanical robot soldiers, who had no reason to be considerate of their targets, the people’s response was seen as something fortuitous, as they could carry out their mission objectives more comfortably.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Theft is never good, try looking at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

The mechanic robots started aiming and firing at the gathered crowd. The people, who finally figured out the situation they were in, panicked and screamed; however…

Brr!! Boom!

The large explosions soon drowned out their screams.

***

These mechanical robots appeared all over Earth and immediately started slaughtering the people around them. There weren’t a great many of them. In each of the thirty or so locations that they warped into, a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 20 mechanical robots appeared, so the total number was only 200 to 300.

Since these mechanical robots had bodies made out of special alloys, they were naturally impervious to modern human bullets and chemical weapons; however, unlike the firepower that advanced demons and Masters could output, this level of firepower was something that modern humans could contend against. In essence, the mechanical robots were only utilizing basic armaments that were commonly used by pirates that roamed the universe.

Basically, these mechanical robots were resistant to heat and shock, so they couldn’t be damaged by personal firearms, but they weren’t so strong that they could survive a strong physical impact, such as artillery fire or missile attacks. Even if humanity didn’t take any collective action against these mechanical robots, their relatively small numbers meant that humankind would ultimately defeat them at some point.

However, unlike the larger picture and their eventual demise, currently, these mechanical robots were freely slaughtering the people around them. They appeared in crowded downtown areas, so the loss of life was truly astronomical.

The mechanical robots didn’t take any strategic action. If there was a human nearby, they’d seek him or her out and kill.

In other words, their actions were close to an act of [Terrorism].

Moreover, this was their true and only purpose.

***

“… How did this happen?”

Tan, DIO’s top operator, gritted his teeth at the massacre unfolding on his screen. Of course, he wasn’t feeling sorry or guilty about the people’s deaths. He didn’t value human life. The problem was that, while the mechanical robots slaughtered humans, some of the more valuable users would be swept away in the carnage. Even in this brief attack, two Master users had died!

“What happened? How were they able to warp into our territory?”

It should have been an impossibility. The planets managed by the [Union] were equipped with all manners of warp-defying defensive measures, so the fact that mechanical robots were able to descend upon Earth meant that the Noblesse’s defense systems had been breached.

“Who’s behind this?”

“It’s the Legion.”

“Ugh, those old-timers…”

Tan gnashed his teeth in annoyance. The Legion, a huge power that ruled over more hundreds of planets and owned ten Terra-class ships, was one of the three terrorist groups, often referred to as the Union’s Great Adversaries, that were hostile toward the Union. Like the Grotesque, the Legion was a terrorist group that constantly presented issues for the Union.

At least now, from the Union’s perspective, the Legion was just another terrorist group, but when the mech god, Dekarma, was present, the Legion was such an enormous force that even the Union couldn’t easily deal with them. If the Union focused everything they had against the Legion, the Union could annihilate the Legion, but the damage the Union would suffer in the process would be so great that they’d be unable to muster any defense against the other terrorist groups.

Although the Legion lost most of its power after the fall of their mech god, who did something forbidden and was annihilated by the God of War, the Legion continued to exist and remained hostile towards the Union.

“Did the Legion break through our security systems?”

The Legion was an organization made entirely of machines. Born from artificial intelligence that was created in the distant past, so long ago that no one truly knew how long, these machines possessed special traits, such as [creativity] and [thinking], which allowed them to be capable of [imagining], unlike the artificial intelligence that existed on Earth.

These machines were able to think for themselves and develop a civilization, and since they could reproduce Legion mechs without anyone’s help, they were able to proliferate at a somewhat infinite pace, as long as they possessed the required resources. Since the Legion were essentially containers of information, they could easily crack through and infiltrate computer and mechanical systems.

Even so, it was still puzzling as to how they were able to break through the Union’s warp-defying defenses, especially at this specific moment and time.

“By the way, why aren’t the Enforcers mobilizing?”

“Ah, that’s because… the mech robots invading Earth are within the boundary of being categorized as 2nd stage civilization things. They’re using a [legal] loophole, so to speak. Of course, if they increased their numbers, the Enforcers would probably come to stop them, but it seems the Legion are adjusting their numbers to fly under the Enforcer’s radar.”

Human casualties, and in turn the reduction of users, were the Union’s main concern, as the Legion’s forces that descended on Earth weren’t at a [Humanity Destruction] level. The Legion’s forces would cause some damage, but their relatively small numbers could be contended against by humans without any need for intervention. In addition, the Legion had no intention of gaining any benefit from this round of attacks on Earth and wasn’t interfering with human souls in any way, so the Enforcers wouldn’t mobilize. Of course, human individuals were dying, but the Enforcers wouldn’t care about that. Human life perished all the time from wars, skirmishes, and disease, so what if a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of human lives were lost from the Legion’s attack?

“But the Enforcers will probably show up if we intervene, right?”

“Of course. We’re constrained by Union Law. The Reaper Organization also issued a warning not to move recklessly.”

As users began to play an active part in the wider universe, interest started gathering from all corners of the universe. It was true that the Noblesse had a strong voice in the Union, but there were also many factions who opposed them, and even amongst the Noblesse, there were those who did not like Tan and other pure-blooded existences, so it was impossible for Tan to do whatever he wanted.

“In the end, I guess there’s only one thing we can do.”

“Wasn’t that always the plan?”

“Of course, but I thought the Grotesque would have been the ones to push us to mobilize, not the Legion. They’re both our enemies, so that essentially makes them allies… but I’m sure they’re not working together…”

This turn of event happened because Merlin defeated Madness, who had essentially become a lost child within the dimensional rift realm, and Sirius, who was given access to utilize Armageddon power, in succession. The Grotesque possessed more than 100 Numbered Slayers, like Madness and Sirius, but they felt a sense of crisis at the fact that two of their Numbered were defeated by users, who originated from a training system. In other words, the two Numbered Slayers were defeated by existences that weren’t even Noblesses or higher-level beings; they had been defeated by humans who had gone through a mysterious training system.

“If we take our planned course of action, we’ll probably cause an uproar, right?”

Melton, who looked like a young boy wearing a baseball cap, smiled after hearing Tan’s question.

“But what can they do? Since the attacks will become more direct and only increase in number, everyone will start relying on us more.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Tan nodded his head. And then, he radiated blue aura.

“Send in the Masters.”




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