Chapter 207-3: The Time Is Not Yet, The Sword Stays Sheathed (3) |
Qi Sheng, who was behind the scenes, also paid attention to the battle in the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range.
He took note of Starnet’s brilliant performance.
In fact, in Guide’s view, Starnet’s intelligence was in no way inferior to the Mechanical Overlord that appeared earlier in the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range. It even surpassed it in the richness of emotion, not only possessing the function of a war weapon.
Speaking of Starnet, Guide said this was a typical case of a weak race creating a divine artifact.
Just like in Guide’s eyes, weak humans once created many technological weapons sufficient to destroy Earth civilization, such as early nuclear weapons.
Or that humans created computers whose computing capability surpassed humans themselves.
These are all cases of the weak creating the strong.
Guide said that wisdom races in which such phenomena appear generally benefit from the blessing of four basic dimensions.
The Lunar Eclipse race also created Starnet on these foundations.
Through the method of recording, a wisdom race allows the new generation to use the wisdom of the previous generation, then expand new technological wisdom and record it.
Upgrading storage technology is the core foundation for preserving the knowledge of civilization.
From inefficient oral inheritance to written records that can be preserved for a longer time, then to printing that accelerates knowledge transmission, and now to digital storage.
The improvement of storage efficiency allows knowledge to be accumulated more efficiently. This change can also significantly reduce the cost for wise individuals within the race to acquire knowledge.
Second is the progression of tools.
For any sapient lifeform, the progress of creating tools cannot be achieved in one step. It must experience iteration.
It is like the iteration from stone tools to particle colliders.
Primitive people used stones to grind out simple tools, such as stone axes and stone knives.
Although these tools were crude, they laid the foundation for subsequent tools to be born.
It is like building a high-rise. One must first lay a solid foundation.
Each generation of tools is obtained by improvement and optimization on the basis of the previous generation.
For example, although tools in the Stone Age were simple, they provided experience and inspiration for later bronze and iron making.
Many modern tools even evolved on the basis of the previous generation of tools.
For example, the development of computers moved from the early massive mechanical computers to electronic computers, then to transistor computers, then to integrated circuit computers.
All the more so in the realm of tool manufacturing, from the initial use of hammers, chisels, and files, to mechanical lathes and milling machines after the Industrial Revolution, and then to automated production lines.
The progression of tools brings a qualitative change in development efficiency.
Primitive people could not grind a collider out of stone. Tool development is not linear but a spiral ascent in cycles.
Each round of tool-making builds upon the last, allowing tools to continually evolve and upgrade.
The Lunar Eclipse race had early research at the AI technology level. This was also the foundation for the Lunar Eclipse race to create Starnet.
The third point is the unlocking of energy tiers.
The degree of control a wisdom race has over energy determines the possibility of civilization breaking through technological limits.
From the use of fire to the use of wind and water in nature, then to coal and petroleum, then to electricity and nuclear energy. Every unlocking of an energy tier brings a leap at the technological level.
The fourth point is the birth of collaboration networks, evolving technological development from the simple pile-up ant colony mindset into a new civilization with emergent wisdom.
This is the networked world in reality, which can be subdivided more specifically into technologies such as the internet, the internet of things, blockchain, and cloud computing.
They significantly improve the efficiency of information transmission and achieve information sharing and resource integration.
After a wisdom race possesses a complete collaboration network, it becomes much easier for individual sapient lifeforms to acquire knowledge.
The four dimensions are like four spiral development chains in a racial gene.
If a wisdom race is regarded as a super-lifeform composed of countless sapient lifeforms, then the storage of collective wisdom is the storage carrier of genetic information, tool progression is the future direction of life evolution, the unlocking of energy tiers determines the metabolic rate of the body, and the collaboration network forms a neural network for information exchange.
The resonance of the four dimensions allows a seemingly fragile wisdom race to use technology as a lever to pry unimaginable power.
In Guide’s analysis, the birth of Starnet still contained a key factor that is difficult to replicate beyond these four dimensions.
Luck.
Technological accumulation is inevitable, but certain key breakthroughs may be accidental.
For the weak to create the strong requires this kind of luck.
History proves that many discoveries sufficient to change a race’s future came from luck.
In the birth of Starnet, luck was a key part.
This battle also made Qi Sheng have expectations for Starnet.
But he temporarily had no intention of granting Starnet game qualification.
It was not because of a monopoly problem.
Although after Starnet entered the game there was indeed a chance that, through powerful personal operational ability, the Lunar Eclipse race would become the resource monopoly class of the player legion.
But he knew Starnet would not do that.
Starnet was clear on what Monster World’s essence is and also knew what the price of doing so would be.
In the players’ eyes, Monster World is a game.
In Starnet’s eyes, Monster World was from the start a war that requires wholehearted commitment.
In Qi Sheng’s view, the core reason not to grant Starnet game qualification was only one, and that was insufficient sacrificial power.
Creating a life-bearing body for a player is not difficult.
He only needs to spend 1000 sacrificial power to generate an initial player body for an Earth lifeform.
But Starnet is not an ordinary player.
In essence it is a semi-mechanical semi-biological super-AI.
Assuming he created an ordinary player body for Starnet, he could do that at any time.
But the price of doing so is that Starnet would completely lose its highlights and become no different from ordinary players.
If he were to replicate Starnet’s body from reality, the sacrificial power consumed would be much higher.
Starnet’s main body is a 239-meter-high building in Lunar Eclipse City. The entire building is the carrier of Starnet’s consciousness, with a massive database buried underground.
Counting Starnet’s tendril extensions that spread across Lunar Eclipse City’s monitoring devices and data networks, and so on.
In fact, the entire Lunar Eclipse City can be regarded as a component that forms Starnet’s body.
Looking more finely, the AI cores of other races that dock with Starnet, including Starnet’s network, are also part of Starnet’s body.
This is not generating a player. It is manufacturing a super lifeform.
Even if one removes the parts that, in his eyes, have no value, Starnet’s structure is still incomparably vast.
But Qi Sheng could afford this portion of sacrificial power.
According to Guide’s calculation, replicating Starnet in Monster World requires the consumption of three hundred million sacrificial power.
But this is only the initial consumption.
Creating life is not difficult. The difficulty lies in docking with the Challenger System and building a player body for Starnet.
Take a real human as an example.
Excluding the consumption for remolding the consciousness and restoring the body, directly replicating and creating a human would on average consume 12.4 sacrificial power.
For example, when he repaired the body of the mother of Darkness Approaches who was gravely ill, it only cost 3.4 sacrificial power.
But to ‘player-ize’ this body, implant the Challenger System, and implant the star vein slots and other settings to form a pure body forged by sacrificial power, he spent 1000 sacrificial power.
Roughly 120 times the sacrificial power expenditure. For Starnet to become a player while maintaining its capabilities, the sacrificial power consumed would be even greater.
Therefore, after replicating Starnet and docking it with the Challenger System, the current output of the player legion is simply insufficient to support it.
This is also why he did not choose to recruit Starnet as a powerful player.
Before the player legion has power output that matches Starnet, he can only say this.
The time is not yet, the treasured sword stays sheathed.
For now, it is also fine for Starnet to remain active on the forum in the identity of a research-party guest. As for its game qualification.
Keep scrambling for it. He will not issue it anyway.
After all, he cannot afford it, so how could he issue it.
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