Chapter 83: PK Armor
Chapter 83: PK Armor
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Among the ashes, Utoni stood unmoving in the cellar like a statue with the shoulder cannons aimed at the sky.
What followed after was a flash of blue light. Just like when it was assembled, the PK armor morphed into a flash of blue light before reverting to the form of a dull metallic armguard.
“Clank!”
As the armguard heavily clanked onto the surface of the ground, the heavy cast of mist dispersed as well.
It was then when everyone saw Utoni with his head slumped in an unnatural angle in front of his chest. At the back of his neck, there was a hole approximately the size of a fist which seemed like it had been ruptured from the inside.
There was nothing but a thin layer of skin separating his torso and his head...
“The explosion is going to alert the people nearby. Hurry up and take care of this,” Chen Chen instructed before taking the PK Armor from Cheng Cao’s hands. He proceeded to turn around to return to the clinic.
Chen Chen was already aware that the PK Armor was capable of masking electromagnetic signals. However, there was a small portion of Little X’s artificial intelligence copy left in the God Chip. Even without signal access, it was still able to execute Utoni upon detecting his intentions.
The moment the idea of escaping using the help of the PK armor arose in Utoni’s mind, the God Chip triggered itself accordingly.
However, Utoni did not know about the God Chip’s alert system. He barely paid any mind to it and attempted to use the shoulder cannon to break through the cellar.
Up till this point, the God Chip had been evaluating the severity of the developing situation. Upon considering the potential harm Utoni’s action could inflict to Chen Chen, along with the fact that the signal dispatched to Little X was disrupted by the PK Armor, it resorted to the ultimate punishment – self-destruction.
That was how Chen Chen determined that chances were that Utoni was dead upon firing the cannon.
The PK Armor may have extreme offensive and defensive prowess, but how was it supposed to protect the wearer from an attack coming from inside?
The only downside here was the loss of the experimental subject.
Chen Chen shook his head. His original plan was to perform a full body checkup on Utoni after he removed the armor. He would only don the armor himself upon ensuring that no unprecedented issue would come out of it.
Since the experimental subject was deceased, Chen Chen would not force the issue either. He found a scale in the clinic and weighed the armguard at exactly 30 kilograms. Chances were that a regular person with slightly weaker strength would have a hard time lifting it.
This did not prove to be surprising. It would seem that the design of the PK Armor incorporated nanostructure technology that far exceeded the boundaries of the present technology. It took on the form of an armguard in an idle state. Upon activation, the nanostructure will restructure itself to construct a fully protective armor fitting the wearer’s physique.
In any case, its total weight remained completely unchanged.
Putting it in perspective, it was surprisingly light compared to Accelerator Suit and ExoSuit.
After that, Chen Chen took the PK Armor to the rooftop on the third floor of the clinic. After taking a deep breath, he slowly put the armguard on his arm.
“Click!”
In an instant, he heard a click produced by the mechanism locking together. The bulky, black-colored armguard shrunk instantly and wrapped itself around Chen Chen’s arm!
There was a sound of a buzzer ringing at the same time. Following a familiar flash of blue light, it rapidly crept toward the region around Chen Chen’s shoulder.
This blue light was known as plasma. It was a byproduct of the low-temperature plasma effect caused by the restructuring of the nanometal.
Instead of resisting it, Chen Chen took interest in the experience. He had to admit that the plasma produced during the reconstruction of the PK Armor was considerably hot. It was worth noting that it did not completely attach itself to the wearer during the reconstruction as it constantly shifted around. Therefore, the wearer only experienced heat up to sixty or seventy Celsius even though the process involved could reach a temperature up to several hundred Celsius. All things considered, it was a tolerable temperature for a regular person.
As the low-temperature plasma continued to spread across Chen Chen’s body, the PK Armor eventually wrapped itself around his body. By the end of the process, a mask still radiating heat covered Chen Chen’s face.
Chen Chen’s vision turned pitch-black before light was reintroduced again momentarily after. However, his vision field was no longer that of a regular human’s. Instead, it took on the form of an infrared thermal imaging vision field.
It was distinctly different from regular thermal imaging wherein heat signals were displayed in chunky blocks. Chen Chen could tell that he was able to see in far greater detail and clarity than the human eye could offer. Information such as radiation value, temperature value, shape, weight, and other such data of any object was transmitted into the wearer’s mind.
Simply put, this was an enhanced version of a regular human’s vision system.
“Hupp!”
Chen Chen tried to take a breath. Though he was not sure where the circulation of the armor was located, it was clear that the armor did not hinder his breathing in any form.
After that, just by invoking a thought, six laser sights were activated and propped up from the back of the armor. Without having to turn around, the laser sights began scanning the surroundings for signs of potential threat. In addition, it displayed the result of the scan in a window which appeared before Chen Chen’s eye.
Simply by invoking a thought, the six laser sights along with the two shoulder guns provided immediate response without the slightest hint of delay.
Chen Chen was immensely satisfied with this.
If his hunch was correct, this should be a form of mind manipulation technology in its matured development stage. The armor was even able to accelerate his thought process.
Take what happened when playing a battle royale game on a foreign server for instance. Players playing from Mainland China usually required a software known as a “booster”. Without the assistance of such software, it was very likely the player would lose connection in the middle of the game or play with high ping.
Drawing parallels between playing battle royale games and operating the PK Armor, the wearer could be portrayed as the player. The neuron waves transmitted from the wearer were the internet infrastructure and the shoulder canons along with other systems were the battle royale game.
In usual cases, there would always be a delay when operating the shoulder cannons. No matter how quickly it synced to the user’s thoughts, the user would still experience some sort of buffer. This was where the acceleration device of the PK Armor came in. It was able to completely calibrate itself along the user’s neuron waves, serving as the “booster” used in the game. It was able to provide a far fluid experience than the user would have to control his own body.
Upon considering this factor, Chen Chen suddenly raised his head and identified a distant abandoned hut as his target. The two shoulder cannons immediately turned toward that direction when he did so. A window simultaneously appeared in Chen Chen’s vision field which provided three options for Chen Chen to choose from.
When Chen Chen merely visualized the idea of selecting the first option, the cannon on his right fired a blast of blue beam immediately which seemed to vanish as soon as it appeared.
Chen Chen looked into the distance and saw a hole penetrating through the roof of the hut.
“Ultra high-field laser weaponry?”
Chen Chen evaluated before switching ammunition and selecting the second option.
Again, the cannon on his right shoulder fired. Only this time around, the projectile fired was a bright orb. The orb disappeared in the blink of an eye and detonated an explosion on the hut hundreds of meters away like someone had detonated a mine in the hut!
It was clear that this was what Utoni used to destroy the cellar.
“Probably a plasma cannon.”
Chen Chen speculated before selecting the third option.
This time, it was the cannon on the left firing. There was no sound or any indication of firing, but the hut that was already turned into barren ruins as it exploded once again without signs of any projectile!
“It’s a high-power microwave weapon!”
Chen Chen’s eyes lit up. Compared to the previous two weapons, this form of microwave weaponry was the real killer.
The so-called microwave weapon was a subclass of electromagnetic waves. It was distinctly different from regular electromagnetic waves in the sense that it was a form of weaponry that utilizes high-power electromagnetic waves to obliterate its target. Apart from being able to destroy electronic devices, it was able to bypass defenses and armor via thermal energy, directly killing the operators on the interior.
On top of that, this sort of weapon was able to intelligently configure its output based on the selected target. Therefore, there would not be any form of excess waste when firing.
After Chen Chen was done experimenting with the weapons, he retracted the shoulder cannons and the laser sights. He then attempted to move his limbs around.
As he held out his hand and attempted to form a fist, he was taken by a strange sensation. He felt as if there was a slight period of delay between moving his hand and feeling the actual movement on his skin.
Chen Chen was certain that there was a layer of a metallic surface on his palm.
It was apparent that this was an extremely advanced form of sensor-based technology.
Chen Chen gave it another shot. The suit of armor was able to vastly improve the physical capabilities of the human body in terms of strength, speed, and reaction speed. It was even more lethal than the Iron Man armor. The only aspects in which it was inferior to the Iron Man armor was the power issue and the absence of flight capabilities.
Apart from that, the suit of armor also came with a set of control systems. However, the control system seemed to be engineered around the language system from Predator. According to Chen Chen’s understanding, he was looking at a form of phonography.
The existing writing system in human civilization was divided into three types namely phenotype, ideogram, and phonetic. Phenotype writing system referred to early forms of language developed by early civilizations, some examples included Oracle and Cuneiform.
Ideograph referred to the current writing system adopted by Mainland China in the present age, which was a character system represented by Chinese characters as we knew it. It was an extension of phonograph.
Phonetic, on the other hand, were texts taking the form of English alphabets.
Chen Chen figured that if he was able to fully comprehend the language used in Predator, he may be able to achieve further understanding of the Predator technology.
This was not something that could simply be accomplished in a day. Though Chen Chen was perfectly capable of mastering a language in a day, there was no form of traditional learning material for the Predator language. Was it possible to gain complete mastery of it just by using brief references from the movie?
Chen Chen was not going to accomplish it only with the help of NZT-48, he was going to have to resort to the CPH4.
The Earth Federation would not be able to fully comprehend this form of technology even if given a hundred years.
Chen Chen sighed silently. To put it in perspective, the Earth Federation Chen Chen currently resided in was equivalent to the era where the applications of steam engines were in its infancy. The current era was still in the medieval stages of the first industrial revolution. In this case, the suit of armor could be represented as a smartphone.
Around three industrial revolutions separated the eras in which the two respective technologies came from.