The artificial intelligence spoke softly: "Species name: Entropy Devouring Cloud
Species Traits: The Entropy Devouring Cloud is a conceptual creature with no physical form, almost immune to physical or energetic attacks. When it detects a high entropy target (usually intelligent beings), it silently approaches and absorbs its informational entropy.
At first, the surrounding light vanishes into thin air. Since light, as an electromagnetic wave, has its own frequency, intensity, phase, polarization, and angular momentum which also count as information.
Then, the sound diminishes. Afterwards, the entropic effect intensifies: ink fades from books, hard drives are demagnetized, the intelligence of intelligent beings degrades, leading to varying degrees of memory loss, disorientation, even fainting or sudden death.
After devouring the informational entropy of approximately twenty intelligent beings, the Entropy Devouring Cloud gradually acquires a physical form, morphing into the appearance of one of its absorbents. At this stage, effective attacks can be made."
A Level 3 dangerous creature...
Zhao Zijing felt a huge shock, similar to the Special Affairs Bureau’s anomaly flux index, where danger level is unrelated to strength but to the threat posed to players.
For instance, the physical headquarters of the Global Supernatural Alliance Guild in the killing field is located in the Hidden Room called the ’Horn Room.’
Beside the Horn Room’s ocean, dwells a gigantic turtle-like creature spanning 10 kilometers long, emanating intense nuclear radiation, suspected to have a large nuclear fission reactor as its heart.
Such a nuclear giant, because it does not hunt and remains motionless all day, poses no threat to players and hence is rated only as Level 1 danger.
While the Level 3 Entropy Devouring Cloud would require a whole team of Lv20 players to deal with.
The Red Driver spoke urgently: "There are only eight of us on the ship now, far from reaching the critical twenty people needed for the Entropy Devouring Cloud to condense into a physical form.
Without a physical form, it can’t attack.
Let’s scatter now, each taking a lifeboat, perhaps there is still hope."
"It’s useless. It won’t let anyone or anything leave."
Zhao Zijing slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, and folded the Suicide Notebook’s paper given by the Ant into a paper airplane, launching it with telekinesis far away from the exploration ship.
The paper airplane flew over a hundred meters away, and yet, the Entropy Devouring Cloud enveloping the ship also extended a tendril, tightly wrapping around the paper airplane, refusing to let it escape.
This is an inherent greed for food.
"What should we do?" Midnight Howl spoke in a deep voice: "Driver, how many Spirit Balls do you have on you? Can we gather twenty slots?"
The driver, unable to hide his irritation, gritted his teeth: "I only brought six, and whether each Pocket Monster’s informational entropy reaches that of humans is still questionable."
On one hand, he truly regarded the Pocket Monsters as his own partners, unwilling to sacrifice them recklessly. On the other hand, the informational entropy carried by Pocket Monsters is probably not as much as that of humans.
"The ship, the ship’s systems are almost failing!"
Catherine from London said in alarm; as she described, the normally functional AI assistant now emitted a weird flurry of noisy sounds.
"Hello mi rice, Xiaomi su7 zero to hundred kilometers in 2.78 seconds, top speed 265km/h, dual motor four-wheel drive, only sold for 215.9 million million million million...."
Like in the old movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", where the AI HAL9000 had its logic module hard drive extracted, the AI assistant’s voice grew increasingly deep and chaotic, until it completely fell silent.
The ship’s system’s hard drives, absorbed by the Entropy Devouring Cloud, had all their informational entropy taken away, demagnetized.
With the ship’s systems fully malfunctioning, the engine immediately halted, forcing Zhao Zijing to exert more mental effort, releasing telekinetic power to prevent the ship from crashing into the wall.
As the situation grew perilously unstable, Midnight Howl lamented, "No wonder, those drawings on the paper depicted all of us dying in complete darkness."
It sounded like nails scratching on a chalkboard; the noise emanated from the center of the ship.
The Red Driver was initially stunned, but then realized, the sound seemed to be coming from where Ant was standing. "Ant bro, what are you doing?"
"I’m flipping through a braille version of *Golden Lotus*."
Li Cheng said, "To break the illusion, one must lead the lost into enlightenment. Let me critique it a bit."
This statement was so full of holes that the Driver had to hold back for a while but eventually couldn’t help but burst out: "Why would you bring *Golden Lotus* on a mission anyway? And why a braille version? Why read it in such a situation—are you trying to be a glutton before death?"
Zhao Zijing caught on and guessed Ant’s intention.
The Entropy Devouring Cloud causes the text in books to disappear. Since there is no light around, players cannot see to what extent the text on a normal book disappears, but they can touch the braille and use their sense of touch to perceive the progress of the Entropy Devouring Cloud devouring the information.
Li Cheng’s fingers grazed over the braille, the previously raised dots inexplicably flattened, leading to much less noise.
The Entropy Devouring Cloud’s sequence of devouring is light, sound waves, books, hard drives, then humans.
These steps unfold successively, gradually advancing. Players will soon experience the memory loss, confusion, and even fainting and sudden death symptoms mentioned in the database.
Indeed, Ordinary people like Catherine and Mendoza were already unable to speak, Midnight Howl and Red Driver could feel themselves weakening steadily. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ noⅴelfire.net
Li Cheng said: "The reason why the Entropy Devouring Cloud devours hard drives before humans is twofold. One, the data storage format on hard drives is more organized and easier to devour. Two, in the eyes of the Entropy Devouring Cloud, the information storage capacity of humans is much greater than that of hard drives."
"What does knowing all this help?"
Midnight Howl rasped, "It’s not like we can conjure up a few living people out of thin air for the Entropy Devouring Cloud to devour."
"That’s not necessarily true."
Li Cheng grinned and pulled a suit from the dimensional warehouse, putting it on.
In the darkness, everyone was puzzled, and then they heard a commanding black man’s voice.
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."
People barely staying conscious couldn’t hold back, wasn’t this damn the speech from the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream"?
Li Cheng wasn’t joking; he activated the Multi-threaded Brain Domain Method and Experience Playing Method, and seriously recited Martin Luther King’s speech, then switched through several different outfits.
From the darkness came different accents, tones, and languages.
"Do you know how much a loaf of bread costs now? Five hundred thousand Marks."
"Our Daqing Country has endless mountains of gold and silver, they will never run out!"
"Make America Great Again!"
"Those who violate our Great Wu’s territory will be decisively defeated."
"Sukuna, is it? I’ll go fifty-fifty with him, I often solo kill him too."
These voices spanned from ancient to modern, from domestic to international, even touching upon pop culture, yet they were all incredibly lifelike and charming.
The Red Driver listened, dumbfounded, and subconsciously recalled that text passage, "In Beijing, a good ventriloquist needs only a table, a chair, a fan, and a ruler."
Even weirder, as Li Cheng impersonated various characters, the stabbing pain in everyone’s brains gradually faded, and even the light bulbs on the ship, as if possessed, began to emit light.
Bathed in light, people saw the Entropy Devouring Cloud for the first time.
That thing had clearly consumed a massive amount of entropy, gradually gaining substance, turning into a mass of black cloud with dozens of human faces.
Every face was twisted in expression, conveying discomfort and weakness.