"Of course." Mercer answered without hesitation.
Venus continued to ask, "Do you think it's better to exist in this current form, or is it better to return to a human body?"
This time, Mercer couldn't immediately give an answer.
Because rationally speaking, he loved his current feeling—this speed and efficiency in thinking completely outstripped himself as a human.
He felt omnipotent, and even instinctively harbored a disdain for the sensations he had as a human.
To use the simplest example, it's like someone who has been playing games on a 10-frame computer screen suddenly switching to a 1000Hz ultra-high-definition screen; the disparity is too direct and clear.
But after a moment of silence, Mercer gave his answer: "I still want to go back—the feeling of being smarter is indeed wonderful, even making me feel like I'm an omnipotent god.
But..."
He touched his chest, within which the torrent of running data still carried the emotional data of human consciousness. It hadn't diminished with the variance in computational volume, but evidently, the faster the thinking speed, the higher the efficiency, the harder it became for him to feel any special emotions.
This was not a lack of emotion, but rather the fluctuations of emotion were just a momentary thing, and his data computation speed was too fast, so ultimately, the overall emotional data tended towards calmness.
"Maybe this is the direction of human evolution in the future, but at least for now, I don't want to head towards the future so quickly."
Mercer finally understood why Ultraman viewed humans as 'primitives,' AIs as 'modern humans,' and Mercer as a 'future human.'
"Mercer!? Are you okay? The server's computational power has been maxed out, did something special happen on your side?"
At this moment, Lucy's delayed response finally appeared before Mercer.
Mercer carefully considered his reply: "I'm fine, don't worry, it's me using the computational power."
Thinking for a moment, he added another message: "I'm going to start trying to parse my consciousness data core next, I will use more computational power, but don't worry, nothing will happen to me, I'll be back soon."
Mercer turned his head to Venus: "I'm planning to parse my own consciousness data core next... I may need to try decompressing some data. If space isn't enough, give me Busan's server too, remind me in time, don't let me overdo it."
"Understood, Master." Venus obediently stood aside, looking at him with an expression of admiration and appreciation.
After taking a deep breath, the mirror before Mercer suddenly enlarged—he looked at his data, and cautiously approached the rhombus-shaped data core within himself.
Just getting close, seeing the data through the self-check program, gave Mercer an indescribable sense of shock.
What an enormous amount of data?
Simply by observing this rhombus data structure, Mercer could sense the terrifying amount of data within, an amount so massive that even he couldn't clearly perceive it.
If Venus's data core file size was 10K, he feared his own would be 10T.
And even in its compressed state, this compressed file was an astonishing 10G or so in size.
The workload of merely checking and observing the surface data of the outer compressed file was enormous.
Fortunately, Mercer's current efficiency was similarly terrifyingly high.
Countless data streams began to flicker before him, and he no longer engaged in unnecessary multi-threaded thinking but concentrated his computational power, starting to parse and decrypt.
But as time passed in nanoseconds, Mercer felt as if he had contemplated for three days and nights. After seriously analyzing it for a long time, Mercer couldn't help but furrow his brows.
Once unbeatable on the data layer, and feeling even more omnipotent after consciousness was data-fied, Mercer had encountered a difficulty in front of his own data core.
He... couldn't understand it.
Indeed — standing before his consciousness data core, Mercer for the first time felt the sense of bewilderment a regular programmer might feel when faced with an unknown program code.
What... the heck is all this!?