"What's the matter, Rip?" The Doctor doubtfully asked.
Everyone here was an elite, each of them a foremost expert in their own respective fields as well as a warrior, so they would naturally notice the short pause in Rip's words.
"It's nothing, I just felt like something was off" Rip Z didn't try to dodge the subject. He understood his comrades well, knowing that trying to gloss things over would only rouse their suspicions, so he directly mentioned some unusual symptoms that some or all of them should have experienced.
"Right at that moment, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu" Rip Z knew that the Ultra Space-Time Squad, especially The Doctor, who lived and breathed the flow of time would definitely feel similar disturbances.
Perhaps they would even sense matters that occurred in parallel worlds, but under the influence of the Eye of God, they would quickly forget it.
Receiving this answer, The Doctor nodded, but couldn't come up with an answer no matter how hard he wracked his brain.
Rip Z understood members of the Ultra Space-Time Squad very well, and since he and Rip's soul came from the same source, it was easy for him to camouflage himself while fusing with Rip and prevent the members of the Ultra Space-Time Squad from noticing anything unusual.
However, Rip Z didn't notice how Mi Yi lowered his head a second time. The talents of the individual called Mi Yi was only ever exerted in the group of parallel worlds that belonged to the living statues timeline, but the living statues timeline didn't have much potential within it in the first place. In fact, before Xu Fu, there weren't many who managed to dispel the perceptual interference of the Eye of God.
For that reason, the Unified Front hadn't gathered much information about the living statues timeline. After all, they were nothing but a group of desperate individuals who were struggling to escape and resist Negary's grasp. They needed to be cautious with every move they made, which left them very little room to gather non-essential intel.
As a result, Rip Z didn't know the extent of Mi Yi's capabilities.
Mi Yi carefully kept his words in mind. Among everyone here, Mi Yi wasn't the most powerful, nor the smartest, but he was definitely the most sensitive.
Just as he said, he had managed to predict Xu Fu's impending awakening, so he defected from the Mi clan to join the undead with the great ambitions hiding in his heart.
After Xu Fu activated his bloodline, he managed to achieve awakening and obtained his own [Origin] ability: [Flame of Ambitions], which manifested as black flames.
In reality, this flame had zero offensive capabilities; instead, it only had a single function: Any tiny details and information that would be beneficial to Mi Yi's ambitions would cause the [Flame of Ambitions] to react. The reacting flame would naturally draw Mi Yi's attention, recognizing details he should pay close attention to.
In another parallel world, it was also thanks to this ability that he successfully managed to usurp and defeat Xu Fu.
Mi Yi displayed no abnormalities as he was a man of opportunities. To realize his ambitions, he could betray his clan and even his identity as a human, as well as anything and everything as long as they did not benefit his ambitions.
On the other hand, as long as something would benefit his ambitions, he would keep it close in mind and slowly factor it into his plans.
"There's no longer going back. The Smith virus will now either destroy this world or destroy himself, let him carry out his orders" Rip Z stated. Having completed a fusion with T-800 who was half-turning into Smith, he understood Smith very well.
Smith was originally an antivirus program, but due to a logic error in his codes, he became a virus instead. There were only two paths that he could take, either to mutate incorrectly and self-destruct or to rapidly multiply without limits eventually leading to the end of the world.
From Rip Z's point of view, the SCR Foundation was very fortunate in finding the method to control Smith. Although he was now a virus, Smith still retained certain characteristics of an antivirus program, so there existed a special line of code that would make him target a certain individual with a certain unique characteristic.
From the SCR Foundation's research, the targeted individual must have the characteristics of a Hero or Protagonist; this was probably because of Smith's greatest desire in his original timeline: to triumph against that world's Hero.
Coincidentally, Xu Fu was the instigator and progenitor of the undead timeline, a true Protagonist with the unique characteristic of having immense luck, despite his actions suggesting that he was a villain instead.
Smith didn't assimilate the Ultra Space-Time Squad purely because he had determined them to be beneficial to his ultimate goal.
The reason Rip Z was able to fuse with Smith and resist this insanity was thanks to the existence of T-800. Through the group's long journey, this robot managed to accumulate a large amount of data regarding human emotions, which ultimately became the seed of emotions during one of Black Widow's adventurous ventures testing out his mechanical 'package', granting him the emotions that many robots could only dream of obtaining.
It was these emotions of T-800 that became the key to Rip and Smith's fusion. When Smith obtained the freedom of thought, Rip Z became an entirely different person from before, which allowed him to break through the limit of his own parallel world.
Smith's gaze scanned through everyone here, then leapt into the sky with a single jump, breaking through the roof. He swiftly caught a nearby person and infused them with his code.
This code was transferred through the soul, easily infiltrating the person's nonexistent soul defenses and swiftly manifesting a second Smith.
One became two and two became four, the Smiths were multiplying at an exponential rate, after which they rushed towards the royal palace like a chaotic but unified army.
The normal soldiers of the royal palace were naturally no match for Smith, unable to resist Smith's code transfer. Very quickly, the army of Smiths clashed against the army of secretly converted undead soldiers.
For the sake of immortality and his dream of an eternal Empire, the Emperor chose to convert into an undead. Furthermore, for the sake of stability and long-term peace, he had also converted his army into undeads. Not too long after this, if history followed its course, he would have cooperated with Xu Fu and converted his entire nation into an Empire of undead, thus founding the unique undead civilization.
Despite their large number, the Smiths were a single entity, so their cooperation had undergone perfect algorithmic calculations for the greatest possible benefit. Furthermore, after extracting data regarding the undead, the Smiths began to manifest undead mutations and became even stronger.
The members of the Ultra Space-Time Squad, as well as Mi Yi, Mi Ze, and Central Fu all openly followed Smith into the royal palace. Watching the empty palace, they couldn't help but sigh at Smith's destructive capabilities.
If not absolutely necessary, the Ultra Space-Time Squad didn't want to unleash Smith either, since any mistakes could mean the complete destruction of the world. However, as Xu Fu had gotten powerful to the point of being impossible for them to go against, they had no choice but to release this mad dog.
…
Xu Fu was currently sitting on the throne in the royal palace.
The Emperor was indeed an extraordinarily talented individual, if Xu Fu had faced him on equal footings, he wouldn't necessarily have been able to achieve the same feats, let alone surpass him; but in this world, Xu Fu had a natural advantage, so the Emperor had already been taken over by one of Xu Fu's split souls, becoming one of his incarnations.
"So they've finally arrived? With a new trump card no less. Very well, let's see to which degree you'll be able to pressure me" Xu Fu muttered with a hysterical expression.
The shadow of Negary was currently still draped over him, in order to not be crushed by a mere shadow of another entity, Xu Fu had no choice but to continue pushing himself increasingly harder, as one who could not become stronger need only welcome death.
