In every city, there exists a genius.
Those who couldn't blossom because they didn’t realize their talent, those who chose not to demonstrate their abilities out of disinterest, or those kept hidden and nurtured by the city itself.

In the past, there wasn’t much such geniuses could do. Even with extraordinary intelligence, they had only one body and two hands. It was an era where one couldn't invent something new with mere inspiration alone—it required a combination of genius talent and long-term dedication to make progress.

But AI allowed these geniuses' talents to bloom.
Fully.

“─Success!”

The tedious, nausea-inducing grunt work, the tiresome calculations, the tedious chores—AI handled everything that hindered their talents from flourishing, leaving the geniuses to devote themselves fully to their craft.

Using the technologies developed in this way, each city finally obtained the object they had longed for. Androids, whose technology had been firmly locked away by Evilus and Dragon Corp, who would replace heroes and eradicate villains.

[Angel Unit 1. Activating.]
[Unit 2, activating.]
[Unit 3…]
[…Unit 1001, activating.]

“With this, our city will finally be freed from villains.”

Of course, the performance of the androids created in this manner wasn’t enough to replace even a B-rank hero; they were only about equal to a C-rank hero. Moreover, they were outrageously expensive compared to the $99 Evilusloids or Dragon Bone Soldiers…

But, regardless, they had soldiers that wouldn’t refuse orders, could be endlessly reproduced even if destroyed, and wouldn’t require the same compensation as a hero if they were damaged. It was hard not to covet them.

In U City, Utopia Group immediately deployed their private force. A thousand androids, equipped with the company's cutting-edge weapons, moved to capture the villains scattered across the city.

The results were remarkable.

“Mission accomplished! We captured Blade Ghost, a notorious A-rank villain!”

With iron soldiers that didn’t know fear charging forward without regard for their lives, even A-rank villains were swiftly apprehended.

Of course, AI played a significant role here. It tracked the villains’ locations, analyzed their abilities to identify weaknesses, and subdued them by exploiting those weak points.

“One more down!”
“Nice!”
“At this rate, we might be able to clear it all within this month, no, maybe even this week…”

The people in the operations room burst into cheers. Freedom from villains—this was the long-held dream of everyone.

Being able to remove those who hinder progress, cause unnecessary casualties, and do nothing but leech off society.

There were no words to describe how monumental this was.

“We’ve tracked another villain!”
“Got it? Send the Angels immediately!”
“Yes, understood!”

As androids were being dispatched one after another towards villains, the signal from one of the androids suddenly cut off. It was an android that had been advancing towards a newly discovered villain.

Just as an operative in the operations room noticed something was wrong, signals from the surrounding androids began to cut off one by one, spreading outward from the initial lost signal, like paint seeping outward.

“H-Huh—?”
“What… is this…?”
“Could it be an S-rank villain?”

As everyone in the operations room stared at the monitors, unable to comprehend the situation, the feed from a nearby CCTV finally connected, revealing a scene of androids aligning themselves in formation.

At the end of their ranks stood a villain, fiddling with his smartphone. He paused for a moment, clicked his tongue, and then made a sweeping motion with his hand.

Just as an orchestra would play according to the conductor’s hand, the Angels began to advance in response to his gesture.

“What the…?”
“He… he’s controlling our Angels?”
“That… can’t be…”

The one the scientist feared above all others.
The father of machines, Deus ex machina, had revealed himself.

Wuuung—!
A strange sound reverberated, radiating intense heat. Ayle took a step back as she entered the lab, startled by the scorching heat.

“Ah, it’s hot—”

Ayle opened the door slightly to let the heat escape and hesitantly entered the lab, carefully speaking up.

“Um, Scientist? I think you’ve set the heater too high…”
“It’s not the heater.”
“What? But it’s so hot…”
“I’m using the computer.”
“The computer…?”

I silently pointed to a rectangular box in the corner of the lab. The golden box was vibrating wildly, radiating so much heat that, despite its small size, it warmed the entire room.

Seeing the box, Ayle tilted her head in confusion and looked at me. I shrugged as if it were nothing special.

“It’s the computer processing the AI’s computations.”
“AI? Then, this is…”
“Yes. The mother of all AI.”

Inside the cube was a perpetual motion machine I created not long after arriving in this world. Of course, “perpetual motion” didn’t mean it could generate infinite energy; it still had a limit to the energy it could output per hour…

But after I built a gate to the other world with Arima, I managed to eliminate any concept of time constraints. Time and space are one, so if one can manipulate space, one can manipulate time.

Of course, this meant it had to be positioned right next to the gate, making it almost impossible to build a super robot generating infinite energy, supply power globally, or create a planet-destroying weapon.

“So… does that mean with just that, you can generate endless AI…”
“Ayle, focus on your studies, or use AI for something worthy of a villain organization executive.”
“I-I am using it! But I ran out of tokens…”
“There’s no token limit for executives, so you must be using it for something strange.”
“N-No, I’m not!”

As if she’d ever hand over her phone to show me what she was using it for, Ayle protested, looking falsely indignant. I waved my hand, dismissing her.

At that moment, the golden cube began vibrating furiously, emitting even more heat. Ayle, now accustomed to the warmth of the room, let out a faint groan.

“Ugh…”
“Ah—there it goes again.”
“I-Is it breaking?”
“No, it’s fine. Some fools keep trying to hack it.”
“H-Hack? W-We have to stop them…!”

I held Ayle back as she nervously shuffled her feet. She continued to stare anxiously at the golden cube.

“I’ve taken all precautions, so don’t worry.”
“T-That’s a relief…”
“Besides, no one here has the capability to hack it. It seems like it’s even handling supernatural attempts well.”
“Supernatural… Can you hack it with powers?”
“Yeah. They’ve tried all kinds of methods: hypnosis, mind control, machine manipulation… It seems like they’re even trying to prod it with ghostly powers.”

AI is technology coveted worldwide. Since I distributed Evilus Agent for free to everyone, they must know that possessing it means possessing the world. Thanks to this, it endures countless hacking attempts daily.

The computer hacks aren’t as concerning. No matter how much they calculate, they can’t reach 0.0000…1% of the processing power of the computer that runs Evilus Agent. But the supernatural hacks are indeed problematic.

The golden cube, with its limitless energy, emitted such intense heat each day to fend off these supernatural hacking attempts.

‘They should just give up. Even if they succeed, they wouldn’t be able to handle it…’

What if someone managed to hack the AI using supernatural powers? AI doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s constantly communicating with other AIs. Even in places without internet, as long as it’s within this planet’s bounds, it’s connected.

Thus, every second, it communicates with billions of other AIs, and if it were hacked, it would be instantly restored by the others. Unless a psychic could hack billions of AIs simultaneously, hacking AI is physically impossible.

Obviously, there’s no one who can control billions of AIs alone within 0.1 comma units of time. If such a person existed, they’d have already ruled this world alone. There would be no need for A-rank or S-rank villains.

“So? Why are you here, Ayle? Another token refill?”
“Ah—if you could, that’d be very helpful… B-But that’s not the main reason I came.”

“Then?”
“I thought you should see this…”

Ayle handed me her smartphone. Displayed on the screen were pictures of androids advancing through a city, along with a few captions.

At the bottom, a description read:

『So it’s supposed to be controlled by AI, but it got hacked by a villain, lol
Where are all the guys who said AI was safe? Come out and apologize』

The caption sounded as if it was calling someone out.