This series of actions almost exhausted all his strength, so much so that he couldn't even bother to curse him to hell when shooting.
But Mercer merely smiled and gestured to V not to move at the moment he drew his gun, then almost simultaneously activated Brain-Machine Overclocking and Synaptic Acceleration as he reached for his gun.
In an instant, time became unbelievably slow.
The snarl on Placid's face, the flames and smoke at the muzzle aimed at Mercer's head, the yellow-orange bullets fired from the gun, all were clearly visible at this moment.
Die!
From his mouth, which was open but had yet to make a sound, Mercer could see how much Placid wanted him dead.
But faster than the bullet was his shoulder's Octopus Arm.
Even at the reduced speed of time, the Octopus Arm maintained an incredibly rapid pace with robust electrical control, then precisely knocked the bullet flying towards Mercer out of the air.
The breeze whipped up by the Octopus Arm as it swiped even lifted Placid's hair, causing him to involuntarily squint his eyes.
Placid's fingers still mechanically pulled the trigger, but Mercer's Octopus Arm was already stretched across his face, waiting ahead on the bullet's path.
The bullet from his pistol landed on the metal of the Octopus Arm, merely making two clangs before bouncing away; this retractable bionic Octopus Arm, with its own metal density, quality, and toughness, was astonishingly strong, mixed with a large amount of nanomaterials.
Ordinary bullets can't even penetrate basic subcutaneous Nanomaterial Armor, let alone this metal arm?
"Clang! Clang!"
In Placid's view, Mercer seemed doomed a second ago, but the next moment, his oddly-shaped long metal arm stretched across Mercer's face like a monster's tentacle.
Only upon hearing the sound of the bullet deflecting did he see the specific form of the Octopus Arm.
No time to redirect the muzzle, the mechanical dog was already biting at his neck, making Placid unable to dodge this time. He was directly bitten at the neck by the mechanical dog's immense strength, knocking him to the ground.
With his aim lost, his instinctive reaction was to target the mechanical dog with his pistol, but repeatedly pulling the trigger only resulted in clanging sounds, and then, as his neck was nearly bitten through, Placid spat blood, trembling, unable to move anymore.
Mercer waved his hand, speaking meaningfully, "I've always wanted to experiment, to see what the process of deploying the Soulkiller Program directly online against regular connected users would be.
Congratulations, Placid, you are about to receive an experience that even Brigitte hasn't enjoyed: consciousness digitization, and becoming something similar to your beloved AI."
Placid held his neck, blood spewing from his mouth more and more, but he couldn't say another word because the Soulkiller Program running in his Brain-Computer Interface had already begun connecting to the network and operating.
His consciousness was forcibly re-coded, instantly as if entering a state of deep submersion, his brain's perceptions becoming profoundly void.
Mercer simply squinted, inquiring about Venus's progress.
[Venus: The effect isn't great. If the target isn't in a deep dive state and doesn't have a Relic Chip to automatically convert and store their data, the data volume to be transmitted over the network is extremely large.
Furthermore, due to the forced re-coding and transmission, the target's consciousness data, compared to other experimental consciousness data, shows obvious fragmentation and chaos.
His consciousness was almost immediately evaluated as having lost its sanity upon re-coding and entering transmission.]
[Mercer: Those idiots at Arasaka developed my Network Access Vault hoping to copy a target unit's consciousness data to the Divine Chariot from hundreds of miles away; now it seems to be pure bragging.]
[Venus: From a perspective of retaining a complete personality, indeed, but if Arasaka's intent is merely for partial key memory data rather than a complete consciousness data entity,
then perhaps we just need to adjust the algorithm of the Soulkiller Program's re-coding to excavate some key consciousness data we wish to know.
Even chaotic consciousness data entities can still have their key information cracked and restored.]
Mercer pondered, hmm, like Inception? Extracting key information from chaotic consciousness data... Well, for him, this kind of thing isn't very useful.
It seems that if he wants to directly control someone's complete consciousness data entity next time, he still needs to incorporate the Relic Chip.
Mercer clicked his tongue and sighed.
Seems I'll have to try using the Relic Chip for Soulkiller conversion upload effects on the target...
[Lucy: I've seen Hua Tiao, they are coming urgently.]
[Mercer: Got it.]
He stopped thinking, watched the mechanical dog still tearing at Placid, whose eyes were white and had long entered a dying state, or rather, his soul had been gone for a while, issuing a standby command.
The mechanical dog returned to his feet, but Mercer was not quite satisfied with the dog's combat effectiveness—though Placid somewhat counted as a gang leader, his skills honestly were just that.
If dealing with a guy like this, even unarmed, requires several rounds of entanglement, it means his mechanical dog still has much room for improvement.
More training needed.
"Isn't this guy in charge of the combat for the Voodoo Gang? Why is he so weak in a fight." V had trouble assessing his level.