Nick was mentally prepared for the surprised expressions and reactions of the audience below. After all, his words were truly shocking to them, so he could understand how they were feeling at that moment.
It wasn't just them; the YouTube live stream also began to fill with question marks and skepticism. Among the incredibly resourceful netizens, several people appeared who claimed to be industry professionals in this field. Naturally, they didn't believe that Nick and his small group could have developed this world-leading technology.
That was the mild part; those people were only refuting and questioning them from a technical standpoint. Some extreme trolls started hurling insults and attacks directly, and someone even managed to doxx Nick and his group, with their school, MIT, also becoming a target of the attacks.
Furthermore, Nick's remarks naturally didn't escape the clutches of the media present. A well-known news outlet, not long after Nick finished speaking, cooked up an article in its headline position.
"Shocking! A Domestic Research Team Has Actually Developed a Cross-Era Weapon!"
Another major online media headline was not to be outdone, coming straight out with an even fiercer piece. "America's 23-Year-Old Youth Has Actually Developed a Super Weapon" Besides that, there were various tabloids and self-media outlets, quickly making it known across the entire internet.
Consequently, 'Who is Nick' and 'Cross-Era Weapon' quickly climbed to the top of the trending searches on X and Reddit. Of course, Nick was unaware of all this. Even if Tyler and Zack, who were in the audience, knew, it was impossible for them to notify him while he was standing on stage.
Seeing that the shocked audience had quieted down slightly, Nick breathed a sigh of relief and then said, "I know you all don't believe it; if it were me, I would definitely be skeptical too. So, to prove what I've said, please watch this video footage first, and we can discuss it in detail afterward."
As Nick pressed the controller, a video began to play on the large screen behind him. It was a mobile phone video; the quality wasn't very good, and it was quite shaky. It was clearly filmed by hand, and the person filming was quite amateur.
However, the audience below obviously didn't care about that; instead, they focused all their attention on the content of the video. Nick and a few others appeared in the video, but everyone's focus wasn't on Nick.
Instead, it was on the drones flying on the screen, and a fat guy wearing thick clothes and a motorcycle helmet underneath the drones. This fat guy was naturally Tyler; this was a scene of him assisting Nick and the others with their experiments.
The reason they chose him was mainly because the three of them—Nick and the others—all had work to do, while he was the only one free, making him just right for the role of the test subject. Another reason was that he had plenty of padding, so even if there was danger and a drone propeller collided with him, at most he would just lose a chunk of flesh, without causing any major injury to his bones or tendons.
Of course, that was just a joke. To ensure Tyler's safety, Nick and the others specifically equipped him with a motorcycle helmet and thick clothing. Although it was very hot, it at least ensured his safety.
In the video, Tyler stood underneath the drone swarm array, holding a butterfly net in his hand. The test began, and they saw a dozen or so drones in the air gather toward the center to form a square array. Tyler, standing below, used the other end of the net to reach up and nudge one of the drones on the edge of the square, causing it to break away from the array.
Just at that moment, an interesting scene occurred. This drone didn't receive any control inputs; instead, it autonomously returned to the square array. Seeing this, Tyler pulled that drone out of the array again and held it back, preventing it from returning to the square array.
The dozen or so drones that made up the cube seemed to have received some kind of command; they flew over on their own and re-formed a cube array around the restrained drone. Tyler didn't give up; he directly used the net to catch that drone and brought it down.
The cube array in the sky, now missing a drone, also quickly underwent a change, re-forming into a new cube array. Tyler didn't seem to intend to stop there; he continued to use the net to catch several more drones.
Seeing the number of drones in the air getting smaller and smaller, the drone swarm seemed to receive a new command. They saw several drones that had been parked on the ground quickly start up and take off, then re-form into a cube array.
Seeing this scene, the audience below first let out a gasp of surprise, and then broke into enthusiastic applause. Everyone naturally saw the extraordinary nature of this test from the demonstration; the drone swarm possessed autonomous computing and processing capabilities, able to judge the integrity of the swarm array and thus adjust the array or dispatch other spare drones to re-form the array.
Implementing this command, or rather this program, is not necessarily difficult, but it's not exactly easy either; it involves a lot of technical knowledge in many areas. The core of this is rapid calculation and rapid positioning.
Being able to achieve this so quickly and accurately relying only on these drones themselves, without the participation of a host computer, is the brilliance of the technology Nick and his team developed.
However, the audience didn't have time to overthink it, because the test was still continuing. At this moment, that annoying fat guy finally exited the scene, and a somewhat dark-skinned, thin young man appeared on camera. This person was Terry.
As the researcher responsible for drone hardware and an excellent aeromodelling enthusiast, Terry's understanding of this type of aircraft was clearly superior to that of Nick and the others. Therefore, he was in charge of the next test.
Under his control, the drones hovering in the air quickly changed formation, forming a V-shaped triangular swarm. Under his operation, the drone at the very front tip of the V-shaped triangular swarm began to break away from the swarm and fly rapidly.
Immediately following this, the other drones still hovering in the air reacted quickly, each one chasing after the 'lead drone' controlled by Terry. They saw that under the guidance of this lead drone, the entire swarm began to fly rapidly through the space in a V-shaped triangular formation, sometimes circling, sometimes rolling, sometimes skimming at high speed at low altitude, and sometimes passing through various obstacles.
Although the speed was very fast, the drone swarm behind followed the lead drone closely, completing various high-difficulty flight maneuvers. This naturally won rounds of gasps from the audience present, and many people subconsciously took out their mobile phones, wanting to record this video for unknown reasons.
However, this video was not very long. The video ended while everyone was still wanting more, and Nick returned to the audience with a smile. At this moment, the audience, having realized what they were seeing, could no longer hold back and one after another raised their hands high towards him.