Chapter Thirteen: Predators to Each Other

Page 1/3

Staring at the progress bar that stubbornly refused to advance and the note below reading "Remaining time: 99+ hours," Mo Tan’s expression darkened. Such a look was rare for someone with his currently chaotic neutral disposition, indicating the gravity of the situation.

His jet-black laptop appeared somewhat aged. Even if he were to toss it onto the secondhand market, it likely wouldn’t fetch more than two hundred yuan. Its bulky, rugged exterior and the constant buzzing of its fan seemed to broadcast the owner's dire financial state to anyone nearby.

But appearances were deceiving. Compared to the sleek, ultra-thin laptops popular on the market, this machine’s weight came from being packed with an array of custom-modified components by Mo Tan himself. Although performance tests using any benchmarking software would show it lagging behind 99.99% of computers, that was only because its power was usually throttled to about 3%. It was only when logging in through Mo Tan’s specially configured system that its terrifying true capabilities emerged.

As he once boasted to a certain secondhand dealer—whose name he preferred not to reveal—“If you squeeze it hard enough, this thing can handle the nation’s integrated information network’s high-intensity workload for at least twenty minutes straight!”

To put it simply, this seemingly prehistoric laptop could simultaneously manage all basic national data processing and computing tasks for twenty minutes—ranging from community hospital patient record archiving to the bi-hourly routine national census—without breaking a sweat.

In most cases in 2049, such tasks were handled by a massive intelligent matrix known as the “Integrated Information Network.” This was a genuine national-level supercomputer whose underground mainframe spanned an area equivalent to two football fields.

Admittedly, this sounded like a tall tale. Even though Mo Tan claimed his laptop could substitute for the matrix for about twenty minutes, not even the highest-performance Baltan Star β-type elite smart computer on the market could operate in its stead for a single minute without overloading, smoking, or bursting into flames instantly.

The secondhand dealer merely assumed Mo Tan was spouting nonsense. After a polite exchange of business pleasantries, he walked away without giving it another thought.

But in truth... what Mo Tan said was true.

And even somewhat understated.

His laptop had undergone countless modifications and was routinely “tuned” every six months. Its incredible power was simply to keep pace with three independently designed software systems he created:

- Necronomicon—the Book of the Dead system, used for conventional hacking operations and identity masking.

- Hunting Angel, designed to track and lock onto SUN.

- High Energy, compatible with all non-psychic simulation games.

All three systems were written by Mo Tan himself. The first completed was the gaming utility system, born from his middle school years when he earned his first pot of gold through cracking software. As gaming consoles became more affordable over time, software prices skyrocketed, which irked young Mo Tan immensely...

Since this tends to veer off-topic, let’s skip the tangent.

Necronomicon marked a new level in Mo Tan’s programming skills, developed after his diagnosis with multiple personality disorder and during his research into related materials—leading him down a darker path toward societal unrest.

The Hunting Angel system, previously mentioned, was designed to expose other SUN operatives within the Black Sun network. After years of upgrades, it had become a highly capable intel gathering and querying tool.

As these programs emerged, Mo Tan’s hardware lagged behind. So he learned to build...

He succeeded.

Then he tried modifying...

He succeeded again.

Until finally, he created a device that was arguably a little over the top.

That’s enough about Mo Tan’s computer for now. The reason for this lengthy explanation is because something utterly unexpected just happened—a surprise so rare that it visibly unsettled Mo Tan, causing a rare shadow to cross his face...

Page 2/3

“Futaba... SUN...” His fingers danced swiftly over the keyboard, simple white windows blinking and resizing incessantly. After a brief but precise verification, Mo Tan finally confirmed he’d been outplayed. He sighed softly after a moment of silence, muttering, “So I was the first to show a crack…”

The Hunting Angel system was incredibly efficient, and the hidden network cable tucked away in a secret compartment had virtually unlimited bandwidth. Even with a broad search scope, it was impossible to have zero progress after an entire day and night. Yet the empty progress bar on the screen showed exactly that—from start to finish, zero advancement. Theoretically, such a scenario should never occur.

Yesterday, Mo Tan had narrowed the conditions to a fraction of the usual scope. While rapid progress was not expected within a short time, this complete lack of movement was impossible unless...

Unless overnight, countless people fitting all these criteria appeared simultaneously: female, East Asian, aged 18 to 25, citizens of country C, with living mothers, never having purchased any Innocent Company peripheral products, absent from outdoors on December 31, 2048, and tonight.

This, of course, was impossible.

So the conclusion was simple...

“Stop the search.” A sly smirk curved Mo Tan’s lips as he whispered to the microphone, “Switch immediately to the Necronomicon system. Begin address masking and trace cleanup ahead of schedule.”

One second later, the screen turned pure white, speckled with countless red dots that gradually vanished.

“Heh, you’re clever, but unlucky this time...” Mo Tan exhaled lightly, glancing back at the gaming pod in the center of the living room, chuckling softly, “Looks like luck’s on my side this round~”

...

Somewhere in Country C

A murmur echoed in a dim room. Seconds later, a slender figure with disheveled long hair struggled to sit up on the bed, casually slipping on deep red headphones resting on the bedside. She lazily shuffled to a chair pushed against the bed.

She grabbed a soda can from the table’s corner, popped the tab, and drained it in one gulp, clicking her tongue in satisfaction before letting out a clear, ethereal laugh.

Although thick black curtains blocked out sunlight, plunging the room into darkness, this didn’t impair her vision. Such near-night-vision ability wasn’t hard to develop—enduring prolonged confinement in pitch-black spaces was enough for most.

She snapped her fingers, and the monitors around her flickered on, illuminating her figure. The girl looked about seventeen or eighteen, though her slender frame suggested she might be a year or two older.

Wearing only a pure white tank top and underwear, her exposed skin was pale to the point of seeming unhealthy. Her doll-like face appeared innocent and pure, framed by messy black hair cascading down her back.

Her name was Mu You, just two months shy of her twentieth birthday—a shut-in with no school, no job, and no parents.

“A strange girl who never greets anyone, probably a bit autistic,” was the unanimous opinion of the neighbors, who only rarely caught a glimpse of her. In today’s society, encountering odd personalities was hardly newsworthy; a quirky girl wasn’t enough to become neighborhood gossip.

Yet no one knew Mu You’s other identities...

The legendary hacker Black Sun; Futaba, the human mage in the Innocent Realm; an anonymous prodigy holding a dozen top-tier psychology and computer science certifications and related doctorates earned through online exams.

“Ah~ Waking up calls for a sip of Dr. Pepper to feel happy!” Mu You groaned like a mid-aged office worker cracking open a cold beer after work, setting down the drink known as “the beverage loved by the wise.” She glanced at the gradually brightening monitors around the room and grinned, “Let’s see the results, NAVI~”

“Yes.” A pleasant synthesized voice responded from all directions.

“Tell me the 24-hour visit counts for those fake data sets I planted earlier,” Mu You stretched leisurely, unconcerned by her exposed state since only she and the highly advanced AI named NAVI—whose gender was set as female—were present.

After a few seconds of silence, the screen beside the door on her left suddenly turned bright green. Golden characters scrolled rapidly as the AI calmly reported, “Type I virtual decoy accessed 27 times; Type II, 15 times; Types III, IV, and V, 9 times each; Type VI virtual decoy accessed... 3,254,259 times.”

“Caught one~” Mu You slapped her hands and squatted on the chair, tapping wildly on the huge elliptical device resembling a keyboard in front of her. Reflections of countless screens flickered on her glasses, displaying data and IPs refreshing wildly. She giggled to herself, “Let’s see~ Let’s see~ No escaping this time~ Tsk tsk, virtual addresses and disguises again? NAVI, help me tally it up!”

Page 3/3

...

“NAVI?”

...

“No way?!” Mu You exclaimed, leaping from the chair barefoot and sprinting to the corner of the room. She flipped up a thin crystal panel and peeked inside, then shouted, “Huh? It crashed?!”

Rolling her eyes, she reached in and fiddled with it a couple of times to force the AI to reboot. Wide-eyed, she returned to her desk, clenched her fists tightly, and muttered, “Fine, I’ll do it myself!”

She yanked open the top drawers on either side of the desk, snapped the elliptical “keyboard” in front of her into two halves, propped them on the open drawers, then pulled out a more conventional external keyboard from behind and plugged it into the main unit before placing it in front of her. Her fingers danced swiftly and lightly as if playing the virtuosic piece “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

The entire room brightened—not from sunlight breaking through the sealed space, but from a dozen or so monitors simultaneously refreshing data streams at a furious pace.

“You bastard!” Mu You gritted her teeth as her slender fingers maintained a current of at least 600 AMP. “Your reaction speed is insane! Over three million visits and you managed to disguise and forcibly block more than half of them. Did aliens build your computer? Forget NAVI... I’m about to crash here...!!!”

Despite her words, her eyes shone with a near-fanatical gleam. Though she appeared like a slightly malnourished child, Mu You now radiated an overwhelmingly intense aura. Standing barely over 1.5 meters tall, she seemed as imposing as if she were 1.6 meters.

In short, she looked formidable!

This girl, who first met Black Fan in the Innocent Realm, had shed her previous laziness. The corners of her mouth lifted into a confident smile, her pale eyes brimming with irrational joy, her hands moving so fast they left afterimages!

“I will win! After all, the one who first showed a crack... was you!”

...

Ten minutes later

“Hm?” The chime of a wind bell sounded as Mu You’s hands paused. Through the aid of her logic system and acute intuition, she had nearly instantaneously ruled out about a third of the targets. Yet those remaining were increasingly troublesome. Some traps were so convincing that even a slight investigation could cause irreparable consequences, forcing her to slow down.

[Maybe I won’t catch them this time either...]

Just as her spirits faltered, an unexpected chime startled her. After a brief pause, she leapt onto the bed and powered on a green laptop carelessly tossed there, opening a phishing site’s homepage.

Amidst a jumble of chaotic endorsements, a string of dense numbers rapidly refreshed at the bottom.

“What’s going on?” Mu You blinked, quickly memorizing the numbers while murmuring, “Even if you found out I was tracking you, you wouldn’t contact me in advance! What exactly are you trying to say...”

She didn’t return to the likely futile chase but instead turned, crossed her legs on the bed, closed her eyes, and began rapidly decrypting the information in her mind.

Soon, an image of a newspaper clipping matching the conditions appeared in her thoughts.

The cipher book has been found...

Chapter 13: The End

Page 3/3