Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Mutual Prey

Staring at the progress bar before him, which still hadn't budged an inch, and the note below reading "Remaining Time: 99+ Hours," Mo Tan's expression was somewhat grim. This kind of look was rare for his current [Chaotic Neutral] personality, showing just how serious the situation was...

His pure black laptop looked like it had seen better days. Even if thrown onto the second-hand market, it probably wouldn't fetch more than two hundred bucks. Its bulky, rugged exterior and the ever-humming fan seemed to scream that its owner was in dire financial straits.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. Compared to the sleek, ultra-thin laptops popular on the market, this machine was so heavy and thick because it was packed full of various components that Mo Tan had heavily modified. While the surface operating system, no matter which benchmarking software you used, would show it being beaten by 99% of computers, that was only because its performance was usually suppressed to around 3%. Only when logged into the system Mo Tan had set up himself would its terrifying other side be revealed.

As he once boasted to an unnamed second-hand dealer, "If you really squeezed this thing, it could at least replace the national Integrated Information Link for over twenty minutes of high-intensity work!"

To put it simply, within twenty minutes, this laptop, which looked like a living fossil, could simultaneously handle the processing and computation of all basic information nationwide—from archiving community hospital case files to the routine national census conducted every two hours.

And in most cases, in the current year of 2049, all this work was handled by a massive intelligent computer matrix called the "Integrated Information Link." That was a true national machine, whose underground mainframe alone was the size of two football fields.

Admittedly, this sounded utterly fantastical. Even if Mo Tan said it could only last about twenty minutes, let alone a sixteen-inch old-school laptop as thick as a brick, even the highest-performing Baltan Star Person β-type enthusiast-grade smart computer on the current market couldn't manage to replace the "Matrix" for even a minute. It would go from overheating and smoking to catching fire and exploding in an instant.

So, at the time, that second-hand dealer just thought Mo Tan was talking nonsense. After finishing the transaction and exchanging a few polite compliments, he shrugged and left, not taking it seriously at all.

But in reality... Mo Tan was telling the truth.

He was even holding back!

This computer of his, modified countless times and "adjusted" every six months, truly possessed such powerful capabilities. The fundamental reason for it was simply to keep up with the three pieces of software he had independently designed.

For conventional hacking operations and identity camouflage: the Necronomicon system.

For tracking and locking onto SUN: the Hunting Angel system.

The High Energy System, compatible with all non-mental simulation games.

All three of the above systems were written by Mo Tan himself. The first one completed was the Game Exclusive System. Back in middle school, this guy started making his first pot of gold through hacking out of interest, because as times progressed, game console prices became increasingly cheap, but the software under the platforms was outrageously expensive. This trend made Mo Tan, who was still a kid back then, particularly annoyed, so...

So, since it feels like the topic is about to veer off track, let's skip that for now.

The Necronomicon System, on the other hand, was a representative work of Mo Tan's computer skills reaching a new level. By then, he had been fully diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, and during the subsequent period when he was preparing to look into related information, he developed this software, straying further down the path of social instability.

As for the Hunting Angel System, it was mentioned earlier. It was a program developed to root out SUN, who was also part of Black Sun. After years of upgrades and improvements, it has now become a fully functional search and intelligence gathering system.

During the gradual creation of these three pieces of software, Mo Tan started falling behind in terms of hardware. So he went to learn...

He succeeded.

Then he started trying to build his own...

He succeeded again.

Then he started modding...

And ended up creating a device that was a bit too excessive.

Let's stop here regarding Mo Tan's computer issues. The reason for explaining so much is mainly because, at this very moment, something has happened that is extremely unexpected for him!

So unexpected that it even made Mo Tan's face, for once, look somewhat unpleasant...

"Futaba... SUN..." His hands flew across the keyboard as simple white windows flashed and shrank. After a brief and precise confirmation, Mo Tan finally confirmed that he had been set up. He sighed softly after a long silence and murmured, "So it turns out I was the one who showed the flaw first..."

The Hunting Angel System's efficiency was extremely powerful, and the network cable hidden in Mo Tan's secret compartment had virtually no bandwidth limitations. Even if the area to be filtered was very broad, it was absolutely impossible for there to be no progress after a whole day and night. The empty frame on the screen indicated that the progress had been zero from the start of the search until now, and theoretically, such a possibility should never exist!

Keep in mind that Mo Tan had narrowed down the conditions by several times compared to before yesterday. Even if significant progress was unlikely in a short time, this situation was impossible, unless...

Unless overnight, countless people appeared in this world who simultaneously met all the conditions of 'female, yellow race, 18 to 25 years old, C country national, mother alive, never purchased Innocent Company peripherals, December 31, 2048, and not outdoors tonight.'

Of course, that's impossible!

So the conclusion is simple...

"Stop the search." A hint of a mocking smile curled at the corner of Mo Tan's lips as he whispered softly into the microphone in front of him. "Switch to the Necronomicon System immediately and initiate Address Spoofing and Trace Cleaning in advance."

A second later, the monitor screen turned pure white, covered with a large number of red dots that were rapidly disappearing.

"Heh, you're really smart. Too bad, what a coincidence..." Mo Tan let out a light sigh, glanced back at the game pod in the center of the living room, and chuckled softly. "Looks like luck is on my side this time~"

...

Somewhere in Country C

A murmur echoed through a dim room. A few seconds later, a slender figure with disheveled long hair struggled to sit up from the bed. She casually grabbed the dark red headphones resting on the nightstand, put them on, and slowly shuffled over to the chair pressed tightly against the bed.

She precisely picked up the soda can on the corner of the table, popped the tab open, and downed it in one gulp. The girl smacked her lips with satisfaction, then let out a crisp, ethereal laugh.

Though the thick black curtains completely blocked out the sunlight, plunging the room into perpetual darkness, it didn't affect her vision at all. This near-night-vision ability wasn't hard to develop—most people could achieve it if they could endure a confined, dark space for a long time.

With a soft snap of her fingers, the surrounding monitors suddenly lit up, illuminating her figure. She looked like a girl of seventeen or eighteen, though her slightly thin frame suggested she might be a year or two older.

She was only wearing a plain white tank top and underwear, with large patches of her skin exposed—pale, almost sickly white. She had a naive, innocent-looking baby face, and her long black hair was a messy tangle behind her.

Her name was Mu You, two months shy of twenty years old. She was a NEET—no studies, no job, no parents.

"A strange girl who never greets anyone, probably a bit autistic too."

That was the unanimous opinion of the neighbors who only saw her once in a blue moon. But in today's society, nothing was too surprising—a quirky girl wasn't enough to become fodder for neighborhood gossip.

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

The legendary hacker Black Sun, the human female mage Futaba in [Innocent Realm], and an anonymous genius who had earned over a dozen top-tier certifications in psychology and computer science, along with related doctoral degrees, through online exams.

"Whew~ Nothing beats a sip of this right after waking up!" Mu You let out a groan like a middle-aged office worker downing a bottle of ice-cold beer after a long day at work. She set down the can of what she called "Smart People's Drink" on the table, looked up at the monitors gradually lighting up around the room, and grinned. "Let me see the results, NAVI~"

"Yes." A pleasant electronic synthesized voice came from all directions.

"Give me a rundown of the access counts for those fake data files I set up earlier within the last 24 hours~" Mu You said while gently stretching her body, completely unbothered by her exposed figure at the moment. After all, aside from herself, the only other presence in the bedroom was a highly intelligent AI named NAVI, and its gender had even been set to female.

After about two or three seconds of silence, the screen on the wall by the door to Mu You's left suddenly turned emerald green, with streams of golden characters scrolling rapidly. Then, the AI calmly stated, "Type I virtual decoy accessed 27 times, Type II 15 times, Types III, IV, and V each 9 times, Type VI virtual decoy accessed... 3,254,259 times."

"Biting the hook, huh~" Mu You clapped her hands sharply and immediately squatted on her chair. While tapping on the suspiciously large, oval-shaped device on the desk in front of her that looked like a keyboard, her glasses reflected screens from every angle, covered in frantically refreshing data and IP addresses. She muttered to herself with a grin, "Let me see~ let me see~ No way you're slipping away this time, right~ Tsk tsk, virtual addresses and spoofing again? NAVI, help me tally it up!"

...

"NAVI?"

...

"No way?!" Mu You yelped, quickly jumping off the chair and pattering over to the corner of the room on her bare feet. She lifted a thin crystal panel, peeked inside, and exclaimed, "Huh? Crashed?!"

The girl rolled her eyes, reached in to fiddle with it for a bit to trigger an automatic AI restart, then stared wide-eyed as she walked back to the desk. Clenching her small fists tightly, she huffed, "I'll do it myself!"

She yanked open the top drawers on both sides of the desk, then snapped the oval keyboard-like object in front of her into two halves with a crack. She propped each half onto the open drawers beside her, then pulled out a relatively ordinary external keyboard from behind her, plugged it into the main console in front, and placed it before herself. Her hands began moving swiftly and lightly like playing a piano, and the tune she was playing was at the level of *Flight of the Bumblebee*...

The entire room lit up.

It wasn't that sunlight had finally breached this sealed space, but rather that over a dozen monitors scattered around the room were simultaneously refreshing data streams at a frantic pace...

"You bastard!" Mu You gritted her teeth as she maintained an operation speed of at least 600 APM with her slender fingers, snarling, "Your reaction speed is way too fast! Over three million access attempts, and you managed to pull off more than half with multi-point spoofing and forced blocking—was your computer built by aliens?! Don't even mention NAVI... I'm about to crash too...!!!"

But despite her words, a nearly fanatical gleam sparkled in the girl's eyes. She looked like a slightly malnourished little girl, yet Mu You was radiating an unusually intense aura! Though she was barely over 1.5 meters tall, she now seemed... like 1.6 meters...

Anyway, she seemed pretty impressive, that's for sure!

This girl, who had first encountered Hei Fan in **Innocent Realm**, had completely shed her former languid demeanor. The corners of her mouth were upturned, her light-colored eyes brimming with inexplicable joy, and her hands were moving so fast around her that they became a blur!

"I'm definitely going to win! After all, the one showing a flaw... is you!"

...

Ten minutes later

"Hmm?" Accompanied by a wind-chime-like notification sound, Mu You's hands came to a stop. From just now until now, with the assistance of the **Logic System** and her extremely sharp intuition, she had almost instantly eliminated nearly a third of the targets. But the remaining ones were becoming increasingly troublesome. Some traps were so convincing that even a slight check could lead to irreversible consequences, forcing her to slow down.

[Maybe I won't be able to catch it this time either...]

Just as she was starting to feel a bit discouraged, she was suddenly startled by an abrupt ringing sound. After hesitating for less than a second, she immediately pounced onto the bed, activated a jade-green notebook that had been carelessly tossed on it, and opened the homepage of a certain **phishing website**.

At the very bottom of a mess of **Virtuous and Talented** content, a dense string of numbers was rapidly refreshing.

"What's going on?" Mu You blinked, quickly memorizing the numbers while muttering, "Even if you found out I was investigating you, there's no need to contact me in advance! What exactly are you trying to say..."

She didn't go back to continue what would likely be a futile 'pursuit.' Instead, she rolled over, sat cross-legged on the blanket, closed her eyes, and began rapidly deciphering the string of information in her mind.

Soon, a matching newspaper clipping appeared in her mind.

The **Codebook** had been found...

Chapter 13: The End