Chapter Ninety-Five: Hacker Technology, the Infiltration Begins

“Kill them!”

With a furious roar, Mingchuan split a Satan in two with a single stroke. According to the plan, they would divide into two teams and sweep every Satan inside the building. Mingchuan and the other two would head straight for the heart of the city hall, while the other team would clear the perimeter and fortify the position, turning it into a staging ground for a counterattack.

Ahead of them lay the command center on the surface. According to a Kyustan Kingdom official who had luckily escaped the Satan crisis by being away on diplomatic duty, every provincial government center had a vast military base underground, and entry required a pass from above. Though for Mingchuan, that was useless.

Thanks to Cole’s technology, Mingchuan could clearly see what lay behind the door. It was not true x-ray vision, but 3-D projection analysis, a predictive simulation of everything on the other side.

“A vampire?”

Even with thermal imaging, humans and Satans could be distinguished, but even so, a Satan’s body temperature would still be far above the surrounding room temperature.

With a single slash, the lock on the door was smashed apart. Mingchuan burst in decisively, and in that instant the vampire noticed him as well. In two steps, the vampire was already in front of Mingchuan, determined to seize the initiative and kill him first. But the diamond-hard body was no fragile thing in a pond; the claw strike merely sent a thunderous crash through the armor.

“Heh. Good thing I’m not the real body. No need to worry about anything!”

With one thrust, Mingchuan pierced the vampire clean through the throat. He kicked it aside, but did not immediately move to infiltrate the city hall’s central system.

“It has another life.”

The vampire climbed back to its feet. This was intelligence provided by the Eastern Alliance: at first they had not known the vampire’s abilities, and Eastern Alliance soldiers would often be killed by its last gasp of vitality after finishing off its first life.

“I won’t let you get away with this!”

Mingchuan lunged forward in a flash, kicking the creature’s entire body into the air. The spinning-sword technique was merely one of the sword skills he had learned before, yet that strike was as powerful as a sheathed-blade technique. The vampire’s head flew up into the air.

“Goodbye.”

He reached out, and a crystal diamond-like object appeared in midair. A beam of light flashed and vanished in an instant. This was the prototype of the so-called hard-light weapon used by the Heavy Break Armor, though something made by Cole could hardly be judged by the standards of current technology.

“Mingchuan! How is it going?”

A voice came from the doorway, and Wenxin and Katyusha arrived shortly after. They had just finished clearing the other rooms along that corridor.

“Not bad.”

Mingchuan did not let Wenxin see his little piece of black technology. He was waiting for the Eastern Alliance’s other team to seize the nuclear power plant; he needed to wait until power was restored.

“Thanks to Doctor Roger, my brain is still holding together, at least.”

Though he was a powerful hacker himself, he remained cautious when dealing with the nanomachines in his own mind.

“I need to stay here for a while. You two go fight freely. And remember, don’t split up.”

He came before an absurdly old computer, and in his hands appeared two objects resembling USB drives.

“I’ll stay and help you. After all, I’m a hacker too. I should be able to breach the system quickly.”

When Mingchuan had first met Katyusha, she had already shown first-rate computer skills. And now, Katyusha had indeed become one of the top fifteen hackers on the chart.

“Then I’ll guard you!”

That sounded a little strange, but Wenxin took up position at the doorway. A flash of light burst from her watch, and a machine gun appeared in her hands. This was a weapon from the Eastern Alliance, said to be enough to deal with ordinary Satans. She opened the tripod, and an alloy shield rose before her. She crouched slightly, ready to fire at any moment.

“Cole! How do we do this? There isn’t any power right now!”

Seeing Mingchuan stroll unhurriedly to the desk in the very center, Katyusha could not help questioning him.

“May I ask: what powers the armor we wear? Where does that power come from?”

Mingchuan inserted the two USB-like devices into the ports of the ancient computer, waiting for Katyusha’s answer.

“That... your United Kingdom’s technology, how would I...”

“J-alloy. My teacher accidentally created a high-energy alloy, and I improved it!”

Mingchuan removed his helmet, or rather, made it vanish from sight.

“May I ask: if current flows, from where does it flow to where?”

“High voltage flows from...”

Katyusha froze, then suddenly brightened. “Right. You guessed it!”

On the surface of the black-gold USB drive, a thread of electricity suddenly began to appear. At the same time, a pool of silver liquid began to flow into the computer. Circuitry was being altered, current was being fed in reverse, and the ancient machine began to restart.

“And that’s not all!”

As he spoke, Mingchuan pulled off the other end of the black-gold USB drive, revealing another connector. At that moment, he produced an even larger J-alloy battery.

“Just this much is enough to run the whole room for a day!”

With the connection made, and because the silver liquid had transformed the room’s electricity into a closed loop, the computers in the room began to power back up.

“You should know this: I am Cole!”

He smiled faintly. Though it was only lip movement, Katyusha understood him.

“Time to get to work.”

And so Mingchuan began his rapid intrusion: one hundred and twenty-eight layers of encrypted firewalls, bypassed. Fingerprint authentication, Lauren... Lieutenant General Laur en, verification successful. Iris authentication, Lauren... Lieutenant General Mingchuan, verification successful. Highest-level authorization... revoked!

On the screen, all manner of prompts flashed by in rapid succession, and with them came the confirmation messages.

Cole had once studied the highest level of hacking under an old hacker, who told him that the easiest way to breach a system was simply to destroy it outright. And now, that old hacker still stood at the top of the rankings, untouchable by anyone.

What Mingchuan was doing now was precisely that: destroying every layer of security, then pulling out all the information on the Kyustan Kingdom.

“Cole?”

Watching Mingchuan’s concentrated intrusion, Katyusha could not help but be swept back into memory. Back when he was still with the Northern United, he had once fought a girl from the Eastern Alliance. Even then, he had used every trick he knew to break through the system guarded by that Eastern Alliance girl with the help of her admiral father.

He had worn that same expression then...

Of course. What he was hacking now was a network belonging to an entire nation. Even if that nation had already fallen, the system was still there.

“Are you just standing by and watching? Do you really think a country like the Kyustan Kingdom, with network development so far behind the times, can stop me?”

Seeing Katyusha sit there and watch the tigers fight from the mountain, even an artificial intelligence with a human heart could not help but complain.

“Heh. Having you is enough. I think I’m not of much use here...”

Katyusha walked to Mingchuan’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder. But at that moment, she noticed something was wrong.

This Mingchuan’s head did not seem real.

“Who are you? You’re not Cole...”

She raised a gun and aimed it at the back of his head. Among the Satans there was one known as a shapeshifter. Could this be...

“Katyusha, it’s just an artificial intelligence standing in for me. No need to go drawing weapons.”

At that moment, Mingchuan, who had been seated on the stool, turned around. Yet even though his lips had not moved, a voice had appeared in Katyusha’s mind.

“From the very beginning, I’ve been outside killing Satans. I never came in at all. This is just an artificial intelligence body made with Y-alloy and optical camouflage technology.”

Turning back around, this Mingchuan resumed his infiltration work. And in Katyusha’s mind, Cole’s voice began to sound as well.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, but my task is to provide precise landing coordinates for the defense system that is about to arrive. So I can only return in five minutes. Help me buy some time, because my infiltration speed will not slow down.”

As he spoke, the Mingchuan beside Katyusha had already completed the breach. The original silver hacker drive had been replaced by another black one, and on it, the word Wales seemed to foretell something...

If I do not write anything on New Year’s Day, then it will not be much fun at all!