Chapter 247 - 229: The Octopus’s Large Hand (Thanks to Honorary Father Frozen)

[Lille: Blais, I’m connected.]

[Blais: You’re connected? Your access permission... Goddamn it.]

[Lille: It’s a legal donation from the citizens.]

[Blais: ...Cut the crap, and was the Geisha District mess your doing? I told you to investigate covertly, and you went straight for the headlines?!]

[Lille: The greater the disturbance in the real world, the better the cover-up for cyber activities, making the investigation in cyberspace more secretive and relatively less noticeable.]

[Lille: So the greater the commotion, the smaller the fuss.]

[Blais: You’re nuts!]

[Blais: Whatever, report your progress.]

[Lille: The Tiger Claw Gang made a big scene; we saved a stall owner who supplied them with illegal Super Dream Devices and who’s quite familiar with the black market in the market area. I’ll send you the details in a file.]

[Blais: That’s... not bad, an unexpected windfall. That place is rampant with hacker activities; maybe they can help us pinpoint some hackers.]

[Lille: What about my commission?]

[Blais: There are a lot of hackers active in the Geisha District, I need to go back and have my colleagues check it out. Don’t worry, you won’t be left out in the end.]

[Lille: Alright, secondly, we caught a Tiger Claw Gang guy, he spilled about the gang’s involvement in human trafficking but clammed up about the Black Hand behind it all.]

[Lille: It’s someone named Zaixian doing it, but he doesn’t know much more.]

[Blais: Damn it, these bastards are animals. What are you planning to do?]

[Lille: Of course, continue investigating.]

[Blais: I’d be happy to see these animals get whacked, but don’t forget that our goal is to investigate the anomalies at Cloud Peak.]

[Lille: I’m sure this has something to do with Cloud Peak; the industry chain even involves the higher-ups at NCPD. Someone just came to claim the perp.]

[Blais: ...I still don’t see the connection to Cloud Peak. Did you hand the person over to them?]

[Lille: No, but Cloud Peak has its own cover-ups, right? Maybe they’re in on it together.]

[Blais: That’s possible.]

[Blais: Listen, I enjoy seeing some vigilante justice, but I’d rather you focus on our targets, that’s more important.]

[Lille: Listen, I need your help with something now: I need to hack into the NCPD, steal experimental equipment, and delve into that comatose patient’s brain to check something.]

[Blais: ?]

[Blais: Did you not hear what I said?]

[Lille: No time to explain, by the time they’re done with the leads, we’ll have no pretext to hit Cloud Peak.]

[Lille: Just tell me if you’re in or out.]

[Blais: ...Do it yourself, I’ve got NCPD’s data barrier and ICE architecture plans here.]

[Lille: Good, trust me, I’ll get the job done for you.]

[File Received.]

[Blais: Remember your mission.]

In cyberspace, Lille just received Reaver’s message: they had arrived at the NCPD.

The coordinates in the network shifted, and a towering digital city wall appeared in front of Lille.

Now he had to breach the NCPD’s data barrier.

...

Reaver and Anna walked into the NCPD headquarters, which were quiet, with most staff on patrol outside.

Especially since a big incident had occurred in the Geisha District, a lot of police force had to be reassigned.

The two of them walked casually into the police station and then made their way through the corridors towards the evidence department.

[Reaver: Lille, we’re inside the precinct, which interface do you need?]

[Lille: Hold on, I need to check the engineering manual.]

[Reaver: ?]

[Reaver: I mean... shouldn’t we first scan for open ports that are available? That’s how it was done when cooperating with the cybersecurity division before.]

[Lille: Indeed, I’m connected to your prosthetic eye now, start scanning.]

Reaver swallowed hard, beginning to doubt Lille’s professionalism.

He scanned all the electronic devices in the station.

[> Scanning... Open ports found: 80, 22, 443, 3306, 3389...]

[Lille: Can you access the CCTV system? I need to see the network line layout.]

[Anna: I’ll do it.]

[> Port selection: 32105, 22, 2939, 2...]

[> Command received.]

Ports acted like coordinates in a maze, and as Lille used these ports as coordinates, his position in cyberspace kept changing.

The path he chose just happened to bypass the barriers constructed by ICE, all the way to the interior of the barrier.

The barriers interlaced and shifted before Lille’s eyes, even popping up like traps—

Although they seemed soft, hackers attempting to circumvent data barriers and accidentally touching these walls would get caught by ICE; the entire fortress would turn into a weapon, entering the hacker’s brain, disrupting computing devices, and endlessly speeding up calculations.

This was due to the underlying design of the cyberspace access protocol. Hackers either had to confront it with equal computing power or sneak around these walls, risking the possibility of encountering ICE.

Of course, if one knew the construction logic, coupled with a bit of probing, bypassing these deadly protective devices was entirely feasible.

In cyberspace, Lille made it through the outer layer of the data barrier and reached the second layer.

He was still far from the evidence department’s database—at least he couldn’t scan what he wanted from this layer of data.

The NCPD had also adopted multiple subnet settings, requiring further physical hacking.

The data barriers in cyberspace were quite different from buildings in the real world. Lille compared vast amounts of data to find the next potentially useful port and the area where it resided.]

[Lille: Station No. 3.]

[Reaver: That’s an area off-limits to network security engineers.]

[Lille: The cameras won’t record you, just avoid people and you’ll be fine.]

[Reaver: I’ll do it.]

Reaver put on his police cap and swaggered across the yellow line that read "Network Security Authorized Personnel Only."

The camera swept across Reaver’s face but emitted no sound.

Reaver’s heart beat rapidly, yet he displayed no emotion.

Finally, he arrived at the door of workstation three.

[Lille: There’s a hacker inside, and possibly an accomplice, too. Be subtle.]

[Reaver: That’s not an accomplice, that’s a colleague.]

Gently pushing open the door, Reaver saw one hacker lying in the access pod, another with his back to the door, sitting at the desk eating something.

It was clear that the hacker’s hands were trembling—a professional hazard from long-term network security work, inevitably causing some nerve issues.

Reaver sighed inwardly and tiptoed closer...

[Lille: If conditions allow it, use a personal link.]

[Reaver: Are you sure you can take him down in an instant? NCPD’s hackers aren’t amateurs, and their security systems are all imported from cyber surveillance.]

[Lille: I’m sure.]

Reaver gritted his teeth, pulled out his personal link from his palm, and snapped it into the back of the hacker’s head.

The hacker immediately realized what happened—perhaps in less than 100 milliseconds, he deduced that he’d been plugged in.

But Lille had bypassed the ICE and launched his attack within 50 milliseconds after the hacker’s realization.

[> Port linking... Tool introduction successful]

And so, the hacker collapsed onto the desk, asleep.

Reaver then inserted the personal link into the back of the hacker’s head in the access pod.

Two high-level accesses gave Lille a lot of operational freedom—now he was in place of the hacker slumped over the desk and the one lying in the network pod.

Beyond that, there were two more hackers in the network domain—NCPD seemed to like stacking quantity.

However, one good hacker could overpower dozens of others.

In cyberspace, Lille strode forward, entering NCPD’s core database.

This was a treasure-trove-like representation of cyberspace, with important data sealed within uniformly styled small data fortresses.

[Reaver: Don’t even think about touching those important files.]

[Lille: Got it.]

[> Connecting... Login successful, high-level access obtained]

[> Fetching... Data includes: Evidence Department data, NCPD roster, NCPD work logs...]

[> Permission writing]

[> Clearing... Operation complete, digital tracks completely erased]

NCPD’s core database set access time limits for everyone, to ensure that no one could copy information.

Regrettably for them, Lille’s processing power far exceeded that of a normal person, and he had two more accounts.

Si Anweisitan activated, and the speed of cyberspace noticeably slowed down, slowing down to an almost inconceivable degree—cyberspace’s one second stretched to five seconds for Lille.

Normally, an operator with relevant file numbers would read quickly.

But Lille needed to crack as many databases as possible and then copy the data.

Just then, Little Octopus suddenly appeared, gazing excitedly at the vast array of databases, and pointed to them with its Octopus Arm.

[Little Octopus: Can I do the fetching?]

Lille pondered for a moment...

It was a risky move.

AI in cyberspace wasn’t guaranteed to be stronger than a human, especially in specific job categories.

But... he did need to understand more about this symbiotic AI of his.

[Lille: Try it.]

With Lille’s permission, Little Octopus detached itself from him and clung to the database.

Tremendous computing power shifted from Lille to the Little Octopus.

Then Lille watched as the octopus suddenly began to inflate, its tentacles growing longer and thicker, its suckers becoming more refined—

Beyond Lille’s imagination!

The data vaults seemed as though they were being uprooted entirely!

An alert from the system, which hadn’t popped up for a long time, appeared before Lille:

[Your symbiotic AI has absorbed sufficient computing power, reaching the computational limit for the first time.]

[AI Tendency Construction: Data Fetching]

[Adapts to any type of data for quick identification and replication, the AI will fetch data based on your set terms and produce raw data streams to fill core codes.]

[The AI with this trait will have an advantage in data processing, decoding, and cracking.]

The whole representation of cyberspace within the database trembled as if it was shaking from the giant octopus—

The servers couldn’t withstand such an exaggerated exchange of data!

Lille hastily shouted:

[Lille: Fetch the documents related to Super Dream! Don’t grab everything!]