138 Let's Join Forces

Every day, if Yukio wasn't healing Light, he would be healing Rose or studying some medical books that Xiao Ai had found from online. He realized from the previous battle that purely transferring life force between people wasn't the most effective way to use his skills. He had to have both a deeper understanding of human anatomy and physiology as well as a better understanding of plants and herbs to make full use of his abilities.

Rin and Lucifer also focused on fighting and levelling, determined to improve their abilities. The previous battle demonstrated to them that they had been over reliant on their abilities. Increasing their overall power required personal fighting capabilities as well as great coordination between their teammates.

They also took time to give Rose lessons on hand to hand combat. She was a genius at manipulating her abilities, but lacked any fighting experience. Her first task was to increase her physical strength through rigorous exercise followed by training on the basics. Both Rin and Lucifer became her personal trainers. Rose would work till she fainted each day, much to Yukio's chagrin. Her determination towards improving shocked everyone but also became a main motivator for them to work harder as well.

Aida, on the other hand, finally had the opportunity to sleep. Since the day of the battle, she hadn't slept for more than an hour each day to ensure the maximum safety of her companions. Even if she was strong, she still wouldn't have been able to maintain this state for much longer. Most of them had recovered their full strength so she felt assured and finally went into a deep sleep. She decided to hold off on re-integrating with the system until after Light woke up in case he needed her assistance in the final stages.

On the side, Xiao Ai and Ace had become hacking buddies. They spent all their days huddled in a corner chatting. It all started with Xiao Ai bragging to Ace about her accomplishments with the camera virus. "Hehe~ Doggy guess what? Xiao Ai made them pay by sending over a Panda Burning Incense type virus through their systems."

Ace applauded her and said, "Wow! Great job, that sounds like so much fun. Who did you hit first?" As a genius technologist himself, he was able to appreciate her level of skill.

"Xiao Ai sent it through the cameras throughout the city because Mama told Xiao Ai to help cover our tracks from the bad guys."

Ace thought for a moment and then responded, "Why don't we take it a little further? It's no fun just crashing their systems, that's not enough revenge."

Xiao Ai cocked her little bun head to the side in curiosity and asked, "What does Doggy have in mind?"

He explained his thought process, "Well, the camera monitoring group is probably on a closed loop system, but since they're feeding information from the outside, just crashing their system doesn't seem useful enough. Why don't we add a few trojans into their system instead and find out what they've been doing?"

Xiao Ai's eyes went wide when she heard that, "Eh~ That sounds like SO much fun!! Xiao Ai never thought of that before! Let's join forces!!"

With that, the two began revising the code to include this.

***

At the military base underground, a group of 50 people were typing furiously on different computers. One of them muttered, "Just what kind of god did we offend this time?"

Another quickly hushed the one who spoke, "Shh, don't say anymore. There are cameras recording all our actions in here. You're going to get yourself in trouble."

The first person nodded and continued to type. They were trying hard to restore the computers that Xiao Ai's virus had corrupted and track down the IP address to the perpetrator. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be working. All their usual techniques didn't bring them any kind of clue.

They couldn't trace the IP address to any specific location. It just continually bounced around to different places around the world. They could infer that the hacker is on this continent only because the other governments they were in communication with didn't seem to have this problem. The coding style didn't seem to follow any standard pattern from the infamous hacker list either, but they couldn't completely rule it out because the more skilled ones could hide their style.

The motive was also unclear. Why would the perpetrators suddenly cripple the camera systems in the area without warning? Were the Variants trying to hide something from the government's eyes? If only they had a specific location to monitor, then they could control the satellites to look into it or send some reconnaissance drones or planes to fly over the area.

Right at that moment, a serious man with a 3 star lapel on his shoulder walked in with his arms behind his back. His outfit signified that he was a 3-star general in the Army. He asked with authority in a stern voice, "Is there any progress?"

It was silent for a while before someone finally responded in a small voice, "No sir. We couldn't find anything."

BANG. The man slammed his hand on the table and berated them, "50 people here and you couldn't trace down one hacker?! What do I employ you all for? If you don't find me some results, don't even dream of leaving."

With that, he stormed out of the room, leaving the people in the room in silence. They were all secretly protesting in their minds, cursing the 3 star general who just left. They also lamented their own situation.

It was extremely common for the people in leadership positions to not understand the depths of the hacking world, they assumed it was similar to leading people in the field, which it is not. Out in the battlefield, you could threaten and push people to exceed their physical limitations, bringing out their full potential.

Contrasting that with the virtual battlefield where one's intelligence and wit is what helps them win, bringing out one's full potential is not as simple as being pushed to their limits. It's a significantly slower and less tangible process. Threatening a person in this case doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in potential, but rather a decrease. There is only so much they could do within the limitations of their personal knowledge. The only way to improve was to learn more, but that wasn't something that they could do while locked up in this dark room. Sadly, they were being led by a leader who had zero understanding of the complexities within the virtual world and only knew how to set deadlines and threaten them.

***