Chapter 13: Preying on Each Other _1

Looking at the progress bar in front of him, which remained stagnant, and the notation at the bottom that read 'Remaining Time 99 hours+', Motan's expression turned somewhat gloomy. Such an expression was rare under his current personality of "chaotic neutral", showing the severity of the situation...

The pure black laptop in front of him looked somewhat outdated. Even if he were to put it on the second-hand market, it likely wouldn't fetch more than 200 in price. The heavy, rough exterior and the fan that constantly buzzed seemed to announce to everyone just how dreadful the owner's financial situation was.

But that wasn't the reality at all. Unlike the lightweight ultrabook models popular in the market, this machine was heavy because it was stuffed with various parts that Motan had magically modified. Although from the surface the operating system suggested that it would be outperformed by 99.99% of computers in any professional benchmark test, it was merely because during normal operating times, the performance of this laptop was suppressed to around 3%. Only when signed in with the system set up by Motan himself would its intimidating prowess be revealed.

As he once bragged to an unnamed second-hand dealer, "If I really push this thing, it could at least replace the national unified information link and perform high-intensity work for over twenty minutes!"

Simply put, within twenty minutes, his seemingly fossil-like laptop could handle and compute all the basic information nationwide. From case file statistics at community hospitals to bi-hourly nationwide population census surveys, no problem at all~

Under most circumstances in the year 2049, such work was entirely the responsibility of a large brain matrix called the 'unified information link', a legitimate machine of the nation, whose underground main body area was as large as two football fields.

Such a claim was almost too fantastical, even though Motan had said it could replace for roughly twenty minutes. Whether it was a brick-like 16-inch old laptop, or the acknowledged top performance Baltonian β category fever-level smart computer on the market, neither could even stand in for the 'Matrix' for a minute — smoking due to overload and exploding into flames was just a blink away.

So, at the time, the second-hand dealer thought Motan was just talking nonsense. After exchanging the goods, he politely reciprocated a few words of small talk with him and then left, taking none of it seriously.

But the truth was... what Motan said was real...

And he even held back!

This laptop, that he had magically modified countless times and adjusted every half-year, truly had such tremendous ability, and the fundamental reason was only so that it could keep up with the three pieces of software he had independently designed.

For regular hacking operations and disguising the host: the Necronomicon - Book of the Dead System.

To track and lock onto SUN: the Hunting Angel - Angel Hunting System.

And capable of being compatible with all non-mentally simulated type games: the High Energy - High Energy System.

All three systems above were written by Motan himself. The earliest system he completed was the gaming system, which he started to earn money from hacking during his junior high days out of interest. After all, with the progress of time, as the price of game consoles was getting lower and lower, software under these platforms got ridiculously expensive. This trend irritated Mor, who was still considered a tween at the time...

Perhaps sensing the topic straying further and further away, let's skip that part for now.

The Necronomicon System was a representative work of Motan's new stage of computer proficiency. He had been completely diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, and he developed this software in the process of preparing to look up related materials, further distancing himself from social unrest.

As for the Angel Hunting System, mentioned earlier, it was a program developed to weed out SUN, who was also in Black Sun. After many years of upgrades and improvements, it has now become a very comprehensive search and information gathering system.

During the process of these three pieces of software being developed one after the other, Motan started to lag a bit on the hardware front. Then he went to learn...

He achieved.

Then he began to try making it himself...

He succeeded, again.

Then he began to modify...

In the end, he crafted a slightly overkill device.

We shall stop here about Motan's computer problem. The reason we covered so much is mainly because at this moment, something quite unexpected happened to him!

Unexpected enough to make Motan's face unusually grim...

"Double Leaf...SUN..." His hands pounded the keyboard at a high speed. Simplistic white popup windows flickered and fluctuated non-stop. After a short, precise round of confirmation, Motan finally confirmed that he had been fooled. He sighed after a moment of silence, mumbling, "So, it was me who first showed signs of a flaw..."

The efficiency of the Angel Hunting System was extremely high, and the ethernet cable Motan hid in a dark niche had virtually no bandwidth constraints. Even if the area needed to be screened was extremely large, there was absolutely no chance there wouldn't be any progress after a full day and night. The empty box on the screen suggested that the progress had been zero since the start of the retrieval, an impossibility in theory!