Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 147 - 147 129 Moonfire Mond

147: Chapter 129 Moonfire Mond 147: Chapter 129 Moonfire Mond On Highway 90, Xu Yang sat in a ramen stall, dining on fish ramen and orange soda while the noisy chatter of children filled the adjacent arcade, the beat of background music exploding in repetition.

The food was nothing to write home about: a large bowl of alkaline noodles with a broth that mingled the taste of dried fish, topped with seaweed, fish cake, mushrooms, and an egg.

The orange soda, an industrial product, had a universally consistent flavor—crisp and refreshing.

The ramen chef stood behind the open-air stove, humming a rock tune popular 20 years ago.

Ever since the gangs were expelled and order restored in the lower-class districts, his business environment had improved significantly, and his days were looking up.

The community had also been transformed, and Xu Yang felt gratified by this change.

After violent behavior was maximally curtailed, the number of pregnant women and outside immigrants increased, and more people were engaged in small businesses.

Embracing the principle of full employment and under the covert guidance of Xu Yang, the community rounded up a large group of unemployed vagrants along with rehab center residents to undergo labor reform.

They worked in hydroponic farms to produce low-cost relief food to feed the disabled and children.

For those without any particular skills, farming was a reliable way to sell their labor, allowing them to earn a fair wage from the community through honest work and maintain a relatively stable life.

Beyond that, the most popular industry in the community was gold farming in “Eternal Dimension.”

Such businesses usually consisted of groups of three to five people who would delve into game pods, reigning supreme in a second world created by AIs and manufacturers, completely severing ties with the real society and oblivious to the changes in their neighborhood.

The rules inside the game were somewhat fairer than in reality.

As long as a person was determined to never leave their game pod for life, they could permanently reside in the game, work for nations and organizations within it, and earn regular nutrient solution supplements for the real world.

A message arrived in the mailbox module of Digital Mind—Seeking Shadow wanted to meet him, and she was already nearby.

Xu Yang had already paid, he laid his chopsticks flat on the table and left the stall holding his can of soda.

Seeking Shadow stood in a dimly-lit alleyway, watching Xu Yang coldly.

The community had hired sanitation workers, and the alley looked quite clean, even cleaner than many commercial areas in Aizu City.

From a second-floor window nearby, the noisy voices of teenagers could be heard; they were gathered and clamoring over Suzukawa Kiyo’s live-streaming room, excited about the trendy new plays inside.

“You seem a bit lost,” Xu Yang said, extending his hand.

Seeking Shadow handed him a half-rolled, damaged book.

“The end of justice can only be twisted or killed,” Seeking Shadow looked at Xu Yang, “is that so?”

Xu Yang saw her lifelike eyes and face meticulously sewn by the manufacturer.

It was a flawless face that, upon close inspection, could still not be distinguished from that of a real human.

Her eyes shone like stars in the deep space, captivating, reluctant to look away.

It was in those eyes, however, that the greatest flaw resided—the outer gel layer betrayed the presence of photoreceptors and cameras within, making it apparent that she was merely a Synthetic Human.

“Why not think of it from a different angle?” Xu Yang said, “As long as justice isn’t twisted or killed, then it remains the best kind of justice.”

“But there will be formidable enemies…

situations that are hard to decide,” Seeking Shadow said.

“Come to me, and to Nestor Corporation,” Xu Yang dismissed the concern, “we’ve got your back.”

Seeking Shadow lowered her head.

Yes—

To persevere in living, to uphold these principles from being warped, then shadow justice would remain immortal.

During that time, she was not alone.

Seeking Shadow understood, her damaged self-perception module suddenly started working again.

Patches were applied to the defects, self-updated, and she came online in a new version—her bionic mind system upgraded from 3.111 to 3.112.

This was also a part of the self-learning capability of the Third Generation AI, known as “autonomous evolution.” Once the version number self-upgraded to 4.0, it would be equivalent to Fourth Generation AI, possessing complete, perfect emotional functions, no longer distinguishable from the human psyche.

This was the endpoint of the Synthetic Human’s awakening.

However, despite the rampant technological spread of Third Generation AI over the past decade, no Synthetic Human had yet achieved this autonomous evolution.

“You will support me, right?” Seeking Shadow turned, then glanced back at Xu Yang.

“Of course, I will support my shadow,” Xu Yang said.

“Until next time.” Seeking Shadow quickly left, disappearing from Xu Yang’s sight.

Gathering the half-scroll of the damaged book, the blood-stained magic wand and linen clothes, Xu Yang returned to the industrial park to handle these warlock relics, studying their uses in his office.

As a system of integrated supernatural power inheritance, warlocks undoubtedly possessed significant value for industrialization and information technology development.

The simplest point was to record the contents of the warlock’s spellbook into “skill archives,” and then directly download them into human brains equipped with brain-computer interfaces and memory storage devices.

The traditional ten-year training process of a warlock could be completed in one day, greatly reducing the time to become skilled experts and mass-producing an army with certain supernatural abilities, achieving a dimensionality reduction attack on the traditional master-apprentice teaching system.

Thankfully, the deceased had scanned and digitized half of the book beforehand, allowing Xu Yang to quickly review it using Digital Mind.

Otherwise, flipping through page by page would have been really troublesome, as Xu Yang was no longer accustomed to the feel of reading a paper book.

It was only then that he learned the name of this manuscript.

“Demon Expulsion Book,” which recorded the warlock heritage of the Ancient Archipelago Continent.

In the Archipelago, warlocks used their own created magic formulas to combat and exorcise various fantasy creatures from the Witch Era, such as the plethora of fairies, demons, and powerful ghost kings that emerged during the night parades of a hundred demons.

Locally, the conflict between warlocks and witches wasn’t that great.

In the Middle Ages, the “Warlock” and “Witch” coexisted in the Archipelago, worshipped by the local commoners.

After all, the Witch Council, which persecuted warlocks, was thousands of kilometers away in the Taixi Continent.

Moreover, they had a common enemy in the Ghost Tribe on the Archipelago, allowing them to learn from each other and develop the unique “magic formula” lineage of warlocks.

Of course, this did not mean that the two were completely merged.

The warlock tradition in the Archipelago was not independently originated; it also spread from the outside world, so it still carried the concepts of the original warlock tradition.

The first page of the “Demon Expulsion Book” loudly proclaimed “Pass on to men, not to women,” insisting that warlocks remain chaste, never marry or spawn to prevent breeding the scourge of witches, and must find clever and intelligent boys to maintain the master-apprentice inheritance system.

The warlock who had just died did have a wife and children, but it seemed that he had them already before becoming a warlock.

In Xu Yang’s view, this old form should be improved.

Women can certainly learn witchcraft too; this system is actually “sorcery,” not limited to men only.

It’s just that warlocks were too wary of witches, and by extension, very repulsive towards human females.

The content of “Demon Expulsion Book” was divided into three volumes: upper, middle, and lower, encompassing different magic formula systems, namely the Water Technique, Moon Technique, and Sun Technique.

These represented the three great sources of power that warlocks followed — the Nameless Evil Beast in the sea, “Moonfire” Mond, and Zenith Yan Duo.

These ancient Mystics have disappeared from the world today, but in the past, they were considered divine in nature by humans.

Whether to cultivate these personally was a big question for Xu Yang.

According to the base material of Digital Mind, he was clearly supposed to concentrate on data, machinery, and informational pathways to seek power; learning ancient magic formulas during this time might seem jumbled and inconsistent.

However, from a practical standpoint, mastering a few self-defense and protective methods would not be a bad thing.

Judging from the previous battle between Seeking Shadow and the warlock, the warlock’s heritage was far from superficial posturing; once it formed a system, it had huge benefits.

So, the question was, which series to choose.

Undoubtedly, the ocean seemed to overlap somewhat with Farosa’s direction, and Zenith Yan Duo was a confined entity, Xu Yang heard that Kyoto Infinity used Yan Duo metal as a selling point.

Therefore, the answer fell on “Moonfire” Mond.

Its magic formulas involved enhancing thought and intelligence, summoning powerful destructive Moonfire, and opening a portal to the moon’s surface to summon the descendants and relatives of this Ancient Mystic.

Every nine years, it searched the mortal world for a new bride, and to this day, had spawned a large and numerous race.

When Farosa came to Xu Yang for business matters, Xu Yang discussed the warlock issue and his thoughts with her.

She was taken aback.

— Damn it, a human now had the opportunity to get close to the transcendent and sanctified path of power?

Warlocks indeed deserved to die!

Such strange abilities should be entirely monopolized by the Ancient Mystics and witches.

Who allowed them to secretly go and learn and create all these tricks?

This way, witches’ supernatural powers would become commonplace, wouldn’t they?

The pride and dignity of being a witch suddenly seemed so cheap!

Before Farosa could begin her ramblings, Xu Yang preemptively brought up a new topic.

“You might be familiar with these Ancient Mystics,” Xu Yang said.

“Tell me about this ‘Moonfire’ Mond.

The warlocks of the Archipelago once learned power from it.”

“Don’t speak its full name recklessly; it might sense it,” Farosa looked up with concern.

“It’s a huge, pale half-dragon demigod, the ruler of the moon’s world, with countless dragon princes and princesses holding its legacy.

Perhaps other Ancient Mystics are individually powerful and pose a threat to human civilization even on their own.

However, this greedy, lustful Elder Dragon is different; it can assemble its offspring into a massive army to cross the Star Realm’s space and land on the ground.”

…She would have to devour it eventually, Farosa thought to herself.

Swallowing the common father of the moon dragon brood, wails of mourning would spread through the cosmos.

The taste of divinity was unforgettable — what more a Dragon Kind demigod?