Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 532 - 462: The End of Technology

Chapter 532: Chapter 462: The End of Technology

The war had ended.

Immersed in the joy of victory, spoils were handed out and the substantial material rewards made the witches of Nestor Corporation happier than at any other time before.

After several days of intense combat, a sense of fatigue welled up, and they wanted to rest right away, but no matter what, they couldn’t fall asleep.

Because one person had left their lives.

That man who connected everything, who naturally blended into the group when he was around, unremarkably. But once he truly disappeared, they felt an emptiness inside.

The witches gathered, their excitement fading, leaving them distraught.

"Where has the boss gone?" 102 was anxious, she had returned to Shijin Mansion, but couldn’t find him in his usual haunts; she had a bellyful of joy she wanted to share.

"He’s gone to another world," 101 said calmly, her heart also aching, but she couldn’t show it.

"The boss is dead!" 102 immediately burst into tears, "I don’t want this!"

had wanted to explain exactly how, but infected by her sister’s tears, she too turned to face the wall, her eyes reddening.

He had gone too far, too far for anyone to catch up.

"What do we do if he never comes back?" Shallow Dream stood in the hallway, hands clasped behind her head.

"If he doesn’t come back," Miyazato Kazama lit a cigarette, "we will follow Lady Farosa onto an ancient path and replay all of history that has happened before."

"So he... he really is in danger?" Wei Shiyue was shocked to hear the witches’ conversation. She also knew very well that without Xu Yang, the whole organization would completely lose its cohesion.

Du Qianqian said nothing, hiding the diamond ring in the palm of her hand. This wasn’t a good opportunity to give up the ring, and she felt like crying.

Now Du Qianqian’s mind too had drifted to a distant place. How terrible it would be if she could only see him in her memories.

Pan Ruiyi saw Mizuiro Yoshioka crouching motionless on the ground and couldn’t help but ask, "What are you doing?"

"Looking at the technical documents the boss left behind." Mizuiro Yoshioka, originally a Hacker Witch, understood Xu Yang’s condition, "He dived too deep. His consciousness completely left the body, protecting our backs on that battlefield... For a full fifty hours so far, without pause."

"Can you go in and find him?" Pan Ruiyi said urgently, "You can dive in like a hacker too, to see if there’s anything you can do."

"I want to go in without you saying it." Mizuiro Yoshioka stood up, quietly wiping away her tears, and quickly walked towards the information room, "His end... shouldn’t be trapped in a place like that!"

Along with the other witches, she headed to the information room and found that the Little Fool who used to be by the door had been moved aside by Farosa, exhausted and lying on the ground asleep.

Farosa stood alone at the end of the room, staring at Xu Yang’s dormant tech pod, which hadn’t opened yet—a rare occurrence because the fighting had ceased, and the hackers had stopped their actions.

"I will go find him." Mizuiro Yoshioka said.

Farosa looked at Mizuiro Yoshioka with sadness, an expression that made her want to dive into the tech pod more than any threat or compulsion could.

brought over another tech pod, and after Mizuiro Yoshioka bowed to Farosa, she crawled in, inserting the data connectors into the back of her ear.

Lila, who had finished her immediate tasks, also rushed over, and from within the information network, she observed Xu Yang’s state—terribly fragmented, on the brink of overload, completely disjointed by network units, deeply affected, unable to return completely to his body.

"If there’s a mistake, she’ll get lost in there too," Lila said, looking at Mizuiro Yoshioka’s tech pod.

"Trust ’Bax,’" 101 whispered, "she’s the second witch to have seen him."

[Helis Sea]

The tide-like offensive of network information had receded, but the amount of surveillance on Nestor Corporation’s network remained high. Most were enthusiasts who came to pay their respects and satisfy their curiosity by visiting the Hacker Graveyard.

In the Helis Sea, a total of 370 hackers died in their invasion, their consciousness diving deep into the sea, counterattacked by the Cyber Specter, wiped clean, deleted, archived, turned into equal amounts of discarded data.

Now, the empty data battlefield was left only with the Cyber Specter turned "beast," its threat so significant that everyone kept their distance, wary of getting too close.

A few hours earlier, a group of the most powerful hackers, attracted by a bounty, joined forces with the Digital Ark to design a data virus specifically targeting the Helis Sea, which put the ghostly Cyber Specter in a difficult position.

It had to temporarily leave the Helis Sea and abandon its defenses, or else it would be fatally wounded by the data virus.

But it didn’t retreat.

It remained and bore the full brunt of the data virus attack, its remaining rational files decomposing, turning into an almost "beast"-like creature, becoming an unruly, manic, data-based consciousness that drifted throughout the Helis Sea, merging with the system to push its capabilities to the limit, from the shallow interfaces to the underlying source code, all guarded by it.

Its last thought was still to kill all the intruders, its original will sinking to the deepest part of the system.

Other well-known hackers accessed the Helis Sea from outside. They lingered on the edges of what was known as the Hacker Graveyard, silently watching the beast on the verge of destruction. The guardian, like the Helis Sea itself, had reached its limit load—its shattered spirit like a fragmented spiral structure, spread from top to bottom throughout the system.

Mizuiro Yoshioka saw those hackers as she dived and asked them to leave.

"We mean no harm," they replied, "We’ve come here to see a friend who’s lost."

"You know him?"