Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 761 - 633: Frost Specter

Chapter 761: Chapter 633: Frost Specter

The Frost Specter circled the network’s core, barring advancement.

Such an idea would have been laughable just days ago. Yet the intangible cold lingered in the hall, claiming lives—any who came close perished, forcing them to consider the possibility of phantoms.

It was only now that they saw more frost-covered sculptures, among them the figures of professional security personnel in full gear. Apparently, armed troops had tried to retake the network center before but were frozen to death by an unseen force.

"There’s an invisible enemy!"

"Bring him back!"

"Come back, Wei Teng!" The soldiers reached out to drag the leading soldier back.

His body was rigid like an ice sculpture and required several hands to stabilize. His comrades forcefully pulled Wei Teng back, the leather heels of his boots scraping the ground with a piercing sound, like the wail of a ghost.

Xu Yang ordered them to fall back to the exit.

They had initially planned on retreating to the shuttle machine, but climbing the stairs back to the rooftop was also proving difficult.

The frost and snow outside were biting, the winter wind whipped up myriad icy shards that painfully pelted them. The air was so cold it felt like knives at every turn, and moving a finger was like rubbing it against a mountain of blades.

Although the lethal phantom was reaping lives before them, the harsh cold outside was equally hopeless. They preferred to stay put, hoping the surrounding walls would shelter them.

The afflicted Wei Teng lay motionless on the ground. He too was a veteran of Nestor Corporation, and although he had refused to join the ranks for fear of training and physiological modification, his qualifications were substantial. He had joined the forces in Aizu City to make a living and had since charged into battle for the company, never missing an engagement.

Today, he just wanted to bravely forge ahead for his comrades for once, only to be injured by the phantom. Now he lay pale and purplish, eyes rolled back, his body temperature dangerously low.

The others quickly propped Wei Teng up and stuffed him into a high-temperature electric sleeping bag.

The bag was woven from aramid fibers, its layers filled with heating elements that emitted a bright orange glow when activated, as if housing a small sun.

They placed his body inside it, and the information soldier turned on a medical drone that continuously monitored Wei Teng’s vital signs to prevent him from dying of cold.

Ise Hanabi wiped the sweat from her brow as she watched the soldiers getting harmed by the intangible phantom and subsequently receiving medical treatment.

Her Witch Armor sizzled with activity, its power supply working overtime to provide her with personal heat, but she knew that if hit by the phantom, the cold would still penetrate her body and soul, hastening her demise.

Claiming she wasn’t nervous would be impossible.

Ise Hanabi opened her visor and turned towards Xu Yang with a bitter expression.

Xu Yang’s gaze fell upon Ise Hanabi’s face. Her fluffy, soft pink hair hung down on either side of her cheeks. She habitually put on a pitiful look to avoid trouble, as she was doing so now.

With her Nano Armor activated, she couldn’t see Xu Yang’s face clearly. His Armor had been recalibrated and comprehensively modified, now appearing even more mysterious, especially the helmet, which was an indecipherable black void, beyond detection, masking his true face.

When Ise Hanabi looked at Xu Yang’s face, she felt as if her soul might be sucked into it.

Xu Yang’s glance shifted to the other ordinary soldiers, who were mere mortals with technical equipment and unable to resist the unseen phantom that roamed the hall.

Could he himself lure the phantom out if he took action?

With limited options, Xu Yang decided to take a risky approach to break through. After all, repairing the Helis Sea at the bottom was the utmost priority. Only by restoring the network service would they have a chance to succeed.

"You’ve undergone the New Council’s tests, do you have confidence in your skills?" Xu Yang inquired.

"They rated me highly."

"Activate the Magic Power, release the Magic Blade, and then get ready to charge," Xu Yang looked ahead.

"Me?" Ise Hanabi was taken aback, "What are you planning to do?"

If she moved into the range of the Frost Specter, she too would be instantly encased in ice.

In that moment, she was filled with distrust towards Xu Yang.

If he was so selfishly wasting soldiers’ lives, that would have been terrible...

Ise Hanabi clenched her lips; at that moment, she felt Xu Yang was a complete stranger.

Xu Yang did not respond, instead, he took action.

To her surprise, she watched as Xu Yang’s figure crossed the center of the area.

As he moved swiftly, a white Shield sprang up around him, flickering light, casting a large silhouette on its right side!

The shadow, large and distorted, swung down its claws fiercely at the Shield, creating a loud noise like breaking glass.

Ise Hanabi took a quick step forward to follow up.

Before the shadow dissipated, she lifted her great sword with force. A black Magic Blade shot out from the blade, expanding the sword’s reach, and she struck the ghostly figure instantly!

Under the slash of the Magic Blade, its form quickly dispersed.

"Got it!" Ise Hanabi was thrilled, exceptionally excited, and felt ashamed of her previous thoughts about Xu Yang.

After resolving the crisis, she turned to see Xu Yang signaling for the rest to follow and continue with the mission.

"I almost didn’t keep up—it was just for that instant that I could see it."

"We have to catch it off guard... Phantoms are just another form of the deceased after all," Xu Yang led the way, personally scouting ahead.

"What was that power just now?" Ise Hanabi was extremely curious.

"An emergency defense shield."

"What if that force breached the shield... and killed you?"

My wife would resurrect me, Xu Yang thought darkly.

If that really happened, Farosa would definitely come to his aid. He would lie in Farosa’s warm embrace, gazing into her profound eyes and her snow-white skin.

He really wanted to return to her side right now.

Upon further reflection, Xu Yang found his feelings to be very contradictory.

The further he was from Farosa, the more he yearned to return. Yet the longer he stayed by her side, the more he wanted to slip away.

How could one describe such a relationship with words?

Being with Farosa was a very complex affair. She was extremely cunning, untrustworthy, gentle yet evil, beautiful but dangerous. Her words concealed puzzles, her actions laid traps.

Luckily or unluckily, Xu Yang and she were captives of one another.

Since their first meeting, they had accompanied each other, bestowing upon one another affection and resentment, like a pair of mirrors standing on ice, vastly different, delicately related, intricately incomprehensible to others.

Especially since Farosa’s awakening, a series of troubles piled up due to the severe winter disaster, adding more complex interactions for Xu Yang to handle.

"I am not afraid of death," Xu Yang responded succinctly to Ise Hanabi.

Ise Hanabi nodded silently to herself.

A shield that could instantly follow its user was exceedingly rare; most could only protect a fixed area using position generators.

"That Phantom... was quite tall, and very strange. It didn’t look like a human ghost at all. It might be something even more terrifying," warned Ise Hanabi.

She used the recording function of her armor to capture a moment of the phantom, and now she hurriedly sent it to Xu Yang.

Xu Yang had actually already recorded the image with Digital Mind, with much clearer quality than Ise Hanabi’s.

The Phantom was at least three to four meters tall, with a distorted body, elongated limbs, and various parts exhibiting shades of frost blue, pale, and transparent conditions, extremely eerie. If it hadn’t been illuminated by the moonlight from Xu Yang’s shield, it would have been impossible to see with the naked eye.

It was hard to imagine it was transformed from a dead person, but with the information Xu Yang had at the moment, he could only pay close attention to this disaster.

After killing the Phantom in the hall, Xu Yang headed straight down, followed closely by other soldiers, checking the condition of other areas of the building, using temperature monitoring to look for other potential enemies.

Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be a second Phantom. That would have been troublesome.

"This is..." Xu Yang opened the doors, entering the core server room of the Helis Sea.

This expansive underground room housed the terminal stations of the Helis Sea. It contained not only the highest authorization network database but also the integrated physical disaster recovery backup system for the entire archives of Yibei City, which continued to update until the day it completely shut down.

Looking around, there were over 50 rows of cold network cabinets, sturdy and tall, identical in appearance, lined up with exceptional precision, like some sort of art installation.

Cables, hard drives, switches, servers, and monitoring terminals were neatly arranged inside the cabinets, twinkling cold light amidst silence, along with the humming of fans providing cooling which was no longer required.

Xu Yang entered the data monitoring room, where 12 staff members had frozen to death in their seats, as though they were killed suddenly by some invisible power without a chance to react.

"We have to take over their work," Xu Yang inspected the work environment. "Many of the hardware components are intact. It’s just that all the personnel died, which triggered the self-protect mechanism, and everything was locked down... We have to fix it quickly, or it will automatically close off more content."

The Phantom had killed everyone, freezing the entire area, but its power had little effect on the operation of the hardware, allowing for the possibility of repairs.

They quickly dove into the intense repair work, with other soldiers coming up to help, carrying supplies from the shuttle machine.

"We should be able to contact all other stations soon."

"Once the facilities are rebooted, the city will be safe."

"We can provide supplies, and we can organize a defense!"

Even as they said this, the mood was extremely tense as they removed one frozen body after another from their seats. They would then take the place of these remains to work. What if they also repeated the same fate, killed by invisible frost while engrossed in their tasks?

With this thought, when they looked at the chairs in front of those terminals, what they saw were perilous traps.

At this moment, Xu Yang was already seated at the main terminal, replacing important components in the system with backup materials he had brought to prevent them from aging and getting damaged in the extreme cold.

He then proceeded to configure the machines, test the environment, and prepare to reboot the system. Yibei City’s subnet units were constructed by Xu Yang himself; to reconstitute an emergency system on site was not difficult for him.

Xu Yang concentrated on his work with a completely professional attitude and ample experience, his presence inspiring admiration in the others.

Temporarily putting aside their fear of death, they followed suit quickly.

"You are very... calm and composed," Ise Hanabi said, standing beside him and watching with a tilt of her head.

"It often crosses my mind that if people like us feel powerless in the face of a disaster like this, what about the common people? Those who lack the ability to protect themselves must be in an even worse situation," Xu Yang said as he removed the icy cables from the main terminal and plugged them into the port behind his ear.

As the real world grew distant, he submerged himself into the shattered expanse of the Helis Sea, rebooting network units, reviving this trembling isle in the blizzard.

To the best of his ability, he endeavored to save it.