Suddenly, Orthes appeared with an outrageous request.
Arabella didn’t respond with a cliché like, “What did you say?” Instead, she prepared a more formal rebuttal.
“The hacking of the Pythos Factory has happened several times during the Artificial Ten Commandments incident. However, the data in the factory consists only of the basic operating system for automatons. There was nothing noteworthy beyond that.”
“That’s important. The operating system of the automatons is still being updated, isn’t it?”
After searching her auxiliary brain’s data, Arabella nodded. The automatons at Pythos Tower were indeed receiving continuous updates.
“But that’s just work done mechanically by the Great Temple’s artificial spirits. There’s nothing like Kaicle’s secret messages inside.”
Orthes merely shrugged and smiled. It was clear he had no intention of backing down.
Someday, I want to see that beaming face crumpled up. Arabella swallowed her desires and began her task.
*
Ether Space. A dimension created by the accumulation of magical echoes. It exists in a semi-realistic state between reality and unreality.
Ordinary mages enter Ether Space through meditation via spirits, while some exceptional cases connect their brains directly to Ether Space.
Arabella was one of those exceptional cases.
When connecting the physical body directly to Ether Space, exercising magic power is much more flexible, but the threat of death also increases.
Many mages who died while hacking into someone else’s tower attempted this direct connection.
If the firewall is as advanced as the Ten Towers, it could destroy reality’s physical body through the spirit. Fortunately, the Pythos Tower’s firewall was not of that level.
Inside Ether Space, Arabella had the full appearance of a queen spider. Drones made from her flesh helped infiltrate the physical servers of Pythos Tower.
At the moment four spider drones injected Ether virus venom into the physical server, the Pythos Tower’s server activated its vaccine program.
That very moment was when Arabella was waiting for.
Transformed within Ether Space into a wolf figure surrounded by flames, the vaccine program appeared. The virus injected by Arabella’s drones manifested into thousands of spider swarms.
The flaming wolf spewed flames from its body, incinerating the spiders. The moment the vaccine program concentrated its resources on burning the viruses.
Arabella’s web snatched the data stored in Ether Space.
She read the data, copied it, and returned it to its original place. It would take about 15 seconds for the vaccine program to incinerate all the viruses.
Back in her days under the Lernian Tower, where she played hopscotch with her life in fractions of seconds, this was more than enough time.
*
What to do? I’m getting nervous.
The fusion of Arabella with the Hyper Mechanic Spider was shaking my expectations.
Well, if I thought of something in five minutes after hearing it from Bertrand, others wouldn’t be able to think of it, right?
If my guess turns out to be completely wrong, there wouldn’t be anything left for me to do.
Ah, except for one thing.
I could run over to Carisia and ask her to find it for me instead. I don’t want to think about cleaning up after the work, but that’s better than failing outright.
While I was pondering how to make myself seem more pitiful to Carisia, Arabella seemed to have finished her work and opened her previously closed eyes.
“You’re much faster than I expected.”
“That’s because there isn’t a mage directly controlling the firewall at the Pythos Tower. It shows the limitations of an unmanned tower.”
Arabella shrugged and snapped her fingers. The cables connected to her spine started to fall off one by one.
“That said, don’t think about hacking the Pythos Tower itself. You’d have to hack the Mage Tower Core itself.”
“Hacking the Mage Tower Core connected to the glory of the Ten Commandments is a suicidal act. I know that well.”
I’m not like someone you see in Carisia. I give people manageable tasks. Whether Arabella noticed the injustice in my gaze or not, she continued to work on deactivating the external computation device.
Descending from the steel spider, Arabella tossed me a USB.
“Here you go. Besides the unpiloted factory’s machine control programs, that’s everything.”
Viewing the information extracted from Ether Space is easy for mages beyond a certain level.
For mages, of course. I’m not a mage.
Although I have various tricks including Magic Engraving Drives and can only use physical attacks, it still feels a bit sad in moments like this.
“Could you lend me a viewing tool? My workshop isn’t organized yet.”
“…You’re cautious. Of course.”
Why the sudden compliment? It didn’t seem like a jab at my inability to use magic.
*
Arabella rolled her eyes at Orthes’s paranoid security mindset. Did he really think there would be any malicious code installed in the Magic Engraving Drive he lent her?
It was a choice made considering the risk of spyware being installed if she was viewing it inside the tower’s facilities. She had only recently come under the Hydra Corporation, so it’s understandable that she didn’t trust herself.
However, it was somewhat unjust for Arabella.
She had no intention of attempting to inject any malicious code. Since the day Orthes warned her, Arabella hadn’t even considered betrayal as an option.
Sure, I have minor complaints like disliking that grinning face or being scared of the boss, but that’s that.
Her body, remodeled into an Ether Space-specific body by the Lernian Tower, was inefficient. Even when fully charged with magic, it needed a power supply after only about six hours of external activities.
Since Carisia could cut off the magic supplied to the area where the Information Guild was located, and Orthes already knew her true identity, Arabella couldn’t afford to offend them.
‘Becoming the new king feels too far-fetched…’
Arabella watched Orthes display the compressed Ether data contained in the Magic Engraving Drive on a holographic projector.
Ordinary mages prefer to plug into docked devices connected to their nervous systems rather than using external tools like that.
It’s faster and more convenient, allowing them to absorb a lot of information simultaneously. Those who hack that far usually have sufficient abilities to fend off malicious data.
Still, there’s a human accustomed to handling Ether data with external devices. Various hypotheses began forming in Arabella’s mind.
One. He’s really worried about encountering severe malicious code.
Two. It’s habitual for him to create backup data.
Three. He isn’t a mage.
The first or second possibilities seemed like extensions of occupational hazards.
Information-focused mages usually see their brains being consumed by malicious code, leading to panic and skin breathing attempts resulting in death.
On a lighter note, they might lose several days’ worth of memory before and after viewing the code. If they had experienced that, seeking external devices for more secure data handling would be inevitable.
‘The third possibility…’
Arabella frowned. Honestly, that is the least likely.
Still, as someone dealing with information, considering all possibilities was part of her professional duty.
‘Thinking back, I’ve never seen him use any real magic.’
He inflicts severe damage using basic spells through the Magic Engraving Drive appropriately. But that combat style seemed more aligned with warriors or assassins rather than mages.
‘Huh?’
Maybe he really isn’t a mage. Even after combing through all records of Orthes and Carisia rampaging through the Underworld of Etna City, there was no record of Orthes using powerful magic.
While reviewing the hypotheses carefully, Arabella recalled one final question.
That faint presence. That could only be explained without magic involvement.
‘If it’s an artifact endowed with that kind of magic, it wouldn’t be unreasonable…’
What could allow such abilities without being magic?
“Director?”
Orthes’s voice pulled Arabella from her enigmatic contemplation.
“Did something go wrong during the data uncompression? I constructed it to perform well beyond normal processing limits.”
“No. What is this completely useless thing among the basic installation files for the types of automatons?”
As Arabella read the code projected in holograms, she slowly shook her head.
“It’s just as I said. Useless dummy data. It’s pre-installed data for rolling back or updating the operating system, but it doesn’t have any function during normal operation.”
“I see.”
Orthes began extracting such dummy data. Watching his busy fingers, Arabella carefully observed the situation and then asked.
“Are you uncertain?”
“Director, why do you suddenly ask that?”
“During the meeting, you confidently said Kaicle was under the volcano, didn’t you? But now you’re moving cautiously as if you became someone unaware of anything.”
It was a question aimed at probing the origin of Orthes’s information. Just like before, Orthes seemed to want to verify information once more.
Such behavior only surfaces when one cannot trust the source of information. Depending on the response, Arabella might narrow down the candidates for Orthes’s information-gathering group.
“I’m 99 percent sure.”
Orthes answered casually without hesitation.
‘This throws off all my predictions.’
“If it’s information that certain, then wouldn’t there be no need to obsess over cross-verification like this?”
Words delicately balanced between inquiry, provocation, and interrogation. Orthes’s expression remained calm.
“Generally, I would agree with that. However…”
*
“It’s the boss’s matter. If it’s not 100 percent, it cannot be accepted.”
What kind of strange noise is this again? Hasn’t he been properly criticized by Carisia?
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