Chapter 83: Hong Kong (2)
“Then just two beds will be enough?”
“Well…… yeah……?”
“Then should we ask them to change it now?”
“…….”
At Diesel’s silence, Sis let out a small chuckle.
“Don’t worry. I booked separate rooms.”
“Then why…….”
“I just ca to briefly check what the situation below was like.”
As she spoke, she tapped the earring she had set down on the table with her finger.
At the sa ti, green ripples spread out around us.
‘This is…….’
“Sit down and rest for a mont.”
Ar, who had been in my arms, peeked his head out as if he had sensed the unique waveform.
〈It’s an Electrosphere camouflage screen.〉
A special camouflage program that concealed one’s appearance not in reality, but within the Electrosphere.
Sis pulled out a cyberdeck from sowhere, connected it beneath her ear, and perched herself by the window.
Hong Kong was reflected in her eyes.
The dazzling city lights, and Victoria Harbour subrged in darkness.
‘So that’s where the Black Market is opening…….’
To the naked eye, it looked like nothing more than an empty sea, but within the Electrosphere, a completely different scenery unfolded.
I could see countless connections taking place deep beneath the sea below.
‘An underwater auction house, of all things.’
Sis stared down at the view outside the window in silence for a while.
Since she could also perform Electrosphere projection, she was surely seeing the sa scene as I was.
〈Be careful, Master. The Electrosphere defense level there is absurdly high. It would be better if Master didn’t approach.〉
〈Hmm…….〉
Ar was right.
The outermost firewall alone was at least Grade 7.
Several sections were Siege Barriers, and I could even see ta-watches and active ICE monitoring the surroundings.
〈If it weren’t for Sis’s camouflage screen, we would’ve been detected just by looking at it.〉
High-level Electrosphere defense systems made even observation itself dangerous.
By the nature of the Electrosphere, when you observed soone, that soone inevitably observed the observer as well.
‘How does anyone even move around in a hell like that?’
Sis didn’t blink once as she gazed down at the clamorous, glowing connections of the Electrosphere.
I studied her face carefully.
“…….”
ssy black hair reaching just below her ears.
Brown eyes frad by long eyelashes.
A small, round nose.
Cheeks dotted with faint freckles.
She once said she had no interest in grooming her appearance, and judging by the complete lack of costic prosthetics, it didn’t seem like a lie.
Maybe that was why.
There was a kind of rustic innocence to her face, the sort you’d expect from a country girl.
‘Those clothes really don’t suit her.’
I muttered what I’d been thinking since earlier.
The dress itself was undoubtedly beautiful.
And Sis looked flawless wearing it.
But sohow, it felt strangely awkward.
If I had to compare it, it felt like seeing a childhood friend fully made up.
‘…….’
Then I suddenly realized I was staring too intently and turned my head away.
‘This might take a while…….’
I sat down on a nearby chair, thinking I’d give Ar so Jjiru.
How much ti passed after that?
Ar, who had been eating Jjiru on my lap, suddenly jolted upright in shock.
〈Master, Sis is……!〉
At those words, I turned toward the window—and saw Sis blinking rapidly.
‘What, what’s wrong?’
This wasn’t a normal signal.
And it definitely wasn’t a positive one.
“…….”
“Sis!”
At the sa ti as my shout—
Crackle. Sparks flew from the back of her neck.
“Ugh……!”
Wearing a pained expression, Sis hurriedly yanked the jack out of her cyberdeck.
Heat haze wavered from the back of her neck.
But without a mont to spare to dwell on the pain, she grabbed my wrist and yanked toward her.
“Co here!”
“What the—?”
“Shh!”
At the sa ti, she tightly clenched the earring she’d left on the table with her other hand.
“Don’t make a sound. No matter what.”
The mont her warning ended—
Sothing appeared outside the window.
Sothing enormous that couldn’t be perceived with ordinary vision.
Uuuuuung…….
An unpleasant low hum echoed.
Even though it was just a waveform emitted from the Electrosphere, my entire body tingled.
‘What the hell is that now…….’
A form I’d never seen before floated in the air.
A grotesque existence, as if ten thousand eyeballs had fused into one.
Those countless eyes emitted a red glow as they began to sweep through the cabin where I stood.
〈Th-that’s an insanely powerful ta-watch…….〉
I could feel Ar curling up tightly in my arms.
I quickly organized the situation in my head.
Sis had been forcibly ejected from the Electrosphere.
And imdiately after, an ultra–high-grade ta-watch appeared.
Anyone could tell—that thing was an enemy.
And a dangerously lethal one at that.
“…….”
“…….”
‘At least the camouflage is keeping us from being detected.’
Thankfully, the creature’s red gaze failed to properly project the camouflage program Sis had deployed.
Just as I was feeling relieved—
Sothing went wrong.
Among the eyes, the largest one swelled with a vivid crimson light, then flared violently.
Under that terrifying gaze, the camouflage began to peel away.
‘Is it dismantling the program……?’
Code scattered and disintegrated, fragnting in all directions.
I could see every bit of it clearly.
‘If this breaks through, it’s over.’
I didn’t know exactly what would happen then.
ta-watches normally didn’t have offensive functions, but if a hacker was running sothing that powerful, they surely had a follow-up card prepared.
‘I have to stop it, no matter what.’
Sis must have known that too, because she was desperately pouring processing power into the earring.
A bead of sweat ran down her face, and the hand gripping the earring trembled slightly.
‘She’s being pushed back.’
I realized that Sis wasn’t in a normal condition right now.
She was nothing like her usual composed self.
I didn’t know what had happened in the Electrosphere, but it seed she was too shaken to concentrate properly.
In the end, I reached out my hand.
“……?”
My long hand covered the back of Sis’s hand.
Startled, she looked up at as if to ask what I was doing.
But at my next action, that question lted away like snow.
“……!”
Instead, an expression of disbelief surfaced.
‘The program…… is being redesigned…….’
The code of the camouflage screen that had been dismantling itself gradually returned to its original form.
It didn’t stop there—it was being solidly reinforced.
An act that was impossible by common sense.
To directly manipulate a program’s code, even the greatest hacker would have needed an ultra–high-performance supercomputer.
‘But redesigning a program without any equipnt?’
This was more shocking than facing that ta-watch.
‘…….’
A few eternal-seeming seconds passed like that.
In the end, the grotesque eye beyond the window found nothing and slipped away sowhere.
“Ugh…….”
I let out a groan I’d been holding back as pain like fire spread through the back of my neck.
I imdiately drew up my mana and touched the back of my neck.
Cold-type mana gathered at my fingertips seeped densely between the reddened skin, cooling the heat.
It wasn’t magic woven through the formal structure of enchantnt, but a crude thod of directly injecting cold-aspected mana into the human body.
Sis recognized it and frowned.
“……If you use that often, you’ll beco a mana addict.”
She was right—this thod had side effects, so I rarely used it, but the situation had been urgent.
“Get rid of the magic.”
“……?”
Sis pulled out a cooling patch and tore it open with her mouth.
A high-priced consumable that cost over 200,000 Qubits apiece.
“There’s no need—”
“This works better, and it’s cleaner.”
“…….”
She grabbed and slapped the patch onto the back of my neck.
As her face ca close enough that I could hear her breathing, I turned my head aside with an awkward expression.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
Unable to endure it, I asked her,
“……That eye just now—what was it?”
“Stay still. Your overheating is seriously bad right now.”
Sis pulled out a few more patches.
Even though her face clearly showed she had a mountain of questions, she kept her mouth shut and focused entirely on tending to my condition.
I could feel her hands trembling slightly.
“Feeling better now?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Haa…….”
Only then did she let out a sigh and plop down into her seat.
She then stuck a cooling patch onto the back of her own neck.
She hadn’t shown it, but she too was in a severe overheating state.
“Diesel, you…….”
After cooling her head for a mont, she looked at .
Then she finally asked the question she’d been holding back.
“What did you do just now?”
“…….”
I hesitated for a mont before answering.
‘Hmm……. I can’t exactly pretend I don’t know…….’
The ability to handle code within the Electrosphere.
To explain that, I’d have to reveal the power called ‘Surreal Awakening’ that I possessed.
As I hesitated, Sis lightly bit her lip and said,
“Do you know what that was just now?”
“It was a ta-watch.”
“Right. An active program that monitors the Electrosphere. But that wasn’t an ordinary ta-watch.”
“It was insanely high-grade.”
“No.”
She narrowed her brow and continued,
“The Empress’s Eye.”
“…….”
“That was the exclusive ta-watch used by the Black Empress.”
“The Black Empress?”
Sis slowly lowered her gaze.
A faint sadness crossed her face.
But she soon returned to her usual expression and looked back up at .
“Have you ever heard of Despotis?”
I vaguely rembered it.
A criminal organization active across the entire world.
A mysterious group said to consist only of those who had transcended human limits.
“The Black Empress is a hacker affiliated with Despotis.”
“…….”
“I never thought I’d run into her here…….”
Her voice trembled at the end.
Noticing sothing in her behavior, I asked,
“Soone you know?”
“……I do. I know her far too well, and that’s the problem.”
She turned her gaze toward the window and murmured,
“That hacker they call the Empress…….”
She clenched her lightly trembling fist and continued,
“She’s my real older sister.”
“Are you all right, Lady lissa?”
Inside a luxurious sedan.
An old butler asked lissa as she gazed out the window.
“I am fine.”
She answered calmly and turned her eyes forward again.
But the old butler, who had spent many years with lissa, knew better than anyone else.
That the woman known as the Black Empress had been more shaken just now than ever before.
‘She is not soone who ever shows her emotions. For her to be this unsettled…….’
She had clearly found sothing worth that reaction.
In the Electrosphere—her domain, invincible as it was.
The old butler asked in a discreet tone,
“Shall I make preparations?”
“…….”
There was no verbal reply, but he recognized that as an answer as well.
Because her neatly folded hands were trembling faintly.
‘If it’s to this extent, there’s only one possibility.’
The only blood relative lissa had left.
She had surely encountered her youngest younger sister.
‘To think such a coincidence exists.’
모사재인 성사재천.
Man plans, but Heaven decides.
For years she had searched so desperately without finding a single lead—only to discover her at this crucial mont.
“I will make the preparations.”
At the old butler’s words, lissa turned her head toward the window instead of replying.
‘At last…….’
At last, I’ve found you.
She lightly clenched her fist, trying to stop the trembling.
‘Andreina Apergis.’
She recalled the na she could never forget.
The na of her youngest younger sister she had searched for so long.
But—
‘You’ve grown so much.’
The mont she discovered her presence in the Electrosphere, she traced the source and searched every direction thoroughly.
She even used a program that cost an astronomical amount of Qubits to activate even once.
Even so, she hadn’t been able to pinpoint her sister’s location.
‘It’s fine. For now, just knowing that you’re in Hong Kong is enough.’
That alone was sufficient for now.
Thinking that, she turned her gaze back outside.
The city’s brilliant nightscape flowed past like waves.
lissa’s eyes carefully scanned the scenery.
As if searching for the younger sister sowhere beyond it.
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