In the coming days, Mercer diligently transformed into a coder.
During the day, he greedily siphoned resources from the Arasaka Server in Cyberspace, writing programs, running data, and conducting tests.
After work, he continued to greedily siphon resources from Arasaka's educational software, learning all sorts of technologies.
Initially, the other small hackers were somewhat anxious.
However, as Mercer would lie down as soon as he entered Cyberspace and then begin writing programs and conducting research with reckless abandon,
the other small hackers finally felt relieved and started to imitate and delve into hacking technologies.
Diving deep with the support of large-scale servers is absolutely a dream for hackers, a wonderful time to quickly enhance hacking skills.
With computational power support, programs that once required long periods of contemplation and testing can now take shape and be tested rapidly without the worry of mental exhaustion.
And with Mercer by their side — it was during this period that this group of small hackers finally understood the extent of Mercer's talent.
Problems that puzzled them for ages were matters of mere glances for Mercer; even meticulously crafted programs had five to six points for optimization that Mercer could identify casually.
For any unknown or missing technologies, they could consult Mercer; even if Mercer hadn't learned some things, he could find solutions by analogy.
Since entering the underground facility to mine data, the small hackers, who'd seen little technical progress, finally felt like they were back in their learning days at Arasaka Academy.
The once unsettling rogue AI seemed to have completely vanished.
Even the dangerous red programs wandering in the old net appeared to deliberately avoid Mercer; if any mindless dangerous programs floated over, they would become Mercer's target.
He would sometimes even actively seek out data drifting in the old net for testing, claiming to be testing attacks from virus Sorcery Puppets.
Occasionally, he would attempt to extract certain code features and try to forge old net programs—this was for leading the Black Wall to launch a destructive strike when necessary, using disguised old net AI.
He even occasionally engaged in his old trade, extracting dispersed data from the old net, commonly known as Cyberspace archaeology mining.
Indeed, there truly are many treasures in the old net, with many data left behind, storing various treasures from major companies back in the day.
For example, weapon design blueprints, certain AI design codes, and even texts describing company secrets.
Some of these weapon technology blueprints are even comparable to modern technology!
No wonder Arasaka initiated something like the 'Star Plan,' letting people dig data; it's genuinely profitable.
Yet in Mercer's view, the risks and income from using ordinary hackers for this task are entirely disproportionate.
But he's different; with Bartmos's little cat by his side, rogue AI with a bit of intelligence smelled danger and fled; mindless AI came over...
And don't mention, Mercer has grown bolder; he actually encountered one, testing to see how lethal his 'Desire for Death' really is against a mature AI.
Even though it specializes in attacking defensive AI, Mercer, after carefully studying, understood its nature.
There's no real distinction between defensive AI and offensive AI; AI is just AI.
The ability to kill firewall-like AI means the ability to kill other types of AI, with differences only in efficiency and speed.
Just like missiles used for sieges might not be as effective and precise against moving targets as fixed ones, but a hit is still a hit, and it might even cause greater effective damage.
The truly terrifying aspect of rogue AI is their ability to retreat once overwhelmed, with a speed far beyond human imagination.
The more Mercer researched AI, the more he felt the limitations of humans in certain aspects; even with large server support, the effective operations a human brain can perform within a unit of time are limited.
AI is different; its computing speed is solely dependent on computational power.
Meaning, if humans, supported by computational power, could accelerate their thinking in Cyberspace and perform a hundred judgments and operations in one second,
then with the same computational support, AI could perform a thousand, ten thousand, even a hundred thousand million times.
This is the limitation of the human brain; unless one entirely abandons the brain, relying solely on data to sustain one's thoughts, completely replacing brain calculations with computational power—this is the current state of Bartmos and others.
Otherwise, AI still holds too great an advantage over humans in the network.
The only way to effectively eliminate them is with programs possessing the same AI nature.
While Mercer was diligently siphoning resources and learning.
Located in the same facility, Ena Tanino, who initially boasted about launching the second phase of the 'Star Plan,' had a somewhat displeased expression.
.....
"Why?"
At this moment, Ena Tanino stood behind the network technology team and monitoring squad, her expression irritated, her brows furrowed:
"Didn't you say the frequency of AI attacks was increasing?"
"Why now, when specifically searching for AI, even staying at the same old net IP address for a long time, there are no AI appearing?"
"This... might relate to the ICE deployed by Guardian?"
One technician speculated:
"Many rogue AI possess high intelligence; upon discovering the Guardian ICE on our hackers, they might assume it's a trap, hence they're still watching."