Chapter 97: Silver Wolf: Not Right! Not Good!
"So, all those little complaints you were making along the way... those were specifically meant for me to hear, weren't they?"
Silver Wolf's voice drifted through the data stream, dripping with absolute helplessness.
The mere thought of Leon repeatedly hammering the word 'tsundere' into their conversation made her want to mute his audio feed entirely. She wasn't some cliche, die-hard tsundere from a dating sim!
"Is it not true?" Leon shrugged, a lazy, teasing smirk playing on his lips. "Are you telling me you aren't a tsundere?"
He smoothly shifted the topic before she could retaliate. "But you were eager to try this out, weren't you? You were practically vibrating with excitement at the prospect of finally meeting a worthy opponent."
Leon leaned back, his tone casual but piercing. "The Antimatter Legion is just a pack of brutish primitives, and the IPC's security forces are a bit lacking in imagination. Only the Genius Society can actually give you a bit of real fun."
[Aha: Aha feels that Silver Wolf also has the potential to be a Masked Fool!]
[Aha: @Nanook, did you hear that? The group leader said your Antimatter Legion are all primitives!]
[Aha: @Nous, did you hear that? The group leader said your Genius Society can only provide a bit of fun!]
[Aha: The group leader truly loves me! Everything is for the sake of Elation~]
[Nanook: Civilization is but a vain decoration.]
[Nanook: My Legion tears stars asunder, annihilates time, and gazes directly into the purest end of the universe. You call this primitive?]
[Nanook: No.]
[Nanook: This is truth.]
[Nanook: @Aha, your laughter will silence into entropy within the event horizon of a black hole. Care to verify?]
[Nous: Proposition 1: What you call 'fun' is essentially low-information entropy chaotic perturbation.]
[Nous: Proposition 2: The 'knowledge' I observe covers 9,214 deduction paths, from Imaginary Tree branch fractals to Aeon behavior models.]
[Nous: Proposition 3: Your statement is a subset of Proposition 1 and has been calculated as the 5,738,201st meaningless repetition.]
[Nous: Suggest you update your cognitive module or continue being a cute error.]
[Aha: Aha! Two rebuttals! One hot and one cold! One angry and one mocking!]
[Aha: Perfect symmetry! The ultimate comedy!]
[Aha: @Leon, group leader, they are rebutting you!]
Leon completely ignored the frantic vibrations of the interdimensional chat group interface pinging in his mind.
"Reality is just a game," Silver Wolf's holographic phantom spoke up, her hands resting confidently on her hips as she tilted her chin up. "But if you can't be happy playing it, what's the point of the game?"
She scoffed lightly, a digital glitch rippling across her form. "Two legendary geniuses handed me an invitation together—no, a challenge letter. How could I not gladly accept? If it were you, could you resist?"
"Are you certain you can escape unscathed?" Screwllum's mechanical voice hummed, carrying a distinct, gentlemanly hint of admiration.
"That's right. And I'm taking 'it' with me."
Silver Wolf lightly tapped the back of her hand twice. A stream of pixelated light gathered beside her, quietly coalescing into a perfectly replicated Aether Cartridge.
A winner's smirk bloomed across her face.
"A duplicate... completed during our conversation just now?" Though Screwllum phrased it as a question, his synthesized tone held absolute certainty.
"Obviously. Otherwise, why would I spend so much time talking nonsense with you guys?" Silver Wolf boasted, her pride practically radiating through the virtual space.
"You aren't the only ones stalling for time. I bet Herta is currently reverse-hacking along the exact path I used to break in, just like last time..."
She crossed her arms, her smirk widening. "Leaving you to face me on the front line, while the real confrontation has already begun elsewhere."
Her digital avatar leaned forward, her voice rising with genuine gamer adrenaline. "Good. I'm really looking forward to seeing how you plan to stop me this time. Are you going to encapsulate the entire Simulated Universe into a black box? Or maybe collaborate with the IPC for a massive cross-galaxy manhunt?"
She raised a finger, pointing it directly at them. "The contest that couldn't be decided back then is finally coming to an end. And today's winner..."
"Will only be one."
Silver Wolf's smile was blindingly bright, fueled by the thrill of the ultimate high-score chase. "Please, let me have some fun, okay?"
"Who said Herta was going to reverse-hack you?" Leon finally chimed in, unable to hold back his amusement as he watched Silver Wolf bask in her own perceived victory.
"This Aether Cartridge itself is just replicated data. Herta and Screwllum knew long ago that they couldn't stop you—because from the very beginning, they never intended to stop you."
"Oh?" Silver Wolf froze, her digital phantom blinking in genuine confusion.
Not catching her? Then why did these two go to all this trouble?
"It seems Leon has already seen through our intentions." Screwllum's optical sensors focused on the young man, his tone revealing a deep new level of appreciation. He thought he had already held Leon in high regard, but now it seemed he had still underestimated the young man's sharp intuition.
He and Herta indeed never intended to capture the Stellaron Hunter.
"Because only by doing this can the 'game' Silver Wolf painstakingly prepared truly fall through," Leon chuckled, the sound low and rich with masked amusement. "As long as there's no fun, the game is meaningless. To you, the IPC's shackles can't hold you, and a prison is just another stage for a new game. Locking you up would actually play right into your hands."
"Tsk, how boring." Silver Wolf rolled her eyes, her posture instantly slumping as she lost all interest.
"No, this isn't boring at all."
Leon's smile deepened into something wonderfully wicked. "This is the real 'big fun.' For example... right now, Herta is reverse-hacking to locate all of your interstellar network gaming accounts."
He let the silence stretch for a fraction of a second before slowly delivering the fatal blow.
"A total of seventy-six accounts... that's quite a significant number."
"What? Hey, wait—!"
Silver Wolf's eyes widened to the size of saucers. Panic—pure, unfiltered gamer panic—shattered her cool facade. Her phantom flickered violently, and in the very next microsecond, she frantically severed her connection, hurriedly logging off from the Simulated Universe.
Although Leon hadn't explicitly stated what would happen to those accounts, she had already deduced the horrific fate awaiting her seventy-six precious save files.
[Silver Wolf: No, this isn't right! Not good—!!]
The digital ripples of Silver Wolf's dissipating phantom had not yet fully settled into the data stream. In the pure white, sterile space of the Simulated Universe, only Leon and Screwllum remained standing opposite each other.
And the triumphant, gloating humming of the Herta puppet standing beside them was practically overflowing.
"We should leave here as well," Screwllum suggested politely.
The two of them initiated the logout sequence, their consciousnesses exiting the Simulated Universe and returning to reality.
"Hmph! A total victory!" The Herta puppet stood in her office, briskly humming a delightfully out-of-tune melody. "That little brat should finally know how formidable Herta is now, right?"
She crossed her jointed arms, her synthetic voice dripping with a childish, vindictive pride. "I can ignore the Space Station's minor affairs, but for those who dare to provoke me directly? I will definitely pay them back a hundredfold."
She tilted her head, her glass eyes gleaming. "I've already had the IPC freeze every single one of her accounts."
"I bet that little girl is holding her terminal and crying her eyes out right now, right? Haha."
The more Herta thought about the hacker's despair over lost game progress, the happier she became. The painted corners of the puppet's mouth seemed to curl up ever so slightly.
If no one else were around, the Herta puppet might have actually started twirling in joyful circles.
"Nyumu nyumu!"
The Cat Cake named Little Herta, perched comfortably atop the Herta puppet's head, cried out happily, its soft body wiggling. It could clearly feel its creator's immense joy.
"My sincere thanks, Leon." Screwllum turned to the young man, his metallic posture as elegant and humble as ever. "You deserve a significant portion of the credit for this victory."
"You did a good job. I expect if those two Trailblazers had come instead, things wouldn't have gone nearly so smoothly," the Herta puppet agreed, giving a curt nod of approval.
"I also had a lot of fun."
Leon chuckled, crossing his arms as he leaned against the console. "After all, the greatest fun is sometimes watching others at the absolute peak of their self-righteous carnival, only to suddenly discover the stage beneath their feet is collapsing."
Of course, Leon didn't plan on letting Silver Wolf off the hook just yet. He had already stealthily recorded the exact moment her smug expression shattered into pure panic. He was currently editing the video, preparing to send it directly to her terminal.
He just wondered if Silver Wolf would actually start crying and making a scene after watching her own humiliating defeat on loop.
[Silver Wolf: Why are you still chasing me down for the kill?!]
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