Players' Clash (4,000 Words, Please Recommend, Please Vote, Please Follow)

Wang Lei felt like the school bell had rung and he had rushed back to class, only to realize he had entered the wrong classroom. His timing could not have been worse. He had shown up right as Kafka was about to say her final goodbye to the protagonist.

Kafka had been exceptionally attentive toward Stelle. The two were in the middle of their final farewell, and now someone had interrupted them. Anyone would have been annoyed.

Kafka and Silver Wolf were equally shocked. Something had gone wrong with Elio's prophecy. By all rights, no one should have appeared here at this time.

Moreover, Wang Lei's clothing made it clear that he was neither an employee of Herta Space Station nor someone from the Astral Express. Was he a Trailblazer sent by the company? Or an Aeon of Preservation? After all, the Stellaron Hunters were notoriously infamous. It would not have been strange for them to attract anyone.

After his brief stupor, Wang Lei raised both hands, palms forward, to show that he meant no harm. Then he made an inviting gesture and ran to the far corner of the room, watching Kafka and Silver Wolf continue what they were doing.

Kafka and Silver Wolf exchanged a glance and decided to follow the script for now. Kafka began saying goodbye to Stelle, while Silver Wolf kept her eyes on Wang Lei.

Wang Lei was not idle while Kafka implanted her Spirit Whisper into Stelle. Through Aether Encoding, he connected to Silver Wolf's portable supercomputer system and began chatting with her face-to-face from roughly ten meters away.

"Hey, Silver Wolf. Nice to meet you. I'm Wang Lei."

"? Aether Encoding. Huh, I actually ran into a fellow countryman. Wang Lei... never heard of you."

"It's normal that you haven't. I'm not from Punklorde. You can think of my Aether Encoding technology as something I learned somewhere else."

"Oh. That makes it even more interesting. You weren't in Elio's prophecy, which means I've run into a hidden boss, right? Looks like I might actually have more fun this time."

"...I'd rather you treat me as a hidden NPC. Like a mysterious merchant—one that sells high-level items and gives out hidden quests."

"Heh, where's the fun in that? Whenever I played other games, I always thought it'd be great if mysterious merchants could be robbed. Wouldn't all their goods become mine? Anyway, merchants like that usually only have one batch of stock. Once it's sold out, it's gone."

"...Were you playing some kind of space pirate simulator? Robbing merchants, seriously? If an NPC like that can be attacked, then they're usually either unkillable or way higher-level than the players. They can one-shot players."

"That's exactly the feeling I want. So they can be hidden bosses too. If you can kill them in one hit, what's the point? A challenge is what makes it fun, isn't it?"

"A challenge... But in the Milky Way right now, aren't you, Silver Wolf, the boss everyone else has to challenge?"

"No, no. I haven't cleared this game yet. There are still tons of bosses above me. Forget the strongest Aeons—I haven't even fought an Emanator. So I'm still just a player, not even a minor boss. At most, I'm a slightly higher-level player."

"...Forget it, let's stop going in circles. Kafka's Spirit Whisper is almost done. Give me some coordinates. You're probably about to evacuate to avoid running into the Astral Express crew, right? Let's meet at the coordinates. This hidden NPC has a hidden quest to issue."

"Hehe, you know quite a lot about us. You even know about Kafka's Spirit Whisper. You should know that almost every opponent who has experienced its power is dead. But fine, let's hear what you have to say."

With that, Silver Wolf sent over a set of coordinates. Wang Lei hacked into Herta Space Station's system to confirm them. They appeared to point to a warehouse in the Supply Zone. Most likely, there was no trap.

By then, Kafka had finished implanting the Spirit Whisper into Stelle and exchanged a few brief words with her. Stelle had fallen unconscious once more.

Just as Kafka and Silver Wolf prepared to leave, Wang Lei acted first and used Ether Teleportation on them. The destination was the coordinates Silver Wolf had sent.

Kafka and Silver Wolf apparently had not expected Wang Lei to act the moment he said he would. They were teleported away before they could react.

After the three landed in the warehouse, Kafka looked at Wang Lei with an intrigued expression. Silver Wolf, meanwhile, was already glaring at him.

Seeing Silver Wolf's expression, Wang Lei spread his hands and said, "I was worried you might give me fake coordinates, Silver Wolf, then teleport somewhere else with Kafka. Besides, what if this place had a trap? Herta Space Station isn't your home turf. Any traps here could only be trigger-based. If all three of us teleport in together, then if there is a trap, we face it together."

Silver Wolf grumbled unhappily, "Tch. You saw through me?"

Wang Lei then turned to Kafka and said, "Miss Kafka, could you please wait a moment? Miss Silver Wolf seems to be upset with me. As fellow Reality Online players, she's currently launching a frantic attack on my information IP address. I need to calm her down first."

Silver Wolf clicked her tongue again before saying to Kafka as well.

"That's right, Kafka. He's my opponent. He read my body data first and launched Ether Teleportation before I could, so he gets one point. I'm getting that back. Also, activate a block on Ether Teleportation now. I was careless just now. I didn't expect him to actually teleport right under my nose."

Kafka leaned against the warehouse wall and replied in a seductive voice, "Fine. Since this gentleman had the courtesy not to interrupt my farewell with Stelle earlier, I can wait a while. But, Silver Wolf, make it quick. We don't have much time to remain here."

Silver Wolf had already put on her goggles and activated the projection screen of her portable supercomputer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard so fast they left afterimages. "Don't worry. I'll deal with him soon."

In contrast, Wang Lei stood completely still. Yet within the Aether Edit interface, he had already been clashing with Silver Wolf for quite some time with the aid of his Gene Engine.

Since Silver Wolf had never encountered anything like a Gene Engine before, she initially searched Wang Lei for a signal source. The only signal source she could find on him was the phone he had brought from Earth.

To Silver Wolf, this electronic device was a complete antique. She cracked it in less than half a second, then assumed Wang Lei was messing with her.

This was the phone Wang Lei used for communication. Unlike phones from his previous life, it was not filled with lewd pictures and all sorts of random games. It only contained a few communication apps and contact numbers.

Yet those things were clearly useless in this universe. An antique that transmitted information through weak electromagnetic signals? Of course Silver Wolf assumed Wang Lei had kept it on him to mislead other hackers.

So Silver Wolf decisively switched targets and launched a counter-intrusion through the Aether Encoding interface Wang Lei had used to contact her earlier.

That immediately triggered the Gene Engine's automatic counterattack. Wang Lei's Gene Engine had only one function: capturing quanta from the Sea of Quanta within Quantum Space, simulating them into a super quantum computer, and providing computational power for Aether Encoding. As a result, the security requirements for its firewall were exceptionally high.

The firewalls of Gene Engines were critical assets for every faction in the Super God universe, and Wang Lei was no exception. If someone cracked even part of his firewall, as had happened to Leina, then even though Wang Lei was not overly dependent on the Gene Engine, he would still lose more than half his combat power.

Therefore, Wang Lei had configured his firewall to directly use Aether Encoding to alter the transmission data normally returned by the Gene Engine, changing it all so that no information was returned at all. This way, even if an intruder truly entered his genetic system, they would receive only blank results and assume they were being fooled.

Of course, that was the final measure. Silver Wolf was still trying to crack the outer firewall Wang Lei had set up. He knew many Aether Encoding commands, including quite a few designed for information defense. Even Silver Wolf would need some time to break through them.

Aether Encoding battles were actually much like ordinary hacker battles on the internet. It was a contest of who could crack the other side's firewall first, obtain their source IP, then enter their system through it to gain access—or simply overwhelm them with dirty data, in other words, a DDoS attack, and crash their system outright.

That was the kind of confrontation Wang Lei and Silver Wolf were currently engaged in. Wang Lei was preparing a DDoS attack, while Silver Wolf intended to crack Wang Lei's source information and discover who he really was.

Their choices were entirely the result of the difference in their code architecture. Although Wang Lei had obtained every Aether Encoding command in the game through the system, and perhaps knew even more commands than Silver Wolf did.

Having commands alone was useless. When implementing specific functions, the way different commands were combined and edited could drastically affect their actual reading and execution speed.

In that regard, Wang Lei, who had only entered the field halfway through, was qualitatively inferior to Silver Wolf. Even if Silver Wolf knew fewer commands than he did, her genius-level architectural ability meant that the same instruction would execute faster in her hands than in Wang Lei's. Depending on the complexity of the command, the difference in operational efficiency could reach more than tenfold.

However, Wang Lei had an advantage of his own: hardware. The computational power of the super quantum computer simulated by his Gene Engine far surpassed the portable supercomputer Silver Wolf carried around.

Silver Wolf was not at her base right now. This was Herta Space Station, and the Antimatter Legion's invasion had crippled most of its systems. That also prevented Silver Wolf from using large numbers of zombie computers as relays to access the computing power of the Stellaron Hunters' supercomputers.

Furthermore, not everyone at Herta Space Station was useless. They were restoring the station's systems, which meant Silver Wolf would have fewer zombie computers under her control going forward. After all, if she wanted to seize control of Herta Space Station's computers again, she would have to deal with attacks from both sides.

It was not that Silver Wolf could not learn Wang Lei's method of capturing quanta to form a supercomputer. But she could not split herself in two, nor did she have a Gene Engine. She could not attack and defend at the same time while also capturing quanta and simulating a quantum computer to provide computational support.

As for using Silver Wolf's own supercomputer to connect to the Stellaron Hunters' supercomputer, Silver Wolf said she was powerless at the moment.

Wang Lei was no pushover. After counter-infiltrating Silver Wolf's system and discovering that she had created a whole pile of fake IPs to confuse him, he decided that since he could not tell which was real, he would attack them all.

After the fake IPs were hit by massive DDoS attacks, they were immediately exposed when no response packets came back, while the compromised machines that did respond instantly crashed. The malicious data then shifted to attack other IPs. The processing power of the supercomputer in Silver Wolf's hands was not merely ten times weaker than the quantum computer simulated by Wang Lei's Gene Engine—it was hundreds, even thousands of times behind.

The fact that she had held out this long under such an attack already proved how skilled Silver Wolf was. As the number of compromised computers she could control dwindled, the pressure on her supercomputer grew ever greater. If she connected outward now, it would be equivalent to directly exposing the source IP to Wang Lei. Then Wang Lei could trace the IP straight back to the Stellaron Hunters' server.

Naturally, Silver Wolf would not do something so unwise over a momentary victory or defeat. That left only one outcome: the hardware gap caused the malicious data to exceed her portable supercomputer's processing capacity, and it crashed outright.

When the supercomputer crashed, Silver Wolf habitually made a motion to smash the keyboard. However, she had forgotten that she was in a warehouse. The screen and keyboard created through Aether Encoding had already collapsed without the computing power to sustain them when the supercomputer went down. She punched empty air and nearly fell over.

Wang Lei knew that keyboard-smashing motion all too well. In his previous life, he had smashed plenty of keyboards after losing at LOL. So he lunged forward and caught Silver Wolf by the shoulder, stopping her from landing flat on her face.

Silver Wolf shot Wang Lei a glare. Once she had regained her footing, she slapped his hand away and said irritably, "Your code architecture is garbage. You're just a brute who relies on overwhelming computing power. But you could multitask—capturing that quantum-simulated supercomputer while fighting me at the same time. You were inputting commands with your mind, weren't you? Multitasking? Or split personality? That style is rare. Wang Lei, I'll remember you. Next time, I'll definitely break into that super quantum computer of yours."

Wang Lei spread his hands, unconcerned by Silver Wolf's refusal to admit defeat. It was perfectly normal—he had won by overwhelming her with hardware. If Silver Wolf had been beside his supercomputer today, or had remotely connected to it before the match began, then he would definitely have been the one to lose.

To put it bluntly, Silver Wolf had underestimated Wang Lei and had not gone all out from the start. By the time she realized that his computing power was too overwhelming for her to withstand, it was already too late.

Kafka also revealed a look of surprise. She slowly walked toward Wang Lei, regarding him dangerously as she said, "Little Silver Wolf actually lost. Today really is full of surprises. You weren't in Elio's script. Silver Wolf just called you Wang Lei?"

Wang Lei was not afraid of Kafka approaching. He calmly replied, "Elio, the slave of destiny? I heard he has something to do with the Final King, though I don't know whether that's true. But I will never be in his script. I am an existence he cannot observe. And in truth, destiny became different the instant he observed it. As for me, perhaps I will help him fulfill the destiny he desires, or perhaps I will destroy the destiny he foresaw. Everything is unknown."

The moment Kafka heard that, an unmistakable killing intent appeared on her face. She drew her longsword and submachine gun, then said to Wang Lei, "An unknown variable outside the script. Your impact on the plan is too great. Sorry, but I don't like surprises that are too big. Better to kill you now. Listen to me, mmph, mmph... mmph... mmph..."

The moment Wang Lei saw Kafka draw her blade and gun, he knew there would be no peaceful resolution today. He prepared himself for battle. The instant Kafka spoke the keyword "Listen to me," he used Gap Teleportation to rush in front of her and used a silencing technique. Well, physical silence—the legendary move of covering someone's mouth.

Kafka was startled when Wang Lei suddenly appeared in front of her. That had not been Ether Teleportation just now; Ether Teleportation involved a process of disassembly and reassembly. Wang Lei had clearly not gone through that process. It resembled wormhole teleportation more.

But whatever Kafka thought did not stop her from attacking. Wang Lei was pressed so close, and one hand was covering her mouth, so without hesitation, she drove the blade in her right hand toward Wang Lei's heart.

Wang Lei had kept Ether Scan active and noticed Kafka's movement. Since the Charm Technique had been interrupted anyway, he decisively used Gap Teleportation again and moved behind Kafka.

Holding the Nation-Issued Electromagnetic Handgun, he pressed it against Kafka's head and said, "Miss Kafka, please calm down. I have no intention of becoming your enemy. On the contrary, I want to ask for your help. If you still insist on fighting, then I can only defeat you first before speaking with the others."