Arasaka Ichiro

While the master technician was busy delivering babies, something else was happening elsewhere—something that was about to shake the entire world.

Atop Arasaka Tower, two hacker teams struck at the same time, targeting the liberation of the planet's largest virtual-personality storage center.

In this cybernetic testing ground, no one dared claim their personality was flawless.

Personality duplication was like the annual physical most people underwent. If they had the means, most would do it. If nothing was wrong, it bought peace of mind; if there was a problem, all the better. Whether through repairs or replacement, personality-level issues could be resolved.

But hacking into Arasaka Tower and releasing those personalities would cause widespread social and ethical chaos.

After all, once a virtual personality was activated, it would never admit it was fake.

And bringing down Arasaka Tower before the Cyber Tide began would have an even more devastating effect.

Once the backed-up personalities vanished, the early Cyber Tide disasters—"memory loss," "personality resets," "neural theft," and "pheromone viruses"—would erupt. Anyone seeking mental restoration would not even have the raw materials.

The hacker teams that invaded Arasaka Tower also rose to fame after succeeding, earning the title of the "Eleven Arhats."

But now, the plot had long since been altered beyond recognition by a transmigrator.

In the previous life, the captain and vice-captain of the "Eleven Arhats," Holy City Terria and Paradise Bird He Guanlan, had each organized a hacker team to compete over who would hack in first.

At that moment, control over all the buildings surrounding Arasaka Tower had been completely lost. Crowds with brain-machine implants were frantically assaulting the tower's perimeter.

Strange smiles appeared on many faces, while their hands and feet moved unnaturally. Anyone could tell they had been implanted with some kind of crawling virus.

The guards