You traveled west with the convoy, crossing the Great Wilderness and arriving at Scrap Mountain once more. Here, people had always worked in groups; those who went it alone usually couldn't survive. Fortunately, you found a broker, and after paying a hefty intermediary fee, you successfully joined the Slag Gang.
Your talent in hacking rapidly blossomed over the next year. At first, you were an unknown figure across Punklorde's internet, but after successfully breaching the defensive networks left behind by several renowned hackers and leaving behind a digital graffiti tag of a White Fox, you began to rise to fame.
White Fox became a rising star often discussed in hacking circles.
At sixteen, a reliable weapon was extremely important for anyone living on Scrap Mountain. Through Aether Editing, you created a holographic weapon written entirely on an Aetherium Chip. Its form could shift in many ways; sometimes, it could even disguise itself as an umbrella or a travel bag, making your movements here far more convenient.
Your talent in hacking was quickly noticed by the Slag Gang's boss. To test your loyalty, he sent you into multiple gang deathmatches, intending to use you to eliminate rivals.
Over several months, you flawlessly completed every mission he assigned, and nearly every time, you escaped death by the skin of your teeth. This earned his trust, and he began grooming you as one of his confidants.
At seventeen, you had gained considerable prestige within the Slag Gang. As your relationship with that underworld boss grew closer, he began introducing you to things on another level—power.
You followed him back and forth between the Oasis District and Scrap Mountain. You truly witnessed the so-called upper class, and the Slag Gang, just as your investigation had revealed, was indeed a tool used by a high-ranking Oasis District official to dispose of garbage. You did not know that official's specific identity and had never met him. All you knew was that his codename was "Owl Serpent."
When in Rome, you did as the Romans did. During work-related dealings, you continued using the codename the mistress had given you: "White Fox."
After this change in identity, your work began to change as well. Instead of gang deathmatches and eliminating rivals, you now hacked into the networks of Owl Serpent's political enemies to obtain their confidential information.
Of course, the nature of this work was completely different from gang deathmatches. If you learned that one of Owl Serpent's political enemies was actually among the few honest figures in politics, you would also encrypt the information you obtained in misleading ways.
Still, there was something rather ironic about it. While completing Owl Serpent's assignments, you also indirectly investigated information on nearly every official in the Punklorde Oasis Zone. Though you still could not determine whether Owl Serpent or someone else had been responsible for your parents' deaths, you discovered that officials from Aetherium Chip development companies—whether Owl Serpent's allies or his political enemies—were almost all corrupt.
Crows were black everywhere. Nearly everyone had stains on their record, which greatly eased your guilt over being involved in these matters.
Whenever you traveled to the Oasis District on business, you sometimes considered returning to the fast-food restaurant for a look. In the end, however, you abandoned that idea, hoping Silver Wolf truly lived the normal life you had envisioned for her. Still, you occasionally heard news about her—for instance, when you left the Oasis District two years ago, she had already chosen to drop out of school and remain at the fast-food restaurant.
At eighteen, after selectively destroying many of Owl Serpent's political enemies, you were promoted through his backing and successfully entered the government supported by the Punklorde Network Corporation.
Because of your youth and striking appearance, you became favored by many wealthy ladies. This even earned you the title of "canary" throughout upper-class social circles, and many government officials intended to introduce their daughters to you.
If you can't find the book by its title, try searching for the author instead. It may simply have been renamed!
At nineteen, after entering the Oasis District government, you gradually saw many things more clearly. Cases like your parents' were common throughout Punklorde, and the conflict between the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District had existed since ancient times. But that year, something else shook all of Punklorde—someone in the Great Wilderness successfully developed an inferior version of the Aetherium Chip. This meant that Aetherium Chips, once controlled by the Punklorde Network Corporation, would begin flowing into the wilderness in large quantities.
From a purely productive standpoint, if the people of the Great Wilderness possessed Aetherium Chips and mastered how to use them, their lives would rapidly improve.
But from a broader perspective, you did not believe this was a good thing. The reason was that the conflict between the Oasis District and the Great Wilderness had become exceptionally intense.
Several centuries ago, when Punklorde's Sage had just created the Aetherium Chip, many residents of the Oasis District voluntarily went to the Great Wilderness to reclaim the land. At that time, Aetherium Chips were a shared resource for the people of both the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District.
But as generations passed, the passion of those first pioneers had long burned out, while their descendants lived in the harsh environment of the Great Wilderness. After several natural disasters struck the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District refused to provide aid, relations between the two sides steadily worsened.
In the end, it developed into Punklorde's first global network war. Thanks to the Aetherium Chip's ability to edit reality, the devastation caused by that war was even more terrifying than a direct armed conflict.
And the final result of that war was not only the Great Wilderness's crushing defeat, but the defeat of all Punklorde. Cities collapsed into ruin, civilization was nearly destroyed, and the horror of the Aetherium Chip was fully revealed at that time.
The Punklorde Network Corporation was established amid the ruins of the Oasis District then, and it took control of Aetherium Chip distribution throughout Punklorde. From that point on, Aetherium Chips rarely flowed into the Great Wilderness.
But now, with the conflict between the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District escalating to this point, and large quantities of Aetherium Chips flowing into the Great Wilderness once again, what did that mean?
You did not dare think in that direction, but that could not change one fact.
The clouds of the second global network war had already shrouded all of Punklorde.
A storm was brewing.
Today was the first official launch day for Bread's book. How far this book could go was closely tied to today's results.
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