Chapter 37

Hiro decided to walk back to his bed and sit in the corner after receiving a mysterious message from Anonymous directly to his android bracelet. Suddenly, he became anxious and started to wonder how Anonymous could get his contact number.

“Did he hack my number?”

Very cautiously, he reactivated the VPN and then logged into TOR to check the page on the conspiracy theory of his brother’s death one more time.

He read the comments he had left there, but it was still left unanswered.

For a moment, he doubted whether Anonymous on the site was the same person who was contacting him.

However, from the content of the message, it was clear that it was a response to the comment Hiro had left.

Anonymous didn’t reply to his comments on the page, instead, he tried to contact Hiro directly?

Hiro was frustrated after knowing this, he immediately deleted his comment on Anonymous’s thread and then re-secured his android bracelet.

Hiro had guessed that someone out there might be smart enough to hack his data in today’s modern technology. He didn’t want that to happen.

After cleaning his android bracelet with his CyberWarrior program, he felt a little relieved.

“Damn it. Who is he really?”

Hiro tried to identify the IP address of the person who sent the message. It took him some time to create complex coding using CyberWarrior and he spent another 45 minutes before he was finally able to download the code and use it in messages sent by Anonymous.

[Finding Anonymous…]

[…]

He waited anxiously. He now felt insecure even though his android bracelet was clean.

[Beep]

[IP address has been found]

“Yes!”

[Beep]

[Restarting the program]

“What?”

[Beep]

[IP address has been found]

[193.148.16.251]

“Yes!”

Hiro immediately copied the number and searched for it using the CyberWarrior app.

[Beep]

[40° 24′ 55,404” N]

[141° 19′ 19,236” E]

[Kami-Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.]

“Hang on… something doesn’t feel right.”

Hiro checked his IP address listed on the profile page on his android bracelet.

[193.148.16.251]

“What the heck?!”

“Did you just attack me with my own weapon?”

After getting a direct backlash from someone out there who turned out to have higher system hacking abilities than Hiro, he decided to surrender.

“I’ll prepare more complicated coding that you can’t tinker with, just you wait!”

Setting up more complex coding with the same working principle will take quite a long time. However, Hiro insisted on doing it anyway.

Another hour passed.

Ding!

[You have received a new message from Anonymous]

[Anonymous: What’s up, Bro!?]

“What the heck. Again?”

Hiro immediately opened CyberWarrior and checked the status of the most complicated coding he had managed to make.

The coding arrangement has been neatly packaged into a file that can be camouflaged to enter someone else’s android bracelet and steal their data.

Once again, Hiro sent the file to Anonymous in reply. When the file is sent, it can work without having to be downloaded first by the recipient.

Hiro barely blinked and forgot to breathe after seeing the [Message sent] notification.

Ding!

[You have received a new message from Anonymous]

[Anonymous: Are you trying to mess around with me?]

A sly smile spread across Hiro’s face. The man had fallen into his trap. The file sent by Hiro consisted of two files at once with the same contents. However, one file was in hidden status, while the other one was in normal status so that the recipient could see it.

Commonly, people prefered to only focus on seeing the files that were visible for the first time and never think twice about the other files that have been sent together, especially when it was in hidden status.

That was Hiro’s old trick when he still liked to scam game companies through the file attachment feature when contacting customer service.

“I didn’t think that this method was still quite effective, tsk tsk tsk.”

[CyberWarrior: Downloading the information from the host]

[…]

Hiro tapped the back of his hand with his fingertips, nervously. He waited impatiently.

[Download completed]

[IP address has been found]

[193.148.16.267]

“Gotcha!”

[Please Wait!]

[Beep]

[40° 24′ 55,404” N]

[141° 19′ 19,236” E]

[193.148.16.251]

[Kami-Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.]

“Did it turn back to that one again!?”

Ding!

[You have received a new message]

[Anonymous: Nice try, Kid! Better upgrade your bracelet first before challenging me! LoL]

In a flash, the display of the numerical data on the skinscreen had a glitch and the message from Anonymous suddenly split into many.

Within just a minute, hundreds of messages scammed the screen as if he had just shown the next level of hacking ability to Hiro.

“Arghhh!”

Hiro was frustrated again. He became more aware that Anonymous was not someone to be underestimated.

Hiro immediately activated triple protection for his android bracelet so Anonymous couldn’t tamper with the data stored in it. Even though, so far, the unknown person had not done any harm to him. But Hiro didn’t want to wait until something bad happened.

But for one more time,

“193.148.16.267”

He memorized the number of IP addresses that Anonymous had deleted.

Even though Anonymous was more skilled at infiltrating other people’s digital data, Hiro’s brain’s memory capacity was still reliable. And it was very easy to memorize numbers.

[Searching IP Address in Database: 193.148.16.267]

[1 information has been found]

[…]

[No data found]

“What the hell?”

Due to the stress of facing Anonymous, Hiro decided to cook a meal in the kitchen and turned his android bracelet on silent mode.

He didn’t want to be bothered.

RUMBLE!

Hiro’s stomach was growling again. He stroked his belly which was getting more flat that it now looked slightly sunken.

Meanwhile, the instant noodles that he had soaked in hot water were finally ready to eat.

As usual, Hiro was looking for a spectacle to watch while he was eating. Today he was curious about the daily news channel.

“Open the Games Daily Updates Youtube channel!” He spoke into his android bracelet which instantly displayed a 3D hologram in the shape of a mini news anchor in Hiro’s hand.

“The world can’t wait for the Premium Auction that Ninecent is holding to sell the cities in their virtual world.”

“Tickets to participate in the auction have now sold as many as 2,780 tickets and are predicted to increase sharply ahead of the Auction which will be held in a few hours.”

Hiro suddenly remembered that today was the last day the CBT version could be played. And Hiro hadn’t bought the regular plot as he had originally planned.

He still couldn’t choose the server he would use to play the game later.

Hiro ate his hot instant noodles voraciously, his tongue got burned occasionally and he had to drink the mineral water next to his food to cool it down.

“Update: LSC demand in the world has increased significantly. Botcoin owners are now flocking to invest in LSC as well because of the prediction from Satoshi Nakamoto that the Botcoin era might end soon.”

“Ahhh—is this going to happen? Entering the game era, huh?”