"No need."
After a brief pause, Mercer's voice confidently said: "Seems like they have no new tricks. Give me thirty seconds, once I deal with them, I'll come back and chat—V, I'd advise against badmouthing me."
He's not big-hearted. Although he won't take jokes to heart, he does hold grudges. When he gets a chance to make fun of her, he will do so a thousand times over.
Qiwei couldn't help but press her lips together.
Thirty seconds?
Those monitors are relying on large servers for deep diving!
At this moment, Mercer had already stopped the dog-walk-like IP transfer in Cyberspace.
...
"The target has stopped! Quick, David! Send the lock program!"
In Cyberspace, a virtual figure with the Internet Supervision logo printed on its clothes yelled loudly, aiming a large, exaggerated cannon at the motionless Mercer.
Another man, wearing similar clothes and sunglasses in his virtual representation, calmly aimed a laser gun at Mercer and pulled the trigger.
The flashing red laser, symbolizing dangerous red code, shot straight at Mercer.
However, to the surprise of the monitor, when the laser hit Mercer, his virtual image dissolved into a cloud of dispersing blue data.
"Damn it! Zack! It's a decoy program!"
The monitor called David tensely jumped away instantly, with the blue data stream turning into a skateboard he was using to move rapidly in space, constantly changing his IP address to avoid being locked by Mercer's sending program.
Zack's hand cannon swung fiercely, blasting a massive cluster of blue data, which shattered the whole network into pieces upon firing.
This cluster of blue data spread across the network, organizing itself into a giant blue cage within moments.
This meant his program had a localized network locking feature.
With just one attack, he isolated this section of Night City's network into an inescapable local network, attempting to cut off Mercer's escape route.
"Tracking is still here, he hasn't gotten far!"
Zack shouted loudly, but then suddenly noticed the ground beneath him vanish.
He glanced down sharply, seeing a hole like a black abyss suddenly appear under his feet: "I'm trapped! I can't move! My IP is locked!"
"Execute rapid decryption program! If that doesn't work, reconnect!" David rushed over, trying to send him some programs to help.
But a man wearing a smiling mask, a hoodie, and a black jacket suddenly blocked his path: "Chased all this time, why so eager to leave?"
The pale mask painted with a black smile looked scarier than a ghost at this moment. David's entire data froze for a brief moment in shock.
What the hell! It truly felt like seeing a ghost!
Zack's virtual image flickered a few times but could only uselessly stay in place, while the whirlpool beneath him swallowed half of his being like a swamp.
He attempted to forcibly decrypt it using server compute power, competing with Mercer, but found the program unexpectedly sophisticated.
He used compute power to blindly seek program vulnerabilities, attempting data counterattacks with ICE, but the black hole truly behaved like one; without finding a way in, even the vast compute power of servers was just for show.
Mercer casually said: "Don't waste your effort, this program actually borrowed your strategies, one laser gun, one cannon, not a bit of originality."
"Damn it! Do you know what you're doing? Daring to attack monitors on the network, aren't you afraid..."
Before David finished speaking, he suddenly drew his gun, with a gigantic machine gun appearing in both hands this time.
The bullets formed from data roared, engulfing the entire space, but Mercer's voice gently whispered in his ear.
"Can't win, so you're planning to rely on server compute power, using brute force to overwhelm me?"
Even in Cyberspace, David felt a chill run through him; his server compute power actively fired off his ICE programs, building up layer upon layer of thick blue armor.
But Mercer merely stabbed him lightly with a black dagger behind him: "Only stacking compute power is useless against experts... Your brain can't handle that much compute power, all you know is brute force... It's such a waste."
As the black dagger pierced his consciousness body, it transformed into a dreadful black shadow spreading from his data.
David startled, discovered his ICE was fragile as paper: "You..."
"The loophole is too glaring, buddy, you can't even find a target for your counterattack, so what's the use of having ICE active?"
Mmm... David's personal information... Oh, buddy, you earn 10,000 Euros a month, why risk so much for this?
Alright, I won't mess with your servers, afraid of triggering you guys... But the ICE you wrote for servers is quite decent; without a vulnerability, it's hard to break in without massive server compute power.
You probably hid some AI inside, okay, let's call it a day then.
Still, I've got a warning for you guys—stay away from me in the future, I have no interest in playing online hide-and-seek with you daily.
Just killed a bunch of scum, the Voodoo Gang fools are killing people and blackmailing online every day, why don't you assault their lair?
Afraid of a garbage server and protection system pieced together by a bunch of fools?
Then you should be more afraid of me.