The twisted blue sky, the slashed black sword edge, the broken and cracked world, the eternal nothingness of darkness...

The virus program that Carl called out from the system background was displayed after quarantine and running, and it was actually such a video animation.

"Uh, what's this? Are you kidding?" The man, who did not notice the expected situation, twitched. "The picture quality is really delicate, and it doesn't look like an ordinary CG, but a real scene shooting or a scene replica in a hypercube. But as an arrogant virus program, isn't it too simple to have this?"

Ryan, who was standing beside him, seemed calmer, and he leaned over and reached out to open the property bar.

"B's capacity... Although it's a little small, usually a normal mp3 can be vaguely about 4,000k, and an ordinary jpg compressed picture also costs 30-40k. However, every year, famous warez organizations around the world will launch a small cartoon to compare, just to show off their strength.

I was quite impressed by this event. The most classic masterpiece in 2000, "The Comet Crashed the Earth", this program with only 64kb size demonstrated a 3D video with music that was not repeated for nearly 30 minutes. Moreover, its 3D rendering and sound effects are still shocking, and its technology is shocking~ because, in fact, the real capacity of this animation is more than 15g, which means that this warez organization compressed it by 250,000 times-

In comparison, this virus that only lasts for a few seconds but has 6kb is not a big deal, but as a virus, it is really not worthy of its name. Why don’t you check if there are any traces left by other malicious programs in the virtual machine?”

"I understand, but I'm already doing it." It seems that the previous fear has no effect. He entered the state of work fanaticism and pulled out a afterimage on the virtual keyboard. "I also know the super compressed video you mentioned. A program with only a few thousand bytes can achieve that level. If that skill is transferred to destruction, it must be extremely secret and difficult to discover, but as long as it is a crime, it is impossible not to leave any evidence, and I will definitely pull out its feet!"

Ryan, who knew his strength, nodded, but his frown did not let go.

The premonition that made him feel uneasy not disappeared, but instead became clearer and closer to his spine, and then... changed from illusion to reality.

It was like being guided by some inexplicable great will. Ryan took out his cell phone that he had kept in his hand for no reason. He just subconsciously looked down, and the result was that this glance made him scream suddenly-

"My phone - it, it is automatically dialing up and surfing the Internet!"

"What!"

Carl's movement of typing on the keyboard was like a basin of cold water. After being stunned for less than half a second, he suddenly jumped out of his seat and grabbed the phone in Ryan's hand that was showing the file upload pattern. He entered a few commands with the speed of dragging the afterimage, but it was useless. He simply smashed the phone in his hand hard on the table. The mobile phone board immediately separated from the host in this violent action, and the lighted screen also extinguished the light as if it was very unwilling.

But after doing this, Ryan's pupils shrank after realizing it. His face changed drastically and shouted loudly at Carl, "Mobile, your phone!"

Carl, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, immediately took a breath of cold air. He had already thought about what Ryan thought, pushed Ryan away, rushed to the bed where he was originally lying, and took out his cell phone from the pocket hanging on the clothes hanger, without thinking, and threw it to the ground.

There was a dead silence.

After a while, the man kneeling on the ground raised his head with a lifeless look on his face.

"It's been too late for failure," he murmured. He held his broken phone in his hand, "The file upload has been completed, and the virus has probably entered the Internet... Maybe this is his real hidden method. When our attention is attracted by the apparent video, we connect to the wireless facility through Bluetooth. Escape from the hypercube system that was originally isolated from the Internet from the physical level, and enter the Internet with the help of our hands. Will this logic still be AI?

...No, this is a real soul, and we put a demon who could not have expected action into reality!"

He shouted almost hysterically, the man hugged his head in pain and squatted down, and the fear that had just lurked up to his heart again.

But at the same time, Ryan still maintained enough calm.

"Wait, don't be so pessimistic, things are not that bad yet." He pulled Carl up from the ground, murmured as if he was talking to himself, "No matter how high the IQ of that program is, it still needs to follow the laws of reality in the real world. Even if he can show off his power in the Internet, the limit he can achieve is to cause the network to be paralyzed and affect further areas. Although this plot is similar to Skynet in the Terminator, the plot in the movie is actually mostly exaggerated.

Because of the existence of hackers, the internal systems of most military bases are physically isolated from the outside world. After all, no matter how advanced the hacker is, it is impossible for the area where the lines are not laid, and the most critical nuclear bomb launch program is even more so.

So, that guy’s limit is to let us give up the operation of the network for a while. After all, he is just a jumping clown who comes out of a narrow box and cannot become a demon king who threatens human civilization…”

"...Is that true?" Carl asked half-believingly.

"Ninety percent possible." Ryan's answer was ambiguous, "but we don't need to consider the next thing. If we report all the things we have done word by word, the company will evaluate the seriousness of the situation on its own and then make the choice they think is the right one. We no longer need or can't interfere in this matter."

"Will they choose to hide the truth from the masses in order to maintain their reputation and not cause social panic?"

"I don't know this..."

The conversation that was originally consistent ended in dissatisfaction, and the two of them had their own thoughts no longer spoke. While Ryan was sorting out the data before and after the incident, Carl lay back on the bed in a depressed mood, thinking about the program that fled to the Internet and the bloody memories that had bothered him before. Although he was no longer close to mental breakdown when he remembered it, there was still an idea at the intermediate level that had been entangled in his heart.

——Whose line of sight is that?

Although he knew that there was nothing behind him and that the light was turned on to the greatest extent so that everything could hide, he still felt as if he was being watched by someone, because this did not cause any substantial danger to be too ridiculous. He did not mention it to Ryan again but suppressed it in his heart.

(Alchemy, this is just an illusion.)

He told himself this, and then it was as if this self-hypnosis had taken effect, and the gaze seemed to have quietly gone away in a trance.

But, is this really the case?

"Huh, huh, ah...?!!"

The next day, I woke up from the familiar nightmare again.

Looking at the familiar ceiling above his head, Carl, who was completely wet on his back, felt relieved. The fact that he was still alive made him extremely glad. Although his fear of the unknown existence did not fade away, it did not intensify except that his sleep quality was extremely poor.

Anyway, it's just an illusion after all.

Although nightmare did affect his life to a certain extent, it is hopeless to find the real person in the illusory world.

In short, no matter what, it should be just his own problem. It was his own excessive reality in the hypercube, which caused his san value to drop by most of the time and almost zero.
Chapter completed!