The next day, she anxiously woke up. She was afraid of looking at her desktop or laptop's screen. She didn’t want to know how it had gone.

After she started the AI yesterday, she had lost half of her capital over the first hour.

Even if there were some minor corrections to be made, it wouldn’t be this bad right? Right?

She was afraid at first but calmed herself knowing that she had followed the teachings of Dordives’ Father to the r.

It couldn’t be wrong, right, right?!

And so, she went to sleep a little worried, telling herself everything was O-Kay. Waking up now, she felt trepidation all over her body.

“If I were to lose all my money, what should I tell Dord… What would she tell me… I couldn't possibly continue looking at her in the eyes anymore… I’m sorry Dord I’ve been naughty… sob…”

Carefully she went to her desktop and lighted the screen, to her relief, she hadn’t lost all her money! She felt all her blood flowing again, not sure when it had stopped. The capital was being refiled again, getting closer to the original value.

*Sigh..

Sighing with emotion, she felt she had become older by some years.

“Why is money so important in life… Everything should be free!”

Alas, she had forgotten something very important. She gave her AI a nature, the human one!

After getting herself a well deserved breakfast, she was in her room looking at the other countries’ progress.

“Ethas and Decros are doing as well as Gercia, the League of Igny is somehow slow, but it’s as expected from their faulty government… The weird ones are Abergia and the U.S.A.… What the heck are they doing.”

She was a little worried because of what she saw, the U.S.A. were not doing it slowly but in a roundabout way, it was as if they had too many personnel working on it and were doing unnecessary stuff.

Or maybe they discovered something else and were trying to corroborate it?

She couldn’t get inside their information or else she’d be discovered, at least at this moment when it all was in a heightened security.

As for the Republic of Abergia, they didn’t follow any direction whatsoever, it was as if no one was giving them orders.

Really, what’s happening there…

She was a little aware that the Republic of Abergia had some internal issues, what were they, she wasn’t sure, but it was in constant protests and manifestations.

Being one of the biggest countries in the world, it should be more stable, no?

*Sigh

Continuing with the other less important countries, she discovered they were slower than Gercia, but had no strange behavior.

She finished looking at the progress of their investigation in a global sense, made a plan based on it and some contingency for any unexpected thing. Once she was over with it, the sun had set.

Stretching her arms, she went to look for the AI with some fear. Walking slowly as if it would not wake the beast (?) up, she approached her desktop.

She saw that she had made a profit of 1.43%. Clenching her fist she said.

“Finally! I’m making some money!”

When she finished speaking, her profit had decreased to 1.32%. Making her stare blankly at it for some time. After regaining her sense, she left it alone while being more careful than when she came.

Please, I’ll let you work silently… so do your thing properly

Just like that, the rest of the week went by.

On Friday’s morning, they were at the hall of the shared building where Trelle Devs' was situated. Each team was presenting their findings, only the assigned leader was doing it and couldn't last longer than 10 minutes. All the reports the teams presented were practically the same. Only talking about finding something odd every now and then, the number of files that were found and some theories they thought to answer why the hacking happened.

Once it was over, Dunn went to the podium and retrieved the mic from the last team. He was wearing a formal suit, well trimmed brown hair and glasses.

“Everybody, I’m pleased with your great work. Now, seeing as everyone is here, I’d like you all to look for the destination of all the files you found. If you want to do it here we’ll have this space reserved all day, if not, you can freely go.”

As Charlotte came with her borrowed laptop, she didn’t have any problem working here, the only thing was that they all were in chairs, there was almost no table to work in.

My back’s gonna hurt.

She thought as she started to put the destination of all the files she had worked on. Finishing it promptly, she simply waited while watching how the others were doing.

“I see, then. I guess we can look at it from another perspective. If it was modified multiple times, then we have to look where it was modified, no?”

Pilton answered as he finished reading a report from a branch in Abergia. The one who made the report was a young man who was only 23 years old. He had graduated by skipping years in school as well as in college, and had just finished his doctorate before this search began. His name was Aber Fake.

“I’d like to see how he made the connections to think this way. Tell him that we’re very interested in his way of thinking and that if we’re satisfied with his reasoning, we’ll even call him to HQ.”

“Yes, sir. What are we doing with this information?”

“What indeed, we’re already fully loaded looking for that hacker this way, if we used another way without confirming it first, we’ll be losing precious time if it turns out to be a bad road… Look for any group in Charmevory, Gercia or… Yes, Paversia. They’re the fastest right now and should have enough time and teams to work on it. Only one team on it is good enough, and three teams will be the max we shall use.”

“Even the Free city, Paversia?” His secretary asked, uncertain if that was a good decision.

“Yes, even though it’s not official, this hacking used every connection we had… We don’t know if the hacker realized he was getting in Paversia or not, it could have possibly been his objective. Anyway, do it.” Pilton asnwered without hesitation.

“Understood. About the kid who sent this?”

“Let him work however he wants, this was good enough for him to demand our attention, after all.”

His secretary bowed a little and went out of his office.

Once alone, Pilton massaged his temple, he had been sleeping around 2 to 3 hours this last week, and his tiredness was becoming more and more apparent.

“Modifying the files while it’s being transferred, if that is possible, then it could be done an infinite number of times and there’s no way of tracking it back…”

Getting a sip of his cold coffee, he frowned and called his secretary to bring him more coffee.

*Sigh…

“Maybe this was only a test to see if it was possible and had no real purpose…”

The weekend went by without anything of importance happening. Charlotte had made some progress with her investigation as well as with the blueprints. She was without worries in the investigation and her AI was doing perfectly, now she had made a total profit of 12.2% totaling her fund to 12200 Gers. She was planning to be a little bolder so she could gather more in less time.

On Monday morning, she went to Laurent’s place. They would be working on the destination of all the files, or so she thought.

“We’ve been assigned another work, it’s to look to possible changes that could’ve happened to the files en route to their destination.”

“Uh? What?”

How did they know it? Charlotte was astonished as there were no indications to this happening, from what she could see they were far from reaching this stage of understanding her process.

“It’s a new theory someone from Abergia made, it was forwarded to two other teams to make sure it’s true. We are the only ones in this country, the other two teams are from another countries, I’m not sure of the specifications but we can coun on them.”

“Uh, oh, ok… That’s weird, so uh what should we do?” Charlotte was stammering her words, unsure of what to do.

“Yeah, I’m with the missy, we don’t know how to check it at all.”

While Charlotte knew how to do it, she hadn't thught about this development.

Her teamates were no different, though for a different reason, this was the first time this kind of thing ever happened, so they didn’t know how to proceed, either.

“How indeed, first let’s try to reproduce it and see how we can track it back.”

Charlotte herself didn’t do much, she was afraid of doing something that would link it to her. To the others it was normal, as she was the most inexperienced one.

As days continued to fly, it was again Friday, Charlotte was so tired when she arrived to her house, she fell asleep immediately.

She had been in a constant state of stress, not knowing what to do and looking for the places where they were doing the same investigation. Today she found there were three more places that were doing this new research. One of them was the Free City of Paversia.

How’s it there…

Paversia, though a so called free city, it was only free on the sense of entering there. Once inside, it was incredibly hard to get out. Heck, getting information from there was too hard for normal people. It was rumored to be the biggest city in the world, with an unknown number of people.

I used Paversia…? I should definitely erase all my tracks on this as fast as possible.

Paversia could as well be called the criminal city. And from what she knew, everything in there was legal, in the sense that the world wouldn’t bat an eye at any kind of crime. Free reign to any kind of weapon, gene modification and body modification were of the only things she knew it was possible to do in there.

Now that I have a connection to a server there, I should use it and erase everything I did in Necox from there. Hmph, it’ll be easier and will not leave anything to connect it with me.

Doing that took her all night, it was 6 in the morning when she finished.

I need to hasten it all up.

Making up her mind, she made her AI work at 50% without her ‘human’ limiter. She had found about it this week, feeling a little silly inside. She was the one who limited it at the start!

… If I want it all to work well, I can’t be too hasty, or it’ll be busted, yes, only 50% off is good, let’s do it.

As she didn’t want to garner any type of attention, she hadn’t used the laptop she was borrowed to do anything too problematic. But now she didn’t care, she thought that now that Paversia was involved, it would be harder to remain unnoticed.

*Sigh…

Sighing for the nth time, she started looking for the whereabouts of the materials she needed and how to obtain them.

“This kind of thing is not found naturally… It has to be done in a laboratory, hmm. And there’s almost no lab in the world with this kind of industry, why!”

Saving all the information she had obtained during the day, she started doing the pricing of all the materials.

“In total it’s 25419 Gers without the problematic one… Hmph! Let’s see how much I made today.”

Looking at her Ai, she saw it had made a profit of almost 49% since last time. Smirking to herself, she felt that at least something was good.

“Excellent!”

*Bzzz bzzz

Looking at her mobile, she saw that she had a string of messages.

What’s this ‘bout.

Looking at it, she saw that they were from Jean. The first message was sent in the morning but she didn’t notice, she was too worried by financial stuff to pay it any attention. It said that if she was free tomorrow to go to a conference especialy done to game developers, and he needed to confirm it as fast as they could or there woldn't be any free seat.

“Charly:

Soooorryyyy!

Just saw it!

Ehh I think I can go? Still room on it?”

“Jean:

Finally! Some response from the dead!

I thought you’re interested so I made the reservation anyway.

What were you so busy anyway?”

“Charly:

Oh nothing

Was pretty tired

Working lke that sucks big time

Was also looking at some stock im doing hehhe §ԾᴗԾ§”

“Jean:

Stocks? When did you get cash to it?”

“Charly:

I had some!”

“Jean:

Yeah, right, anyway. You going then?”

“Charly:

Sure! I need some change of pace!”

“Jean:

Ok, see you tomorrow in Runov station at 9.”

“Charly:

Roger! (・∧‐)ゞ ”

The reason she acceded to go to that conference was that she was indeed curious as to how they made a game. Not in the sense of doing it per se, but how they limited what the characters did and how they made the players not be bored of it.

Though she was not a game fanatic, she had played her games. And some of them had fascinated her.

Such good stories…

She thought with nostalgia of the few games that had moved her.