Gunfire, Punk and Necromancer

Lucy slammed the phone down, took deep breaths to adjust her emotions, suppressed the anger in her heart, and kept telling herself that only calmness could handle the crisis at hand.

The phone call just now told her that the middleman industry association could not satisfy Colonel Taft's greedy appetite and could not come up with enough money and capital to buy the identity list of the mercenaries, and the negotiations broke down. This result means that Colonel Taaffe may find a buyer and make a deal at any time, and the list of mercenaries will be leaked. Lucy was not alarmist. She learned from other channels that the Liying Gang under the Sanliu Charity Foundation had made a lot of money from its previous Safe Blue business and was not involved in a fight with the PCPD. It was currently quite wealthy. They have expressed a desire to buy the list and have sent negotiators to make contacts.

Time is very tight, but it is the second time that a problem occurs with the mission at this time. Lucy was speechless. She was most worried about the Scarecrow Nake team at first, but Nake completed the task very well, and the smoothness exceeded her expectations. On the contrary, it was a relatively simple group that made mistakes twice in a row, causing progress to be lost again.

Nike has been hiding at the mission site for ten days, much longer than the original plan. Lucy began to worry about Nike's physical and mental state. Especially for supplies, even though he had been reminded to bring more supplies, the ten-day incubation period was still too long. It would be impossible for Naike to carry enough supplies for ten days if he were to act in secret. Even if he eats as little as possible and can reduce his weight to the tenth day, what will happen next? How many more days can you hold on?

Besides, even if the mission is successful, if Nike is not in good condition due to hunger and has problems during the evacuation and fails to come out, it will still be a very heavy loss for Lucy. If Lucy had to choose, she would rather fail the mission and try her luck than ruin Nike's life. The "scarecrow" was so useful that she didn't want to give it up.

Urgent action must be taken now, and all efforts must be made to make up for the last shortcoming, otherwise we will wait for the entire mission to collapse! Although this means spending an extra sum of money and may partially expose the existence of "Operation Pin", unsuccessful actions are equal to zero. At the critical moment, we cannot learn from the middleman association and pick the ropes. This may be the last chance.

Lucy took off her mask, revealing a pale face with wrinkles covered by a large number of tiny scars. She washed her face with cold water from the office to help herself calm down and adjusted her emotions, especially her voice, so that no one could hear the feeling of anxiety. When she felt ready, she put on her mask again and called a number.

"Lark, yes, the work has come, and your team is needed. Yes, at the price you proposed, come to my place now, with a full set of equipment. Huh? Need more money? This kind of thing always makes people feel uncomfortable. I'm not happy." Lucy snorted and said, "Okay, how much will the increase be?"

When Lucy gently put down the phone, she admired her ability to control and perform without showing emotion or anger. "Money is like a dog, if you throw it away, it will come back again..." She gritted her teeth for a moment, and then continued to assign tasks.

The team that failed twice has lost her confidence and trust, and she won't give it a third chance. However, surface work still had to be done, so Lucy scolded them first, then encouraged them, and finally ordered them to start resting immediately and be ready to go at any time. She wanted to create the illusion of continuing the mission with that team, including doing the whole thing and shortening the time between mission departures in half, from six days to three days. But the emergency response team she just spent a lot of money to find will set off later today.

The "Emergency Team" is a mercenary group under the name of other intermediaries, and they are also aces. Their status is like that of the Nike Group in Lucy's place. Long before the mission began, Lucy approached the team and asked them to be on standby in case of emergencies. She had already spent a lot of money for this period of waiting. Looking back now, I'm glad I spent the money.

"No, if the operation is not successful, there is no such thing as 'lucky you spent money.'" Lucy did not dare to let herself relax for a moment. She immediately arranged for her staff to remedy the failed operation and paved the way for the emergency team's action.

A lot of money was spent, but the "result" was still on the way, and everything that happened to Lucy was unknown to Zhuang Xuteng. He was still hiding in the corner of the computer room, practicing spells and trying to create ghosts. At the same time, he asked the shadow to pick up the meat, tear it into thin strips, and put a little into his mouth every once in a while.

Concentration and distraction have their own advantages and disadvantages in different situations. There is no saying that if you practice one, you don't need to practice the other. In the past few days, Zhuang Xuteng had been practicing creating ghosts with concentration, and he had already experienced the hardships before success. He believed that in the next few days, at least in the computer room, no matter how focused he was, he would not be able to create ghosts in time. It is better to calm down and advance the two states simultaneously, which can at least balance the training progress.

He did not expect that his low desire state was actually in line with the mentality of a necromancer, especially the thoughts of "making ghosts just to save trouble" and "there is no need to care about the survival of ghosts", so he accelerated his practice. .

Tear the butcher shop into thin shreds and feed it to himself at regular intervals - Zhuang Xuteng's shadow has been able to complete this level of autonomous tasks. He also tried to issue more complex orders, but the shadow was completely unmoved. From a design perspective, this response is actually quite good. It means that commands that are not understood will not be executed, and commands that can be executed must be understood.

According to the Lich Master, regardless of ghosts, shadows or other created wraiths, their intelligence is both limited by the creator's own intelligence and spell skills. As far as Zhuang Xuteng's personal situation is concerned, the limitations are all on magic skills, that is, whether he can create shadows more skillfully and skillfully. The skill lies in practice, so Zhuang Xuteng believes that once he can create ghosts, Yingying's intelligence will reach a new level.

Another strand of meat slipped through the middle of his lips, and Zhuang Xuteng chewed it slowly. The two large bags of snacks stolen from the office were both high in oil, protein and high in calories, which could quickly suppress hunger in the abdomen and thus allow Zhuang Xuteng to last for several more days. This time, he did not plan to eat slowly and save food for a long time. Instead, he first made himself full and then performed restorative training for his body. The mission has been delayed for such a long time, and it cannot be delayed indefinitely. Since action is expected soon, it is necessary to restore the best combat status.

Besides, you can still steal again after eating!

The people from Aote Company discovered that the snacks in the conference room were gone, but they were snacks, not important documents, and they were not valuable. If you have to trace it and find out that it was taken by a colleague, it will not look good on you. The easiest solution is to buy some new ones and change the locks on the cabinets.

The result was: no one went to look for these two packs of snacks, and no one came to push the door of the computer room, and the matter just passed. Zhuang Xuteng was not afraid of them checking the surveillance unless they believed that someone could enter the corridor from the stairwell 20 meters away, open the conference room, enter the conference room, open the cabinet door, take away the snacks, and close the cabinet door in three seconds. , leave the conference room, close the conference room door, and finally leave through the more than 20-meter-long corridor...

"This can't be done." Zhuang Xuteng ate the meat, quite satisfied with the effect of his actions, and also quite satisfied with Youying. At the same time, inspired by the shadow covering the lens, he also thought of a way to use it, which is to completely cover himself with the shadow. If he is hiding in the shadow at the same time, he can use the light-absorbing properties of the shadow to completely blend himself with the shadow. Since the shadow can imitate the intensity of the shadow, this kind of integration is difficult to detect, which is equivalent to Zhuang Xuteng becoming an expanded shadow from a visual perspective.

So in dark places, he can combine with the shadow to achieve invisibility.

Shadow is really good, but Zhuang Xuteng believes that Phantom would be better. As mentioned above, in terms of cultivation, Zhuang Xuteng felt good. He also took advantage of the period when he was well fed and mentally healthy to seize the feeling and train in time. Unfortunately, he was still not before the "shock echo" Create usable ghosts.

Lucy finally called Zhuang Xuteng. This was already the tenth day of hiding. He was patient and kept quiet, but Lucy didn't contact him, more out of guilt. "Are you in good condition?" Lucy's voice trembled rarely. She can deal with anger well, but the same skills cannot deal with guilt. "How's your physical strength? Can you evacuate?"

"Evacuate? The mission has been cancelled?" Zhuang Xuteng asked.

"If you are not in good condition, then cancel it temporarily. You come out first, and after you recover, we will still have a chance."

Zhuang Xuteng understood and said, "I'm fine. I can proceed as planned. The key is that the other teams..."

"The three groups have completed preparations and can start activating the concussive echo at any time." Lucy said: "Don't force it..."

"Come on, I'm really good. I'm not trying to show off, I'm just a little tired of the monotonous environment here."

"Okay, let's start."

It doesn’t mean it starts at the beginning. The four locations must first carry out joint communication debugging and make technical preparations to deal with network fluctuations. Zhuang Xuteng didn't understand how these technologies were implemented. What he had to do was quite simple: control Brother Pingtou and execute the preset program already placed in the chip.

Put on the zombie headband and activate the "zombie" mode. Brother Pingtou's device status interface will overlap with Zhuang Xuteng's field of vision. At this time, Zhuang Xuteng turned the shadow into a black curtain in front of him, and he could only see the device interface, and the clarity was at least two levels higher. Next, Zhuang Xuteng started the program according to the previous plan. Everything was normal at first, but suddenly various error messages began to pop up. He could neither understand nor deal with it, so he immediately called Nightingale and asked her to take over.

"No problem, leave it to me. It should be a time stamp issue. It has been delayed for too long and has exceeded the original calculation cycle. It needs to be restarted..." Nightingale thought for a while and said, "I won't talk nonsense. You can also exit. This saves computing resources.”

Okay, it seems like I won’t be needed anymore, and I can just prepare for the evacuation. Zhuang Xuteng turned back to the cooling fan room next door and unscrewed the fixing bolts of the pipe. Afterwards, he began to tidy up the two houses, erasing traces of his life, and using special spray to eliminate his biological signatures such as smell. During these ten days, he has been wearing gloves and a mask, and he is not worried about leaving fingerprints and saliva. In addition, use Wraith Jelly to carefully search for fallen hair, and then use Wraith Tentacles to flatten the dust as a whole to eliminate footprints. At least with the amount he carried on this mission, it was impossible to do better.

Next, Zhuang Xuteng waited for Nightingale to complete the procedure. Four locations, four groups of people, the network, power supply, programs, and databases all operate under their control, working together to create a specific state. In addition, they take into account the habits of the personnel in the Aote Company's emergency response team, and the status plus the habitual operations of these people can create an "echo". The combination of the echo and the "shock" from the outside world will create loopholes in the resident identity authentication and data storage systems that can be exploited by outsiders.

The concussive echo is a stage for professional and technical personnel to perform. Zhuang Xuteng can't even understand the excitement. He does the best in his field and trusts his teammates for the rest. At this time, he didn't know that a group of people had been replaced by the emergency team called by Lucy, but it didn't matter who did it, what mattered was the result.

About half an hour later, the concussion echo was successfully generated, and Aote Company's emergency response system responded immediately. The last time the pin insertion plan failed here, it was because Aote Company did not choose the most commonly used and safest response measures among dozens of response options, but directly chose a rare, seemingly risky, and extremely low-ranking solution. Regarding this point, in the end no one knows whether it was luck, a mole who betrayed the information, or whether Ultra Company really has such strong technical capabilities.

For Ott Company, the experience of the last successful defense must have been retained. Personnel will be forgotten and replaced, but the system will definitely remember it. Therefore, after the shock echo was generated, the emergency system still recommended the "most correct" response method. This coping method was successful ten years ago, but ten years later, it was within Lucy's expectations.

The reason why the "New Pin Plan" is "new" is that improvements have been made in this step and the following steps, taking into account all the responses of Auto Company. Lucy has more intelligence officers than before, and her information technology has also been greatly improved, so she can prepare countermeasures for every "correct" operation of Ultra Company.

Counter once, counter twice, no need to counter the third time. Ultra Company's defense system was successfully led into a self-contradictory dead end by the shock echo. It was incapacitated for about five seconds, causing all defenses to appear to be there, but in fact they were ineffective.

Five seconds is enough time for someone who is prepared in advance to do a lot of things. A needle belonging to Lucy is inserted into the brain of the resident identity system at this time, and then hidden in a complex network of nerves and blood vessels, becoming part of this system. Five seconds later, the defense system slowly recovered, re-checked itself, and applied for manual intervention. At this time, the shock echo has ended, and the "Final Needle" follows the footsteps of the defense system, forming its own control network by gathering the previously buried needles, and at the same time, it is perfectly integrated into the real system.

"Completed, safe evacuation begins."

The four groups of personnel began to evacuate at the same time. Everyone knew that this was a critical step for them. Zhuang Xuteng felt briefly excited at the thought of leaving this boring place, but it only lasted five seconds. He quickly regained his composure as a mercenary and began to put away the flat-head brother in an orderly manner. He checked the scene one last time and compared it with his memory when he arrived to ensure that there were no mistakes.