The inn’s windows were obscured by thick, heavy curtains.
A bright desk lamp illuminated a laptop in the room, while the morning sun seeped through the fabric to cast a dim, dusk-like glow.
Shiratori wasn’t sleeping, nor had she pulled an all-nighter playing video games; she simply wanted to sever any possible prying eyes from the outside world.
She had just detected two extremely well-concealed cameras inside the room—one hidden in the eyeball of a doll, and the other mounted on the bathroom ceiling.
Even though they were currently powered off, in Shiratori’s eyes, their signals blinked as obviously as fireflies in the night.
This made it impossible for her to drop her guard.
Tracing the signal routes, she hacked into the inn’s main computer, only allowing herself a slight breath of relief after thoroughly combing through all of its files.
The contents of the inn’s computer were better left unsaid.
The sheer vulgarity of it instantly dispelled any suspicion she had that the owner might be AST personnel.
Yet, a profound sense of unease still gripped her heart.
The fundamental nature of a bird placed absolute priority on safety, and Shiratori was no exception.
Even if this inn posed zero real threat to her, her vigilance would not decrease in the slightest.
Furthermore, she had experienced a bizarre dream last night.
That phantom had manifested before her, emphasizing love, repeatedly whispering, “Stay.
You need him.
He will give you answers.
He will embrace you.” In the end, the phantom had even wrapped her in a hug.
That sensation…
even though it was only a dream, it felt so visceral that it left her body tingling.
This continuous string of events kept her mind pulled taut like a bowstring.
“…”
Without making a sound, Shiratori tapped against the keyboard with a hint of agitation.
As her eyes tracked the scrolling text, her mind sorted through the fragmented pieces of information.
She was currently compiling specific data on this place called “Tengu City”.
The inn’s hidden cameras had triggered a massive sense of crisis, making it imperative that she firmly engrave the details of this city into her mind.
Only then would she be able to close her eyes and actually sleep.
The mouse clicked intermittently as countless windows popped up across the desktop—all of them displaying error messages.
It seemed that relying on a high-end commercial laptop to breach the city’s system was still too tall an order; its computing power was severely lacking.
Perhaps feeling a surge of displeasure, she immediately manifested her Astral Dress over her left arm, sliding open a hidden compartment at her wrist to reveal a data port inside.
Pulling a data cable from her bag, she linked the computer to the interface on her wrist.
The instant the connection was established, Shiratori’s Angel seized control of the impossibly massive influx of data, silently bypassing the firewall and diving straight into the core sector.
Human operating systems were hopelessly fragile before a Spirit.
With a mere ten percent of her computing power, the city’s entire network architecture crumbled, laying its most classified core contents completely bare before her eyes.
Having seized administrator privileges, the secrets of this city were now entirely at her mercy.
The passcodes to bank vaults, the scandalous double lives of television stars, and even backroom stock manipulations—all of it had nowhere to hide from her Angel.
Unfortunately, none of this was what she was looking for.
With zero interest, Shiratori sighed and closed the files. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
These things held absolutely no temptation for a Spirit; they were as dull and meaningless as pebbles on the side of a road.
What she needed was a detailed background on one specific person.
The inn owner’s identity had already been verified as nothing more than a perverted old man.
So, who was the person she truly needed to investigate?
“Shido Itsuka…”
Muttering to herself, Shiratori located exactly what she had been searching for— Shido Itsuka’s identity profile.
It wasn’t that she wanted to dig up his dark past, nor was she prepping for some kind of blind date.
It was because her internal alarms were ringing.
The only person she had engaged in frequent contact with yesterday was this boy.
Just to be safe and to eliminate all uncertain variables, it was highly necessary to verify this boy who had approached her with unknown intentions, even if she herself had initially assumed his clumsiness was a genuine accident.
But the human heart was something she still could not comprehend.
She couldn’t accurately judge which of his expressions or emotions were faked.
It was precisely because of this uncertainty that she had gone through the immense trouble of hijacking the city’s system.
Hovering the mouse over the file, she double-clicked.
“…?!”
Shiratori’s eyes suddenly widened at the prompt that flashed onto the screen.
“Access Denied…”
Yes.
Shiratori, who currently possessed the highest system authority in the entire city, was actually being denied access to the profile of an ordinary high school student.
Not only that, but Shido Itsuka’s file was swiftly rerouted through a hidden directory and moved to another folder, making it look as though it had been automatically deleted.
Although a trick like this was useless against her, the sophisticated concealment of its programming was enough to fool the vast majority of computer prodigies in the world.
The identity of this Shido Itsuka was indeed far from simple.
It seemed her paranoia had paid off once again.
After calibrating the program, Shiratori realized there were many duplicate files scattered about.
The intention was clearly to disorient intruders, making it impossible for them to determine which file belonged to their actual target.
Regardless, the individual or organization that had planted this protocol undeniably possessed top-tier administrator privileges.
They might have hacked in undetected, or perhaps physically installed the program during some field trip to a server room.
But whichever possibility it was, it had thoroughly captured her attention.
She opted against probing further, as this protocol was installed locally within the servers rather than executing remote commands.
Yet, no matter how beautifully the opponent had crafted their defenses, they were still fundamentally a step behind an electronic warfare Spirit.
Shiratori isolated the program’s source code, then breached the wireless network.
Since the code was written by a human, their terminal had to connect to a network to save and implement it.
Therefore, by cross-referencing all terminals that had connected to the wireless grid, she could absolutely pinpoint where the code was originally authored. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
The moment the calibration initiated, data as colossal as a torrential tsunami surged toward her Angel through the interface on her wrist.
This was the collective data of global network traffic, but to her, it was little more than a light drizzle.
She effortlessly absorbed an output that would have instantaneously fried a normal CPU into molten slag.
Once the data entered her Angel, the rest was child’s play.
She tracked down the source code’s author logs in a flash.
“This is…?”
Slightly surprised, Shiratori summoned her Angel fully, projecting the code’s telemetry onto her virtual screen.
“The mainframe of Ratatoskr.”
“Interesting.
Let my Angel hunt down your physical address first, and then I will completely dissect you.”
Expressionless, Shiratori began mobilizing her Angel, preparing to track the opposing IP through the wireless network.
But—
A terrifying surge of Reiryoku violently severed her intrusion.
The immense physical force of it instantly annihilated the data cable linking her to the laptop.
Shiratori took a massive shockwave directly, her arm going completely numb as she staggered backward and collapsed onto the bed.
“What a naughty child.”
A blurred voice emanated from the static-filled laptop screen.
The voice was far too familiar; it was the exact same phantom that had haunted her dreams last night, only now its tone was laced with a hint of teasing.
She couldn’t even distinguish if the voice belonged to a man or a woman…
Enduring the stinging pain, Shiratori propped herself up, staring at the glitching phantom on the screen with a highly complex gaze.
“There are some things you shouldn’t know yet.
You cannot know them yet.
Even if you once crossed paths with the Second Spirit, she is no longer here.”
“So be a good child, you hear?”
“…”
Grinding her teeth with indecipherable intent, Shiratori watched wordlessly as the entity vanished from her display.
The laptop let out a violent, sizzling static noise as wisps of white smoke plumed from the keyboard, declaring its total destruction.
However, considering the intelligence she had gathered today, the sacrifice of the hardware was well worth it.
She now knew for a fact that there was something deeply suspicious about Shido Itsuka’s identity, or perhaps he was merely a smokescreen for the true VIP.
But regardless of which it was, and regardless of what “Ratatoskr’s” ultimate goal might be, her guard was now fully raised to its absolute peak.
However—
Pulling back the curtains, she looked up at the dark, oppressive clouds gathering in the sky above.
“It’s going to rain, it seems…”
Suddenly recalling that today’s weather forecast had explicitly predicted clear skies, Shiratori felt another distinct trace that something was terribly amiss.
Thanks for sticking around.
See you all in the Yoshino Arc coming up next!