From Hogwarts to Sturhaven

He quickly regained control of the silver hand, opened the core panel on his chest, and pressed several buttons rapidly.

At the same time, Lucy also unfolded the mechanical wings on her back, completely maintaining a dazed state.

A massive amount of data surged from Silver Hand and Lucy's bodies, filling the entire microcircuit workshop like a tidal wave. Then, these scarlet 0s and 1s began to compress continuously, constructing their own bodies from the most basic pixels.

The Oracle's drive core emitted a glow that prevented dimensional teleportation, but it did not interrupt communication between the two worlds. Utilizing the bandwidth of interdimensional communication, Ivy teleported over his new project, which he had been researching in cyberspace for a long time.

Digimon, make your grand entrance.

Chapter 951 Beast

The chaotic pixels were given new order and color. Eight black spider legs, like spears, scraped through the blue copper floor inside the spaceship, leaving metallic scratches. Horrifying scarlet eyes were evenly distributed around the narrow head, and sharp bristles bulged from the body, like a layer of natural armor.

The fangs gleamed coldly, and the venom dripping from the hollow fang tubes reacted rapidly with the metal floor, creating countless bubbles. The oval abdomen was densely covered with dark brown hairs, and both the front and back of the carapace were glossy black. Most striking was a scarlet hourglass-shaped horizontal stripe occupying a prominent position in the center of this terrifying spider's body.

If you only look at the lower half of this gigantic monster, which is transformed from pixels, you might mistake it for a mindless and evil monster. However, if you look at it as a whole, you won't think that way. This is because this giant spider monster also has a female human half that grows out from behind the spider's head.

She had black hair, looked thin and dangerous, and wore closed metal goggles on her face, making it difficult to tell where she was looking. Her thin lips were only painted with lipstick on the lower half, and it was a gloomy metallic black.

This is the intelligent Digimon, LadySpidermon, created by Ivy in cyberspace using the personality data of Spider Murphy.

The other Digimon that appeared alongside her displayed a completely different form. Overall, it was a giant dog with mane resembling hellfire wrapped around its entire body. The giant dog had three heads, not unlike Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the underworld in legend. However, apart from the six eyes on the three dog heads, this giant Digimon was covered with eerie eyes all over its body, as if countless bloodthirsty creatures were lurking beneath its mane, ready to pounce.

"Holy crap..." Johnny Silver Hand regained control of his body, scratching his head as he marveled at the two magical beasts that had flown out of his chest, "These new companions are fucking creepy! I thought we were good guys..."

"Can Johnny, who detonated a nuclear bomb at Arasaka Tower, be considered a good person? Or do you think that as long as you oppose the company, all your sins can be wiped clean?" The Spider-Woman moved her eight sharp legs, turning her humanoid upper body towards Silver Hand, and uttered many sarcastic and mocking words.

"I'll probably never forget that voice... Spider? Murphy? Is that you?" Johnny Silverhand recognized his comrade-in-arms from the Arasaka Tower with just one sentence, too astonished to refute the false claims about his great deeds. "You're not dead? No... you're dead too? How did you end up like this?"

“From a human perspective, I am, of course, dead. After poor Johnny Boy was smashed in two by a hammer and Arasaka Tower was destroyed by thermonuclear explosives, I found Saburo’s good son, Arasaka Kei, and had him use the Soul Killer on himself as well. Later, I took Saburo’s good son and escaped into the depths of cyberspace. Until recently, Arasaka Kei was my favorite collectible.” Spider Murphy uploaded his personality data to cyberspace via the Soul Killer after the Arasaka Tower nuclear explosion in 2023, making him one of the first hackers to escape into cyberspace.

There, she received help from Ultraman Cunningham, who had been freed from the Arakawa Shrine, and became a carefree managing AI in the ghost town of Hong Kong.

“You’ve got some serious skills, Spider.” Silver Hand sighed upon learning of his old friend’s plight. “What’s wrong with you now? You don’t look very human…”

"Besides Spider-Murphy, you can also call me Spider-Woman." Half-human, half-spider Murphy maneuvered her massive body around the deck, then spread her arms wide and took a deep breath, as if savoring the joy of rebirth. "Lord Doom used his magic and divine power to reshape us, these wandering AIs, elevating us from mere data into digital cores, while simultaneously granting us the ability to freely traverse between cyberspace and the material world. This form is what every hacker dreams of; I feel an unprecedented freedom!"

“Well, that’s definitely in the style of you crazy hackers…” Silverhand turned his gaze to the Cerberus with its countless open eyes. “Uh… is your partner… also a hacker? Do I know him?”

“Of course, Johnny Boy, but he and you weren’t on good terms when he was alive.” Spider-Murphy was talkative, yet also eccentric. “Guess who he is?”

"A hacker who doesn't get along with me but gets along with you very well... I can only think of one person... Bartmos? Is that you, old buddy?" Silverhand asked tentatively.

The three-headed dog responded with a threatening growl and bared teeth.

“Okay, it seems not…” Silver Hand raised his hands in front of his chest and carefully took half a step back.

"Stand up, Johnny?" V stood behind Silverhand, chuckling and egging him on. "What's that saying again: Johnny Silverhand was a legend in life, and his friends will never forget him..."

“But his reputation isn’t always effective…” Silverhand stared intently at the three heads of the three-headed dog, fearing that it might suddenly launch an attack.

The three-headed dog's growl suddenly intensified, and it took a step forward, poised to pounce.

Johnny Silver Hand let out a scream and scurried behind V's butt.

“Alright, alright, good dog.” Spider Murphy seemed quite satisfied with Silverhand’s reaction, reaching out to scratch the three-headed dog’s three furry chins. “This is indeed Bartelmos, but he’s not just Bartelmos. After Arasaka’s special forces team cut off the power to his life support pod, he began making his own arrangements in cyberspace. His personality data was uploaded in batches, and now it’s completely integrated with the RABIDs virus he used to destroy the old network… You can call him Hellhound.”

“Wow, that’s so cool… Johnny Silverhand, Spider-Murphy, and Lucky Bartmos. Legends of the past are crawling out of their graves one by one. Nobody would believe it if you told them.” V clapped his hands insincerely, then turned around and mocked Silverhand, “Johnny, you were yelling like a little girl. Is it really that scary? It’s just a dog with three heads and a bunch of eyes.”

"I'm not a dog!" the Hellhound roared back. "You'd better show some respect, little girl. Lord Doom had a reason for sending us here from cyberspace."

"I'm glad to see you two catching up, but we're on a mission now, so let's focus on this spaceship." Ivy didn't give Johnny a chance to retort, taking over his body again. "The situation is simple. The AI ​​on this ship seems to have gained superhuman power through thousands of years of iterating and optimizing its code. Now it's seeking to bring the minds of all intelligent life under its control and eliminate all free will. I need you two to follow the wires here, find the switch on the other side of the teleporter, turn it on, and let the others through, delivering a surgical strike to the self-proclaimed God of Steel, Guiyi."

Although the Oracle's anti-teleportation aura prevented all teleportation methods, for Digimon capable of transforming themselves into data entities, their movement through wires was more akin to transmitting communication signals than spatial teleportation. This was one of the reasons why Ivy was able to send them from distant Earth.

Furthermore, both Lady Spidermon and Hellhoundmon were once top hackers who dominated Night City, and these liberals would not easily submit to the Unified Mindset like the other mechanical beings on the spaceship.

Rather, Ivy was really looking forward to seeing these hackers, who were determined to fight against the company's tyranny, put on a good show with the hegemonic AI from another world.

Under Ivy's orders, Lucy quickly exchanged information with the two veteran hackers, sharing the logical framework and vulnerabilities of the Oracle's internal computer system, and discussing various solutions for repairing the teleporter.

The Oracle spaceship was never something a single individual could operate; it required a large crew to run all of its systems. Even with the assistance of a super AI, many functions still had to be handled by humans. While Guiyi has replaced them with various types of automated robots, many of the amenities left behind by the Oracle's crew remain functional. These include the synthetic food that provided nutrition for the Tech Alliance's advance team and the teleporters that facilitated the movement of senior engineers from the computer core to the secondary engineering deck.

€€€€€€€€

To overthrow a country or a system, overt violence is essential, but covert collusion is equally important.

Thor Norman, the chieftain of the Ghost Wolf tribe, who had a long dream due to poisoning by Numeria's liquid, is actively applying what he learned from the dream to reality.

For her, everything in the dream was vivid in her mind, and it was no different from living it all over again.

In the dream, the oppressive force of the ordinary people of Night City is the various monopolistic corporations that have formed a technological alliance. In reality, in addition to the oppression of the technological alliance, the inaction of Black King Ecovacs is equally important in causing the chaos in Newmelia.

Sol Norman is no longer content with leading the Kelide people to attack members of the Tech Alliance throughout Falling Star City; she is plotting to kill the Black Lord and ignite the fury of all of Newmelia.

No matter how incompetent Kovacs is, he is still the ruler of Numelia, and the Kelids, who respect the strong, won't ignore him. As long as Kovacs remains in that chair belonging to the Black King, at least half of the Kelids will remain indifferent to the situation.

But once Kovacs is overthrown, all the Kelids of Newmelia will rise up and usher in another era of warlordism.

Thor Normanger not only intends to overthrow Kovacs, but she also wants to ascend to the throne of the Black King, commanding all the Kelids of Newmelia to completely annihilate the Tech Alliance and their evil robots.

In the dimly lit room, flickering candlelight, an old, toothless shaman was using vibrant pigments to paint battle patterns on the bare-chested Sol Normang.

Besides their ancestors, the Kelids also revere spirits with great power.

Whether it's an earthquake or a wildfire, those natural disasters that leave behind countless ruins are all considered by the Kelids to be the wrath of some spirit.

This anger is dangerous and terrifying, and it also possesses the power to destroy everything. Thor Normanger needs this power now.

The shaman's hand resembled a withered twig, its dry, cracked skin wrinkled with unsightly lines. At this moment, it was applying red mud-like pigment mixed with blood to the chest of Sol-Normang, like a mural left on the cave wall by the ancient Kelid ancestors.

The design depicts a terrifying behemoth with its scythes and tail spikes raised high, seemingly about to unleash its boundless fury upon its enemy.

From Thor Norman's perspective, the behemoth on its chest looked more like a scorpion, similar to the destroyers she had led her tribe to hunt in the wasteland, except that all the metal plates had been replaced with grotesque chitinous carapaces.

Besides that, the most eye-catching feature is the enormous mouth of the scorpion-shaped beast, which is emitting a silent roar and occupies almost two-thirds of the entire pattern.

"You must never call upon the name of [the deity], otherwise the wrath that descends from [the deity] will destroy this city, this country, and all of us..." The old shaman muttered to her as he smeared his fingers on Thor Normang's chest, giving her a long list of precautions. Linking totems and spirits was extremely dangerous; even the totems of wild beasts could drive skilled warriors mad, let alone the ancient spirit of destruction on Thor Normang's chest.

“Of course I won’t call out your name. You didn’t even tell me your name, old shaman.” Thor Norman watched the shaman finish the last stroke and smiled reassuringly.

The old shaman, having finished his work, paused, his body hunched over with worry.

“Don’t worry, old shaman.” Thor Norman patted the old shaman’s shoulder. “I will personally take back Nymeria from those bastards of the Tech Alliance and build a nation that truly belongs to the Kelids. That is my promise.”

"I hope so..." the old shaman muttered, and left with a worried expression.

Thor Normange exhaled a breath of stale air. Long before the old shaman finished the last stroke of the totem, she had already felt the power of the ancient spirit flowing through her body.

She seemed to have a new connection with the earth beneath her feet, able to sense the earth's restlessness and oppression, as if a stomp of her foot could crack the ground and cause mountains to collapse.

Thor Norman knew perfectly well what had happened: a metallic meteorite had corrupted the land of Numelia, filling it with unclean metallic artifacts. Merely destroying the Technological Alliance wouldn't liberate the Kelids; she must, after ascending to the throne as the Black Queen, cleanse the land of all external pollution. Only then could the raging spirits of the earth return to peace, and the free-spirited, ancient Kelids unite.

Thor Normang donned his cloak, picked up his weapon, and with a thunderous thud, headed toward the Starfall Palace atop the hill.

She will kill Ecovacs there, unite all the Kelideans, and utterly destroy the Tech Alliance.

Chapter 952 Divine Oracle Drive

The infiltration plan of the two virus-type Digimon was a great success.

Perhaps preoccupied with building its own domain, or perhaps focused on executing its grand plan, the Oracle's super AI, Guiyi, neglected to monitor all data transmissions within the computer system. Not only were there no self-checks in the program, but there weren't even any alarms.

Spider Murphy and Lucky Bartmos, disguised as Digimon, successfully reached the computer core via the high-speed communication link inside the Oracle spaceship, without encountering any obstacles in the process.

Two Digimon appeared in a narrow corridor with only basic lighting. Through the blue copper walls of the corridor, the faint hum of machinery could be heard from the other side.

The spider-woman spewed out a long string of silk threads shimmering with the glow of a scarlet data virus from her silk sac. With her eight nimble legs and human-like hands, she wove them into an invasion program that materialized in the material world. The invasion program was then folded multiple times under the manipulation of her hands until it became a card about half the size of a palm.

Crimson pixels flickered across the card, looking quite different from the various colored passes used within Mt. Silver. But the Spider-Woman holding the intrusion pass actually managed to stuff it into the teleporter's control panel.

The surging electric current surged wildly across the outer wall of the cylindrical container used to hold the object being transported, and crackling sparks exploded from all parts of this instrument that had not been used for thousands of years. Even the panel of the transmitter emitted an ominous plume of black smoke.

However, after everything calmed down, the transmitter in the corridor behind the computer core resumed normal operation.

"The control panel interface is broken..." The Spider-Woman looked down at the control panel where the intrusion pass had just been inserted. The LCD screen was completely scrambled, the touch response was no longer working, and nothing could be displayed except for the random colored bars.

"Why don't you just use your programming skills to make a simple interactive interface?" Even though the three heads of the Hellhound were all facing another door at the end of the corridor, the eyes all over its body still caught everything that was happening behind it.

"Of course I can do that. What I'm most satisfied with about this new body is its outstanding programming ability. It can run programs by hand with the efficiency of dual cores and ten threads! It's simply the perfect body that hackers dream of!" The spider-woman happily pulled out another clump of data from her private pouch and, with the help of her eight spider legs and two human hands, quickly created a holographic interactive interface.

Compared to everything on the Oracle spaceship, the red and black holographic interface was rudimentary, with only function option icons and a flashing candidate prompt cursor, much like the DOS system interface when personal computers were first invented.

The spider-woman pulled out several data threads from the holographic interface and connected them to the already broken teleporter control panel. With the data transfer, the black and red holographic interface immediately started working.

However, before LadySpidermon could even reach out to respond to the teleportation request from the Level 2 Engineering Deck, the smoking control panel erupted with an exaggerated surge of electricity, destroying not only the newly numbered interactive interface LadySpidermon had just created, but also leaving charred marks on the entire corridor covered in blue copper.

The spider-woman, caught in the surge of electricity, let out a scream. Both her spider tentacles and human arms bore varying degrees of electric burn marks.

"You activated the teleporter? How did you strange creatures manage to infiltrate this place?"

"It doesn't matter. No matter what you spoilsports are planning to do, you can't threaten the grand plan of unification."

"What you've done is just to make me laugh."

"Come, you poor creatures, I will be waiting for you in the heart of God."

“Please come to me, and I may lead you inside…”

The Hellhound Beast, with its countless eyes watching everything around it, discovered the source of Guiyi's voice and immediately unleashed a shockwave from its mouth, destroying the camera that had just been exposed in the corner of the corridor.

Guiyi had indeed neglected to monitor the data links within the spaceship, because he had never imagined that someone would use the Oracle's control channels to attack him. However, once the teleporter connecting the second-level engineering deck and the computer core was established, Guiyi immediately sensed it.

That's because the aura responsible for suppressing the teleportation effect emanated from the Oracle spaceship's energy core—its wormhole engine, the miraculous technological component that inspired the ship's name—the Oracle Drive. As teleportation is permitted by the Oracle Drive, all teleporters on the spaceship are recorded. Therefore, when LadySpidermon successfully activated the teleporter, the Oracle Drive's log immediately and faithfully recorded this information. And it was because of this log that Guiyi discovered the two Digimon that had secretly infiltrated the computer core's teleportation corridor.