Chapter 210: Spider Murphy's Concerns
Outside the Abandoned Town, the war between Arasaka and Militech continued.
The sounds of gunfire and the vibrations of explosions came from beyond the quarantine wall, but after being weakened by the composite soundproofing layers and active sonic cancellation fields installed around the manufactorum, they were faint by the time they reached the interior.
The flashes of artillery fire occasionally illuminated the rusted metal walls at the edge of the town, but they could not penetrate the heavy defensive structure of the manufactorum.
This line of defense, composed of physical barriers and energy fields, effectively isolated the fires of war from the outside world.
Inside the town, especially within the central manufactorum and the data network under its jurisdiction, stable operations continued unaffected.
Deep within this local network controlled by Joric, in a separately partitioned data space, Spider Murphy's form of existence was undergoing subtle changes.
She had initially viewed this place as an exquisite and sturdy cage—a compromise she had to accept in exchange for the truth about Rache Bartmoss.
But soon, she realized the extraordinary nature of this place.
The stability and purity of this data space far exceeded any environment she had experienced while wandering the ruins of the Old Net or the peripheries of the Blackwall.
There was no chaotic data turbulence, no prying eyes from other rogue AIs that required constant vigilance, and none of the omnipresent oppressive feeling of the Blackwall AIs.
Everything here operated according to a concise, efficient underlying logic, in perfect order.
What shocked her even more was the computing power support.
When she began executing the task assigned by Joric—mentoring the three female netrunners—she attempted to mobilize resources for simulation drills and code compilation.
With a mere thought, near-infinite computing power responded. The speed of response and the smoothness of resource allocation gave her the illusion of being "omnipotent."
She could easily simulate the complete environment of any subnet in Night City, run dozens of complex breach protocols simultaneously without feeling any latency, and even allocate a portion of her threads to brute-force crack an encryption protocol while her main consciousness remained unaffected.
This was support that no server cluster in this era could provide.
She had secretly tried to probe the boundaries of this data space, attempting to understand its limits.
However, no matter the form or frequency of her probe commands, the feedback was like a stone sinking into the sea—or rather, like injecting a drop of water into an ocean. She could feel the vastness of the ocean, but could never touch its shores.
It seemed that what this space provided her was merely a negligible fraction of its overall resources. Yet, even this fraction far exceeded the total power she could mobilize at her peak as a legendary netrunner or a powerful rogue AI.
This realization elevated her internal assessment of Joric once again.
This existence, who called himself a "Passerby" and "Researcher," possessed technological depth that was unfathomable.
He could restore remains from half a century ago, easily breach Arasaka's Mikoshi, manipulate the Blackwall as if it were an extension of his arm, and construct a data space that transcended the understanding of the era.
Compared to him, Saburo Arasaka's pursuit of digital immortality, Militech's vaunted military tech, and even the many legendary netrunners and rogue AIs including herself, seemed like frogs in a well.
After receiving Joric's clear directive to guide Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi, Spider Murphy displayed unusual seriousness and focus.
This dedication didn't stem solely from the constraints of forced allegiance. It was interwoven with an indescribable awe for a controller of higher-level knowledge and technology, as well as a hope that outstanding performance might earn her more clues about Rache.
Her teaching style was direct and efficient, discarding the flashy tricks and overly personalized habits of the Old Net era, focusing instead on basic logic optimization and efficiency improvement.
Regarding Sasha and Kiwi, although their electronic warfare cyberware—modified by Joric—was top-tier in terms of hardware, there was still significant room for improvement in software adaptation and operational mindset.
Murphy pointed out their weakness keenly: over-reliance on ready-made Daemons and a lack of deep customization ability.
"Blindly using other people's weapons will never make you a top hunter." She strictly required them to deeply understand the underlying code of every Daemon, master its core principles, and learn to adjust and optimize based on real-time feedback from specific target systems. She even made them hand-code exclusive intrusion tools that were unique, more targeted, and stealthier.
Furthermore, she taught them how to allocate neural bandwidth more efficiently. While keeping multiple intrusion channels open, they had to reserve a portion of computing power for risk warning and self-defense, avoiding the trap of becoming completely passive once an intrusion was thwarted—a common mistake among reckless netrunners.
For Lucy, Murphy saw a different kind of potential.
Lucy's technical foundation leaned more towards a rigorous traditional path, but her extensive experience operating near the Blackwall gave her an unusually sharp intuition for data risks.
Murphy didn't force a change in her style but guided her to transform this vague intuition into a more systematic risk assessment model.
"Feelings might deceive you, but data won't." She guided Lucy to build dynamic threat perception algorithms, learning to predict the types of defenses she might encounter before initiating a breach and preparing corresponding counter-protocols in advance.
At the same time, Murphy began teaching Lucy advanced techniques from the Old Net era regarding the digitization of consciousness and how to effectively hide and camouflage oneself on the data level—knowledge that Lucy would have found hard to access within Maine's squad.
Initially, facing this "Spider Murphy" whom they had only heard of in legends, Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi maintained an instinctive vigilance and a hint of distance.
However, this barrier melted rapidly once Murphy began substantive instruction.
She didn't posture as a high-and-mighty legend but acted like an experienced, strict coach, pointing directly at the core defects and blind spots in their technical systems.
Under Murphy's systematic tuning, their progress was concrete and visible.
Sasha found her speed in writing breach protocols increased by nearly thirty percent, and her code structure became cleaner and more efficient, like a precision-milled blade.
Kiwi learned how to construct more deceptive collaborative breach protocols. Her coordination with Sasha was no longer a simple division of labor but formed exquisite tactical interweaving at the data level.
Lucy's gains were particularly significant.
The "intuition" she relied on from experience was reinterpreted and reinforced by Murphy using a rigorous algorithmic model.
She could now simulate several possible defense patterns through data before launching an attack and preload the corresponding counter-Daemons.
This "Predict-Prepare" capability drastically reduced risks and uncertainty during intrusions.
The data space provided by Joric, with its near-infinite computing power support, was the key catalyst for their rapid improvement.
Here, they could run dangerous code that might instantly fry ordinary interfaces in reality without scruples. They could repeatedly attempt penetration and defense under extreme conditions without worrying about irreversible neural damage or triggering real-world tracking.
High-intensity, high-risk drills in this safe environment were a luxury that no network access point in the outside world could replicate, allowing their combat capabilities to achieve a qualitative leap in a short time.
(End of Chapter)