Gunfire, Punk and Necromancer

Through highly penetrating narrow-band multi-purpose data signals, Meteor at the rear and Nightingale at the front successfully established a connection with Zhuang Xuteng behind enemy lines, and then followed Brother Flathead's probe and penetrated into the Aote Company's network. They searched for the hidden needles left here by the previous needle insertion operation, and then used them to obtain appropriate permissions in the information network to prepare for the "shock echo".

Zhuang Xuteng couldn't see the exciting battles taking place on the network. He could only see the lights on the network equipment flashing, and when checking Brother Pingtou's remaining power, he saw that the small green round light next to it representing signal transmission was always on. After closing the back cover of Brother Flathead, Zhuang Xuteng sat down at the door of the computer room. The reason why I chose this place is mainly because the crack in the door is right next to me. Through the crack in the door, the Wraith Jelly can penetrate into a wider area and bring him key environmental information.

The daily work pattern of any company that provides network maintenance services is the same: as long as nothing happens, you don’t need to do anything and you can be very leisurely. Within the range of Zhuang Xuteng's perception, he could touch the offices of "Work Group 6", "Work Group 7" and "External Station Group 1", plus bathrooms, a conference room and a stairwell. The daily activities of these people will be a live melodrama to pass the time when they are bored.

But how could Zhuang Xuteng be bored? He wanted to practice the Wraith Spirit spells, first train the Wraith Spirit Servant to proficiency, and then learn other spells. The so-called mastery of the servant of resentful spirits is marked by the creation of "ghosts" or "shadows". The former takes "death breath" as the core and is supported by "resentment (shadow side effects)"; the latter focuses on "dark concealment". Mainly deformation and penetration, it will not carry shadow energy, but is closer to the original necromancy.

But the biggest difference between them and "servants" is that they can stay away from Zhuang Xuteng's activities, and have acquired a certain amount of "intelligence" and "skills" to complete the tasks assigned by Zhuang Xuteng. For example, Zhuang Xuteng can create a ghost, let it carry a certain amount of resentment, and order it to "kill as many people as possible who have shadow slave equipment around them, starting with those with a greater energy response from the shadow slave."

At this time, the ghost needs to possess three skills: Eye of Shadow, dormant martial arts, and resentment storage array, plus a certain amount of "intelligence". Zhuang Xuteng needs to use these four things at once in the form of spell engraving when creating the ghost. Finish.

The method has been taught to him a long time ago, and the important joint tips are also explained clearly. If he wants to successfully create ghosts and shadows, what he currently lacks is "proficiency", and proficiency comes from enough practice. The Lich Master made it very clear: as long as the Wraith spell can create ghosts, it is equivalent to completing seven dodges of super-computing martial arts, and it will become very useful. No matter what necromancy spells you learn in the future, you can combine them with ghosts and shadows to inherit the flexibility, long-range, automatic and safe features of the necromantic spells.

There are many benefits and many difficulties, and there is no shortcut to "practice". You can only rely on patience and understanding to slowly accumulate progress. By practicing the Wraith Spirit Spell, Zhuang Xuteng began to understand the importance of "time" to the mage. No wonder the Lich Master said that many necromancers pursue immortality. In addition to personal pursuits such as ambition, the common reason is that practicing spells consumes too much time.

Mana rises and falls on both the physical and mental levels. It constantly penetrates and transforms the wraith, trying to turn it into "something better." After practicing for ten cycles, that is, an hour and a half, the nightingale's voice came from the communication channel: "The straw man, the preparations are completed, start waiting for the others."

"Understood, I'll wait for news here." Zhuang Xuteng said, "There is power here and the call will be kept."

"Keep."

Only Zhuang Xuteng needs to follow Anchorage's maintenance schedule, and the other three groups do not have such rigid timing requirements. Relatively speaking, Zhuang Xuteng's action was the most difficult. Now that he had completed his work, the other three groups could start taking action.

For better concealment, Zhuang Xuteng tried not to communicate with the rear, and Brother Pingtou's radio station also remained silent. According to the action plan, Nightingale needs to temporarily leave Ott Company and return after the other three groups are in place to assist in the operation of the shock echo.

She is just an assistant, in fact the main operator is Zhuang Xuteng. The synchronization program for creating concussive echoes is already on standby in Brother Pingtou. Zhuang Xuteng only needs to start it. Because remote operation requires Brother Pingtou's computing power and network bandwidth, Nightingale only needs to connect when Zhuang Xu has a problem or the program needs urgent fine-tuning.

It was enough for Zhuang Xuteng to be alone at the scene, so Zhuang Xuteng had to stay alone and pass the boring time by practicing spells so that he always had something to do. He strictly adheres to the minimum amount of fasting and strictly controls the amount of water he drinks every day in order to reduce the body's excretion.

One day, two days, and three days have passed. According to the original plan, the other three groups should be completed, right? On the fourth day, Zhuang Xuteng couldn't bear it anymore and was ready to break the silence and ask about the situation at the rear. As soon as he connected to the flat-headed brother, Lucy came to him first and gave him bad news: "We have encountered a problem and are solving it. We need you to stay on standby."

"Then I'll be on standby." What else could Zhuang Xuteng say? Could he quit? In order to reduce the amount of communication, he could not ask what specific problems occurred. He still behaves like a mercenary: take the money, do the work, and shut up.

Generally speaking, when a problem occurs, you must first eliminate the negative impact of the problem, which is equivalent to going back first, and going back and forth often requires twice the workload. Twice the amount of work means twice the time if productivity does not increase or only slightly increases. Zhuang Xuteng had been calculating the amount of supplies he carried with him. After a little calculation, he found that although it was possible to persist for another eight days, he must be quite weak at that time.

"It's best to get a supplement." Zhuang Xuteng began to think about how to proceed with this action.

In the corridor outside the door, not far away is the conference room. Ott's employees stored some snacks and drinks in the conference room cabinets in preparation for the meeting. It is nominally prepared for external staff who come to meetings, but in fact they will consume some when they hold meetings themselves. Several offices have their own cabinets, which are usually locked. That lock can only protect against good people, but it is of no use to Zhuang Xuteng.

The trouble is not the locks on the cabinets, but the surveillance in the hallways. Although Zhuang Xuteng has many ways to destroy surveillance, and he can also turn to Nightingale and ask her to try to intrude and crack, any abnormal data passing through the network may ruin the entire operation once it is discovered. Even the well-prepared predecessors did not dare to try to touch the monitoring system, and taking risks for a little food would be even worse than the gain.

Just because the surveillance couldn't be used didn't mean that Zhuang Xuteng had no other options. He doesn't take the high-tech route to begin with. In fact, he is better at traditional methods and uses vengeance-type spells to "cheat". The door locks of the computer room and conference room are not difficult for him. The cabinet locks of the conference room are a little more troublesome because they are far away. There is only one problem that cannot be solved: it can only be extended from the crack of the door, causing the carrying capacity of the wraith tentacles to decay more rapidly with distance. When it reaches the food cabinet, it can only use a paper clip to pick the lock and open the door, but cannot drag the food back.

This group of people prepared large packages of food for the conference room, focusing on cost-effectiveness, so that they could eat more for the same cost.

"You need Shadow at this time," Zhuang Xuteng carefully weighed the risks of opening the door and releasing tentacles, and felt that sending Shadow would be the best choice. "The load capacity of the shadow is equivalent to that of a teenager. Its load capacity is always the same. It is not affected by distance like the tentacles of the wraith. And I only need to create a simple shadow to solve the problem. There is no need to give it other functions. .”

For the purpose of fighting, ghosts are definitely better than shadows, but Zhuang Xuteng only wants to solve the problem of eating and drinking now. Since he had to wait any longer, he turned his energy to creating shadows, and they were shadows with the simplest and most basic functions.

Obtaining food, as the most primitive desire of mankind, has great power in driving human progress. Zhuang Xuteng was thinking about the connection between the food in the conference room and his belly, while strengthening the connection between the ghost servant and the shadow. Finally, the hard work paid off, and after six days of hard work, the shadow was finally created.

It was a dark shadow with a vague human shape, that is, it had arms, legs, and a head. Its body has a two-dimensional shape and can only move on the surface of objects, and its moving speed is slightly faster than a human running wildly. When Zhuang Xuteng created it, he would store mana in it. By consuming mana, it could expand and stand up, just like a flattened balloon being re-inflated. This state will make it consume mana all the time, but at the same time it will have the ability to affect physical matter - to put it bluntly, it can touch things.

When the shadow moves, it is no different from a shadow. It will not affect any objects it passes, not even a hair. It is impossible to detect it except by visual means, and it can change its shape to fit the shadow in the actual environment.

Zhuang Xuteng discovered through experiments that the area of ​​the shadow is related to the stored mana. The mana is equal to the carrying capacity after three-dimensional expansion. Therefore, the larger the area of ​​the shadow, the longer it can work.

The shadow itself is pure black and does not reflect light at all. At the same time, it can increase the brightness and turn into a virtual shadow or a light shadow according to the actual environment. As it does this, its area must increase, by a factor related to brightness. If the shadow continues to increase in brightness, it will explode itself, releasing the magic power within it and creating a gust of wind.

If you take the initiative to explode, you can focus on the subsequent wind. The more mana you have, the more powerful it will be. Therefore, the shadow is more like a mana balloon. When it expands, it uses mana to move things, and when it pierces, it produces a violent push. If you want to make better use of the blast wind, experiments are indispensable, but the computer room of Ultra Company is definitely not a suitable spell testing ground.

"We'll study how to strengthen you when we get back." Zhuang Xuteng poked the swollen shadow with his finger. It felt like poking a ball of soft cotton. "Change back to your shadow first, and when they get off work in the evening, you can go get me food."

There were three locks between Zhuang Xuteng and the food. He easily pried open the door lock of the computer room, then took out a thin metal wire, held it with invisible resentful tentacles, and pressed it against the ceiling - here is where the surveillance camera is facing An area of ​​less concern - near the conference room door.

After research, the conference room door does not need to be pried open. It is a one-way lock that only enters and does not exit. When the time comes, let Shadow turn the door handle directly inside, and the lock and door will open together. The metal wire entered the conference room, and under the command of Wraith Jelly's perception, it was slowly inserted into the keyhole and began to deform to fit the internal structure of the lock.

At this time, Zhuang Xuteng was already clinging to the door, pushing his fingers into the cracks of the door as much as possible in order to reduce the attenuation of mana caused by distance and increase the power of the metal wire to twist the keyhole. After his unremitting efforts and the price of his fingertips turning red and purple, the cabinet in the conference room opened.

Phew, great, everyone in the office has left. No one stayed up late to work overtime today, so Zhuang Xuteng must take action! In the corridor outside, the lighting turned off automatically, leaving only the fire escape tunnel indicator lights still on. Its light is not strong and can only illuminate the ground near itself and adjacent to it, so it will not affect the shadow's actions.

Zhuang Xuteng created two shadows, one large and one small. He first used his wraith tentacles to control the larger one, making it crawl into the conference room along the ceiling as a two-dimensional shadow. Although shadows and ghosts can move away from Zhuang Xuteng, as long as they are within the range of the Wraith Tentacles or Wraith Jelly, they can be commanded to complete various delicate operations, greatly improving flexibility and accuracy.

The swollen shadow opened the cabinet door and took out a pack of butter biscuits and a pack of preserved meat, holding them in his left and right hands respectively. It lifts one leg to close the cabinet door - its arms and legs are black shadows to it, and there is absolutely no difference in how to use it. Moreover, it has excellent balance and can stand stably on one leg.

When it came to the door of the conference room, it raised its feet, wrapped them around the door handle, and was ready to open the door. At this time, it was time for Little Shadow to take action. It also moved close to the wall and came to stand by the surveillance camera.

No movement was found within the detection range of Wraith Jelly, except for Zhuang Xuteng's hungry stomach growling. So Zhuang Xuteng ordered the small shadow to be attached to the surveillance camera, making it use the most intense pure black to exert its opaque and non-reflective properties, blocking the light necessary to form a visual image.

The shading effect of the shadow will not leave any dead corners or holes, nor will it allow a trace of light to pass through. It is almost impossible to find a better shading material than it. Even if someone were looking at the surveillance screen at this time, they would not think that something was blocking the lens. They would just think that the lens suddenly malfunctioned and the collected content could not be converted into a signal and sent back. But running the self-test, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the lens, not even giving them an excuse to repair it.

At the same time, Da Youying opened the door of the conference room, walked over with two bags of food, and handed them to Zhuang Xuteng who opened the door of the computer room and was waiting. Dayouying stretched his legs back, pulled the door of the conference room shut, and pressed the door handle on the inside in advance, so that the door would automatically lock as soon as it was closed.

Zhuang Xuteng took the food, closed the door, and let the two shadows disappear. The total time the camera is blocked is only three seconds, after which everything returns to normal. The corridor was still as it was before, as if nothing had happened.

It's just that once a certain stomach is filled, he can continue to persevere.