That night was silent, except for the soft whisper of wind through the open window. Inside Alaric's private workspace, bathed in the cool blue glow of his monitor, the atmosphere was far from peaceful.
Alaric sat slightly hunched in his chair. His gaze was sharp, piercing the screen. His eyes hadn't left the thousands of lines of data and activity logs he'd collected from his own servers for hours.
This was all the result of tracing a digital attack that had shaken his AI system. It had disrupted most of his digital business operations.
But it wasn't just his business nearly being destroyed that kept him awake that night.
He had just uncovered something much bigger.
His right hand moved quickly across the trackpad, opening one encrypted file after another extracted from the thin virus he had injected into the enemy's server.
His initial mission was simply to test the strength of their digital defenses. But unexpectedly, a tiny fragment of that virus got caught in one of the log gaps. When the opposing server experienced a slight delay, Alaric managed to copy a small portion of the system's identity.
And from there, everything unfolded.
"Suspicious user activity detected,"
the system on his screen read.
"Interaction records: 382 victim accounts — indications of phishing, unauthorized auto-withdrawals, forced access to stock & e-wallet accounts."
Alaric held his breath. His hand froze for a moment.
"So... this isn't just about my business. They've already dragged in ordinary people who don't even understand technology. Unauthorized fund withdrawals, quietly drained stock accounts, identity theft using fake cookie masks. This is insane."
His face hardened. His eyes narrowed.
"Everyday people who accidentally clicked a spam link... their bank accounts frozen, their stock balances wiped out. And they're targeting victims at random," he muttered quietly, his anger barely contained.
"Ordinary people — who just want to open an email invitation to a meeting, or a holiday sale promo. They aren't IT experts. They're just regular people who don't know that one click could ruin their lives," Alaric's voice caught.
His hand clenched slowly on the table.
"Imagine, a housewife losing access to the family's grocery money. A student suddenly unable to pay for exams. All because of one phishing link. And you... you're happily playing with all of them."
"If I let this slide... they'll keep hurting more people. This isn't revenge anymore. This is about morals."
Alaric scrolled through more data. One metadata showed the username: "GreyPhantom7x."
Not a real name, of course. But unique enough to trace.
Several suspicious IP activities popped up on his screen again. Alaric noted everything into his private encrypted document. The originating servers were spread across three continents, one even bouncing IP addresses from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia as before.
And Alaric wasn't satisfied with just finding the Old Port area, a southern coastal city, or a dark market tech stall.
He kept tracking, until he finally found a weak spot—
A local IP from a small island in Indonesia.
Alaric squinted. "This is your crack."
Moments later, he activated his defense features. But this time, only a light attack mode. He didn't want to destroy the enemy's system. Not yet. He only wanted to test its resilience.
So he sent a small virus, a kind of stealth scout that would stick without causing significant damage.
He designed it like an invisible hunter. Lightweight, nearly transparent, but able to infiltrate the deepest layers of the system and sniff out traces of manipulation.
He named it WhisperWorm — like a whisper, but sharp enough to mark hidden vulnerabilities in the enemy's server network.
"Go," Alaric whispered as he hit enter.
"Bring me fragments of truth, no matter how small."
And it worked.
The virus clung like an unseen leech.
On the other side, an old man wearing a hat in a basement stared at his monitor. He frowned as his system lagged.
"Bad network again," he grumbled, patting the side of his CPU.
Unaware, files on his server were gradually becoming inaccessible. But he thought it was just a minor glitch.
Meanwhile, Alaric, sitting behind his computer, watched everything unfold. The system showed data starting to be extracted from the infected files.
"So... you think this is just lag?" Alaric sneered.
"You chose the wrong target."
But he knew it wasn't enough yet.
There was one last security wall — a multi-layered encryption code he had to crack to reveal the true identity behind the account. He had tried two approaches.
Brute forcing the hash files — failed.
Pattern recognition algorithms on script writing — failed too.
The night dragged on. Outside the window, streetlights dimmed one by one. But Alaric remained still, his eyes glued to the screen. One hand propped under his chin, the other resting on the keyboard.
He wouldn't give up. Not yet. Even if it took days or weeks.
Alaric's eyes were red, not from tears, but from the night swallowing his time, flipping through page after page of endless data logs.
Yet inside him, a small light never faded.
"If I let this continue... one by one, people will fall. Maybe next is someone who can't even report it because they don't understand what happened. I have to be their shield. Finish this, even if I'm alone."
Even if the world doesn't know, even if there's no headline about him—Alaric would keep fighting.
For him, this was more than revenge.
It was about removing a poison from the digital world before more people became victims.
"I will find you..." he said quietly.
"And make sure you can't touch anyone ever again."
And that night carried on. Accompanied by the sound of typing, maps of data being unearthed, and a screen that never went dark.
The city was asleep, but this room stayed lit, filled with the scent of hot metal from the CPU, the soft clink of an almost empty mug, and the steady tapping of keys like the heartbeat of a young man refusing to give up.
On the desk, cables tangled and notes scattered. But one thing was certain—
Alaric was hunting a shadow.
And he didn't plan to stop until he won.
The young man stared at his laptop screen in pale blue light, his fingers moving fast but steady. It was late, but he couldn't afford to act recklessly.
The screen showed raw data he had just uncovered from the dark web network where the man in the worn hat operated.
"His name isn't Yurik, but Tio Mahendra," Alaric muttered, then went back to reading the information he'd obtained through his counter-hack.
"Born in South Sulawesi. Once a mobile game programmer. Now... the leader of an illegal group called Astra Noctem. Starry nights, but filthy."
File after file he transferred into a small matte black flash drive plugged into the left side of his laptop.
Not a special hacker's laptop, no crazy processors or super cool cooling — but in Alaric's hands, even an ordinary machine became a silent killer weapon.
He opened the last folder:
"Transit_Technology_March → Silent_Contracts → Anonymous_Protocol"
Two clicks... it opened. Hundreds of transactions flowing in and out of dummy accounts, aliases from various continents and countries.
"They're not amateurs," Alaric muttered again.
"But luckily, I'm no rookie either."
As the flash drive finished transferring, Alaric quickly closed all windows with a shortcut.
"Data secured. Now… disappear."
With a single line of code, he erased his traces from the dark server — but not without a parting gift.
He planted his own virus: "Reversal Echo."
Lightweight, but once it touched their main system, it would invert their encryption structure. One line of code could turn entire directories into unreadable gibberish. Unremovable. Inaccessible.
Elsewhere, far from Alaric's workspace…
A dimly lit room with a large flickering monitor.
The old man in the worn hat slammed a coffee cup onto the table, spilling its contents across.
His eyes locked on the big screen, now completely blank.
"Three hours," he hissed in frustration.
"Three hours and this file still won't open…"
Breathing heavily, he called someone from the next room.
"Giman! Come here! Check this out!"
A man in a wrinkled shirt with a small laptop rushed in.
"Boss... the file is badly corrupted. Could be the system is frozen… or…"
He stopped.
The hat-wearing man glared.
"OR WHAT?"
Giman took a breath and spoke quietly,
"Or... someone from outside did this. Maybe… we've been hacked, boss."
"Huh? Who's crazy enough to hack me!?"
His voice exploded, full of rage and disbelief.
Giman shrugged, no less anxious. "I'm not accusing anyone, boss. But... the move was subtle, smooth. We only just noticed it now, and it's way too late. If this is a hacker... they must be very skilled."
The man in the hat looked sharp but chaotic. He stood up, hands on his hips, breathing fast.
"Who was the last one to open that file? You?"
"I didn't touch it, boss. You've been clicking non-stop."
"Huh!? So it's my fault!?"
"Well, not exactly, boss…"
BLANK.
Suddenly, all monitors went black.
The small indicator lights on the CPUs blinked erratically, then shut off one by one.
The computers fried.
Data was gone.
The system collapsed.
"What is this!?"
The hat man yelled, shaking the table in fury.
"Boss, is that... a virus?"
Giman shrank behind the table, afraid.
"Damn it! Who's messing with my empire!?"