Digital Hackers' Memories

"You have a huge appetite."

As for Meimei standing to the side, from initial shock to now being used to it, she was just a little curious about how the tiny body of the Koromon could hold so much food.

Of course, what Meimei was most curious about was how Chen Ze transformed from Snowballmon into Koromon, and what the light that had just emanated from her body was.

"Because I have evolved, I need food to replenish my body."

Chen Zedao clearly noticed Meimei's curiosity, and he didn't mind satisfying her little curiosity.

"I am a Digimon, a life form born in the network world. I can change my form based on the data I receive, a process we call 'evolution'."

As Chen Ze gradually got into the zone, he explained it this way, as if he were a real Digimon.

"However, the newly evolved form is not stable. If it cannot replenish its energy in time, it will soon regress to its original state."

Chen Ze didn't know how other Digimon maintained their forms, but his current body did indeed operate in that way.

Theoretically speaking, as long as he doesn't reach the point of exhaustion and death, Chen Ze can maintain his current Rolling Beast state for a long time.

Even after undergoing special intensive training, Chen Ze is confident that he can maintain his current state forever without deteriorating.

However, this has led to a small problem.

That is, it's fine when you're still in your infancy or growth stage, but once you evolve into maturity, how to get enough energy to maintain your own functions becomes a problem.

After all, only a few adult-level Digimon are small in size and powerful in combat. The vast majority of adult-level and above Digimon are enormous, which means they have to capture as much food as possible.

Besides, it's already a significant problem for those enormous Digimon to simply maintain their current state, let alone acquire more data to continue evolving.

As for those Digimon with "protagonist aura" who keep evolving and then regressing?

Putting aside whether it's possible to successfully evolve again after degeneration, the sheer uncertainty and randomness of the evolution process alone is enough to make the vast majority of Digimon give up on this method.

Although constantly hunting and capturing food is tiring, at least there is still the possibility of continuing to evolve.

However, through repeated evolution and the constant absorption of inferior data, most Digimon, except for those with "protagonist aura," will only become weaker and weaker until they become "trash" like Poopmon and Snotmon, with no possibility of further evolution.

"Change your appearance? You mean you'll become more and more beautiful?"

With her big eyes blinking, Meimei stared at the snow-white ball-shaped beast. She clearly only understood the first part of Chen Ze's sentence.

"Will you turn into a flower fairy? You mean one who waves a magic wand and flies through the sky?"

After giving Meimei a silent look, Chen Ze really wanted to say, "Your future partner will be a fairy beast wielding a fairy cannon and flying around everywhere."

But the thought that he might evolve into such an existence in the future made Chen Ze not want to say anything.

Why aren't you saying anything? Don't you like the Flower Fairy?

Just as Meimei was about to continue asking questions, the front door of the entrance hall suddenly rang.

"Meimei, Mom is back."

Immediately afterwards, Ms. Tachikawa's voice came from the front door.

"Mom! I've found my future flower fairy!"

She immediately jumped off her stool, ignoring Chen Ze's drastically changed expression, and shouted loudly towards the entrance.

"Although it's not pretty now, it will definitely become a flower fairy in the future!"

Under Ms. Tachikawa's bewildered expression, Mimi threw herself into her arms and continued shouting loudly.

"Flower Fairy?"

Following the direction Meimei pointed, Ms. Tachikawa did not see the legendary "future flower fairy," but instead saw a messy table and snack wrappers scattered on the ground.

"Beautiful!"

So, Ms. Tachikawa suddenly raised her voice and glared fiercely at her daughter.

"Even if your father came, he couldn't save you this time!"

............................................................................................................

"so close!"

From the moment he realized what was happening to the moment he slipped into the study, Chen Ze took less than ten seconds, fully demonstrating the powerful physical abilities of the Digimon.

However, upon hearing Ms. Tachikawa's suddenly raised voice, Chen Ze felt both sorry for Mei Mei and extremely relieved that he had not been exposed to her.

After all, unlike little girls like Meimei who are full of childlike innocence, adults who have already been exposed to the ways of society are not as easily fooled as they are.

If the Tachikawa couple really discovered him, Chen Ze couldn't guarantee what measures they would take.

The better ones might accept their own existence, but the more likely outcome is a less than friendly one.

Chen Ze didn't want to gamble on that one in ten thousand chance. Rather than passively accepting the unknown bad ending, he preferred to continue hiding himself.

This is a hacker's instinct, and also Chen Ze's assessment of his current situation.

Apart from Meimei, the little girl who has already shown him kindness, no one else in this world is trustworthy.

"I'm sorry, Meimei."

Chen Ze quietly apologized to Mei Mei in the living room, then turned and hopped towards the computer in the study.

Through his previous interactions with Meimei, Chen Ze had managed to extract information from her about what happened after he became a digital egg, including the process of emerging from the computer in his study.

Of course, using the word "set" here might not be quite appropriate.

Because Chen Ze didn't ask any questions throughout the whole process, Meimei just blurted out everything she knew.

So, both to avoid Ms. Tachikawa returning home and to find Renamon, who is currently in an unknown cyberspace, Chen Ze plans to recreate the process of "reverse digitalization" and return himself to the world of the internet.

"Digitalization?"

Recalling the scene of Renamon leading him into the Internet world, Chen Ze's Digicore began to reverse-engineer the process.

Protein program deconstruction, digital state reproduction, internet access...

Silence!

The next moment, the snow-white figure of the Koromon disappeared from the study.

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PS: Monthly tickets (86/200), tips (15628/20000).

PS2: I just confirmed with the editor, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, the contract should be signed tomorrow.

However, since I signed the contract on the 3rd, I didn't have perfect attendance this month, so I can't take any more razor blades.

So if I still have drafts saved up next month, I'll start offering a bounty on the knife then. I know you guys must have saved up a lot over the Lunar New Year (shrug).

Chapter Thirty-Three: Worms and Viruses

As a bridge between the digital world and the human world, the Internet possesses characteristics of both.

Using real-world computers as nodes and the lines connecting each computer as networks, data on the Internet can be transmitted to every corner of the world in a very short time.

There are no time or space limitations; the only limitation on data transmission is its capacity and size.

Especially in this era before the rapid development of network technology, the transmission and download speeds of a few bytes of information and tens of gigabytes of information are completely different.

Even semi-artificial intelligence programs like "Digimon.sms" are limited by the network's capacity to roam freely across the internet.

In fact, this is the biggest reason why magnetic tapes and optical discs became the carriers of computer programs before network technology developed to a certain level.

Compared to downloading the programs you need bit by bit at a KB rate, copying directly from a CD or tape is undoubtedly a completely different experience.

Adhering to this philosophy, Chen Ze, who reappeared on the Internet, chose to target the massive amount of information transmission and consciously began to search for programs with huge amounts of data that circulated between networks.

Without even thinking, Chen Ze knew that if he found a similar program on the internet, it would definitely be the Youkomon.

The only problem now is how Chen Ze should search for similar data streams?

Breaking into the interfaces of individual computers and examining their most recent log records is undoubtedly the most futile and laborious method.

As a seasoned hacker, Chen Ze would naturally not use this method.

The most correct thing a hacker would do is to write a program that automatically measures network speed and then spread it across the network to infect every computer they can reach, like a worm virus.

At this point, we need to first explain what a "worm virus" is.

Unlike traditional computer viruses, worms are self-replicating codes or programs that can spread through networks and infiltrate systems without human intervention.

Once some worm viruses invade and completely control a computer, they will use that machine as a host to scan and infect other computers.

Once these new worms have taken control of the computers they infiltrate, they will use those computers as hosts to continue scanning and infecting other computers.

Generally speaking, worms spread through various means such as email, instant messaging software, P2P application protocols, system vulnerabilities, and search engines.

As for what kind of damage these worm viruses will ultimately cause to computers, that depends entirely on what the developers intend to do with them.

The infamous "Panda Burning Incense" incident, which occurred in Chen Ze's previous life in 2007, was a worm virus that exploited a Windows system vulnerability to invalidate EXE files.

Because this virus changes the desktop file icons to an image of a panda holding three burning incense sticks, it is also known as the "Panda Burning Incense Virus".

In the world after Chen Ze's rebirth, hackers have come up with all sorts of creative ways to use worm viruses.

A significant number of hackers even exploit this characteristic of worm viruses to capture high-performance computers as stepping stones, Trojans, or even to build botnets.

So all Chen Ze needs to do now is select a few open-source worm programs that are widely applicable and program them with the features he wants.

Even so, Chen Ze still spent a whole morning trying to recall and write a worm that would work on most computers.

Fortunately, the Digicore of the Agar.io is essentially a high-performance computer, so temporarily compiling and recording such a program is not too troublesome.

The only thing Chen Ze needed to consider was how to load such a program as a "plugin" onto the Agar.io without affecting the functionality of the digital core itself.

After all, one accidental occurrence of the "overload program" is enough. The digital core only has super computing power, but it is still different from a real computer in essence.

At the very least, Chen Ze had never heard of a computer being able to further improve or evolve its "hardware" functions based on the different program data it loads.

"I wish I still had my personal terminal."

Once these worm viruses started to spread, all Chen Ze had to do was keep an eye on the abnormal data and investigate them one by one.

At times like this, Chen Ze would especially miss his personal computer.

As standard equipment for a hacker, Chen Ze's computer contained enough program source code to write the programs he wanted in a very short time.

Moreover, the personal computer also contained some ready-made software programs. If Chen Ze wanted to perform a simple intrusion, he only needed to open a few programs.

"This isn't it either, this isn't it either."

In the virtual world of the internet, Chen Ze, in the form of a ball-shaped beast, used his long ears instead of hands to swipe across the screen from time to time, hoping to find traces of the fox beast.

"Wait, what kind of amazing operation is this? Downloading a gigabyte of pornographic images at a speed of kilobytes per second?"

Staring dumbfounded at the newly infected computer, Chen Ze suddenly became curious about what kind of person the computer's owner was.

"What's so great about pictures? If you want to see something, see the real person!"

With a malicious smile playing on his lips, Chen Ze not only deleted the pictures that the computer's owner had painstakingly downloaded over several nights, but also, with an extremely twisted sense of humor, copied a string of mysterious code from a large server.

"If you can download this much data, then I'll truly admire you!"

Looking at the newly created document on the desktop, Chen Ze was now eagerly anticipating the other party's reaction after seeing its contents.

"Never mind, business is more important."

After a brief moment of morbid amusement, Chen Ze finally remembered his immediate priority and decisively turned his attention to the next target to be captured.

Thus, Chen Ze spent two whole hours browsing through all the computers in the Guangqiu area with abnormal data, but still couldn't find the target he was looking for.

Where did the fox spirit go?

Chen Ze's long ears drooped involuntarily. He realized that searching for a living "artificial intelligence" was indeed much more difficult than he had imagined.

"Is it disguised? Or have they already left the Hikari-gaoka region?"

Just as Chen Ze hesitated, he didn't notice that a ripple had unexpectedly appeared in the cyberspace behind him.

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Parrot Beast

"Are you looking for me?"

Appearing silently behind Koromon, Renamon first revealed a faint smile before asking in its characteristically cold tone.

"A fox beast?"

Startled by the sudden sound, Chen Ze immediately turned around and saw the fox demon beast completely unharmed, as if nothing had happened.

"Where did you come from?"

After a brief moment of surprise, Chen Ze frowned slightly and quickly realized that something was wrong.