Chapter 444 - 440: Hit and Run

Xie Ning was taken aback. She quickly reached out, cupped it in her hands, and patted its head comfortingly. "Okay, you go rest in the Space for a while. I can handle cleaning all this up."

Little Spider didn’t refuse. It raised a tiny leg with a solemn expression.

Xie Ning sent it into her villa Space, placing it on the nightstand in her room and communicating with it via spiritual power.

"This is my room. Just give me a shout when you want to come out."

"Okay!"

"In that case, I won’t check the System’s marketplace for a while. I’ll just leave the baby bok choy listed. I’ll check back on it later."

"Mhm, it’s best to wait until this whole thing blows over before going back in."

’We really overdid it this time.’

It wasn’t sure how it happened either. It had just been an accomplice, helping its master Ningning make over two thousand pulls...

...which caused the system’s backend to crash and die. Only then did Little Spider realize, with dawning horror, what a huge score it had pulled off!

Looking at the items scattered all over the floor, Xie Ning felt a headache coming on.

She saw it was nearly midnight, so for the time being, she moved the whole messy pile of stuff out onto the terrace and dumped it there.

She planned to go to sleep first and sort everything out in the morning.

She had no idea that in the System’s marketplace, her shop, Crystal Core Duo Duo, was being repeatedly searched by the X Realm’s backend system. But they couldn’t find any trace of the rogue AI.

It was as if the AI had pulled off its grand heist and then vanished from the face of the earth...

The rogue AI had completely severed its connection to their system.

The director of the X Realm’s System Marketplace was hopping mad. He had intended to follow the clues meticulously to track down the rogue AI.

But in the end, the trail went completely cold at the Crystal Core Duo Duo shop.

All they could do was stare at the shop, unable to hack into it at all.

They could see a pile of "ancient" baby bok choy on display, but they couldn’t hack the shop, nor could they hack its backend inventory. They were utterly helpless!

Xie Ning was completely unaware that the X Realm was in a furious, frantic search for Little Spider.

In truth, she was also worried about the one thousand baby bok choy she had listed for sale...

But compared to the mountain of supplies she had gotten today, losing a thousand baby bok choy didn’t seem so bad... right?

-----------------

「Meanwhile.」

In a ten-square-meter cubicle on the first basement level of the Zone A shelter, shouts and curses could be heard.

A furious middle-aged man stood up, pacing back and forth, looking like he wanted to grab a nearby stool and smash the bound bracelet he had just taken off.

Several people around him were chattering rapidly in the R Country language, trying to calm the furious man.

"Mr. Matsumoto, please try again. Maybe the system just lagged for a second?"

"Yes, yes, try again. Give it another try."

"I just uploaded two hundred Second-order Crystal Cores. That should give me twenty pulls, shouldn’t it?"

"That’s right. Mr. Matsumoto, check the bracelet again and see what’s going on."

"Yes, yes, check it again."

"Bring up the System’s marketplace interface again!"

The middle-aged man irritably tapped at his bracelet.

However, when the small, phone-screen-sized virtual display appeared again, the lottery wheel interface had been replaced by a comical crying face.

"Look, all of you, look!" Matsubara Daiichi roared, his face livid with rage. "Isn’t this a total rip-off?"

"Yeah, what’s going on here?"

"Mr. Matsumoto, my own interface looks the same as yours."

"It must be synchronized in real-time."

"The system crashed?"

"How is that possible? The people who gave us these bound bracelets swore that the X Realm’s black technology would give us an unparalleled experience."

"An experience of crashing at any moment?"

The group was as anxious as ants on a hot pan, but the most frantic of all was Matsubara Daiichi, who had deposited his assets with no result.

"I’m going to find Mr. Suzuki and see what he has to say about this."

"The Global Superpower Academy has always been in contact with the people from the X Realm. It makes sense to have Mr. Suzuki ask for us."

"Oh, right, about the housing arrangements..."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Matsumoto, rest assured. I’ll go speak to the officials right away." The speaker was a young man with a sickly complexion and greasy hair. He nodded his head repeatedly, his attitude extremely deferential.

The white suit he wore was washed so much it was pilling, and the collar was frayed.

Matsubara Daiichi nodded and quickly left to find someone about the System Marketplace’s lottery wheel problem.

The young man in the white suit followed him out moments later, heading straight for the office of Zone A’s administrator.

It was nearly twelve o’clock, but the office was brightly lit. The person on duty was hunched over a desk writing something when a sudden knock on the door made them put down their pen and go to open it.

"Hello, hello." The young man in the white suit enthusiastically extended his hand for a handshake.

The person on duty looked at him grimly. "You again?"

The one on duty today was none other than Team A member Takayuki. This wasn’t the first time in the past two days he’d had to deal with this unreasonably demanding man in the white suit.

"Your cubicle is already considered large. There’s no way you’re getting a bigger one. We have a team of over ten people sharing a single room. What’s so hard for you to overcome? It’s only for a few days."

"A few days?" The man in the white suit raised his voice slightly. "Friend, you have to be reasonable! This isn’t a matter of a few days. Before, they said we’d be out in three to five days, but now it looks like the sandstorms outside aren’t letting up. We can’t get out at all, can we?"

"’A few days’ this, ’a few days’ that... you keep telling us to ’overcome’ it day after day. You can’t be so dismissive of your friends from R Country."

"You people are just a handful," Takayuki said flatly. "I haven’t seen friends from any other country come here to cause a fuss. You’re the only ones making a scene."

First, they complained the heating in their room wasn’t enough, so we went out of our way to move them to a larger cubicle. Now they’re saying there isn’t enough space.

Their whole team only has eight or nine people. Other groups have more than ten people crammed into a single cubicle, and I don’t see them being half as much trouble.

"What’s with that tone, friend?" the man in the white suit said, displeased. "This is a perfectly normal request, okay? Nobody knows how many more days we’ll have to spend in these harsh conditions. Is it so wrong to ask for slightly better accommodations?"

"There’s nothing wrong with it, but the problem is we only have so many cubicles, and the underground shelter is only so big."

"Everyone is already settled in. Now you want other people to move? Isn’t that just causing trouble?"

"How is that causing trouble?"

Takayuki was speechless. "How is it not? I’ve already explained it to you. Impossible means impossible."

"There are currently no rooms for you to move into. If you’re not satisfied with your lodging, you’re more than welcome to go back up to the surface, aren’t you?"

"Hey, you can’t talk like that. Who’s your leader? Get your leader out here. I’ll talk to him."

The man in the white suit flew into a rage, his voice growing louder and deeper as he bellowed for Takayuki to bring out his leader.

"Our leader isn’t on call 24/7 to serve you people from R Country." The young man’s temper flared up as well.

’Are the captain and the others made of iron? Don’t they need to rest?’

’Working around the clock, 24/7, just for them?’