Chapter 393
2-in-1-chapter
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Elsewhere.
Leo and his team split across several heavy-duty trucks, rapidly making their way toward the Chilean border.
Inside one of the heavy trucks, the squad leader couldn't help but ask Leo,
"Boss, did we really give those tens of millions in ransom money to the insurgents?"
Back at the port, there had been that many wealthy elites—each paying a million; together it added up to several tens of millions.
The funds for those ransoms had come from Leo, or so the squad leader believed. He assumed the account receiving the money belonged to the insurgents.
Leo glanced over at Goro Takemura, who was driving, and the two exchanged a smile.
"Of course not. The electronic banking account the ransoms were wired to—that was ours."
Months earlier, Leo had already arranged for a group of the company's most trusted netrunners to settle in Switzerland.
To make operations easier, he had rented them a villa to serve as their local base of operations.
Their main job was to help Aurora PMC set up anonymous accounts in Switzerland.
There were dozens of primary accounts, and far more sub-accounts.
The account number Leo had given the squad leader was one of those primary accounts.
The netrunner team operated on standby around the clock. As soon as funds arrived, they would immediately begin dispersing the money across multiple sub-accounts.
Then they would withdraw the money from ATMs, re-deposit it onto fresh credit chips, and scatter the holdings once more.
In other words, even if those rich elites called the authorities after being released, it would make no difference.
The funds wired to the specified account had long since vanished.
And since every one of those accounts was registered anonymously, there would be no trail to follow.
Some might ask—wouldn't ATM security cameras catch them withdrawing the money?
There was no need to worry about that. That's exactly what netrunners were for.
In fact, Leo had initially considered simply letting the high-profile hostages walk free.
After all, their real target was Yanan —the number two of the Shining Group—and the elite figurehead, Flores.
But Leo had reconsidered.
If they just let those people go outright, it wouldn't be in line with the image of a proper insurgent force.
Keeping promises was fine. But when meat is already at your lips, there's no reason not to take a bite.
Demanding a ransom not only padded Aurora PMC's finances, it also reinforced the idea that insurgents were indeed involved.
There was no downside.
...........
......
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A week was enough for Leo and his group to leave Chile and return to Bolivia.
Rather than heading straight for the capital, they entered a military base located on its outskirts.
Upon arrival, Yanan and Flores were immediately separated and interrogated—via direct access to their neural links.
Up to this point, Leo had found one thing particularly strange.
Bolivia's elite class had not only lost their political power and influence, but even their wealth had been stripped away.
Sure, they might still have money tucked away in Swiss accounts.
But it was well known that people with wealth and status didn't usually keep large amounts of liquid assets on hand.
This was where the mindset between the rich and ordinary people diverged.
To most average individuals, extra money goes into savings. Some might invest in stocks, funds, or property—but most still defaulted to putting it in the bank.
To the wealthy, though, parking excess funds in a savings account wasn't considered saving—it was letting it rot.
Single-digit interest rates meant nothing to them—barely enough to notice.
The wealthy kept only minimal cash for liquidity. The rest was invested—either in tangible businesses or in real estate.
But now, all of their businesses and real estate in Bolivia had already been confiscated.
With only their small caches of liquid funds, it would be hard enough just to cover their usual extravagant lifestyles.
How could they possibly offer enough incentive to sway the Shining Group?
This was a question Leo had long struggled to understand.
Only after Lucy had successfully breached the neural links of both Yanan and Flores, extracting all the embedded data, did the answer finally come into focus: the Shining Group had struck a deal with Flores and the elite class she represented because they possessed the coordinates to several of Captain Cuatro's hidden treasure vaults.
But who exactly was Captain Cuatro?
He had served as both the head of state and supreme commander of Bolivia's armed forces during the Fourth Corporate War. At the time of his coup, his official rank was only captain. Believing this designation carried a sense of destiny—and also finding the term pleasantly easy to pronounce—he never promoted himself further. Thus, despite commanding the entirety of the military, he remained "Captain" Cuatro in title.
He ruled Bolivia for forty-two years.
Under his rule, Bolivia couldn't be described as thriving, let alone stable. If anything, it was in constant decline—year after year worse than the last. While the population suffered through poverty and disorder, Cuatro's personal fortune grew at an astronomical pace.
Aside from treating the entire nation as his personal estate, rumors circulated among the public that he had buried several secret treasure vaults across Bolivia—vaults said to contain vast, almost unbelievable wealth.
Some might ask: how could a poor country like Bolivia, whose projected tax income over the next ninety years would still amount to barely anything, possibly produce treasure vaults of such value?
The answer lay in the history of the Fourth Corporate War.
That conflict began in 2021 as a dispute between two maritime development giants—CINO (the International Maritime and Oceanic Corporation) and OTEC (Ocean Technology and Energy Corporation). The spark was a deadlock over who would inherit the remaining assets of a third company: IHAG (International Holdings of Allied Shipping).
The struggle quickly escalated. After a brutal financial war, hostilities intensified.
OTEC enlisted Militech to protect its interests and initially gained the upper hand.
CINO responded by signing a contract with Arasaka.
With that, the Fourth Corporate War—also known as the Ocean War—officially began.
As in most corporate conflicts, the initial blows were struck in the shadows: mid-level employees began turning up dead, sensitive files were stolen or leaked, and both sides deployed netrunners to disrupt the enemy's data caches and manipulate stock holdings. These cyberattacks triggered major instability in global markets.
Eventually, NetWatch imposed a temporary communications lockdown on both Militech and Arasaka—but that was only the beginning.
By the time the European Central Bank managed to mediate a temporary ceasefire between CINO and OTEC, the real conflict had already shifted. The struggle was no longer between the two maritime companies, but between their hired security firms: Militech and Arasaka.
By early 2022, a new phase had begun—what would come to be known as the Shadow War.
This second phase was far more open and brutal.
Mercenaries and netrunners were deployed en masse by both megacorps to launch overt military strikes and raids against rival military and research installations. Though the conflict was driven by corporate interests, once both sides unleashed new generations of devastating digital viruses, the deadliest battles shifted into cyberspace.
Some of those malicious codes remained active years after their creators had died, leaving vast, unrepairable dead zones across the Net.
By June of 2022, both Militech and Arasaka abandoned surgical strikes in favor of direct large-scale warfare. This marked the beginning of the third phase: the hot war.
Their conflict escalated into all-out war.
Entire cities, like Rio de Janeiro, were razed to the ground. Civilians were either slaughtered or displaced, becoming refugees in neighboring regions.
As the war reached this stage, no place outside of Asia's Ceres region or Europe remained untouched. All other regions were forced to choose sides—either with Militech or with Arasaka.
Bolivia was no exception.
Though a landlocked country in the heart of South America—cut off from the ocean by Peru and Chile—those two countries were, at the time, also consumed by severe internal crises.
In fact, the entirety of Central and South America was suffering, much of it due to the spread of destructive corporate viruses unleashed during the Fourth Corporate War.
Governments collapsed, national reserves vanished due to digital corruption, and civil unrest exploded.
Amid all that chaos, Bolivia stood alone in its stability.
Captain Cuatro, a military man through and through, didn't trust cyberspace. He believed that only what could be held in one's hands could be trusted.
During his reign, Bolivia's military government continued to rely heavily on pen and paper for records and operations. Even tasks that required computers were carried out on isolated terminals—network access was strictly forbidden.
Moreover, whether for major financial transactions or day-to-day business, digital banking was banned. All payments were made in cash.
While this approach made everything slower and far more cumbersome, it also meant that when the global virus wave hit, Bolivia was largely unaffected. It was the only country in the Latin America region to remain untouched by the digital plague.
In addition, since Cuatro himself had come to power through a coup, he did everything he could to prevent others from doing the same. He maintained military rule and kept a standing army at all times.
Compared to the elite private security forces of megacorporations, his military was nothing special—but it was more than capable of pushing around Peru's retirement homes and Chile's kindergartens.
If Bolivia had even a single coastal port, it would have taken almost no effort to establish a direct trade route with Militech's New United States.
Both Arasaka and Militech had recognized this.
Arasaka hoped to prod Bolivia into attacking Militech from the south. Militech, meanwhile, didn't demand Bolivia's loyalty—just its neutrality.
And so both megacorporations began throwing money at Bolivia with everything they had.
That a poor, underdeveloped country like Bolivia would become the center of attention—and the recipient of so much foreign capital—was one of the most absurd spectacles of the entire Fourth Corporate War.
No one ever managed to calculate how much financial aid Arasaka and Militech had funneled into Bolivia.
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