Ultraman did not break his promise.
After promising to provide Mercer with a server to carry out the assassination of Arasaka Saburo, he quickly provided Mercer with a super-large server.
Surprisingly, the address of this server was actually in Busan, South Korea.
Ever since the Fourth Corporate War in 2022, Busan's original population of 4 million suffered heavy casualties due to war and subsequent virus effects; the survivors left the city, turning the entire city into an uninhabited 'ghost city.'
However, even before becoming a ghost city, Busan was one of the world's leading automated cities — this meant there were lots of robots, lots of servers, lots of networked devices.
Just like Hong Kong where Ultraman was located.
It's well known that today's Hong Kong is a veritable city controlled by AI, filled with robots, drones, and even rumored mysterious bio-viruses that would infect and kill any humans who entered.
Busan is the same.
But compared to Hong Kong, which is somewhat famous because of Ultraman, Busan's situation was more complicated.
Since Busan became a ghost city, it has been nearly sealed off by Korea itself, so outsiders can only learn about it through satellite-monitored city images.
Yet, precisely because satellites still monitor Busan, the ghost city reputation becomes more fitting — it is nominally sealed, and deadly viruses spread there, causing nobody to live there.
However, when people compare Busan's buildings on satellite images, they are amazed to find that this empty city still shows various new constructions — which look like large warehouses.
The official Korean explanation is that because the unmanned equipment and robots there continue to operate automatically based on programmed settings.
But folks online aren't fools; if buildings and equipment can be repaired by robots, who repairs the robots?
How are such a large city's electrical and network systems maintained? How have nearly fifty years passed, yet from the satellite view the entire city shows no sign of deterioration?
All these questions, in themselves, are one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in the Cyber World, but now Ultraman suddenly handed Mercer access to a large server from a Busan IP...
This couldn't help but make people ponder deeply.
Mercer is usually straightforward in asking questions, but unusually this time, Ultraman did not explain the detailed reason to him.
[Mercer: The server's IP is in Busan?]
[Ultraman: Yes.]
[Mercer: How did you manage that? Is the ghost city of Busan also under your control?]
[Ultraman: Not so, I just have some server access permissions, I've given you what you need, next you need to quickly deal with the Divine Chariot and Relic.]
[Mercer: Can't you disclose a bit more?]
[Ultraman: No, I can't.]
Ultraman's response made Mercer put the thought aside, but this didn't mean he didn't speculate — perhaps all this is related to some wandering AI? Or is there some new terrifying large-scale plan involved?
But Mercer just thought for a moment and felt a headache, not wanting to think about it further.
The more he knows, the more he feels he is not strong enough at present; rather than worrying about far-off matters, it's better to focus on the immediate crisis.
After gaining the computational power boost from the Busan server provided by Ultraman, Mercer successfully allowed Venus to connect server network data transmission and started using the ctOS System via the global network provided.
Thus began a virus-style attack sweeping the globe.
Mercer chose two regions as the dissemination starting points for the ctOS hacking virus program.
The North American Continent, starting from Night City, viruses began to be dispatched via the network and various connected devices.
This self-spreading hacking virus, when initially developed, could automatically exploit the signal transmission permissions of devices to automatically hack into any network device it might come in contact with.
And now, having been optimized through multiple versions, these networked devices can not only execute simple automatic hacking programs, but can also act as botnet proxies to perform remote hacking and virus dissemination using server computational power.
Moreover, because Polaris is obsessed with modifying vehicles, with its deepening understanding of car systems, this virus can even be deployed within vehicle systems.
And this has made almost all virus-infected vehicles become horrific mobile network virus sources.
Once the ctOS intrusion virus is deployed by Mercer, any device that becomes infected with it will be silently granted highest access by the ctOS system; once any device transmits data to a virus-infected device, the virus spread mechanism will be automatically triggered.
This means if a car drives from City A to City B, connecting to the counterpart city's network, or even satellite network, as long as data transmission can occur, the virus will automatically spread.
And with continuous optimization, the current ctOS hacking programs have demonstrated astonishing intelligence.
This intelligence allows any hacked device to automatically analyze the traits, difficulty, and category of its intended hacking target.
Then it automatically searches the program code for corresponding decryption and hacking programs, or captures the target code characteristics and requests server remote assistance.