Even after executing the command, Leon felt a bit unsatisfied. He needed to teach the suits in Oakhaven a real lesson. So, he manipulated the data once more, pulling all that highly classified intelligence—specifically the files detailing Oakhaven's covert operations against Veridia—and made them public. Taking it a step further, Leon experimentally issued a broadcast execution command across the entire Veridian IP block.
To his surprise, it actually worked.
The command materialized as an automatic pop-up window on the computer screen of every single internet user in Veridia.
The headline read: "Exposed: The Oakhaven Department of Defense's Filthy Classified Data on Sabotaging Veridia." A direct download link was attached right below it.
After finishing all of this, Leon finally felt like he had vented his frustration.
The Orange tier's duration wasn't exceptionally long. Shortly after, the time limit for Data Manipulation expired.
Leon checked the Oakhaven DOD's website metrics. Their traffic had likely just hit an all-time historical peak—breaking ten million clicks in under five minutes.
And over in Oakhaven, they still hadn't realized their data was being broadcasted to the world.
Walking past the other dorm rooms in his hall, Leon heard guys surfing the web suddenly start screaming.
"Fuck, I got a virus!" "Which asshole hacker is trolling right now? Is this real or fake?" "Go look, bro, it's real!" "What the hell?! Oakhaven's DOD classified files just got leaked?" "Screw Oakhaven! They're so unbelievably shameless!"
Listening to the uproar, Leon felt a profound sense of satisfaction. To put it bluntly, it felt exactly like finally dropping a massive load after a week of severe constipation.
So this is what manipulating the world feels like! It feels amazing!
No wonder the overpowered main characters in web novels always loved destroying the world.
Just as he was starting to feel a little smug, his brain suddenly issued a mandatory psychological directive.
Oh crap. The damn mental cost is here...
The next day at the Computer Science lecture hall, Leon noticed an unusually massive crowd. The classroom was packed to the brim. Even the aisles and hallways were crammed with standing students, many of whom were clearly from other departments.
Usually, a turnout like this was strictly reserved for Miss Davis, the undisputed hottest professor on campus.
Left with no other options, Leon had the bad luck of being squished into a corner against the wall.
"Damn, I don't remember it being Miss Davis's lecture today? Why are there so many people?" His roommates were just as shocked when they saw the scene.
Leon silently agreed.
"It's probably because of the 'Oakhaven 31-Minute Terror' from yesterday," John Walker, the oldest of the group, guessed.
"What 31 minutes?" Michael Ford had been out chasing girls until his soul nearly left his body last night. He'd come back, collapsed into bed, and was completely oblivious to the DOD hack.
David Thorne shot him a look of pure disdain. It was literally world-shattering news.
From the moment the DOD's classified files were leaked to the moment the breach was discovered and the network was fully restored, it took Oakhaven exactly 31 minutes to completely neutralize the threat.
Yet, those brief 31 minutes had generated a shockwave of news across the globe. Getting hacked wasn't the big deal—the big deal was that over fifty years of the DOD's most guarded internal secrets had been laid bare for everyone to see.
Especially the fact that a shocking pop-up news alert had appeared simultaneously on the computers of hundreds of millions of Veridian citizens last night. Nothing like this had ever happened since the dawn of the internet.
As a result, every major newspaper and news outlet the next morning was plastered with headlines: The Angry Strike of a Hidden Veridian Hacker: Oakhaven's Shamelessness Laid Bare. The Greatest Hacker in History is Born in Veridia. The Hacker Who Humiliated the World's Number One Superpower.
Of course, there were also the corporate clickbait rags trying to spin the narrative: Firmly Maintain Bilateral Relations, Severely Condemn Hacker Provocations! or Alert: The Sector 11 Conspiracy...
Aside from the surface-level news, outsiders had no way of knowing what kind of political earthquakes were happening behind closed doors.
Regardless, the emergency press conference held by Oakhaven's Secretary of Defense, Gomez, last night had left the entire world gasping.
Naturally, all these students were gathered here today because of the cyber-storm.
Leon hadn't expected his little stunt to cause such a massive tsunami.
Whatever. The bigger, the better. He had always hated Oakhaven acting like the self-appointed police of the world anyway.
"A news pop-up appeared on every computer in the country automatically? How is that even technologically possible?" Michael was dumbfounded after hearing the recap.
The other guys immediately started debating their own theories.
Leon just pretended to be shocked, nodding his head with exaggerated enthusiasm.
"Quiet down! Class is starting." A freezing, authoritative voice instantly killed the chatter in the lecture hall.
It was Isabella Sterling. Her voice was quiet, but it carried an undeniable weight.
Even with an event this massive happening, Isabella still looked perfectly calm. Sometimes Leon wondered if the world could literally be ending in the next five seconds and Isabella still wouldn't blink.
The professor teaching the class was Professor Yates, a man with serious academic pedigree. He was a world-renowned CS professor specializing in compiler design and a former Turing Award laureate.
He was incredibly knowledgeable, but notoriously rigid and never smiled. Yet today, he walked through the door beaming with joy. He looked like a completely different person. His very first sentence immediately explained why he was in such a good mood.
"Anyone who was online last night at 20:40, please raise your hand."
Swish. Every single student in the hall raised their hand. The class had never been this synchronized.
The professor smiled in satisfaction. "Now, keep your hand raised if you received that pop-up news alert."
Not a single hand dropped.
"Excellent! My students, yesterday you had the privilege of witnessing computer history!!" he said, his voice trembling with excitement. "According to our estimates, every single actively connected computer in the nation received that astonishing message..."
The students' faces flushed with barely suppressed excitement.
"I'm sure you all know the basics by now, but there is one detail you definitely don't know," Professor Yates said. "The Oakhaven DOD was hacked, their highly classified data was altered and made public, but only one country received that direct broadcast..."
The students' eyes went wide.
Professor Yates was very pleased with their eager anticipation. He cleared his throat. "It was our country!!"
The entire hall erupted. What did that mean? Didn't that basically confirm the hacker was Veridian? And that this hacker had the power to control the network operations of an entire nation?
"Professor, we want to know exactly what happened during the intrusion. Can you explain to us in detail how they pulled it off?" a student raised his hand and asked.
"They successfully established a virtual ultimate administrator privilege and modified the DOD's data in an impossibly short timeframe. Furthermore, they used some kind of spoofing protocol that successfully blinded Oakhaven's monitors, preventing them from noticing the breach for 31 minutes."
"What I want to know is, how did they achieve the scale of that pop-up?" The one asking the question was Isabella Sterling. For once, a rare trace of confusion flickered in her eyes.
The Ice Queen's confusion only made her look more captivating, but right now, everyone was entirely focused on her question. It was the hottest debate on the global internet right now: What kind of god-tier method allows someone to force a pop-up onto every single connected computer in a country?
Professor Yates was prepared for this. "Honestly speaking, this was the hacker's true stroke of genius. I can guarantee you: there isn't a single person in the world who can replicate what they did."
"But can't Oakhaven's Central AI Mainframe issue nationwide commands to its users?" a student asked.
"That only applies to their own internal networks. And frankly, the research into true nationwide command execution is still incomplete. Even now, the latest developments of the Turing supercomputer are kept absolutely classified; no one knows exactly how far they've gotten. But you can believe this: our nation's own cyber-monitoring network is not just for show. From what I've heard, even our military's classified intranet received the pop-up at that exact moment..."
Hearing this piece of high-level gossip, the crowd grew even more frenzied.
Amidst the excitement, absolutely no one noticed the young man standing in the corner, muttering under his breath:
"No way... even the military's classified intranet got the pop-up? ...I really took it way too far this time..."