Drawing a deep breath to steady himself, the King barked an order at his subordinates, “Find me the most skilled hacker from the black market immediately! I don’t care how much their services cost!”

This command signaled something serious to everyone present. The King was prepared to spend a significant amount of money to address the breach. Hearing him say that he didn’t care about the cost was enough to make them consider a wild number.

Meanwhile, the architect of this chaos lounged comfortably in the study of a secluded suburban villa. She unwrapped a milk candy with deliberate slowness, popping it into her mouth and savoring its sweetness without a hint of concern.

This mastermind behind the attack was none other than Katelyn herself.

With methodical precision, she extracted all the processed data and transferred it to a secure location far beyond the King’s reach. Any attempts to trace this information would lead him down an endless maze of dead ends. Her confidence in her hacking abilities was unshakable.

While Katelyn continued her enthusiastic data transfer, Vincent returned from his outing, only to encounter Jaxen rushing toward him with urgency.

Jaxen immediately asked, “Vincent, be honest with me. Is Katelyn still alive?”

The recent developments had planted a seed of suspicion in Jaxen’s mind that Katelyn might not actually be dead, compelling him to seek answers immediately.

Vincent stared at Jaxen with bloodshot eyes that spoke of countless sleepless nights. “Have you completely lost your mind?” he growled.

Anyone who saw Vincent’s haggard appearance would immediately recognize that he was a man devastated by the loss of someone irreplaceable. If Katelyn were truly still alive, Vincent would never have allowed himself to deteriorate to such a state.

Doubt crept into Jaxen’s mind as he studied Vincent’s appearance. Perhaps his suspicions were unfounded after all. Could it have been just a false assumption?

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However, the recent events in the hacking community kept nagging at Jaxen. A normal person wouldn’t have noticed, but someone like Jaxen—an insider—was acutely aware that the T Organization had suffered a devastating data breach from a mysterious hacker.

No matter how much the T Organization tried to sweep the problem under the rug, they couldn’t hide it. Jaxen had an extensive network, and finding out something like this was easy.

He stared at Vincent and fell silent. Before coming here, Jaxen had been filled with excitement, convinced that his assumption must’ve been right.

But all of his excitement quickly extinguished.

Jaxen slumped onto the sofa, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders hunched as if the weight of the world had settled on him. “I just can’t believe it,” he said, his voice low and strained.

He kept telling himself it couldn’t be real. It had been almost two weeks since he heard about Katelyn’s death, but the reality of it still hadn’t settled in.

Someone as formidable as Katelyn wasn’t supposed to disappear so easily. The thought of her being gone felt completely unreal.

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