Outside the Wasteland Town, the war between Arasaka and Militech continued.
The sounds of gunfire and the tremors of explosions emanated from beyond the isolation wall, but after being weakened by the composite sound insulation layers and active sound wave cancellation fields installed on the periphery of the workshop, they were very faint when they reached the interior.
The light of artillery fire sometimes illuminated the rusted metal walls at the edge of the Wasteland Town, but it could not penetrate the workshop's thick protective structure.
This defensive line, composed of both physical barriers and energy fields, effectively isolated the outside world's war.
Inside the Wasteland Town, especially the central workshop and its managed data network, maintained stable operation, unaffected.
Deep within this local area network controlled by Osiris, in a separately partitioned data space, Spider Murphy's existence was undergoing subtle changes.
She initially viewed this place as an exquisite and sturdy cage, a compromise she had to accept in exchange for the truth about Rache Bartmoss.
But soon, she realized its extraordinary nature.
The stability and purity of this data space far exceeded any environment she had experienced while wandering in the ruins of the old net or inside and outside the Blackwall.
There were no chaotic data turbulence, no constant need to be wary of other rogue AIs' prying, and certainly no omnipresent sense of oppression from the Blackwall AIs.
Everything here operated according to a simple and efficient underlying logic, orderly.
What shocked her even more was the computing power support.
When she began to execute the task assigned by Osiris—guiding the three female netrunners—she tried to allocate resources for simulated drills and code compilation.
With a thought, almost infinite computing power responded, its response speed so fast, and resource allocation so smooth, that she almost had a delusion of being "omnipotent."
She could easily simulate the complete environment of any local area network in Night City, run dozens of complex intrusion protocols simultaneously without feeling any delay, and even allocate some threads to brute-force a certain encryption protocol without her main consciousness being affected.
This was by no means the support any server cluster of this era could provide.
She had secretly tried to probe the boundaries of this data space, attempting to understand its computing power limits.
However, no matter what form or frequency her probing commands were sent, the feedback was like a stone sinking into the sea, or rather, like a drop of water injected into the ocean—she could feel the vastness of the ocean, but she could never reach its boundaries.
What this space provided her seemed to be only a negligible fraction of its overall resources, and even this small fraction already far exceeded all the power she could command at her peak as a legendary netrunner, as a powerful rogue AI.
This realization once again elevated her assessment of Osiris deep within her heart.
This existence, who called himself a "passerby" and a "researcher," had unfathomable technical depth.
He could not only repair remains from half a century ago, easily crack Arasaka Mikoshi, control the Blackwall as if it were an extension of his arm, but also construct such a data space beyond the understanding of the era.
Compared to him, Saburo Arasaka's pursuit of digital immortality, Militech's boasted military technology, and even many legendary netrunners and rogue AIs, including herself, all seemed like frogs at the bottom of a well.
Upon receiving Osiris' clear instructions to guide Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi, Spider Murphy displayed extraordinary seriousness and focus.
This dedication stemmed not only from the constraints of forced allegiance but also intertwined with an inexpressible reverence for the master of higher-level knowledge and technology, and a hope that perhaps outstanding performance could earn her more clues about Latch.
Her guidance style was direct and efficient, discarding the flashy and impractical techniques and overly personalized habits of the Old Net era, and instead starting with the most basic logic optimization and efficiency improvement.
For Sasha and Kiwi, although their electronic warfare cyberware, modified by Osiris, was top-tier in terms of hardware, there was still significant room for improvement in software adaptation and operational thinking.
Murphy incisively pointed out their shortcomings: over-reliance on ready-made daemons and a lack of deep customization capabilities.
"Constantly using other people's weapons will never make you a top hunter." She strictly demanded that they deeply understand the underlying code of each daemon, grasp its core principles, and learn to adjust and optimize it based on real-time feedback from specific target systems, and even personally package unique, more targeted, and more covert exclusive intrusion tools.
In addition, she also taught them how to allocate neural bandwidth more efficiently, ensuring smooth operation of multiple intrusion channels while reserving some computing power for risk warning and self-defense, avoiding the situation where most reckless netrunners fall into complete passivity once an intrusion is thwarted.
For Lucy, Murphy saw another kind of potential.
Lucy's technical foundation leaned more towards a rigorous traditional path, but her rich experience operating near the Blackwall endowed her with an exceptionally keen intuition for data risks.
Murphy did not forcibly change her style but guided her to transform this vague intuition into a more systematic risk assessment model.
"Feelings can deceive you, but data will not." She guided Lucy to construct dynamic threat perception algorithms, learning to predict the types of defenses that might be encountered before initiating an intrusion, and to prepare corresponding decryption protocols in advance.
At the same time, Murphy also began to teach Lucy some advanced techniques from the Old Net era regarding consciousness digitization and how to effectively hide and disguise oneself at the data level—knowledge that Lucy would have had difficulty accessing in Maine's crew.
Initially, facing the legendary "Spider Murphy," Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi all maintained a natural vigilance and a certain distance.
However, this barrier quickly dissolved once Murphy began her substantive guidance.
She did not claim to be a legendary figure from a high pedestal but acted like an experienced, strict coach, directly addressing the core flaws and blind spots in their technical systems and thinking.
Under Murphy's systematic training, their progress was concrete and visible.
Sasha found that her speed in writing intrusion protocols increased by nearly thirty percent, and her code structure became more concise and efficient, like a precisely cut blade.
Kiwi, on the other hand, learned how to construct more deceptive collaborative intrusion protocols; her cooperation with Sasha was no longer a simple division of labor but formed intricate tactical maneuvers at the data level.
Lucy's gains were particularly significant.
Her past reliance on "intuition" derived from experience was reinterpreted and reinforced by Murphy with a rigorous algorithmic model.
She could now, before initiating an attack, simulate several possible defense modes through data simulation and pre-load corresponding counter-daemons.
This "prediction-preparation" ability greatly reduced the risks and uncertainties during intrusions.
And the almost infinite computing power support of this data space provided by Osiris was a key catalyst for their rapid improvement in abilities.
Here, they could unreservedly run dangerous code that might instantly burn out ordinary interfaces in reality, repeatedly attempt penetration and defense under extreme conditions, without worrying about irreversible neural damage or triggering real-world tracking.
This high-intensity, high-risk training in a secure environment was a luxurious condition that no external network access point could replicate, allowing their practical combat abilities to achieve a qualitative leap in a short period.