(Chapter 35) The Hacker Forums

Astrid walked out of the exam hall leisurely, now the school year was over, and she could focus on more important things. Such as her mother's impending birth.

"Woah, those questions weren't all that bad." Francesca stretched as she felt liberated that the test they just did wasn't as hard as she expected.

Leone felt his eyebrows twitch. 'I'm not surprised you didn't find those questions hard. You have a genius personally tutoring you...' He had his brother to tutor him, yet he thought the questions were still difficult.

"Ah, how about coming around my house?" Leone then suddenly asked.

Francesca looked at Leone in surprise. "Us come over?" She didn't think that Leone would ask. She thought he wasn't such thick-skinned to invite three girls over to his house...

Leone nodded seriously. Seeing no other motives in his eyes, Francesca was quite happy to accept.

Winoa obviously waited for Astrid's decision, while Astrid wasn't paying much attention to Leone's expression. "I'll be going home, do what you want." Astrid replied to both Leone, and also gave Winoa her thoughts on the matter.

"I'll come." Winoa responded, she was interested in Leone's family, since he wouldn't stop talking about them all the time.

Leone was secretly disappointed, he had been told non-stop that her mother would want to see his friends. But since Astrid didn't want to come, he couldn't force her.

So Astrid got into the car on her own. The driver started driving on her orders, while the other three waited to be picked up.

.......

Astrid walked into the living room and saw Andrea on the phone. She didn't think anything of it and went into her own room.

Astrid had been working on improving both her hacking skills and her information network. Sure, the internet can provide most of the knowledge a normal person would ever need. But was Astrid any 'normal' person?

She went into some hacker forums and roamed around. Seeing the chat explode with comments, she decided to go and read some.

Astrid started to tap her fingers on the keyboard. As many well-known hackers in the forum started to talk about the same person with endless praise.

Her eyes glimmered as she started to type on her keyboard, and within 30 minutes. She had a new private message.

'Who are you?' Astrid cracked her knuckles as she saw the message pop up.

'No one important, I wanted to see the abilities of the person put on a pedal stool by the hacker forums.' Astrid quickly responded.

The man on the other side of the computer shuddered. 'I'm not as good as they say! How did you manage to hack into my computer's files so fast? Surely you would be able to hack into the Pentagon quicker than me.' The man was terrified, he had always been on top of the hacker forums, his name was well known. So when he was hacked within 10 minutes he was completely baffled, who was the great god on the other side?

Astrid read the message and then took a look at the forums again. This hacker was only known by Wu, he had recently hacked into the Pentagon and was placed on to the international watchlist by America. In the past it has been rumored he had also hacked into the Chinese government and discovered years of corruption and released it to the public, leading to China also putting him on to the watchlist, and marking him as a criminal and prepared to send him to prison for the longest amount of time possible.

But now Wu was waiting in anticipation on what the great god behind the computer would reply with, he had always been quite arrogant of his skills. And he was always in high demand and would do jobs for an expensive price. But he couldn't do anything in defense against this person...

It only meant this person was a genius in comparison to him when it came to hacking. While he might as well lick the person's shoes in respect.

As a new message popped up, he quickly turned his attention to it.

'How would you like to work for me? You're quite skillful, I'll send over a contract offer.' The message he read completely blew away Wu.

A hacker officially working? That was incredibly rare at these times, he was seen as a criminal by most of the world. He only survived because he could hide effectively, now he would need to come out in the real world and work?

He quickly typed back a response. 'No, I would put you in too much danger if I did that, half of the world wants me in prison as it is.'

Astrid chuckled to herself. 'Really? Do you think I'm afraid? You have hidden away for so quite a long time, wouldn't you want to be seen as something else apart from a criminal by the world?'

Astrid hit a critical hit. Wu stopped typing, as his passion grew within him. He didn't want to be seen as a criminal, he just wanted to hack without many issues, he never did anything all that bad. He routed out corruption and exposed secrets of government sure, but the people had the right to know such things. Since even the government once admitted that they wouldn't hide such things.

He also submitted a lot of reports to the police of corrupt officials and dangerous gangs that had hidden away. But no matter what he did, he was still a 'dangerous person'.

'PDF' Astrid then sent over the document for Wu to read.

'I'll be online at the same time tomorrow, tell me your choice by then.' She typed before going offline.

Astrid didn't move from her computer, she then went through the forum and did the same thing to a few more people, they were all talented in their own rights. After sending over contracts to a team of hackers, Astrid then moved her attention elsewhere.

As Astrid was looking at the stock market, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her stomach.

However, she didn't react all that strongly to it, she just froze suddenly. As she felt the pain slowly fade away.

She didn't think much of it, as she then bought up some stocks, noticing her own bank account quickly being depleted, she then had another idea.