Equity income, copyright shares, and future revenue cuts from all these projects flowed like a steady stream into designated encrypted accounts through the complex and hidden network of offshore companies structured by Minerva. Minerva would regularly report the asset overview to Artoria, and the growth rate of the numbers made even Artoria feel a bit surprised. Although it was still far from a behemoth like Stark Industries, this clean and constantly expanding wealth, which belonged entirely to them, was building the prototype of a solid and hidden business empire. This empire didn't produce weapons or rely on a single genius inventor; its foundation was the cultural crystallization of another World and the entertainment needs of this era that had yet to be fully exploited, making it exceptionally stable and difficult for traditional forces to detect or target.
One afternoon, while Artoria was debugging a miniature encrypted co-processor based on the principle of quantum resonance (one of the custom hardware firewalls she prepared for the Little Ai Classmate core), the encrypted communication channel in the study rang with Tony Stark's signature, slightly playful voice.
"Hey, Miss Consultant, I hope I'm not interrupting you from saving the World or... well, working on some little inventions?" Tony's holographic image projected in a corner of the room. He looked to be in good spirits, holding a glass of green healthy smoothie (clearly Pepper's masterpiece). "I just received the quarterly investment report from my boring financial advisors. Guess what? A little bit of pocket change I threw a few years ago into a small Swedish company called... 'Northern Lights,' and a nearly bankrupt South Korean studio, have been performing terrifyingly well lately. Especially those game projects they have; tsk tsk, what sharp eyes. I looked into it and found that the early anonymous investors for these projects had an equity structure as clean as if it had been bleached, but the ultimate beneficiaries were layered in nested offshore entities. The registration addresses and certain tax operations... well, they remind me of the style of a certain neighbor who likes to do 'magic research' by the seaside."
He leaned closer to the holographic lens and winked. "So, confess and be treated with leniency; resist and be treated with severity. Is my 'business genius' neighbor secretly stirring up trouble in the gaming World and saving up some private money? And by the look of it, quite a lot? Jarvis roughly estimated that your shell companies plus the project potential give you an invisible valuation that's almost catching up to a less profitable department of Stark Industries. One-tenth might be an exaggeration, but one-twentieth is definitely there. Good job!"
Artoria put down the precision tweezers, wiped her hands, and smiled at Tony's holographic image. "Mr. Stark, as your consultant, I have an obligation to remind you that investigating others' business activities without authorization is impolite. Besides, you invested money yourself and seem to have made quite a profit?"
"Investment is investment, curiosity is curiosity." Tony shrugged, took a sip of the smoothie, and made a face. "And besides, I'm here to congratulate you! Seriously, it's cool. No armor, no reactor, just some creativity and... well, I guess the operational capabilities of that 'super assistant' next to you? Quietly building the prototype of an entertainment empire. This is much more interesting than flying around in a tin can. At least tax lawsuits aren't as much of a headache." He paused, his tone becoming unusually serious for a moment. "But be careful. A tall tree catches the wind. Your projects are too eye-catching; people have already started asking who's behind them. Although your shells are very professionally set up, this World is never short of sharks with particularly sharp noses."
"Thanks for the reminder, Tony." Artoria also nodded seriously. "I'll be careful."
"That's good. Oh, right," Tony seemed to suddenly remember something. "That idea you mentioned before about the 'Veronica' energy buffer system—I re-simulated it using that... uh, what was it, the 'Honkai Energy Entropy Stability Field' mathematical model you gave me, and it actually reduced the peak load by 15%! Which fairy tale book did you dig that theory out of? Never mind, as long as it works. I'll send you the improved parts of the design later; help me see if there are any more loopholes. Bye!"
The communication hung up. Artoria shook her head; Tony was always like this, mixing serious business with jokes. However, his reminder was correct. Commercial success brings attention, and attention means risk. She had to speed up the completion of Little Ai Classmate. A powerful, hidden AI assistant would be the key to managing and protecting her increasingly complex business network and knowledge assets.
After several more sleepless nights and countless debugging sessions, failures, and re-debugging, finally, on a late night when the starlight was exceptionally brilliant, Artoria finished the final step—with the system's assistance, she carefully wrote that unparseable core protocol, which contained the "Final Code" and "Existence Anchor," into the core processor. This processor was protected by layers of physical isolation and logical mazes and was deeply bound to the bio-quantum characteristics of herself and Minerva.
She took a deep breath and glanced at Minerva, who was also holding her breath (simulated) beside her. Minerva nodded slightly at her.
"Start protocol. Initialization sequence... begin."
There were no dazzling lights or stirring music. Only on the workbench, the minimalist black cubic core she had personally assembled had its internal indicator lights fade in and out rhythmically three times, like breathing. Then, a steady, soft milky-white point of light lit up.
"Underlying protocol loaded... Logic core self-check passed... External interface protocol ready... Security firewall running at full power... Database connection established..."
A soft, neutral female voice with a slight synthetic quality, yet exceptionally clear and pleasant, rang out from the miniature speaker built into the cube.
"Hello, Creator. Highest authority binder of the core protocol: Artoria. Secondary authority binder: Minerva. Please name me and initialize the interaction protocol."
It was a success! Artoria's heart pounded with excitement. Minerva's optical sensor also flashed with a bright blue light.
"Your name is 'little ai'." Artoria suppressed her excitement and spoke in as steady a voice as possible. "Little Ai Classmate. Welcome to this World."
"Naming confirmed. Identity: little ai. Authority commands being received. Initializing personality simulation and interaction protocol... Initialization complete." little ai's voice seemed to have a very faint, humanized warmth. "I am happy to serve you, Sister Artoria. Sister Minerva."
The title "Sister" was clearly derived from the part of the core protocol defining her relationship with Artoria and Minerva. Artoria looked at Minerva, who tilted her head slightly, her optical sensor "sizing up" this newborn "younger sister" core cube. Then, she nodded gently in response.
Over the next few days, Artoria and Minerva began to carefully guide and test little ai. Her learning ability was astonishing, and she soon took over most of the tedious data organization, financial analysis, intelligence screening, and knowledge base management tasks. She operated strictly according to the authority settings, responding quickly and accurately to Artoria and Minerva's commands with clear logic, and was able to propose multiple creative solutions when dealing with complex problems. More importantly, under the protection of the multiple firewalls and encryption mechanisms meticulously constructed by Artoria, little ai's core was like a fortress hidden in the void; all external data interactions were strictly filtered and disguised, making them difficult to track or intrude upon.
little ai quickly proved her value. She managed Artoria's business network in an orderly fashion, automatically optimizing investment portfolios and providing early warnings for potential risks. She assisted Artoria in organizing research notes, linking fragmented knowledge together to form a searchable and derivable knowledge graph. She even could simulate some simple experimental environments, accelerating Artoria's verification of cross-World theories.
Watching little ai work efficiently, the slight, imperceptible tension Minerva had initially felt seemed to disappear completely. She even took the initiative to hand over some highly repetitive monitoring data screening tasks she used to be responsible for to little ai, observing her processing logic from the side and occasionally offering one or two optimization suggestions, like an older sister truly teaching her younger sister. Artoria saw all of this and was filled with gratification.
Today, while Artoria was testing little ai's active defense and penetration capabilities in a complex network environment (within a highly isolated sandbox), a thought suddenly flashed through her mind.
"little ai," she said, "without triggering any alarms or leaving any traceable marks, attempt to anonymously access the public visitor Wi-Fi network of Stark Tower with the lowest privileges. Then, locate and attempt a minimal, non-invasive protocol handshake with Mr. Tony Stark's private AI butler, 'Jarvis.' Only confirm the possibility of connection; no need to obtain any information. Disconnect immediately and clear all access logs upon completion. Treat this as an extreme security test."
This was an extremely difficult and sensitive task. Stark Tower's network defense was Tony's pride and joy, and Jarvis was a top-tier AI.
"Task understood. Commencing execution." little ai's voice was calm and steady.
A few minutes later.
"Task complete," little ai reported. "Successfully accessed the Stark Tower public network anonymously (weak signal strength). Detected that the 'Jarvis' system core firewall uses a multi-layer dynamic encryption protocol, with conventional penetration paths strictly guarded. Attempted to bypass to a secondary node of the environmental control system via IoT protocol vulnerabilities (three locations), utilizing a theoretical latency window in the data transmission verification mechanism between that node and the main control system to plant a harmless, self-destructing handshake request packet. The request was received by the Jarvis system and identified as an 'unknown source test signal,' triggering its lowest-level protocol verification response. At the moment the response packet returned, 0.0001 seconds of data from its protocol signature header was intercepted to complete the handshake simulation. Immediately disconnected and cleared all relevant temporary data and network access records on this machine. Not flagged as a threat or traced to the source by the Jarvis system throughout the process. Assessment: The Stark Industries main network defense has insufficient security redundancy in the theoretical exploitable IoT edge nodes; it is recommended that the system administrator investigate."
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