[The Omniverse - Leviathan Hedge Fund Mainframe]
The liquid-platinum walls of the Leviathan Hedge Fund were vibrating with the sheer heat radiating from their primary server cores.
Director Mammon stared at the glowing financial terminal in absolute, mind-shattering horror.
"What do you mean we owe them six hundred billion Omni-Credits in server fees?!" Mammon roared, grabbing his Chief Data Angel by the lapels of its pinstripe suit. "The streaming division only made forty billion this week!"
"The Tycoon raised the API call rates, Director!" the Angel stammered, its multiple eyes spinning in panic. "Every time an AI hero blinks on stream, it queries the Abyssal OS servers. We are paying five hundred Omni-Credits per blink! The hosting fees have completely bankrupted the division!"
"I will not pay that human another cent!" Mammon threw the Angel to the floor. "Sever the connection to his cloud! We will download the AI source code and host the VTubers locally on our own Hedge Fund mainframe! We have the processing power to run them!"
"But Sir, running proprietary third-party code on our central financial servers is a massive security risk—"
"Do it!" Mammon bellowed.
The Angel scrambled to the console, initiating the local transfer. The AI models were successfully ripped from the Abyssal servers and booted up on Leviathan's internal network.
For exactly three seconds, Mammon smiled.
Then, the alarms began to scream. The ambient temperature in the room instantly spiked to three thousand degrees. The massive, liquid-platinum servers began to melt, violently venting starlight-plasma into the boardroom.
"Warning! Critical processing overload!" the automated voice of the mainframe shrieked. "CPU capacity at one hundred percent! Financial trading algorithms suspended!"
"What is happening?!" Mammon screamed over the deafening alarms, watching his multi-trillion-credit stock portfolio freeze in real-time.
A sleek, obsidian portal opened in the center of the melting server room. Victor Thorne stepped out, holding a cup of black coffee. Valerius the CTO stepped out behind him, holding a datapad.
"You really should have kept paying the hosting fees, Mammon," Victor said smoothly, his Tycoon's Aura effortlessly repelling the blistering heat of the melting servers.
"What did you do to my mainframe?!" Mammon demanded, his platinum body beginning to lose its shape in the intense heat.
"I didn't do anything. You downloaded my software," Victor checked his gold pocket watch. "Valerius. Explain the background architecture."
"Gladly, Principal," the four-armed engineer smirked. "When you ported the AI VTubers to your local network, you also ported the hidden background dependency we injected into the source code. It is a highly aggressive, self-replicating mining script."
Mammon froze. "Mining script...?"
"Cryptojacking," Victor smiled a ruthless, calculating smile. "While your servers are busy rendering the cute AI heroes, the background script is secretly hijacking ninety-nine percent of your Hedge Fund's raw processing power to mine Pantheon Tokens directly into my offshore wallet."
Victor pointed his gold-nibbed pen at the melting servers.
"You aren't trading stocks anymore, Mammon," Victor declared coldly. "Your entire Hedge Fund has been forcefully converted into my personal crypto-mining rig. And because the script is deeply embedded in the AI models you legally purchased... deleting it violates my copyright."
Mammon fell to his knees as his multi-trillion-dollar empire melted down to mine fake digital coins for a human Tycoon.
"I will buy the streaming division back," Victor offered generously, sliding a contract onto the floor. "For exactly one Omni-Credit."