Chapter 304 - 237: Zog’s Impulse Buy
Zog hurried to the Magic Vision Station.
Doudou and the Magic Vision transmission engineering team were there, researching encryption and security measures for the broadcast.
It was only after the signal hijacking incident that Zog and the Magic Vision Device team realized the problem: the entire transmission process had absolutely no magical protection whatsoever.
The only protections in place were physical ones on the Magic Arrays used for short-range transmission, intended to prevent the theft of materials.
As for the part of the signal that traveled through the non-corporeal plane, it was completely exposed.
Technically speaking, intercepting the signal and replacing the source wasn’t difficult. It was actually quite easy. Anyone with a certain level of skill in the Clone Technique could pull it off with ease.
It was as easy as refunding a game you’ve bought and downloaded that has no encryption, only to find you can still launch it from the installation files and keep playing.
No hacking required.
The main reason was that no one had ever imagined something like this could happen.
As a result, the entire engineering team had been working overtime lately to develop security measures.
This wasn’t just about targeting the Mammon Sect. To prevent any other organization from trying the same thing in the future, Zog’s directive was "saturation encryption."
It had to be as complex as possible, even if it led to a slight degradation in the final broadcast image quality.
The new encryption measures would be implemented after the Mammon Sect’s next move. If they simply vanished, the rollout was scheduled for three months later.
Zog arrived at the Double Tower Magic Vision Headquarters.
Security here had been tightened considerably of late.
The engineering team’s office was located underground.
It wasn’t that Zog had put them in the basement; Doudou had specifically requested it.
He claimed that being underground gave them the feel of a mysterious organization wielding secret, advanced technology.
Zog had no idea why he insisted on defining the Magic Vision engineering team as a mysterious organization.
But Doudou really did run the team as if it were a mysterious organization.
For example, every member had a codename, and they used special codes and ciphers to message each other.
Everyone had a decoder card with features like a filter you could place over a block of static and twist to reveal a message, or a grid for picking specific letters out of a jumble.
When Zog first found out, he thought the entire team was engaged in a massive role-playing game based on some kid detective series.
However, since the employees were all having fun and it didn’t affect their productivity, he saw no reason to interfere.
The Zog Group wasn’t the kind of company that was a stickler for discipline.
He never understood why some corporations were so obsessed with it, either.
In the lab, Doudou, who looked like a mischievous child, was methodically directing a large group of doctoral candidates, pushing the development work forward.
As the originator of the entire transmission system, Doudou had abandoned his usual slack-off-whenever-possible attitude for this task, becoming the Dragon leading the engineering team’s overtime charge.
At first, Zog thought Doudou felt guilty about the incident and was doubling his efforts as a result. He had even planned on comforting him and telling him it wasn’t his fault.
Then he discovered that Doudou didn’t feel the least bit guilty. As he worked, he was furiously cursing out the Mammon Sect for making him work overtime, which left him no time to catch up on the latest comics.
His motivation for working overtime was as follows: if the Magic Vision Device had problems, there would be no viewers. If there were no viewers, the animation studios wouldn’t make money. If they had no money, the animation teams would disband. And if they disbanded, what would he watch?!
A Reverse Scale!
Thus, he erupted with astonishing enthusiasm for his work, driven by what could be called a personal draconic grudge.
Of course, "Reverse Scale" was just a metaphor. Strictly speaking, his kind were "Zhuagen," a different concept from Dragons; they didn’t grow reverse scales.
"Doudou!" Zog called out.
Doudou turned around. "Oh, my goodness, isn’t this the legendary Zog? Let me guess what time it is."
Doudou glanced at his watch. "Wow, it’s already eleven p.m. How strange. Why on earth am I still working at this hour?"
"Uh, I didn’t actually ask you to work overtime," Zog said.
’Then again, does eleven p.m. even count as overtime? Back in my day, this was a normal time to get off work. If you left at nine on the dot, people would question your work ethic. On release days, it wasn’t uncommon to head home just as the sun was coming up.’
"Oh, is that so? Well, it’s still your fault. You’re the one who didn’t think of adding encryption earlier."
"Fine, it’s all my fault."
Zog was completely sympathetic to an employee’s overtime-induced crankiness. It was understandable; at a time like this, everyone seems annoying.
"What did you mean when you said there was a problem with the Church’s surveillance Magic?"
"It’s not a huge problem," Doudou said, leading Zog to a magical test model they’d constructed. "Didn’t the people from the Church say they need a little time to locate the Caster *after* the signal is hijacked?"
"That’s what they said," Zog affirmed with a nod.
"A few days ago, we did a retrospective on the incident. While we can’t be one hundred percent sure what kind of Magic the Mammon Sect used, we are certain that their spell has to run for a period of time before it can complete the source swap."
"And?"
Doudou spread his small hands. "What do you mean, ’and?’ Don’t you get it?"
He pointed at the test model and spoke in a rapid-fire burst.
"Theoretically, the Church’s surveillance Magic should be able to get a location on the Mammon Sect the moment they start their spell. They could go and bust them, and we could catch them without having to pull the plug on the Magic Vision Station. The broadcast could continue as normal, and the audience would never even realize anything had happened."
Doudou let out a long breath after finishing his spiel.
It was as if the Magic Vision Station belonged to Doudou, not Zog. He was a Red Copper Dragon of considerable age, yet he was worrying himself to pieces over this.
"So, you want me to go to the Church and tell them they can get a fix on the location much earlier."