Punklorde Stage Zero

Thanks to the technology it received from the Genius Society, the monopoly capital of Punklorde single-handedly built an information industry far above the interplanetary average.
All things connected, consciousness uploaded, virtual life... Strolling through the upper levels of Punklorde, you will see an illusory mortal scene like a rainbow paradise: roaring vehicles streaking along the flight lanes, points of light gathering and interweaving, bustling entertainment centers swallowing up lavish desires and greed.

However, looking down from above, Punklorde is a ruined and derelict residential district.
Electronic scrap and compressed garbage piled into small mountains, middlemen touts, black market traders, gang members... people slip like wild beasts through the poor streets and the vicious alleys.
This place has never lacked tragic legends or absurd episodes, so much so that in the legends of the hackers, the Aeon of Elation was once drawn in and personally added to this resistance a delight reserved for Punklorde alone.

Those who intended to reach the summit of Punklorde found their inspiration, and they compressed their own lives into data inside an Aether Cartridge. With the birth of the hacker, the game called "Punklorde" was unveiled as well.
If you put on hacker glasses and look at this world again, you will see gray walls covered by layer upon layer of graffiti; behind every crack there may be folded space, and the cursor that suddenly appears in a dark alley is a guide left behind by those who came before, or perhaps a trap.
In an information world built out of 0 and 1, the hackers firmly believe that life is a game: challenge authority, mock hypocrisy, create things that exist only in imagination, tirelessly explore the limits of the self... until the day they "clear the game".

The Interastral Peace Corporation once wanted to buy Punklorde out, but an unprecedented cosmic cyberattack forced the Corporation to abandon this plan. In the years that followed, no fewer than ten cosmic powers tried to annex Punklorde, but every one of them failed miserably and had to withdraw empty-handed.

To this very day, Punklorde is still a free land in the middle of the universe.
Even in that cramped space barely large enough to shelter a body, there are still countless souls longing to break free of their bonds; they wander through the information world, heading toward the summit of the Rainbow City, and toward that world beyond the starry sky.

Just as the Mask is to the Masked Fool, the Aether Cartridge is the proof of a hacker's identity.
Enormous sums of virtual money, entertainment content disguised as ordinary files, programs holding secrets, a single string of commands enough to paralyze a planet-wide network... When they plug in the Aether Cartridge, the hackers risk being buried in the data deluge as they pass through the data channels.

In this game of Punklorde, a hacker's cartridge level decides how far he can go. For most hackers, their whole life will stop at the limit of their own talent.
As for the few who are called "legends", their names will remain forever on the leaderboard of the Hackers' Guild...

"Zero" caused the first great data avalanche, "the Sage" created the Aether Editor technique, "Stoneblade" is remembered by the world for his great feat against the Oasis District...

And yet, if you trace the leaderboard from the bottom upward, what strikes your eye at the very top is a piece of graffiti that cannot be erased: "Silver Wolf" pulling a face.
No one knows why an orphan who walked out of a scrap heap became famous overnight, and no one knows why, after "gifting" her graffiti to the Hackers' Guild, she quietly disappeared one day.
Moving freely through the "Dark Zone" created by Mythus, waging battles of attack and defense with the planetary genius Screwllum, stories half true and half false are still being passed around, and legend says she touched the summit of Elation, but for some reason never used this power.

Even so, even a legend will one day have to take its final bow.
At the end of the game, the hackers pull out their game cartridges, wipe their own data, and welcome the moment of GAME OVER.
In the past, Punklorde hackers liked to call that final curtain LV99, and now, what will it be?