Athanasia: My Hacker System

"Stop talking about me like I’m some kind of laboratory specimen," John muttered, rolling his eyes.

He grew curious when he heard Goven’s words, pulled out a standard defensive tower, one that should have stood a hundred meters tall back in the trial.

This time, the structure that appeared was a measly twenty meters high. It looked more like a backyard observation deck than a weapon of war.

John’s face darkened as he turned to Goven. "How did you manage to miss telling me this tiny detail until now?" he asked, his voice laced with frustration.

"If I’d known that everything was going to be miniaturised and weakened upon ascending, I wouldn’t have wasted space on standard equipment. I would have filled the entire pocket trial with high-grade defences!"

"I thought it was a well-known fact," Goven replied, his voice slightly strained as he tried to process the sheer scale of the towers John had just manifested, not that much worried about missing this point.

He was inwardly shaken, his mind racing to recalibrate his understanding of this human’s potential.

Yet whenever he realised the stern gaze of John, he cleared his throat and added, "I assumed you understood the implications when I said we needed to lay out all the defences before ascending, that the Source Code World would evolve and merge them.

But still... How could I have known you were harbouring such terrifying behemoths? Even demoted, those structures are still quite deadly, way stronger than what most veteran races possess after ascending and working for a few months on defences."

John didn’t linger on the blame. His mind was already pivoting toward a solution. He began to take out everything he had acquired from the pocket trial, checking how they changed after ascension and running a deep check on their code lines.

It was exactly as Goven had described: a general demotion affected everything he had. His arsenal had been downsized in scale, ferocity, and raw output. The terrifying war machines that had dominated the pocket trial’s landscape were now mere echoes of their former selves.

If he hadn’t been so obsessive about evolving lots of stuff back then, he would have arrived in this new world with defences that amounted to little more than decorative fencing.

’I can still bridge the gap,’ John thought, his eyes narrowing as he analysed the miniaturised towers, walls, and cannons. He hadn’t expected such a significant nerf to his power base, but he wasn’t broken by it. This wasn’t something directed solely at him; all other races suffered the same.

To him, this wasn’t a permanent loss; it was a challenge that he gladly accepted. He could simply hack his way through the limitation, merging and refining the structures just as he had done previously with all of these structures.

"Night is here," Blakar said suddenly, breaking John’s internal thoughts.

The transition was rapid. The world around them had been steadily dimming, but as the massive orange star finally dipped below the horizon, the sky transformed. The horizon remained a faint, glowing golden line that stretched across the world like a cooling ember, casting a final, lingering radiance over the plains.

"Is it going to be like the pocket trial?" Luke asked. He, along with the others, instinctively reached for the yellow cores they had relied on for survival during the trial’s brutal nocturnal times. "Is it going to get that cold and dark again?"

"Oh, no, it’s totally different here," Goven said. He paused, a smile spreading across his face that, despite his intentions, only served to make his features look more unsettling. "It’s going to be beautiful. I won’t spoil the surprise."

The group exchanged silent, wary glances. Since Goven had joined them, he had been their primary compass for navigating the unknown. However, after his oversight regarding the demotion of their defences, a small seed of doubt had taken root. They clutched their cores a little tighter, waiting for the freezing winds that never came.

When the night truly took hold, their scepticism vanished, replaced by a sense of profound awe.

The world wasn’t swallowed by an oppressive, freezing darkness. Instead, the sky was a deep, velvet carpet adorned with stars of varying sizes and colours, shedding enough light to illuminate the landscape without artificial aid. The air remained refreshing, carried by a cool, gentle breeze that drifted from the north, carrying the scent of alien flora and distant water.

But the stars were only the beginning.

"Wow! That... That’s incredible!" Elena gasped, pointing toward the zenith.

About half an hour after the sun had fully vanished, the sky began to bleed brilliant hues of emerald, violet, and crimson. It was a silent festival of dancing light, swirling and folding in on itself like a celestial curtain caught in a windstorm.

John stared up, mesmerised; it reminded him of the Northern Lights back on Earth, but with a vividness and complexity that felt almost mesmerising.

The breathtaking display lasted for hours. Goven explained that this was a nightly occurrence in the Source Code World, a byproduct of the planet’s unique atmospheric high density of mana.

He mentioned other phenomena, shooting stars that left trails of gold for minutes, and rare glitter rains where sparkling light particles of different colours drifted to the ground like snow, though no one quite understood their origin or purpose.

Seeing this, everyone was finally beginning to relax. Large fire pits had been pinned using the yellow grenades. It wasn’t for warmth and light, it was for gathering and chit-chatting.

The sounds of laughter and celebration began to drown out the alien night. People were eating, sharing stories, and bathing in the beauty of the night sky.

In the midst of the festivities, Cissel approached John. Her movements were stiff, and hesitation was written across her face.

Since their last explosive meeting, the one where tensions among the friends had reached a breaking point, everyone had been swept up in the frantic preparations for the ascension. They hadn’t had a single moment to breathe, let alone speak to one another outside the high-pressure environment of the trial’s final hours.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that confrontation. She worried about where she stood with him, and more importantly, what he truly thought of her now. She had tried to get closer to him, only to find him distracted and not paying attention to her gestures.

John looked on the surface that he moved past the dangerous revelation with a terrifying casualness, but that was the problem. To Cissel, it felt like he was handling the rift with the cold mindset of a sovereign leader managing his subordinates, rather than a friend, or something more.

"Hi there," she said softly, stopping a few meters away from him.