Athanasia: My Hacker System

"Don’t even think about testing those here!" John shouted, stepping between the girls and a huge hill of different types of grenades.

"These aren’t the standard explosives we’re used to. You saw how scary one is! A single one can saturate an area of a few hundred meters in a deadly firestorm. Don’t use it in here, or else the Mana mine will explode, and we’ll be goners!"

John wasn’t exaggerating in the slightest. The single grenade they had randomly picked and tested earlier had painted a terrifying picture; it had blanketed a thousand-meter radius in a haunting blue flame that refused to die for an hour.

Seeing the persistent fire and its terrifying scale, John felt a genuine flicker of fear that such volatile explosives might accidentally reach the Mana mine and set the entire ridge ablaze if they continued testing them here.

He redirected the girls toward a barren, distant stretch of land closer to the distant walls, where the ground was nothing but packed dirt and silence.

The girls didn’t protest the faraway location, but they didn’t budge an inch toward it either. They stood their ground, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the heavy loot of grenades around.

"Give us our share first," the two demanded in unison, looking like children refusing to eat their vegetables until they were promised dessert.

John had to obey. He knew that if he didn’t permit their allowance of explosives now, they would simply keep testing whatever was closest to hand just to get his approval. As he began the meticulous process of dividing the loot, he had a sudden realisation about the flying ships.

The way they had erupted when they slammed heavily against the ground back at the hill, those massive, localised suns of purple and orange fire, finally made sense. If those galleons were packed to the brim with these grenades, they weren’t just ships; they were floating powder kegs.

Yet, a puzzle remained: why hadn’t the Demons used these against him and the Dragons during the initial clash? After mulling it over, he realised the answer was likely the collateral damage logic.

The grenades’ area of effect was so massive that using them in the chaotic, slightly narrowed battle would have incinerated their own ground troops just as easily as the enemy.

"I bet they reserved these for the Dragons’ major armies later," John muttered, his fingers tracing the cold metal of a black-cased grenade. "They probably used a few of these to force that retreat, knowing the Dragons couldn’t stomach losing hundreds of kin in a single blue-fire burst."

He turned his eyes toward the rest of the Demon haul. Unlike the Dragons, the Demons clearly weren’t the defensive-loving type.

They placed zero trust in static walls or stationary towers, putting their absolute faith in the mobility and firepower of their fleet. Consequently, John found almost no defensive structures in their loot. Instead, he found advanced versions of his own cannons.

"Now we are talking, hehehe!"

John’s eyes lit up as he examined a mid-sized Demon deck-cannon. After dragging it away from the Mana mine for a test fire, he was startled by the results. The range was bigger, easily five times the distance of his own evolved cannons from the pocket trial.

Furthermore, they drew their firepower directly from Mana gemstones. This explained the insane mountains of refined gems he had found in the Demon storage devices.

He categorised the cannons into two groups. The Stingers were small, long-barreled weapons designed for the sides of the ships, capable of rapid, high-velocity fire. He found tens of thousands of these.

Then there were the Breakers, massive, heavy-set cannons designed for the main decks to siege targets from kilometres away. He only found a few thousand of those, but their destructive potential was evident in the tests he underwent.

"I can try to merge these and see what happens," John whispered to himself. He saw the sheer number of the smaller Stingers as the perfect fodder for mass evolution.

"But I’ll need to figure out how to incorporate these gemstones into the evolution process first. If I can combine the tech logic behind the lots of cannons I have with the Mana gemstones, I might create something even far deadlier than any of these."

The Mana handicap," he had feared earlier, was essentially gone, replaced by the staggering wealth he had looted. He now had the resources to fuel his evolution spree for months.

Yet he still stood in front of another problem; how could he bridge the gap between his system and hacking abilities and the Mana gemstones of this world?

After the long hours of work, John finished the distribution as he promised. He kept fifty percent of the total loot for the zone’s needs and split the rest among his friends.

He felt a bit more prepared, but he wasn’t fully reassured. Aside from the Dragon flying platforms and the Demon cannons, nothing he had found truly felt like a trump card that could change the outcome of any battle. He still needed to innovate. He still needed to work harder.

The girls disappeared to test their new toys for several hours. When they returned, they wore wide, serene smiles that looked like they had been painted on. No one dared to ask what they had blown up; they all just made a silent pact to stay away from the north-western testing grounds for now.

John delivered the bulk of the weaponry to Goven and Blakar. He asked Goven to disassemble a few units for study and instructed Blakar to store the rest as an emergency reserve.

With this task finally handled, John led his friends toward the central living quarters. He had been awake for nearly two days, including the high-stress scavenging run and the marathon of hacking.

Exhaustion finally claimed him, and he fell into a sleep so deep it felt like he had entered hibernation. He slept for an entire day and a half straight, finally blinking his eyes open in the middle of a quiet, starlit night.

His friends were already up, gathered around a small table with a map of the zone. After a quiet meal, Ricky looked up, his expression uncharacteristically serious.

"Are we going back tomorrow?"

The question hung in the air, thick and heavy. Cissel, Luke, and Elena all turned their eyes toward John, waiting for the word.