Athanasia: My Hacker System

"This..."

Nikolas stopped dead the moment his eyes landed on the five of them.

His gaze travelled slowly, almost painfully, from Luke to Elena, to Cissel, to Ricky, before finally locking onto John.

A long, shuddering sigh of relief escaped him, followed immediately by a hardening of his features. "You... All of you... Come with me this moment."

His tone was firm, leaving no room for negotiation or objections. Not that any of them intended to do any of this. The situation was far weirder than they had anticipated.

Even Cissel and Elena, who had joked during their final night in the new world about being welcomed back like the walking dead, were visibly startled now that their imaginations had become a bitter reality.

"So... You are saying you were transported to a weird place where you had to fight for your lives against monsters and alien races, ending up being saved by the Anomaly God Paragon?!"

The interrogation was happening in the headmaster’s private quarters. After leaving the dormitory, they had been escorted to a small, three-story building tucked away behind the seven massive structures of the Military Department.

John was surprised; he had thought he’d mapped every inch of the campus. But this building, with a surface area of less than five hundred square meters, had been perfectly obscured by the larger architecture.

The interior was cramped, packed with teachers who eyed the five returnees with gazes so sharp they felt like physical probes penetrating their flesh.

The Headmaster, the same man who had congratulated them after their competition victory two years prior, sat behind a heavy oak desk, his hands clasped. His eyes never blinking as he attentively heard the five’s story.

John had prepared for this. He knew that a straightforward lie would be shredded by these veterans within minutes. The best way to hide the truth was to wrap it in a veil of reality so thick that it only required twisting a single, pivotal detail.

He used the title he had come up with in front of the human survivors to shut them up, the name that was destined to shake Athanasia soon enough, and placed himself and his friends in the role of the witnesses rather than the ones who cleared the pocket trial.

John took the lead, describing their adventure from a third-person perspective. He spoke of the pocket trial as a place they had been trapped in, where they witnessed the terrifying power of the Paragon from the sidelines.

He told tales of flying ships and demonic legions; he spoke of the Bulltors, the Dragons. He described the aftermath of battles they had actually fought as if they had merely been cowering in the bushes nearby.

The more he spoke, the more the room filled with the sound of sharp intakes of breath. Teachers exchanged silent, knowing glances. It was clear from their reactions that they recognised the descriptions of the pocket trials and apocalyptic events that they lived through.

"It was weird at first," Ricky chimed in, perfectly on cue. He knew that if John did all the talking, it would look like a rehearsed monologue. He needed to add the flavour of a survivor’s trauma.

"But soon enough, we learned the true nature of that place from the other survivors. That Paragon... He said it was a pocket trial of an apocalypse. He told us that many others had been dragged there from different worlds and perished trying to survive the first trial."

John watched the Headmaster’s face. The old man’s eyes were narrowed, tracking every micro-expression. John leaned into the story, describing the Paragon as a hooded, unreachable figure of immense power who had cleared the trial and eventually opened a portal for the humans to return home.

By framing himself as a mysterious, separate entity, John was accomplishing two things: he was protecting his current identity at the academy, and he was beginning the process of spreading his name far and wide.

As for all these lies, he has already let his friends prepare the human survivors for these. They kept singing praises while portraying John as a solitary figure who saved them. On top of that, they stressed a few points.

One was the need to keep his identity hidden. A youth like John wouldn’t shake the world, wouldn’t attract enough attention. They played on that string and infused the survivors with an image of a veteran who lived for decades, someone the world would accept and respect.

Another point was to add a little extra detail about his features, something his friends were about to say soon enough to the Headmaster and the teachers around.

"He told us that the world was changing," Cissel added softly, her voice carrying a practised tremor. "He said that the portals he would spread later in our world were just the beginning, and that Athanasia wouldn’t be safe for much longer."

The Headmaster leaned back, the wood of his chair creaking in the silence. He looked at the five students, children who had left as freshmen and returned with the eyes of true veterans.

For a seasoned warrior like himself, for a local powerhouse like the Headmaster, he could easily sniff it. Those five had lived through tons of clashes, saw death countless times, and shed their enemies’ blood until their souls were crucified and got baptised.

He couldn’t believe they were just standing on the sidelines. The look on their eyes told him they were fighting at the forefront, most probably fighting by the side of that mysterious Paragon, even from the very first moments of the trial.

And yet, he decided to keep playing their game and see what else they had to say.

"An Anomaly God Paragon," the Headmaster whispered, testing the weight of the name. "And why did he help you, help everyone? And how did he do it, I mean, how did he crush the scary monsters and clear the trial?"

"He said he had a responsibility towards humanity," Ricky replied, his voice steady. "And that we were to tell the world that a new Paragon is born out of necessity.

He is going to lead us all towards salvation and establish a strong front for humanity in the new world. As for how he killed all the monsters, bested the alien races, and won the trial for us, he did that by..."

He started telling a different side of the story, one that wasn’t actually a lie in its essence. To Ricky and the other three, the reality was that they had watched John pull one miracle after another.

They had helped to a certain degree, providing support and holding the line when necessary, but the heavy lifting, the genius ideas he brought, the mindblowing abilities he showed, the grand-scale destruction, was almost entirely John’s work.

Even when they helped him, they did so by relying on his methods, using the items he provided, and mostly tried to mimic his way of fighting.

Therefore, telling the story from their perspective as observers of a legend wasn’t a total fabrication; it was simply a shift in the protagonist’s identity.

The Headmaster remained in a profound silence, much like the other teachers in the room. He sat there, slowly stroking his long white beard, his eyes narrowed as he processed the disparate voices telling the same consistent tale: the tale of the Anomaly God Paragon.

The more he heard that name, the more he grew increasingly curious about the identity behind the mask. He threw aside the little lie they said about being witnesses. He easily spotted the reason; they didn’t want to take any light off the legendary figure they met. They decided to act selfishly and set themselves apart from their heroic tales.

The air in the hall was thick with the weight of the impossible, yet the evidence stood right before them in the form of five students who had grown stronger and sharper than any years of academy training could explain.

"Did you see that Paragon’s face?" the headmaster finally asked, his voice calm and firm. "Can you draw him for us?"

This was the specific point that Elena had steered them toward during their rehearsals. The five friends looked at each other with practised hesitation before Luke delivered the final lie they had agreed upon.

"He was wearing a mask all the time," Luke said, pausing for dramatic effect. "It was a weird red and black mask, looking like one that might be worn at a cosplay party... But far more intricate."

He began to describe an imaginary mask, choosing a design that was somewhat common among the upper-class masquerades of Athanasia to give it a sense of familiar mystery, yet distinct enough in its colour pattern to remain unique.

They already told the same description to the human survivors over and over again, stressing the importance of the point of hiding the true identity of the Paragon. And yet, even if some didn’t listen and describe his face, or draw a sketch, John still had a contingency plan in his mind to counter this.

John had originally suggested they describe a mask with green touches instead of red and black, but no one had agreed with his suggestion. They favoured the more aggressive, striking colours to fit the warmonger persona of the apocalypse-crushing Paragon.

"Interesting," the Headmaster murmured. He was not an easy man to fool. His eyes gleamed with an immense intelligence and experience as he chewed on the details, looking as if he had already sniffed the scent of a lie but couldn’t quite find the source.

The more he thought about having a new Paragon born in their world, the more he felt something was amiss. And seeing how hard they tried to cover up the identity of that figure made it more fishy in his eyes.

If that man was as strong as they described, if he was a true Paragon as they claimed, then what was the need to hide? What was the need for all this secrecy? Even if he grew suspicious, he couldn’t pinpoint where their tales strayed away from truth to lies.

"You can retreat for now. You’ll be granted a one-week vacation period to adjust. Until then, you are to stick to the temporary dorms we’ll provide. You must understand, you were officially declared dead over two years ago.

We need to settle a mountain of administrative matters and notify the proper authorities before letting you back into a standard class rotation."

"Excuse me, sir," John said, trying to maintain a veneer of polite student humility, though the sharp eyes of the old man still made him slightly nervous. "Are we going to be joined with a first-year class or the third-year class?"

This was a point John needed to clarify immediately. If the Headmaster intended to throw them back into the first-year curriculum, he would have objected on the spot, demanding a challenge or a test to prove that their growth far exceeded the early years of the academy. He had no intention of wasting time relearning fundamentals. However, his worries proved unnecessary.

The Headmaster casually shrugged. "You’ll attend the third-year class, of course," he paused, his gaze lingering on the calloused hands and steady eyes of the group.

"I believe your return will inspire something great in the students of many classes this year. You’ll receive your updated materials and schedules when you join the class in a week. But for now..."

He turned his attention toward Nikolas, who stood waiting in the shadows of the office. The teacher silently stepped forward, his face unreadable.

"Take them to the guest building," the headmaster commanded. "And make sure no one disturbs them without my explicit permission."

"I will make sure to spread the news so no one tries their luck," Nikolas said firmly. He then turned to the five students, gesturing toward the door. "Follow me."

The five of them heaved a collective, inward sigh of relief the moment they stepped outside the headmaster’s building. The cool night air felt refreshing after the stifling atmosphere of the interrogation.

John, in particular, felt they had navigated the minefield perfectly. Even if the Headmaster suspected they were withholding parts of the truth, he had no tangible way of knowing exactly what had transpired in the Source Code World.

As he walked alongside his friends, following the silent, rhythmic steps of Nikolas through the darkened campus, John realised they had been lucky to settle on this specific narrative. Because ninety percent of what they said was true, the Headmaster or the teachers couldn’t pinpoint where the reality ended and the lies began.

’First step is a success,’ John thought, his eyes tracking the back of Nikolas’s head while a small, invisible smile played on his lips. ’And now, it’s time for the second step.’