Athanasia: My Hacker System

"Told you, we’ll find him here!"

Just before Ricky would walk away from Cissel’s door, a loud shout came from behind. It was Luke, and he wasn’t alone; Elena, Ben, and Mond. Their presence came as a surprise to Ricky, and Cissel, who kept herself close to the door.

"You will get your grenades later," Elena rolled her eyes, before turning her attention fully to Ricky, "we were wondering where you were, and Luke guessed it right."

"I know him better than everyone, hahaha!" Luke laughed, feeling great about winning his best with Elena. As for Ricky, he stood in his place, not getting what they wanted from him or what they were doing here.

"Easy on the man, he doesn’t know why we are here," Mond chuckled, as he got some fun while watching Luke and Elena bet on where Ricky was.

Elena bet on him being on John’s side, sneak-peeking at what he was doing down there. Yet she lost, and the two kept debating on why each picked their choice, with Elena betting on how smart Ricky was to not try to make a move at Cissel at such a tricky moment.

"That’s what I wanted to hear," Ricky crossed his arms, getting over the realisation that his move towards Cissel was the centre of his friends’ debate and bet, "why are you gathered here? Don’t we all have tasks to do?"

"That also applies to you," Luke shook his head. "Anyway, we were met by accident while doing our tasks, and we all asked the same thing: What is John doing back in the basement of our club?"

"You noticed he was coming to the club, not thanks to the gathering," Ben stepped in, while adding, "he came to do something, and the people gathered back there were quite surprising to him."

"That’s why we thought he must be doing something big and shocking," Elena added, "as we know him very well, Luke and I decided to bet on what he was doing down there. Do you want to take part in that bet by any chance?"

Without the need to ask, seeing that excited look on her face told Ricky everything he needed to know. The bet included grenades without a doubt. Considering the sum she just lost, she must be trying to make up for that loss and gain more grenades.

"Don’t tell me you two are into this," Ricky moved his eyes between Ben and Mond, while ignoring what Elena asked, "this kind of bets run far too deep in our group, and I don’t like getting involved in this."

"Hahaha," Mond laughed, while Elena puffed her cheeks, feeling like she lost a big gain, "I don’t like any of this either, still it’s super fun to watch."

"We don’t have any grenades to begin with," Ben paused, before asking, "between, what are these grenades?"

"It’s something you’ll get in love with once you see it." Elena’s mood got better when she spotted another potential fat sheep. "Just ask John to share a few of what he has. I’m sure he has way too much more than all of us combined..."

"Let’s get back to business," seeing no one else wanted to get involved in these bets, Luke said, "we need to go to the club and see what John is doing there. I’m sure he is busy doing something big, or else he wouldn’t have moved away from his dorm after..."

Luke stopped himself here while his eyes lingered at the closed door of Cissel’s dorm. Everyone got what he wanted to say, but before anyone would move a muscle, the closed door suddenly opened, and Cissel came out with a calm look on her face.

"I can’t stop thinking about what John is planning to do in our absence," she shrugged when Ricky gave her a weird look, "what are we waiting for? Let’s go and check."

The team felt more awkward by Cissel’s presence. Yet no one ever asked about her real motives. Luke and Elena could easily tell what happened between Ricky and Cissel before the group arrived. And that made the two think about why she rejected Ricky and why she volunteered to come with them.

As for the newest two, they didn’t know much to see anything abnormal about what happened. To Ben, this was a love affair that he rarely enjoyed. And Mond recalled his time with Rachel before the latter moved to stand with his rival, a classic pattern of an opportunist.

While they were walking towards their club base, John was already checking the results of what he had done. And he couldn’t hide his shock.

"Pretty amazing indeed," he sucked in a cold breath of air, "this Machine Factory core is really amazing!" He blinked twice while triple-checking the details and information he read in the final product.

The addition of the core transformed the entire circular platforms into a grand and unified structure of a tubular ring. The ring was twenty metres tall, with different starlight dust particles dancing all over it.

That wasn’t the part that surprised John; the function of the Machine Factory was. The factory could produce different versions of the weapons John placed over the platforms before adding the core. That part was already known to him. But what was truly shocking was the rate of production and the additional bonus effects he could add to the final products.

There was a long list of special bonus effects that he could select and add to any weapon. For example, there was a fiery effect, one that, once added to a cannon, the cannon would literally shoot explosive grenades, or columns of fire to rain over the heads of the enemies.

There were lots of other effects, like the ice, wind, earth, lightning, and even light and darkness. He even found the vacuum effect and the time effect in there.

John didn’t get what these special effects meant, so he decided to run a test. From the requirements of the Machine Factory, he needed to supplement a few metal pieces to a group of special containers placed at different points along the grand circle.

The only metallic parts he had were the destroyed machine parts he stored and used to suck dry their Mental Points. So he took out one hundred broken pieces and placed them over these containers.

Then he gave the order to produce a high-grade cannon, one that he had never made before, but the Machine Factory provided. On top of that, he added the fiery effect to the production.

Once he gave the order, the notification popped in front of his face, asking him to pay ten thousand Mental Points for the production. It was a steep cost, while noticing the system was raising the stakes recently. And yet when he saw the end results, he realised this cost was simply cheap, very cheap.

He took out more metallic pieces, sucked them dry while putting one hand over the metallic ring. The moment he hit the threshold, the tubular factory hummed to life, roared with lots of weird noises coming from within, while the lights intensified.

Once that happened, he retreated a few tens of metres and waited. He didn’t wait for far too long; it took half an hour for the Machine Factory to produce the cannons.

And these weren’t simple cannons; they were metallic beasts that towered to reach the ceiling of the entire basement!

That wasn’t the shocking part; the number of these cannons was. He expected at most he would gain one hundred cannons, yet he gained ten thousand! The number was quite shocking, made him realise he had a treasure trove of pocket trial weapons, one that would solve a great problem regarding his armoury supplies.

As the Demons kept surrounding his zone on the New World, the wandering merchants had never paid his place a visit yet. He had no other way to solve this problem, provide his future human armies sent to clear the pocket trials with the right means to crush these and secure huge wins for humanity.

But now all this was solved, and even he had way more options than the standard weaponry at these pocket trials. Seeing this made John crave to try one of these cannons. So he decided to first use the precious item he gained from Ricky’s enemies and test the weapon there.

Using the Instant Dungeon core was easy. He just needed to supplement a few Mental Points to activate it, link himself with the core, and keep the dungeon running by constantly paying one hundred Mental Points once per day.

It wasn’t a high cost for such a precious dungeon. And once the dungeon was created, he made sure to give access to his friends before getting inside the dungeon.

There, he took one cannon out and instantly tested it.

RUMBLE!

The effect was scary and shocking! A huge pillar of fire erupted from that cannon, turning this cannon into a gigantic flamethrower! On top of that, the cannon would fire from time to time a concentrated ball of fire that spanned itself, then detonated to remind John of old Earth’s nuclear weapons.