Athanasia: My Hacker System

John looked at that scene, unable to grasp the full effects of it. The cannon turned entirely into a weapon he could use in large scale wars without any doubt. On top of that, this was just the tip of the iceberg.

He scrolled through the different versions of weapons, with different tiers provided for each and sucked in a cold air of breath.

"I need to produce samples first and test them later," he paused, before looking at the dungeon he had, "I need to test if this dungeon can automatically send weapons to the outside world and attack any intruder no matter what or not..."

He knew after upgrading the dungeon, he gained lots of benefits. But there wasn’t anything like that. So he had another way to do this, which by using one resetting core.

The resetting cores would reset the already exhausted attempts of any core, letting them being viable for using again. John initially wanted to do it for his team, in case they needed to grow their strength far beyond what they currently had.

Seeing how they easily dominated the Backup Team and crushed the Official Team made John change his mind. They didn’t need such perks, not right away. But having the dungeon core changed everything.

So John got out, took back the core, without taking the cannon away. He wanted to test if he could store his weapons inside the dungeon core, prepare everything so he would instantly deploy the dungeon and let it defend certain area if needed.

"Time to fill the entire basement with the cores," after taking back the Instant Dungeon core, John moved fast, taking out tons of cores. From the description of the resetting core, he knew that core would cover an area of one kilometer in radius. Yet the description didn’t specify a certain limit in height for these cores.

So he decided to fill a huge area inside the basement with cores, not just filling them flat with cores, but placing tons of cores in heaps, forming not only hills, but a grand elevated ground that was made entirely out of cores!

He didn’t even count how many of these cores he placed, but he made sure to not place two identical cores together. To avoid triggering the explosions, he grouped the cores into triplets, forming them of different cores.

This made him take way longer than needed to prepare the setup. In one hour, he finished laying all the cores into a grand structure that towered for twenty metres in height. Then he took out the resetting core, and used it without hesitation.

The moment the core was ignited, all the cores under the effect shone brighter as if they were going to explode. Seeing this drove instant panic into John’s heart, yet eventually nothing happened.

The cores got resetted, and he simply took them back before testing few over the dungeon core. The dungeon core didn’t just evolve, it transformed.

"Interesting..." Holding the blindly shining core in his hand, John felt amazed. It felt like he was holding a shining star in his hands, not just a core. Yet what was truly shocking was the description of that evolved core.

"I can turn it into an automated fortress, a space which can, not only hold weapons, but also temper with time and space even outside it! And it can also sniff the enemies and attack automatically anyone trying to trespass a certain area I specify around it... That’s like the beating heart of my future faction, hahaha!"

He was totally excited by such results, feeling like using one resetting core was truly worth it. He didn’t stop there, he instantly activated the core, and inspected the dungeon. The first thing he noticed was the presence of his cannon inside. Then he saw how vastly grown that space became!

"I can even create sub-spaces attached to the dungeon, with different purposes and time dilation..." He started to thoroughly go through the details of the enhanced dungeon, feeling like this dungeon would be more useful than what he thought.

He tested, created few sub spaces and changed things inside. In one, he selected a place filled with metals, where lots of metals appeared. It felt like walking inside a world of metal. And when he used one of the purple grenades, the metal got crushed at different points, ending up gaining new metal out of the blue.

"These metal pieces... They look perfect to test on my factory," he muttered, before deciding to pick more of these metal pieces. After all, the metal scraps he used before were much higher in grade in his eyes than these normal metal pieces.

The main difference lay in the absence of any Mental Points inside these metal pieces. John didn’t know this was a big point of difference, and luckily he decided to collect large amount of these metal.

Once done, he went outside to check a timer clock he left there. He spent roughly three hours working inside that metal mine space, and yet only ten minutes passed in the dungeon, one minute in the real world.

"This time dilation feature will become handy," he smiled, before turning his attention towards the grand tubular structure, "time to check and see how the new metal will do with the factory."

John knew the factory worked brilliantly with his metal scraps, but they were still very precious items to him. Until he would secure a stable source of these, he wouldn’t risk overusing them like that.

The moment he started producing a super grade defensive cannons, he noticed the difference. First the amount of Mental Points needed was quite higher than before, roughly five times more than his first attempt. He reasoned this for the lack of any Mental Points inside any of these metal pieces.

Then it came down to the final number of defensive towers the factory produced; only one thousand. He used one tenth of the amount he gathered inside the metal pocket space, almost twenty times the amount he used before to make the cannons.

"So I’ll need more materials and need to pay more Mental Points... Overall it’s not that bad, but it’s still not the best option..." He looked at the towers he gained. They all looked more ferocious, yet they weren’t as scary as what he gained from the cannons.

He decided to give this another try, using the metal scraps from the pocket world this time. And the results were quite different, like the difference between earth and heaven.

The towers that got produced before were two hundred metres tall, thirty in thickness, while having more fire-barrels up there. Yet the latest towers made were five hundred metres tall, one hundred in width, with lots of scary looking mortars on top of it, with three levels of smaller versions of cannons to fire alongside the huge body of these towers.

"Weird... They both are the same grade, and yet the difference is quite scary," he closely inspected the differences between the two towers, ending up feeling he shouldn’t use the new metal into any production at all.

"Or perhaps I should use them to make a different variation of weapons... Still that higher Mental Points cost is quite annoying," he shook his head. And before he would do something else, he noticed the elevator moving.

"Wow! Told you, told you he was doing something big, hahaha!" The moment the doors of the elevators opened, Elena’s loud voice came from within. She looked very excited and happy to see the grand tubular structure surrounding the distant basement edge. And when she landed her eyes over the grand towers scattered across the basement, she couldn’t help but hysterically laugh.

"These towers... They look very much different than what we used to have," Ricky instantly moved forward, inspected the closest towers and seeing what changed in their outer appearance.

"I lost the bet this time," Luke betted that John was training on some new cool ability, and Elena betted he was working to produce different types of weapons. yet his loss wasn’t that painful, after all he grew excited about the new version of these towers.

"First things first," John rolled his eyes, especially when he spotted Cissel walking with the group, "what are you guys doing here? Don’t you all have a task to do?"

"Well..." Ben cleared his throat, feeling the pressure from the subtle blame John threw over their faces, "we heard from others that you must be doing something cool, so we decided to come and check it."

"And we were right, right?" Elena looked at everyone, trying her best to contain her excitement yet she failed, "you were building a new version of towers, or versions, as I can spot a different type of towers back there..."

"What is that tubular metallic structure?" out of the blue, Cissel pointed towards the distant Machine Factory and asked, attracting everyone’s attention towards the simplest, and weirdest item John created in this place.

"This? It’s a magical artefact," John laughed, deciding to grant such hefty nickname to the Machine Factory, "it can make these babies, and even more..."

"Can it make grenades?" Elena instantly asked, and Cissel looked troubled when she heard the question. In other times, she would have jumped in and joined Elena in expressing her desire to gain more grenades, better grenades. But after what she did with John, she felt more awkward than ever.

"No, no grenades in there, but..." John paused, looked at the nearest tower before adding, "why don’t you take few and go into the dungeon and test them?"

"Oh, you already made the dungeon? Where? Where is the entrance?" Ricky instantly grew excited, shifted his eyes away from the towers and over John. And the latter simply smiled, as if he was telling them to guess where the entrance was.