Athanasia: My Hacker System

"This is amazing!!"

John showed everyone the entrance to the Instant Dungeon. It was hidden just beside the circular platforms, where he placed a few of the supreme-grade towers to defend the entrance.

The moment they entered the dungeon, Ricky noticed the changes. The area inside the dungeon was at least one hundred times bigger than before, making it suitable to use as a training base. On top of that, there were a few portals that led to different pocket dimensions, like the metal world.

John left the six of them to play and explore the Instant Dungeon like real kids, while he returned to complete the task at hand. Proved its worth, John decided to mass-produce all the weapons he could from the Machine Factory.

As he started mass-producing the weapons, storing most inside his inventory and scattering the rest around the basement, he started to consider a problem.

"I thought I collected more than enough from those machines, but..." John sighed, realising even if he still had lots of machine parts, this wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t limiting his thoughts to the academy, or even taking control over the zone they were in. he thought of the most important step, sending human armies to the pocket trials and arming them with enough weapons and defences to win.

Thinking about this showed how greatly he lacked in terms of having enough metal pieces. If he had the option, he would volunteer to go back into the pocket trial and fight Mark’s machines there.

"Perhaps I was hasty in killing the machines back then... I should have milked these resources for months," he shook his head, thinking about how big a chance he let slip by his hands back then.

Yet he knew dealing with Mark was tricky and hard. Giving that rogue program time was the worst thing he could have ever done in their confrontations so far.

Left to do this task, he spent the entire night making weapons. as for his friends, they took the whole night to wander the Instant Dungeon, playing with the new cannons and towers he produced, before they all decided to call it a day.

John and Cissel never shared a single talk during all this. Even when everyone headed to their dorms together as a group, talking and laughing, the two kept their silence and distance.

Ricky got over his disappointed rejection by what changed in the Instant Dungeon. He showed weird excitement about this, totally getting over what happened a few hours ago with Cissel.

Everyone parted ways in the Dormitory Building, agreeing to handle their tasks tomorrow by paying a visit to their assigned department students and seeing what they had achieved so far.

John felt way better than before, still feeling awkward around Cissel, but he felt like he had started to get over the breakup. It was too early to judge, especially in the eyes of the more veteran in love affairs like Luke, Elena, Ben, and Mond, yet all silently agreed that John looked way better than before.

Things seemed to head for the better for everyone, but that wasn’t true.

Away from what the RBM Club members were doing, a meeting happened far from the academy. It was in the city, inside a small restaurant, where it was all booked for the whole night.

The place was void of people; only a few were present there, only five.

If John were here, he would instantly recognise them; they were all cyborgs!

"It took way longer than expected to gather here tonight," one of the five cyborgs said, a middle-aged man with an appearance and outfit giving him a military identity.

"We tried to prepare everything we agreed on," a hot-looking lady said, yet her tone lacked all the playful additions that she used to add to her voice, "the Paragons proved useless! None believed in the story that a group of youngsters and students would be behind the Anomaly God Paragon rumours."

Her meaning was already known by others in the meeting. During the past days, they kept trying their best to link the growing new Paragon rumours to John and his friends. And yet, not a single Paragon or any affiliated forces believed a single word they said.

"We carefully picked these bodies and turned them into cyborgs to serve this purpose," a third man said, looking more annoyed and frustrated than the rest, "after all this effort, after all the resources we spent over turning these useless meat sacks into ours, we still failed."

"It’s not our problem," a fourth cyborg said, "it’s just the ones we are trying to expose are very young and lack anything to support our claims."

This was the core of the problem. John and his friends were simply students in the eyes of everyone. No one ever believed those youngsters, with most of them coming from humble backgrounds, were the ones behind the unsettling rumours growing fast in Athanasia.

John and others didn’t know that the upper circle of power in Athanasia were all stirred up by the news. No one took such rumours lightly, especially when it was attached to the achievements John accomplished back there.

The stories that spread were too wild to be ignored. On top of that, the Paragons and the top families affiliated with them were well aware of the pocket trials threat and presence. Anything related to this topic was handled with utmost care and attention from these folks.

That was the reason why the new Paragon news wasn’t neglected.

"If we can’t expose him, then we should kill him," the fifth cyborg said, in a tone that was dripping with hostility and hatred.

"What are we waiting for? Aren’t the preparations ready for that plan?"

He looked the youngest out of the lot. He moved his eyes among others, and eventually, they all nodded.

"We managed to rally ten different academies, but most of them are far away from here," the lady found her alluring tone again when the talk shifted towards this plan.

"We have enough portals ready to move their elite students and strongest teachers over," a cyborg said, before sighing, "but we all know how strong and capable John is. I doubt they will be enough to hurt him."

"If they can’t kill him, we’ll have enough data to use to prove our point," the cyborg paused, "and I don’t believe he can stand against a sudden assault from ten academies without losing a lot on his side."

"At least we’ll bring the academy down to the ground," a cyborg spat, "without the academy, whatever that bastard is scheming, he will fail."

"He still has the zone in the new world," the youngest cyborg sighed, "we need to pick someone on our side to kill him, steal the ownership rights off him and like that we’ll end up with an extra base on our side."

The five fell into deep silence before they all said the words in succession.

"If I had known he would grow to be a thorn on my side like this..."

"I would have killed him back in that filthy prison..."

"He has an annoying defensive ability, but I’m sure this comes with a terrible cost..."

"No one shall have such omnipotent ability without paying a price for it..."

"The attack will show us more about what he can do. This time, we might fail to kill him, but we’ll learn more than enough to kill him once and for all next time..."

The five were all controlled by Mark, yet for a reason, it felt like each one of them had a slightly different Mark program controlling them.

"It’s settled then," the lady evilly chuckled, "in two days, we’ll go into that academy and burn everything to the ground. John Mirage, oh Mr Mirage, next time we meet, you’ll suffer way more than just losing your girl, hehehe."