Athanasia: My Hacker System

"That's a lot of blank spaces and omitted knowledge about such an insanely dangerous mission."

Natalie took a while before she could finally speak. What she heard startled her, made her look in a weird way towards John, towards everyone else.

Yet none looked away when they met her questioning gaze. At least this confirmed that John wasn't joking or messing with her. And yet, it highlighted another problem.

She lacked enough information to even grasp the reality of the situation. And when she finally spoke, she didn't wait for John to give her any lame excuse. She slowly and thoroughly explained her point of view.

"As a start, I don't really get what you are afraid of."

She moved her eyes around. "Everything the club has is normal and naturally owned by other clubs. Unless there is something major you are afraid to let it be known, some sort of great secret or shameful thing, then nothing else matters."

"Believe me, it's something important and quite a secret."

John stuck to his earlier decision to keep her in the dark, yet she didn't like it. Not even for the slightest.

"Let me follow your line of thought then," she intentionally paused, before adding, "aside from the fact that you don't trust me enough to share with me anything, you expect me to prepare a counter strategy and contingency plan for something I don't know. That's purely impossible."

She narrowed her eyes further, and the mask of allure and temptation she kept using all this time slipped off.

"I'm a genius Media Department student, but I'm not an oracle or a wizard. You need to trust me more on this, or else I will simply turn away and won't stay any longer."

John was startled by how daring she acted. The seriousness she showed, alongside the irrefutable logic, took him totally by surprise.

He initially thought, like others in the team, that she was like other beautiful girls. She was sexy, but dumb. Yet that proved wrong at this moment.

Meeting her strong defence, and feeling like this was merely the start of a very long and very strong debate from her side, John turned his eyes towards his friends.

He sought their opinions, and instantly all the males in the team nodded fervently in favour of letting her into everything they had. As for the two ladies, Elena slowly nodded after a brief moment of hesitation, and Cissel completely ignored his look, shifted her gaze away, refusing to even give a response to his silent inquiry.

"Fine." Seeing this result, John took a golden scroll from his inventory, "put a drop of your blood over this, and then follow me."

"What is this?"

Natalie looked in doubt and curiosity towards the golden scroll. Yet John didn't even halt his steps.

"You asked me to trust you, and you don't want to share the same trust with me?"

His words landed, and Natalie instantly took a knife out and cut her finger with it. If it were only to satisfy and impress John, she would instantly do it. And yet, she was still curious about what that golden scroll was.

Yet her curiosity changed, got wiped out by the sheer magnitude of shock she felt when she followed John down to the basement layer. There, she saw the factory, she saw the weapons, she heard the wilder and far crazier story about the new world, the other races, and the secrets John and his friends kept away from the rest of the world.

John knew he was sitting on a ticking bomb. The system didn't give him any hints about when Mark was going to attack the academy precisely. So he had to sum up most of the stuff and show evidence of his wild claims most of the time.

In less than fifteen minutes, the ashen white face of Natalie spoke volumes about how shocked she was. And soon enough, she took in a deep breath, before asking in a joking tone:

"Is it too late to take back my blood drop off that golden scroll?"

She knew the answer already, and John didn't waste his time saying anything. Instead, he stood in front of her, waiting to hear the answer he wanted.

He didn't do any of this to impress her, least of all to scare her. He wanted a viable solution, a concrete strategy, to efficiently counter what his enemy was preparing for.

On the other side, all of his friends remained silent and didn't say a single word. Luke and Ricky were the most excited ones about Natalie's joining. The two didn't even bother by the weird looks from Elena and Cissel.

In fact, they wanted nothing more right now than to propose to stay behind and work with Natalie in whatever plan she would improvise.

Yet what Natalie said eventually shocked all of them deep down to the core.

"In my opinion," Natalie took in a deeper breath, "you can't expect to use any of these without raising suspicion."

"Most, if not all, of the weapons we'll use are already available in the world…"

Cissel coldly remarked and was prepared to snort and make a joke out of Natalie. Yet the latter proved to be a harder opponent than what Cissel took her for.

She didn't wait for Cissel to continue her bombardment; she instantly countered, interrupting Cissel's words.

"That's where the main problem lies." Natalie crossed her arms, making her chest bulge more to anyone looking, "Even if such weapons exist in the world, they shouldn't exist in the hands of mere students. How come you plan to explain your possession of all this in the first place? For mere academy students, in their third year, without enough backing of strong figures in the world? This is a red flag already."

She didn't stop there, as she looked at others around, before adding:

"I ran my check on your backgrounds, like how many of the students did anyway. Recently, you have become the most public and trending topic in the entire academy. And from what I found, none of you is directly related to powerful Paragons. Even your families can't be considered that special."

She then turned to the weapons around, "Add this to the entire image, and you'll get how this is a grave problem."

"That's why I invited you here." John didn't feel any disappointment. After all, what she said proved his point entirely. Natalie's presence was crucial to winning over Mark. Or else, something trivial like what she just exposed, that already slipped past their notice, would have cost them everything.

"That's why I need to improvise something crazy." She met his words with a beaming smile on her face. She even slightly leaned over to let him see more than others, "How about this… You don't move a finger until Mark attacks the academy. You don't even step in at first; let him and his gang wreak havoc in the entire academy. How about that?"