Athanasia: My Hacker System

"Now what?"

John took everyone back to the surface, where they all stood upon the walls and watched the nearby department suffering from clear signs of violent fights.

Be it the loud explosive noises, the thick clouds of smoke rising up from different spots, or seeing many teachers and students running inside, seemingly going towards one direction. Everything pointed to a hectic situation and an alarming state.

Yet John watched all this with a cold gaze. His mind was fixated upon something else, upon his real enemy, on what Mark intended to do next.

If it were up to John, he would simply walk directly into that trap and single-handedly crush it down. Yet he could tell his enemy came prepared and wanted a single mistake to expose him to the world.

So he had to control himself; the same went for his friends.

The screams, the shouts, the devastation signs, everything stressed them over their nerves. Yet they all stood their ground until Luke couldn't take it and asked.

"We will wait till the isolation is up," John didn't move his eyes away from the ongoing chaos inside the department walls, "and when it happens, we'll get divided into different groups."

He paused to let everyone get focused on what he was going to say next.

"First will be the ones leading defences here," he moved his eyes upon his friends, "Ben and Mond will stay behind and handle any incoming enemy. I've already disabled the defensive nature of our club base. So it's up to you to stop any incoming enemies and kill them."

"Or you can simply ask for help," Ricky shrugged, as he took a few devices from his storage device, "these are linked with military-grade cypher. It will work fine within ten kilometer range, so it's enough to cover a great deal of the academy."

Everyone received a device, and John didn't ask where he got these.

"The second group will be formed of me and Cissel," John dropped a literal bomb. Even Ricky stopped what he was doing, turned to glare at John before turning towards Cissel.

John looked casual and normal, and Cissel looked as if she didn't care. Yet everyone was wondering how this team would do.

"We'll handle the isolation thing once appeared," John ignored the weird eyes and suspicious looks, as he continued, "as for the final group, it's formed of Ricky, Luke, and Elena. You'll move to deal with the isolation thing once we identify its weak spot. Also, in case we took some time to do it, help Mond and Ben to defend the base."

"But… We won't use anything we gained from that place, right?"

Luke asked in doubt, as this meant they would be at a disadvantage. John recalled the point Natalie mentioned, which he totally missed. And it seemed like his friends also didn't notice it.

Once he explained this point, everyone nodded in understanding. Then John looked at Cissel, and the two simply withdrew from the club walls.

Cissel kept his silence as she walked by his side, and John was busy using his Wireframe Sight ability to check the nature of the attackers. He was far from the actual battleground, yet he could vaguely tell what was going on there.

'I thought he would start with cyborgs,' John inwardly smirked, 'yet he used normal teachers from other academies. It seems he wants to hold back the deadliest force till the very end.'

It felt quite a machine-like style in thinking, ruthless, quite decisive, and aiming to secure the victory by the end. Yet John wasn't worried at all. If he were just limited to his abilities, he had total confidence in toppling the tables no matter what.

On his side, Cissel started to grow a bit restless. For some reason, she felt a headache and throbbing pain as they walked towards the department. Luckily, John didn't intend to go inside and join the fights. He simply stood a few hundred metres away, waiting and watching.

On the other hand, more noise came from different places outside the department. John didn't need to look to know that Mark had already started a wide-scale attack on the entire academy.

"It seems our dean is making a move," Cissel slowly said, yet John could tell she wasn't feeling alright. Her voice was heavy, looked tired. Yet when he switched to Frame Recognition ability, he saw nothing abnormal inside her.

"The dean and other teachers were supposed to be in a meeting with the other deans and the academy grandmaster," John paused, before feeling more anxious, "Are you alright?"

"It's just a little headache," Cissel honestly replied, as the more she tried to talk, the worse the pain became. "I'll be fine once we start to do something."

John kept his silence, but he grew a bit vigilant. Cissel didn't act like herself just now; she wasn't the impulsive type, nor the easily enraged and quite impatient type.

For a reason, he felt like Mark's touch on her wasn't totally erased. And even if he didn't spot anything abnormal in her codes, he was sure there was something fundamentally wrong within her.

The wait didn't last for long, luckily. Just after half an hour of constant fights, loud bangs and explosions, a weird shimmering dome appeared out of the blue, surrounding the entirety of the Military Department.

The moment it appeared, John instantly turned on his Wireframe Sight ability and scanned the surroundings. He didn't stop there; he even used his map to spot a few red marks surrounding the department from twelve different points.

"Twelve different enemies are creating and controlling that dome," John coldly said, while noticing the structure of this dome was all silver in code colour. Luckily, the dome spread speed was quite slow.

"I'd say we have at least ten minutes and at most twenty," Cissel coldly said, "I can tell it's a device-induced isolation dome. Once we get rid of half of the people activating it, we'll be fine."

"Bingo!"

John instantly ran.

"Tell others to go in the opposite direction and kill any invader without asking questions."

Cissel frowned when he moved while leaving her behind.

"How about me?" She shouted, yet her voice carried a tinge of rage, "What shall I do?"

"Go with them, of course," John replied, as if this was a natural thing to guess.