Athanasia: My Hacker System

John held his breath until the three of them passed before the dome fell. It was quite intense for a few seconds, and ended with the three barely passing through the dome.

John watched the three stand on his side, heavily panting, with the look on their faces speaking volumes on how desperate this turn of events had become.

Yet what John said next startled the other three.

"It's not a big deal. To be honest, I alone am enough to handle all of them. And you know that."

His words were directed to Cissel and Elena, who exchanged silent glances and nodded in confirmation. As for Ben, he never saw how scary John could be and had to believe what the girls said.

"Now, what shall we do?" Cissel moved her eyes around, looking at the dome that fell down. She touched it, yet a spark of electricity followed, before John grabbed her behind in time.

BOOM!

A lightning bolt landed from the dome, just at the spot she was at a moment ago. Seeing this freeze everyone running from inside, made them ditch any idea of trying to break through using brute force.

"We can't pass through this," John was seeing how complicated the code structure of this dome was. It wasn't made out of just silver codes; there were even red codes in there. And he didn't need to test to know these were quite the deadliest codes.

"Then what?"

Elena looked at the entrapped Luke and felt like part of her heart was ripped off.

"Are we going to leave them entrapped inside?"

"They have a task to do anyway."

John shrugged before taking the communication device.

[Listen up, this dome is impregnable for now. We'll move around and destroy all the devices, but it's not enough. Go into the second dome and stop it. Then go into the department, purge it from all enemies, and help our colleagues and teachers, before arranging everyone and preparing them for the last crucial and bloody battle.]

John could read through the intentions of Mark at this point. That program didn't just trick him; he wanted to isolate him from everyone else.

He didn't believe Mark planned all this without knowing that John could use a map or had a super speed ability. Unlike others, he had the chance to get out in time, yet his friends wouldn't.

As for why he wanted to separate him, it was easy to guess. Just thinking about using the plan to fabricate their connection with Ares God Paragon was enough to see how devastating this move from Mark was.

And with others around John, he could have more means to extricate himself from tricky and tough situations. And so, trying to expose him to the world plan would fail.

The good news was in him, not alone. Mark overlooked the abilities of his friends to a great degree, which made three passes through. The bad news was that John didn't know how long this isolation dome would last, or how to bring it down.

Regardless, he intended to first kill everyone, destroy all devices, and then head outward and kill any invader. Against his abilities and sword special effects, nothing could stand against him.

Yet John underestimated the treachery and dirty tricks Mark would use in this battle.

The moment he relayed his orders, everyone nodded and turned around, focusing their attention fully on the enemies trying to bring the second dome down.

If they allowed a second dome to fall, then his friends would be totally isolated from the department. That would nullify their impact on the entirety of the battlefield. Not to mention, John was worried that Mark would lift one dome and leave the other intact, letting his friends face a tsunami of enemies on their own and be forced to reveal things unrelated to this world.

John had to admit to himself that Mark outplayed him this time. And it was expected. He was fighting a vicious enemy who knew most of the tricks he had, and got enough time to prepare, and wasn't acting alone.

Then he moved alongside others, all in one group, to hit and kill the other enemies around the dome.

The first few battles went smoothly, and no one was spared. If they weren't cyborgs, then John would have considered sparring one or two alive, to interrogate them later and learn more about Mark's scheme.

Yet all he met were cyborgs, which meant he was just dealing with Mark's clones. And to them, only death could be the reward they could get.

But everything changed when they met the tenth enemy group. There, as usual, Ben took the side, ready to use his ability the moment any enemy tried to escape. While Elena and Cissel took the front, John kept himself a little behind.

This formation was the deadliest, and it allowed the other three to perform and get experienced in dealing with the cyborgs.

Yet whenever they arrived at the tenth group of enemies, they were surprised to see only one standing up front, with an expression on his face that told everyone this wasn't a normal human being.

"Mr Mirage, you are really quite something."

The moment these words landed, the look on John's face instantly changed. He looked quite alarmed, vigilant, and very enraged. He simply stopped others, took a few steps up front, to handle Mark, the leader of this invasion and the mastermind of all disasters he had lived through so far.

"I'm going to tear anything you throw at me apart," John calmly said, yet his tone carried lots of bloodlust, "you'll fail, every single time, and you'll eventually fall by my hands, one day, I swear."

"Quite terrifying you are, hahaha!"

Unlike what John expected, Mark was acting totally carefree.

"Don't give me that look," Mark chuckled when he noticed how John glared at him, "after all, I made my preparations to put you in your place if things didn't go my way."

Before John could make a head or tail of what Mark meant, the latter simply raised a hand, then snapped his fingers.

"Let me give you a present I've been preparing for so long already…"

"Agh!"

Just before he would continue his words, a heart-curdling scream issued from behind John, when the latter turned to see what happened, he saw Cissel falling to the ground, screaming and her body fiercely twitching, as if she was getting electrified.

"She will suffer, from now onwards," Mark laughed as if he was watching the most amusing show ever, "she won't get relieved from this until the academy is destroyed and you are dead or exposed to the world. If that didn't happen, she would suffer like this until she dies. Hahaha!"