Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 299: The Era of John Mirage Had Begun

Seeing members of their own trusted circles suddenly bolt into the darkness and fog without a word, terrified just by John’s gaze, drove a wedge of doubt into the hearts of the humans.

Even if they had wanted to step in and stop John, they knew they lacked the power. It was clear in their eyes: anyone daring to stand before this monster would die. End of story.

While the crowd remained paralysed by the sudden, bloody twist in events, John chased down the remaining runners. He caught the cyborgs one by one. He didn’t leave a single one alive.

Then, he began to drag their bodies back toward the centre of the clearing, moving with the grim purpose of a butcher dragging sheep for the slaughter. He piled the corpses in a heap in front of his fortress.

"These bastards are the ones who let you all fall to this low bottom," John said, throwing the final batch of cyborgs onto the pile. He rubbed his hands together as if clearing them of imaginary dust. "And now, let me show you their true form. Don’t play dead there, motherf*ckers. I’m going to attack regardless."

He looked at the pile of corpses, his eyes narrowing to slits. Suddenly, one of the bodies in the middle of the heap twitched. An arrogant voice rose from the pile of corpses, driving terror and shivers into the surrounding survivors.

"Mr John Mirage, you are proving to be a much bigger headache than I initially expected!"

As if they were watching a surreal blend of a high-budget sci-fi and a horror movie, the humans John had just cut down and killed started to slowly stand up one by one.

In the eyes of the few thousand humans gathered in the area, these people should have been dead; their wounds were deep, and the attacks they received were all deadly. Yet, they rose, looking absolutely fine despite the carnage.

A heavy, suffocating silence prevailed over the scene. The survivors exchanged frantic, silent glances, their minds frozen by the immense shock of the supernatural display.

The people they had shared fires with, argued with, and slept beside were standing up from lethal blows as if nothing had happened to them. To make matters worse, their eyes began to pulse with a weird red light, and the man who had spoken before addressed John, the human they had just met minutes ago, with a chilling familiarity.

That man who just spoke was a low servant of a Paragon-affiliated weak family. And yet, this wasn’t the behaviour of a mere servant; this was something far more ancient and predatory.

Without the need for a long-winded explanation from John, the crowd stirred and jumped to the only logical conclusion: these people were not humans. They were exactly what John had claimed.

"Sorry, but you’ll need to die for me once more," John said, his voice flat.

He didn’t use a wide-area ability this time. He moved fast, a dash, and a few silver slashes of his sword. The cyborg that had been acting as Mark’s mouthpiece was decapitated before it could finish its next taunt. John then slowly retreated a few steps, his blade held low, waiting for the next puppet Mark would choose to possess.

"You... You are playing an extremely risky game, Mr Mirage," a new voice rasped.

As John expected, another cyborg stepped forward. This time, it was a young lady whose features had turned savage; every speck of beauty she had displayed over the past few weeks was replaced by a ferocious look she shouldn’t have.

Seeing this happen again made the reality crystal clear to every human present. None of these two hundred people was a human. They were all vessels for the same malicious personality, a sworn enemy of the youngster standing before them. Yet they couldn’t tell what their true nature was.

"Is that enough, or do you want me to demonstrate further?" John asked, his voice calm as he looked over the heads of cyborgs toward the trembling crowd.

After watching John execute a dozen of these entities, letting Mark’s possession prove his words louder than any speech could, the humans finally broke out from their paralysis.

"You... You can do whatever you want with them," one of the humans, a man in his early thirties with rugged clothes and tired eyes, stepped forward. He was visibly trying to control the tremors in his hands. "We’ll need to talk after all this is over, but for now... Do what you need to do to protect us."

"Sure," John shrugged.

In the next instant, the area was consumed by a series of muffled thuds followed by ear-splitting detonations. John didn’t even turn to face the rising cyborg army; he didn’t even draw his sword again. He kept his eyes fixated on the man who had just spoken, while the Logic Bombs he had stealthily planted during his initial dash began to explode.

"If I were you," John said casually, his voice easily carrying over the sound of fierce explosions, "I’d take a few steps back."

He added the warning just as a shockwave erupted from the centre of the cyborg pile. Seeing the visible ripple in the air as the shockwaves arrived, and the continuous explosions of the Logic Bombs detonating inside the cyborgs, the humans retreated in a hurry. They didn’t ask questions; they simply moved.

Now, after waiting for a few more minutes until the last of the shockwaves dissipated and the smoke began to settle over the scrap metal, John finally spoke up.

"From this moment onwards, there is no separate group you belong to. There is no paragon here to serve," John’s words were domineering, ringing like thunder in the ears of every survivor. "In this world, there is only one thing you need to believe in: serving humanity, and serving me. Is that clear?"

Even though he didn’t raise his voice to a shout, the sheer weight of his presence made the statement feel like an absolute law of nature. He was oblivious to the fact that what he was demanding seemed impossible to these people. They had lived their entire lives dreaming of a paragon’s favour.

Now, they were being told that no Paragon was coming to save them. There was only a seventeen-year-old youngster who looked as if a war god had been reincarnated before their very eyes. The contrast was brutal.

"I want the leaders of your different groups to step forward," John shouted, making sure the command left a permanent impression on their souls. "Let’s talk about our next step."

"Next step?! Aren’t we... Aren’t we going back home?!!" the man who had spoken earlier asked, his voice cracking with a desperate hope.

"We will, eventually," John sighed, the weight of the upcoming battles momentarily visible on his face. "But before that, we have a trial to win. Only then can we go home."

"..."

His words left no room for doubt or further questioning. The humans realised, perhaps a bit too late, just how much they had missed.

By confining themselves to this small territory, by hiding in the fog and squabbling over petty differences, they had remained stagnant while the world, and John, had evolved. Just seeing how terrifyingly strong John had become made them regret every second they had wasted sitting in the dark.

The era of the different Paragons was over. The era of John Mirage had begun.