Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 302: Some Daring Girls!

John stood in a corner of the cleared den, surrounded by a high-tech arsenal that looked less like equipment and more like a collection of sci-fi nightmares to the watching humans around.

He kept pulling items from his inventory, towers, walls, cannons, and even the heavy mobile fortresses, to inspect the changes in awe and admiration. Every single one of them had undergone a radical metamorphosis.

The mobile cannons, after two subsequent evolutions, had transformed into a version of the core enhanced mobile fortress that was twice as large and bristling with reinforced armour plating.

The most staggering part was that John hadn’t even touched them with his hacking or cores yet. They were raw, natural evolutions, and that meant this wasn’t the final form of them.

The cannons had experienced a similar growth spurt. They no longer looked like standard artillery; they had evolved into massive, wide-bore mortars capable of unleashing literal hell-shots over immense distances, covering up huge areas in the blast.

As for the defensive towers, they had expanded until they were five times their original size, looming over the battlefield like small mountains of steel rather than simple sentry posts.

As he checked an evolved wall segment, a single, electrifying thought flashed through his mind: ’What if I started editing and enhancing these further? What if I allowed a den to evolve even beyond what I’ve experienced already?’

"Dammit! I was so hasty in killing that den!" The realisation of the missed opportunity hit him like a physical blow, and he slammed his palm against his forehead in a fit of genuine regret.

"I only killed a few hundred thousand of these evolved monsters and left most up there untouched. I should have waited! I should have been patient, surrounded the den with tight defensive circles, and let it cook until it reached Wave 100 or more instead of destroying it instantly..."

He stood there, momentarily consumed by the what-ifs, but the thought of the two remaining dens quickly improved his mood. A greedy grin spread across his face. "I won’t kill Luke’s den right away, not when I can harvest all this cool stuff by letting it ripen. Hehehe, that Mark... Thank you for the gifts, pal!"

He erupted into a vicious fit of laughter, the sound echoing unnervingly off the surrounding emptiness. The humans gathered nearby paused what they were doing, turning to give him weird gazes.

They saw the mountain-sized towers and the terrifying mortars he was manifesting and assumed he was performing a show of force to keep them in line.

Terrified of the Anomaly God Paragon’s temper, they didn’t dare slack off; instead, they doubled their pace, finishing the task of core extraction, fog clearance, then enhancing themselves and their gear, in less than half the time John had originally allocated.

"Let’s go," John commanded, his voice snapping back to its usual seriousness. He decided to head back toward the northern territory first to secure the highest-value loot.

"We’ll bypass a territory I’ve already cleared. We might still encounter stray enemies, so stick close and don’t wander aimlessly. If you get lost in the fog, I won’t be responsible for what happens to you."

The moment the order was given, Thomas began barking it at the various group leaders, breaking it down and repeating it like a faithful echo. John watched him for a second, thinking that Thomas and Luke would probably make a perfect pair once they eventually met.

As the column of over three thousand humans began to march through the dark, biting cold of the night, John realised his mobility had been gutted. Even though the humans had enhanced themselves with the Fog Seeker cores, those were still the lowest grade of cores. Their physical limits were still fundamentally low, and John had no intention of sharing the high-grade cores with them, not yet.

Since he had purged the cyborgs, he had established a baseline of cooperation, but he didn’t fully trust them. He could see the psychological scarring of their past; they had lived in the shadows of the Paragons for so long that they seemed incapable of existing without a master to serve.

As he was totally oblivious to the Paragons’ world, he decided to take it slowly and leave this matter to far experts; his friends.

He detested the title of Paragon and hated being addressed as one, but he resigned himself to playing the part until he could reunite with his team. Once he regrouped with them, he would dump the task of managing these thousands of refugees onto them and save himself the constant headache they caused.

It took them almost six hours just to cross the initial territory. The slow pace was grating on John’s nerves.

"Tell them to start picking up the pace!" John shouted at Thomas as they entered the thick, white fog separating the southern and northern territories. "I have a tight schedule. If they keep crawling like this, I’ll be forced to leave you all behind and let the Fog Seekers have their midnight snack!"

"No, Sir Anomaly God Paragon! We can’t survive without your guidance and help!"

A girl in her early twenties stepped forward, her voice carrying a tone of forced devotion that made John raise an eyebrow. He looked at her, and for a fleeting second, he imagined Cissel standing there, glaring at the scene with her arms crossed.

He inwardly sighed over the potentially bitter fate awaiting this daring girl if she ever tried that tone or attitude around his ferocious girl.

Seeing that John remained nonchalant and seemingly unbothered by her initial probing attempt, the girl didn’t back down.

In fact, she grew more persistent over the next few hours, and her boldness seemed to inspire several other young women in the group to try their luck as well. They saw John as a ticket to a supreme position in this new world, the consort of a Paragon.

Eventually, John grew tired of the hovering. He accelerated his pace to a speed that none of them could hope to match, leaving them trailing in his wake while he shouted back orders for the column to keep moving in a straight line forward.

Thomas, sensing John’s annoyance, turned and glared at the girls who had been harassing him. "Don’t try your luck!" he hissed. "He is a Paragon! A f*cking Paragon, for god’s sake! If he wanted any of you, he’d take you, and none could say no. And if he isn’t interested, none of your little games will change his mind. You’re playing with fire!"

"..."

His words landed like a breeze hitting a stone wall. They left no mark. The girls were blinded by the potential of rising from refugees to royalty. And yet, none knew they were hovering over a terrifying edge by their actions, but soon they would realise that.