Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 308: Cissel Vanished!

"That stupid bastard... I can’t believe even in his weakest and most vulnerable state, he still acts like a jerk!"

Cissel’s voice was a low snarl that cut through the oppressive silence of the northern fog. She continued walking aimlessly toward the West, her boots crunching violently against the blackened, frost-covered soil. Every step was fueled by endless rage that seemed to radiate from her very bones.

Her encounter with Ricky had been a disaster. The threats he had issued so casually, the way he had smugly presented the information he had gathered about her identity, and, worst of all, that specific, evil look that she had spotted before on his face, back at the last moment of her past life... It made her blood boil. It was the look of a man who was willing to do anything to achieve what he wanted, and he wanted her.

In any other cycle, she would have played it differently. Usually, when met with an obstacle she couldn’t overcome, or ending up facing utter defeat, she would have regressed to a much earlier point in time, shifting her starting location and taking an entirely different route than the one she had travelled before.

She was a master in this game, having done it so many times to be a reflex. Yet, this was the first time she had ever consciously decided to walk the same path twice. This time, she wasn’t running. She was coming for revenge.

To her surprise, this cycle had offered a variable she had never encountered in any previous regression: John.

He was a mystery, a person who simply hadn’t existed in her past cycle. Driven by an initial spark of curiosity and the strange pull of a fate she couldn’t predict, she had ended up staying by his side.

At first, she was so hostile towards him, thinking he was here to ruin her plans and interfere with her desire for vengeance by fate. And then, without realising it until it was far too late to draw back, she had fallen for him.

She could tell, with the clarity of someone who had seen too much of the dark side of the world, that John wasn’t like Ricky. He wasn’t the type to lay her on an altar of ambition to get what he wanted.

In fact, this was the first time in her long existence that she had felt this way toward anyone. He was dependable, trusty, and possessed an overall relaxed demeanour that made the apocalypse feel like a manageable chore.

John kept helping her, helping others, and taking the lead, not out of a desire for status, but because he was a true leader. He was so strong, so unique that he never bothered about anyone trying to come at him. If that ever happened, he had the confidence to emerge victorious and pay that person triple!

She had even started to wonder if he was the missing piece in the grand, multi-universal puzzle, the one anomaly that could finally alter the bitter end awaiting all of humanity decades down the line.

As she remained lost in these deep thoughts and disturbed memories, Cissel didn’t realise she had begun to drift. The fog looked the same in every direction, a featureless white void. As long as she could walk endlessly to vent her frustration, she didn’t mind the lack of direction, as long as her feet were taking her far from Ricky.

She didn’t find it weird that she had been walking for hours without reaching the Bulltors’ main base. Her mind was a mess of Paragon politics and past-life trauma, so she failed to notice the subtle shift in her direction. Instead of walking West, her legs had gradually changed directions. She was now heading due North.

From behind, John was racing as fast as he could, cutting the gap between them with every passing hour. He watched her icon on the map, noting the change in her path. He saw her turn North, walking in a perfectly straight line toward the swirling, impenetrable wall of fog that served as the boundary of the pocket trial.

’She’ll hit the dead end soon,’ John thought, his breath coming in steady puffs. ’She’ll reach the boundary, realise she’s off course, and turn back toward me.’ He wasn’t worried, not until the unbelievable happened.

"She... She vanished!!"

John skidded to a halt, his eyes widening as he stared at the map floating in his field of vision. Just as he was within an hour of reaching her, Cissel’s icon had simply winked out of existence.

She had been walking toward the distant edge of the pocket trial, a place where, according to every rule of the trial, there should have been a solid wall of fog that couldn’t be passed.

He recalled Lanmar’s earlier briefing: once a participant reached the border of the pocket trial, a massive, structural fog wall would block their path, acting as a limit to the playable area.

"This..." John muttered, zooming in on the last coordinates of her icon.

He tried to see where she could have possibly gone, searching for a glitch or a hidden path. Then, a sudden realisation hit him like a lightning strike. He instantly zoomed out, looking at the entire overhead schematic of the pocket trial, overseeing the overall structure of the eleven known territories.

"The point she vanished into... It’s perfectly aligned to be an entry point to another northern territory. One just like the one we initially started from!"

When he looked at the layout of the entire pocket trial, it became clear. The spot where Cissel had vanished was the perfect location for a hidden twelfth territory. It was a possibility that never crossed his mind before.

"I know the rules say the pocket trial must have ten territories only," John whispered to the empty air, "but our version of this trial already broke that rule once. Regardless of how it happened, whoever managed to sneak in one extra territory could easily do it a second time."