Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 208: Harvesting a Grand Loot While Waiting!
[Ding! System Handshake Established!]
[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Storage Program 9751235115454!]
[Ding! Warning: Storage Program 9751235115454 is protected by Mid-Grade Encryption!]
[Ding! You cannot gain access to its content by simple handshaking!]
’Hahaha, it worked! Hahaha!’
John’s triumphant laughter rang inside his mind. As he drew closer to the heart of the golden-hued spot, the true scale of the site revealed itself. Before him lay a series of massive excavated pits, each the size of a small football field, filled to the brim with the mangled, golden-coded corpses of the Hivemind’s fallen two thousand members.
A flicker of genuine alarm crossed his mind as he looked at this burial spot. His map, which had been his primary source of reliable intel for days, showed this specific spot as a normal stretch of land, no different than anything around.
The fact that a mass grave of two thousand elite units was invisible to his map was a glaring red flag; it meant the Hiveminds possessed some form of technology that could fool even his system. He took a mental note of this and threw that realisation aside for a later time. For now, he had a much more important mission.
He scanned the nearest pit with intense curiosity. The fallen Hivemind units were a grotesque gallery of huge chimaeras. There were beasts and insects fused with different machinery parts to add various benefits to them.
He spotted massive bears with hydraulic forelimbs, crocodiles whose scales had been replaced with overlapping armoured metallic plates, and lions with optical sensors where their eyes should have been. There were even insects of unrecognisable species, whose carapaces had many mechanical parts added over them.
Not that surprising, none of them carried external storage devices or sparkling ornaments. To any random observer, they looked like mere junk. But John knew better. He knelt at the edge of the pit, cut his thumb, and pressed his blood against the armoured flank of a fallen Hivemind bear.
The resulting system notifications confirmed his hypothesis: the storage wasn’t external; it was integrated, like what the D-1000 units had.
"Luckily, I stored that specialised hacking program," John whispered. He reached into the digital storage space of his Shell ability, dragging out the hacking program he had used before to crack the D-1000 machine units’ storage programs. He executed the script and waited.
[Ding! Congratulations! You have cracked the protection encryption and gained total access to Storage Program 9751235115454!]
[Ding! You have gained +1 point in Hacking Proficiency!]
[Ding! Do you want to take the content inside the Storage program 9751235115454out, or do you want to merge it with your inventory?]
’Store everything within my inventory,’ John mentally commanded, his eyes gleaming with a greedy light.
He rubbed his hands together. There were two thousand dead mechanical behemoths in these pits, each was a potential treasure chest of Hivemind technology, resources, and stuff he would have never heard of before. Yet he didn’t forget what he initially came here for. He needed a sustainable loop to maximise this opportunity.
As he hacked through one hundred storage programs, he also activated his MP Absorption ability, making sure to replenish his Mental Points.
"Using a hundred corpses just for a single recharge might be overkill," he thought to himself. He had already gathered forty traps from the surrounding area, but he knew thousands more were still buried in the northwestern area alone.
He adjusted his process to be more efficient: he limited his absorption to exactly twelve Hivemind corpses, just enough to fully restore his Mental Points, before sprinting back out into the minefield to hack and collect more traps.
Utilising his high Speed stat and the constant use of his Speed Lock ability, John became a blur of motion. He moved back and forth between the pits and the minefield, repeating the process many times.
By the end of all this, he had successfully cleared all two thousand corpses of their treasures and drained their residual Mental Points, while simultaneously gaining a staggering eight thousand trap devices.
The distance between the burial pits and the far edges of the minefield grew as he cleared the area, requiring him to travel further each time. Yet, he didn’t mind the exertion. As long as the territory remained clear of the Fog Wrathers’ tide, every minute spent was a minute spent disarming the Hivemind’s future fighting capabilities. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
He spent roughly five hours in this trance-like state of scavenging and hacking. Throughout the ordeal, he kept one eye on his map, monitoring the Hiveminds’ base and territory, anticipating how they would react to the incoming nightmare.
At first, nothing out of the ordinary appeared on the map. The Hivemind units remained, buried in the repetitive labour of laying down even more defences.
Watching their efficiency made John wonder if their storage programs were filled to the brim with an endless supply of defences. Yet, as the clock ticked into the fifth hour, there were clear signs of escalating distress and collective anxiety among them.
’They are indeed restless,’ John noted, his eyes tracking their movements on the map. John saw many of them pacing back and forth around the eastern area.
They were scanning the entire area as if they were desperately searching for the appearance of the Fog Seeker den anywhere else aside from the spot where they had gathered their main defences.
’The more I look at them, the more certain I am that they understand the internal mechanics of these pocket trials far better than the Bulltors ever did. But this time, they are destined to get a real, nice surprise, a personal gift from me, hehehe!’
As he finalised his scavenging task and secured the traps, John returned to the triple-walled enclosure where he had left his magical core. By the seventh hour, the Hiveminds’ agitation had reached a breaking point.
They were expanding their search scope. Realising the window of invisibility was closing, John decided it was time to withdraw. He retrieved his magical core and began his retreat toward the distant northwestern border while holding it in his hands.
Just before he reached the safety of the fog border, the atmosphere shifted. He felt a grand, rhythmic shaking of the ground, the signature move he had been waiting for with bated breath.
’They are here!’
