"Agh! I swear to God, I'll kill you!"
The moment the messages ceased their frantic flashing, John's consciousness snapped back into his body like a released rubber band. He cursed, he screamed, he threw punches at the empty air, but all he received in return was the cold, hollow echo of his own voice bouncing off distant walls.
Breathing heavily, John finally forced his eyes to focus and scan his surroundings. There wasn't a trace of Mark, the prison was gone, and the place he was in looked totally alien.
"What the hell is this place? Where am I?"
He wasn't in the interrogation room. The heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the prison was gone, replaced by a spacious, high-ceilinged hall. The hall was vast, felt like it was a place for training of some sort, with different dolls standing in different spots.
"Am I dreaming?" John muttered. He raised a hand and delivered a sharp slap to his own cheek.
The sting was painful and sharp. "Ouch!" he hissed. "Okay, I'm not asleep. I'm definitely not dead. But what is with this place? What happened back in the room?!"
He recalled what he passed through: Mark's glowing eyes, the metallic wire, the insane story about the future, and the deafening roar of the guard's shotgun. He remembered losing consciousness. He remembered the darkness.
-
[Ding! The Hacker System: V.0.1
+ Primary stats:
INT: 15 + HP: 10 + Strength: 7 + Defence: 8 + Speed: 5
+ Mental Point (MP): 10/10]
-
John jumped nearly a foot into the air. The words didn't come from a speaker; they appeared as glowing, semi-transparent text floating directly in his field of vision. He stumbled backwards, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and terror.
They were preceded by a melodious chime that rang clearly in his mind.
He waved his hands frantically through the air, trying to push the words away, but his fingers passed through them as if they were made of light and smoke.
"This can't be real!" John's body shivered, "Where am I? What is this place?"
-
[Ding! You are living in the future, within the VR game known as Athanasia. This world was crafted and went live over five hundred years ago, and now it is the year 2864]
[Ding! Athanasia is a high-reality VR massive game that envelopes all humans inside, living their lives from birth to death without realising they are inside a game.]
[Ding! Thanks to pollution on Earth, humanity moved to live in here, while leaving machines back on Earth to clean their filth. This isn't Earth, it's a way bigger world!]
-
The text shifted, updating with an answer that was far more terrifying than anything John experienced before. He stopped pacing, stared at the floating words, a cold dread settling in his stomach.
"Who are you?" he asked the empty room. "Show yourself, whoever is writing this?"
-
[Ding! I'm not a person, I'm your system. You can consider me a very advanced program designed to help you survive and grow stronger through different quests and abilities. I'm one of the kind, with no equal out there!]
-
"I took the wrong shot... That's it," he muttered, pacing in a tight circle. "That blue fluid... It wasn't lethal, it was a hallucinogen. I'm still locked up in a cell back there, and this is just a nightmare."
-
[Ding! No, you are not! This is real, and you can begin by viewing the general interface of your system. Just issue verbal orders or simply think of a command, and I will execute it for you!!]
-
John blinked while trying to get used to this insane situation. He calmed himself and started to accept his reality; he noticed his clothes were soaked with cold sweat.
As he wiped his forehead, John paused, looking down at his sleeves. He wasn't wearing the rough-textured orange prison suit he had lived in for the past few months.
Instead, he was clad in a dark, durable jacket and a pair of sturdy jeans, with a soft shirt underneath and heavy-duty, thick boots on his feet. The outfit felt high-quality and completely alien.
"Hmm, let me check what that system is all about…"
John just mentioned the system, and an interface opened up. He stared, mesmerised, at the translucent golden lines cascading in front of his eyes. It looked more like a game interface to him than anything else.
"Interesting," John muttered, a small, amused smirk playing on his lips. "It's just like any game I've ever played, with me playing the role of the main character in the game world," John thought, feeling a strange sense of comfort in the familiarity. It made this alien world feel manageable.
There was a section for Quests, another for a Map, a Profile icon, and other features. However, most of the features were dimmed, greyed out.
He checked his profile details, and there he found basic stuff like his name, age, and then more detailed stuff like abilities, stats, and Mental Points. There were other alien stuff like system synchronisation level and security deadlines.
He spent a few minutes checking everything, going through all and reading the description attached next to each. The first point he noticed was the repetition of a single item in almost all the abilities he had: Mental Points.
"What is this Mental Point part? Is that like Mana, the game characters used in the games I played?" He muttered to himself, never expecting a response from the system.
-
[Ding! Mental Points: It's the system currency used to activate abilities and unlock advanced features. Current Cap: 10. (Cap can increase through quests).
Regeneration: 1 point per hour during sleep; 1 point per 3 hours during non-combat; 0 points during combat; different point regeneration rules in special situations.
Warning: Hitting 0 will trigger Mental Burnout State, an abnormal status requiring urgent, prolonged rest to lift.]
-
"It's like Mana then," John shook his head, feeling it was way easier to describe it this way. Once this point was explained, he moved his eyes towards the abilities he had.
There was the Hacker Mind ability, a maxed passive that granted him the ability to perceive the world in a coded way. The Spoofing ability was another passive. It helped obscure his presence in the world from the eyes of hunting programs like Mark.
The first active ability was the Shell ability, which, from its description, was a hacking interface. John tested it, and there he saw a black window appearing in front of him, one that he could write on using his thoughts or verbal command.
It was a fun experience that he truly enjoyed, yet there was nothing he could hack right now using this ability.
There was another active ability he could use for now, which was Frame Recognition. It was a battle tailored ability by description, allowing him to fight properly in close-quarter battles.
From its description, he could tell it allowed him to perceive the world in a coded, matrix way and see the trajectory of any incoming attacks.
"Let's see what this is all about... Frame Recognition!"
John felt a sharp tug on his eyes and head as the ability surged to life for the first time. The realistic appearance of the academy dissolved into a sea of flickering green code.
The floor beneath him was no longer polished stone; it was a complex lattice of glowing lines, symbols, and codes. The ceiling and the walls followed suit.
"Fascinating," John was totally absorbed in the new world that had just opened to his eyes. There was nothing similar to the realistic appearance he saw before in this big hall.
Everything was formed of green code lines. He had to step up and touch the central doll, and his hands felt the artificial soft skin covering it. And yet in his eyes, the doll was made entirely out of green code.
"Even my body is made of the same weird code structure," he took a glimpse of his arms, body, and there he spotted the same structure of green codes. Everything felt new and shocking to him, confusing yet quite refreshing.
He would have dismissed everything, the interrogation, Mark, the lethal blue shot, as a particularly vivid fever dream if it weren't for what he was seeing right now.
As he kept moving around and inspecting everything, getting a bit used to this ability, ten minutes passed, and then the ability snapped off. "Tsk, it seems this system is quite serious about the duration thing," he shook his head, while the world around him returned to look realistic as before.
He then turned toward the far wall, where a massive mirror dominated the space. He approached his reflection cautiously. He looked like himself, the same jet-black hair, the same piercing blue eyes, nothing out of the ordinary.
He looked… In the best shape he ever had. The clothes offered no clues. Yet he was the curious type of person, and very patient too. "I'll take my time, surely something or someone will pass by here and I'll get to know more about what this place really is," he casually said, before recalling something.
"First things first," John whispered. He took a quick, frantic look at his own body, reaching down to check his little John. He let out a long, heavy sigh of relief to find everything exactly where it was supposed to be. "Okay. At least these future programs knew where not to mess around."
He spent a moment testing his body. He sprinted a few paces, ducked low, and performed a standing jump. He felt light, responsive, and incredibly fast.
He turned his attention back to the room. He marched to the door and shoved against it, but it remained as stubborn as a mountain. He was still locked in. "Don't tell me the prison just got an upgrade," he grumbled, turning back toward the centre of the hall.
In the middle of the room stood a big training doll. There were others scattered around the perimeter, but this one was the clear focus.
It was a featureless mannequin, with soft skin, devoid of a face, standing on a weighted base. Its most glaring feature was a set of shining, silver-coloured armour plates bolted firmly over its chest and abdomen.
"First time I've ever met a student who ignored the testing doll to dance around, speaking to himself, like a complete idiot!"