"Depending on Luke isn't enough," John muttered, pacing the length of his spacious bedroom.
The adrenaline from the hallway confrontation had faded, replaced by the calm, analytical mindset that had once made him a legend in the dark internet of 2026.
Luke was a valuable asset for understanding the social landscape of the academy and parts of the world, but the boy was clearly a local.
He was bound by the knowledge of his family, which obviously had declined. To uncover the true origins of someone like Ricky—or the mysterious girl—John needed a different approach.
"Let me think about it from a different angle then..." He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the far wall. "We are inside an academy. What did academies do in my time?
They kept registries. They kept records, background checks, family history, and sponsorship files, and even some even run some private investigations on every student who walked through the gates. If this place is as prestigious as they say, their documentation must be very detailed."
He leaned forward, his mind beginning to whir. He approached the problem exactly as he would have done back in 2026.
"That means there is a central, administrative office dedicated to gathering and storing all student files. I just need to find that office and find a way to get in. Physically breaking in is an option, but..."
He paused as his thoughts drifted toward a more profound realisation. "I'm in a world that behaves like a game. Everything I've experienced so far—the prompts, the stats, the green coding structure—stresses this fact. And I have abilities that allow me to perceive the world in its pure, digital form."
He recalled the shimmering green lines of the Frame Recognition ability. He remembered how the physical stone of the hallway and the flesh of his enemies were actually composed of cascading rows of code.
"If everything is, in fact, digital at its core, then the 'physical' world is just a high-fidelity front-end," he reasoned.
"If I can see the code, I can hack the code. It doesn't matter if the information is stored in a 'physical' folder; in the end, it's just a pile of data and instructions that make it look that way. If I can find the coding structure that represents those files, I can hack it."
His excitement rose sharply, his fingers twitching instinctively as if hovering over a mechanical keyboard. He could almost feel the phantom glow of his old penta-monitor setup. "I can hack them. I can gain access to those files and download the data... Or at least, that's how I'd do it back on Earth."
But then, the excitement faded just as quickly as it had arrived. A stark reality check hit him. "Yet, I don't have a computer... I don't even have an internet connection in this world. So how am I supposed to execute a hack??"
Just as the frustration began to mount, a memory surfaced—the moment he first arrived in this world. He hadn't used a keyboard then. He had used the raw coding knowledge from his time to mentally intercept the "erase" script and rewrite his own fate. That act of digital rebellion was the very thing that had birthed his current system.
"The Shell ability," he whispered.
His eyes gleamed, and the next instant, a command window materialised in front of him. Unlike the golden, user-friendly interface of the system, this was a stark, black-and-white console—a command prompt that looked hauntingly familiar.
[Shell Ability: Active][Duration: 10:00][Mental Point: 6/16 > 5/16]
He looked at the window with pure, unadulterated interest. The loss of another Mental Point stung, but it was a price he was more than willing to pay. This was his best shot at solving the quest.
This was his chance to return to his old profession: being a hacker in a world that didn't even know it was a program. In the end, even his system's name was the Hacker system!
However, as he stared at the blinking cursor, he hit the final, most daunting dilemma. "How can I connect to the office? How do I 'ping' a building?"
In his time, everything was networked via the internet or local intranets. Here, the structure of the world depended on the game engine, but he had no clue how the "nodes" of this world were connected.
"Perhaps my system can do the handshake for me..." he paused, holding his breath as he waited for a response. The answer came swiftly, a golden text appearing on top of the black Shell window itself.
[Ding! I cannot secure a direct connection with the game system for you! My primary objective is to shield my presence from detection, not to expose us both to a core-level detector! You must find an alternative method on your own!]
[Ding! One Mental Point has been deducted for this consultation!]
"Tsk! And there goes another point," John muttered, shaking his head with a heavy, weary sigh. The system was proving to be a stingy partner. "If I need to find another way, then let me use this dorm as my first test subject."
He looked at the walls, the door, and the polished surfaces of his quarters. To the naked eye, everything appeared normal—luxurious, even. But he knew it was a high-resolution facade, a skin that would peel away into a cascading series of long strings of green codes the moment he willed it.
However, he had another problem to handle. Before diving into a blind experiment that could drain him dry, he forced himself to lie down. He slept for six hours straight, allowing his Mental Points to regenerate fast.
[Mental Power: 10/16]
"That will suffice," John said, stretching his limbs until his joints popped.
He stood in the centre of the room and used his abilities. First, he activated Frame Recognition, watching the "real" world dissolve into a skeletal grid of emerald light. Then, he opened the Shell window, the black console hovering in the air like a relic from a forgotten era.
He decided to target the wall separating his bedroom from the dining hall. It was a safe choice; if he accidentally deleted a segment or caused a structural collapse, he'd only be linking two of his own rooms rather than blowing a hole into a neighbor's dorm or a public corridor.
He walked to the wall and placed his palm against the glowing green lattice. He watched the way his hand appeared in his special vision—a complex arrangement of codes.
"It's not working," John whispered after a few minutes of silent concentration. He didn't feel a "handshake" between his system and the environment. There was no data transfer, no prompt to "access," and no way to inject a command from his Shell into the physical structure. It was a failed attempt.
"Let me take a look at myself first," he mused, struck by a sudden thought. He walked to the bathroom mirror, hoping to see the code structure of the vessel he inhabited. But the moment he looked, he clicked his tongue in frustration.
"Tsk! I forgot. A mirror's function is purely optical. The moment I use Frame Recognition, the reflection just becomes a flat plane of codes."
Instead, he looked down at his own body directly. He raised his arms, inspecting his forearms, belly, and legs through the digital lens. A chuckle escaped his lips—half-shock, half-triumph.
"Those two... Ricky and the girl... They aren't special at all compared to this."
Embedded in his limbs alone, John spotted more than a dozen shimmering white code clusters! Not only were they more numerous than the students', but the brightness they emitted was far staggering.
"Still no clue on the connection problem, though," he grumbled, returning to the bedroom. He poked at the gaps between the green lines of the wall, tried to force his fingers into the "seams" of the code, and even delivered a sharp punch to the surface. Nothing happened except for a dull ache in his knuckles.
He sat on the floor, nursing his hand, when a realisation hit him like a lightning strike. His eyes shone, and his entire body froze as his mind spun back to the interrogation room.
"Wait a minute..." he breathed, recalling the moment he signed that contract. "When I signed that document, a needle pierced my thumb. Mark mentioned something about the need for my blood and DNA to finalise the procedures... Don't tell me that is the missing piece..."
It was a gruesome thought, but in a world that treated biological entities as codes, it made perfect sense. His blood was the missing key in his hacking thesis.
Without hesitating, John grabbed a steak knife from the dining table. He returned to the wall and made a small, precise nick on the pad of his thumb. As a bead of crimson blood welled up, he pressed it firmly against the wall.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The moment his blood touched the wall, the green lines in a three-foot radius flared into a brilliant, pulsing white colour. The code seemed to vibrate, drinking in the biological data and merging it with the room's environmental parameters.
[Ding! System Handshake Established!]
[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Room 189252!]