Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 128: Grade-1 Magic-Tech Defensive Tower

"Ah, how come I forgot about it?" All of a sudden, Lanmar shouted. It was a desperate, manic sound, as if he had just found a silver lining of hope in the middle of his blackest despair.

"Go ahead! Touch them! Hahaha! All of these run using our Mana! Humans aren’t a magical species. You don’t have Mana in your bodies, you don’t have the magic spark! You can have our treasures, but to you, they are just useless metal! Hahaha!"

As if he had flipped a switch, the more Lanmar talked, the louder his voice became. He ended up laughing in that same grating, arrogant manner as before, clinging to this last vestige of superiority. He believed that the biological gap between their races was a wall John wouldn’t hack.

"Do you know how to use these?" Ricky asked, looking at a small metallic sphere with a frustrated frown. The team was met with a significant dilemma: they had the loot, but they lacked the key to turn it on. They instinctively turned toward the only person who could perform miracles: John.

"Let me try," John said calmly. Initially, he stood erect in the middle of the large pile, not touching anything, letting his friends do the work.

But when they failed, and coupled with Lanmar’s rude, mocking commentary, John finally leaned over and grabbed a tube-shaped item. It felt surprisingly heavy for its size, which didn’t exceed half a meter in length. It looked more like the detached pole of a spear than a functional piece of technology.

’Unluckily for you, dear Lanmar, I have something that can easily replace your Mana... I have my Mental Points. And... Viola!’

The moment his fingers brushed the cool, dark metal of the tube, a window flickered into existence.

[Ding! You have come into possession of a Portable Tent item!]

[Ding! You need to hack it to overcome the underlying protection and Mana-lock!]

John smirked. He knew what the system meant; he could easily activate it using his blood, and the handshake would do the trick.

That faint, knowing smile on his face immediately elevated his friends’ expectations. They didn’t know he intended to do it, but they knew that look meant the Bulltor was about to be proven wrong.

"Let’s see what we have here," John murmured. He didn’t hurry to activate the tent. A portable tent was a good item, but he wanted something more impactful. He wanted to humiliate Lanmar once and for all by making the first move using something truly terrifying.

He moved through the pile, his eyes scanning the system’s notifications of the items he touched, until he found a weird item, more like a pyramid.

[Ding! You have come into possession of a Grade-1 Magic-Tech Defensive Tower item!]

[Ding! You need to hack it to overcome the underlying protection and Mana-lock!]

"That’s the one," John whispered. This was the item that had looked the most menacing. He stood up and gestured to the area around him. "Move all the other items away. Clear a wide space. This might be something big!"

John couldn’t imagine exactly how large a Defensive Tower stored in a palm-sized object would be, but the name was self-explanatory. He waited patiently as Luke and Ricky scrambled to shove the hundreds of different items further away. Then they stood back, their breaths held, waiting for the magic to happen.

"No way..." From behind, John could hear the hissing, trembling voice of Lanmar. The giant’s laughter had died, replaced by a cold dread. "He can’t be... It’s impossible! Humans don’t have Mana! They don’t know how to gather Mana!"

Just as Lanmar was in the middle of his denial, John moved his left hand—the one where the small wound from the bracelet handshake was still fresh. He pressed his blood-stained palm directly onto the apex of the metallic pyramid.

[Ding! System Handshake Established!]

[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Grade-1 Magic-Tech Defensive Tower 75252!]

[Ding! Paying 5 Mental Points will activate it!]

’Five?’ John raised an eyebrow. That was a bargain. He turned his head slightly to look at the eleven bound Bulltors, his eyes landing on Lanmar’s ashen face.

An evil, predatory smile spread across John’s lips—one so dark that Lanmar was forced to shut up, the remaining blood draining from his face.

’Do it! I have plenty of livestock right here to harvest Mental Points from later. Activate the tower!’

The next instant, the weirdly shaped item suddenly shone brighter in a brilliant white colour. John instantly moved away, putting distance between himself and the glowing tower.

A sudden flash of light erupted, momentarily turning the area into a sea of radiance, and the item started to grow bigger. Nothing was visible within that blinding white light for several breaths, save for the hum of shifting metal and the distortion of the air itself.

"Dammit!" one of Lanmar’s gang cursed, his voice cracking with disbelief. "He activated the defensive tower this easily?! I thought it’d take ten of our strongest men to activate it! They would end up exhausted and drained of all their mana just to initiate the deployment!"

The remark didn’t escape John’s ears. Yet he didn’t pay much heed to the giant’s whining. He knew there were perks for having a system.

"Wow! John! This..."

Just when the light faded, a tall, cylindrical, fierce-looking white metallic tower appeared in front of everyone! It was massive—twenty meters in radius at the base and fifty meters in height. Its surface was sleek, etched with silver runes that pulsed with a faint inner light. Several weapons were installed on its upper, circular platform.

John decided to leave studying the code structure of this tower for later. There were still lots of items to go through, just in their first hacked bracelet!

"I love it! Can I have it?!" Cissel was the first to jump at John, shouting in excitement.

"Come on," Elena rolled her eyes, though she was clearly impressed. "Such a complex defensive tower will be better handled by an expert, like me! I have the needed experience to operate it, thanks to my military family."

"I also came from a Guardian Family! Defending is in my blood! I can operate it the best! Give it to me, John!" Luke didn’t hesitate to ask for the tower. Then Ricky calmly walked over, his eyes fixed on the towering structure.

"None of you will get it," he simply said, as if he was stating facts, silencing the bickering. "We were discussing how to fortify our base, and here we have a deadly-looking tower! We’ll take it back to our base and place it there, take turns to use it, right John?"

John moved his eyes around his disappointed friends, amused by their sudden competitive streak. It didn’t need John’s confirmation to know what Ricky said matched his own mentality. This wasn’t a personal weapon; it was a cornerstone of their new base defensive system.

"Anyway," John moved his eyes next to the piles of items they had moved, then towards the large stack of storage devices waiting for him to crack. "We still have tons of loot to go through. Let me turn this baby back to its smaller version, then we’ll go through everything one by one and see what else these generous Bulltors brought to us!"

"Damn you!" Hearing what John said forced Lanmar to his feet, his chains rattling. "You are a thief! A thief never heard of before, ever in the multiverse! To treat our hard-earned items like common street loot!"

"Sit down, and watch your tongue from now on." John’s fierce response and cold gaze drove Lanmar back to his knees, the giant’s pride crumbling under the weight of his own helplessness.

John then turned and touched the tower, paying another five Mental Points to deactivate it. The massive structure collapsed inward, folding with a series of mechanical clicks until it was once again a small, heavy, more like a pyramid item.

"I’ll keep it safe then," Cissel was the fastest to grab it from the ground. John couldn’t help but roll his eyes at her tenacity.

"You do know I’m the only one able to use it, right?" He motioned with his eyes towards the weirdly shaped item in Cissel’s hand, then looked into her eyes. Recalling how they had tried and failed to elicit even a spark of reaction from the items, she begrudgingly handed it over. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Now, let’s bring the rest here, and I’ll work on them one by one."

John stored the item in his inventory before starting a barrage of exploration through the loot. It was a tedious process of hacking, but the rewards were worth it. Now and then, he’d stop, walk over to touch one of the bound Bulltors for a few seconds, and then return to his work.

To his friends, it looked like a strange ritual; in reality, he was simply using MP Absorption to recharge his lost Mental Points from the captives, using them as living batteries.

Over the next hour, John worked through the mountain of gear. He found portable rations that tasted like chalk but were packed with nutrients, specialised armour plates, and strange navigation tools, not to mention weapons, defensive walls, and another tower. And finally, he found the items he wanted the most: the magical contracts!

John picked up a scroll that felt like hammered gold.

[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Magical Contract 5333678541!]

[Ding! Paying 5 Mental Points will activate it!]

’Pay!’ John didn’t even hesitate, while holding the golden scroll in his hand, the size of a finger!

[Ding! You’ll need a droplet of your blood to link the contract to you as Master, and a blood droplet from the target to turn it into a Follower!]

[Ding! By the contract’s rules, the Follower will listen to your commands and execute them without question, and they won’t lie to you!]

[Ding! By the contract’s rules, if the Master dies, the Follower dies instantly!]