Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 132: The Machines’ Treasure Trove!

John knew he had finally cracked the big secret by the series of these notifications. When he thought about it, he knew this made perfect sense!

Machines were already running on programs, using AIs, so why would they use physical storage devices in normal ways like other races when they could simply do it in the form of digital inventories like himself?

’I’ve cracked you once, and will crack you again,’ John thought, a sharp grin crossing his face. He didn’t need to think about what to do. He simply called for his Shell ability. His mind worked fast as he wrote down the twelve code lines of his simple hacking program.

[Ding! Congratulations! You hacked the protection encryption and gained total access to the Storage program 0784211113!]

[Ding! You gained 10 points in Hacking Proficiency!]

[Ding! Do you want to take the content inside the Storage program 0784211113 out, or do you want to merge it with your inventory?]

’Take everything out!’

John was beyond excited to see what the machines had decided to bring with them. Unlike the Bulltors, machines didn’t need to eat or drink. If anything, they’d bring high-energy cells, items that he desperately needed to run the thousands of laser guns scattered all over the place!

*Fwoosh!*

Like magic, a cascade of items piled up and appeared out of thin air! The loot was so much bigger than what everyone had seen when John cracked the Bulltor bracelet. On top of that, there were lots of items they recognised right on the spot.

"Damn me! Is this the Hybrid Pulse cannon or am I dreaming?!!" The first to move was Elena. She practically threw herself toward a massive cannon. It had a firm, triangular, large base and a long, menacing muzzle.

The platform was big enough for three people to stand side by side comfortably to operate the weapon. It was a beast of a machine, designed for anti-armour warfare.

"Wow! That’s what we call real loot," Ricky said, leaning toward the ground to pick up a spherical object that looked like a tennis ball in John’s eyes. Instead of the typical white lines, these lines were a pulsing, bright purple. "This baby here is a fierce grenade, one that can take down tens of enemies right on the spot!"

"Hahaha, we hit the jackpot! We hit the jackpot!" Luke kept jumping around, even dancing a little jig in the middle of the loot John had extracted. "All of this can arm our base and turn it into a fortress, no exaggeration at all! Hahaha!"

He was ecstatic, as were the other three. But for John, he cared more about the small, oddly shaped pieces of metal that appeared in the middle of the well-known items from their world. He let the others marvel at the pulse cannons and grenades while he focused on the items that far more interested him.

"Wow! They brought a tower with them, just like those giants!"

The first item John activated was another massive defensive tower. Then he started to probe all the other metallic pieces, ending up activating over two hundred different items!

"Big towers, a large number of reinforced walls, and even a mobile energy generator... That’s a big loot, big bro! That’s definitely a great loot," Luke said, turning his eyes toward a speechless Lanmar. "See this? That’s what truly preparing to take out an entire world looks like! Your little bracelets are toys compared to this!"

"All this just from a single D-1000?!" Cissel moved her eyes among the piles of items. "We still have thousands of them out there!" She couldn’t help but take a wider glance at the expansive battlefield, her mind reeling at the potential.

John recalled the machines he had destroyed earlier in the fog while they were fleeing their previous base. There were hundreds of wrecks scattered across the path from here to that territory.

"Change of plans," John said, turning his eyes to his friends and then to the eleven Bulltors. His voice was firm, commanding the attention of everyone present.

"It will take us way too long to explore all this individually. So, here is what we do: each of you takes two Bulltors with you. Collect the scattered chest pieces of the D-1000s here and all the way back to our old base, and bring it all to the new base."

John recalled where he had killed the machines in the fog while they were running and in the aftermath of the conclusion of the battle. The terrain was etched into his mind.

He described these locations to his friends, giving rough estimates of the time they would need to travel to reach these spots, while strictly asking them not to risk anything if the areas were still covered by the roiling brown fog.

Then, he gave a direct order to eight Bulltors, aside from Lanmar, to go with his friends and help them. As for the remaining two, he ordered them to work on the battlefield around, moving the chest pieces back to the other side of the river.

The D-1000 he had hacked earlier was accessed through the chest piece. So, he knew they didn’t need to bring all the heavy, cumbersome parts back for his hacking to work.

"What about me then?" Lanmar asked, his massive voice lowered. He felt like John had spared him the manual labor not out of his good heart, but for something else he wanted from him. His hunch proved to be right.

"We’ll talk," John led the way toward the other riverbank. "I need to know everything about the pocket trial rules and how the machines managed to get in here by breaking them."

"Ok," Lanmar grunted. He didn’t know if John had heard every word he said earlier or not, but if talk would save him from working as a common labourer like the others, he wouldn’t mind it. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Once they crossed the underwater bridge to the other bank, John turned to the giant, starting a long talk with him.