Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 127: Ding! You Have Unlocked Hacking Proficiency!

[Ding! System Handshake Established!]

[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Storage Bracelet 5869575412!]

’It’s a success!’ John thought, his heart racing. He looked down at the chunky, golden-hued bracelet he held in his hand. His own blood, smeared across the cold metal from a small nick on his finger, coated the bracelet’s surface.

His friends watched him with a mixture of confusion and concern, as if he had finally lost his mind under the pressure. To them, he was just bleeding on a piece of jewellery. Even the Bulltors exchanged glances before Lanmar erupted into a fresh fit of hysterical laughter.

"Did you think when I said they are linked by our blood that these items would open to you by covering them with yours? Hahaha! You humans are more retarded than I thought! You don’t even realise what it means to have an item locked by someone’s blood!"

Lanmar’s laughter was loud, mocking the perceived simplicity of John’s attempt. "You can drown that bracelet in a bucket of your blood, and it will remain as shut as a mountain!"

John didn’t need to hear the giant’s blabbering. Just after the two successful notifications, a third one flickered across his vision, telling the story he had anticipated.

[Ding! The Storage Bracelet 5869575412 is protected with mid-level encryption!]

[Ding! You cannot gain access to its content by simple handshaking!]

’I know... Shell!’

John wasn’t fazed by the failure. In fact, he had expected it. When his black coding window manifested in front of him, he instantly called up the most basic hacking program he had ever written.

He recalled the night he had finalised this specific script; he had been only twelve years old. The hacking program wasn’t exceptionally powerful by modern standards; it was a "Brute-Force Bypass" that usually required a stable connection to a central server and functioned best within a closed environment.

’I’m considered to be inside a closed environment with this bracelet now,’ he reasoned. He quickly finalised the twelve lines of code. Then he hit the final command: ’Run it! Enter!’

And, he waited.

"Are you praying, human?" Lanmar sneered, seeing John stand motionless with his eyes half-closed. "You think praying will crack the bracelet open for you? Hahaha! I’ve changed my mind. After my people come and crush this place, I won’t kill you. You’re far too funny to die. I’ll keep you as a jester!"

John totally ignored him. He closed his eyes per habit, centring himself, waiting to hear the most melodious tone in the world—the system’s chime.

[Ding! Congratulations! You have hacked the protection encryption and gained total access to the Storage Bracelet 5869575412!]

[Ding! You have unlocked Hacking Proficiency!]

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

[Ding! Do you want to take the contents inside the Storage Bracelet 5869575412 out, or do you want to add it to your inventory?]

John opened his eyes, reading the text with a sense of quiet triumph. He suddenly realised that this was the first time he had truly hacked into a foreign piece of technology using his own handwritten programs rather than just a system-backed handshake. It felt... Refreshing.

"Hahaha, look at his face! He’s stunned by his own failure!" Just before John could decide to keep the content hidden, Lanmar mocked him again, his voice booming with confidence.

’Okay. Get it all out!’

John turned and gave Lanmar a calm, chilling gaze. He touched the surface of the bracelet, and the next instant, the world seemed to warp. A massive volume of items appeared out of thin air, cascading onto the dirt and covering an area of tens of meters around the group.

"John! Wow! You did it!" Cissel was the first to jump toward him, her eyes wide with amazement as she looked at the sheer volume of weird-looking items.

"What did you say just now?" Luke turned back toward Lanmar, ignoring the shiny new items for a moment to savour the giant’s reaction. "What did you just say about our John? Hahaha! Who’s the jester now?"

Luke laughed, and Lanmar’s face turned ashen white in an instant. The items appearing meant the fallen human had successfully cracked a protection enforced by the Source World’s own laws. It meant their storage devices were now open books to him. And that also meant the contracts were no longer safely locked away.

"Don’t even think about it," Ricky said, his voice cold as he stepped toward the bound giants. He waved his blades, the light of the fire reflecting off the steel. "Our John here won’t show that kind of mercy again. You have a few choices now: you can risk your lives inside the fog and die, you can do something reckless here and die, or..."

He turned around, placing both swords over his shoulders with a nonchalant ease that betrayed his absolute control over the situation. "You can sit tight," he said, his voice echoing with a chilling finality. "We’ll find those contracts, and we will make sure to bind you forever to our ship. You wanted to call us a fallen race; now you can see what it’s like to serve one."

"..."

Hearing this, the flickering thoughts of resistance, the desperate plans of fighting back, and the suicidal urges to escape into the fog vanished from Lanmar and his fellows. They sat in a heavy, defeated silence, watching as the small humans began to pick through their life’s possessions like scavengers.

"Good job," John said, raising a thumb to both Luke and Ricky once they joined others in sorting through the mountain of loot. "Let’s find out what all these mean in the first place... And how to make them work."

Even though he had cracked open the bracelet, the items were entirely alien. There were dozens of metallic cubes, long tubes, and weirdly shaped objects that defied common sense. John waited on the side, letting his more experienced friends to check the items, perhaps they’d find any relation to things they knew before.

Yet to Ricky and Cissel, they looked like scrap metal—useless junk that had no buttons, no triggers, and no obvious purpose.