Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 133: New Quest: Establish the First-Ever Human Base in the Source Code World!

Chapter 133: New Quest: Establish the First-Ever Human Base in the Source Code World!

"I heard everything you said earlier, but let’s try this from a different approach. You kept stressing how impossible it is to break the laws of the apocalyptic trials, but as you saw there, the machines already found a way to do it.

So why don’t you squeeze your mind hard and try to find any clue or a rumour you heard before that can help us explain this? In my world, we call this a bug in the system. I want to know where the bug is."

John’s words left Lanmar deep in thought. The giant had spent the last hour telling John’s friends that it was impossible to traverse between different pocket trials and that the machines’ presence here was a violation of the trials’ rules.

John had already jumped over the point that the machines might have just crossed a border. The number they came in—thousands—didn’t match a small group detached from the ten thousand sent into a different pocket trial.

Whatever the reason was, it felt to John that the machines had somehow bypassed the limit. It was as if they had sent another ten thousand specifically to this area—the area that shouldn’t exist, the area that no one had heard about before.

Two anomalies aligning together weren’t a coincidence in John’s eyes; it was a conspiracy. And something told him the machines didn’t come solely for him and others this time; they had used this tactic for a long time already.

"Try to find any rumour or wild story about the presence of machines in any pocket trial your people went into, where the machines weren’t supposed to be there," John directly asked, pointing at the conclusion he had reached in his mind.

"They didn’t cross the borders of the pocket trials; they found a way to get into here like the other four races of the trial. So, is there anything ringing bells in your giant brain that matches this theory?"

"Well..." For long minutes, Lanmar kept his silence, his brow furrowed as he tried his best to recall anything near or far from what John suggested.

"I once heard about such an incident... A big battle once erupted in the fog between my people and some unknown force. A small army of a thousand Bulltors was killed, wiped out in a single night.

When my people went to check the leftovers of the battle, they found lots of machine parts—like the ones present at the other bank of the river—scattered among our dead."

"That’s good. What happened then?" John felt like he had found the thread he was looking for. "Did your people clash with them again? Did they attack your people’s base? Did they hunt the survivors?"

He tried to think of the potential ends of this story, yet when Lanmar shook his head, John was left confused.

"They didn’t appear again," Lanmar sighed, looking troubled. "It’s as if they evaporated into the mist. My people looked far and wide for them, even after they won their pocket trial; they didn’t find a single machine.

Weirdly, though, I recall hearing a similar story from another trial. A one-hundred-man team of my people was killed, and machine parts were found around them, but again, the machines didn’t appear at all afterwards."

"So your people thought these were all fabrications from the ones who came back, right?" John paused, trying to process all this and find a common link between.

"You said they didn’t appear at all, then do you recall where your people met them in the pocket trial? Was it close to a northern area of yours, like how you appeared here this time?"

"You don’t expect me to memorise such a thing," Lanmar was startled and shook his head emphatically. "I don’t recall hearing any detail about that, but there is something in common between these two stories and our pocket trial here!"

"Which is?" John was desperate to find a clue, and what Lanmar said next was definitely considered as one.

"In the three pocket trials, there was the same race with us; the mechanical hivemind of beasts and insects race!"

"Oh, is that so?" John never thought too much about that race, yet now he was far more curious to know more. "Tell me everything you know about them then..."

Yet as he was in the middle of his words, a series of notifications came to startle him.

[Ding! Congratulations! You survived the Fog Tide!]

[Ding! Congratulations! You completed the quest!]

[Ding! You gained +1 stat - +10 Mental Point cap!]

[Ding! You have a new quest!]

[Ding! Establish the first-ever human base in the Source Code World Quest!]

[Description: Humans are considered a fallen race as they never ruled over any pocket trial area! The first step to dominate the pocket trial is to establish a strong human base!]

[Requirements:

+ You need to establish a strong base that secures your safety, can host at least five thousand humans inside, and secures your water and food sources!

+ You need to prove the strength of the base by withstanding a massive attack against it!

+ You need to keep all of your team members + the eleven Bulltors alive!]

[Duration: 1 week!]

[Rewards: Will be decided upon the success of the quest!]

[Failure: You’ll lose the right to take over the pocket world + Losing the ability to get back to your game world!]

The moment the notifications came in, and the system announced the success of his quest, the brown fog changed back to pure white. The fog got pushed back to clear more areas, far beyond what the magical core ever cleared. The oppressive, crackling energy of the tide vanished, replaced by the eerie, quiet stillness of the standard fog.

’It must be the effect of the thousands of cores we used before, luckily they weren’t wasted,’ John thought while watching on his map the fog getting back to reveal double the area it cleared before the tide started. The boundaries of the safe zone were expanding rapidly. ’Still, that new quest... That’s a hellish hard quest.’

The scale was staggering. John’s eyes flashed in bright light for a moment; he turned to Lanmar, interrupting what the giant was saying.

"Tell me, in your world’s standards, what defines a proper base in this world?"

"A proper base?!" Lanmar was confused by the sudden, seemingly primitive question. He looked at the vast cleared area around them and then back at John.

"Well... You need to establish good defenses, a perimeter of fortified walls to identify the area you control, secure your food and water sources inside, have locations for your people to live in and sleep at, early detection measures that stretch across the borders of the entire area your base is in, traps around the base, and a detailed map of the area your base is in..."

Lanmar started to narrate a long list of requirements that mostly focused on the military side. Weirdly enough, the requirements of the system quest—to secure food and water sources—were perfectly mirrored in Lanmar’s words.

"... Then lastly, you’ll need to prove the safety of the base by getting challenged," as if Lanmar was the one who issued him the quest and not the system, the giant concluded his twenty-minute talk with these words.

"After all, a base isn’t considered one until it stands tall against enemies and proves it can’t be breached or broken. Right there, you can, with absolute certainty, claim to have a base."

"Noted," unlike what Lanmar expected, John’s response told him was really didn’t know the basic requirements to establish a base. "Let’s talk back about that mechanical race. Tell me everything you know about them. And yes, from your map, it seems they control the adjacent area to your people, right?"