Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 33: The Azure Academy Bug Dungeon 51

John didn’t even wait for his mind to clarify and instantly shot to his feet, his heart hammering hard. The cold, stony texture of the ground felt impossibly real for a place the system called a bug. Yet it was all alien to him, not in the academy anymore!

"What the hell are you talking about? A dungeon? Like real games dungeons?!!"

[Ding! Why is the shock for? You are already living for a long time inside a real game!] [Ding! 1 Mental Point is deducted!]

John went speechless when he heard the system’s response, which looked more like a mockery than a helpful answer. He stood there, jaw slightly agape, as the weight of that answer settled over him.

When he thought about it from that angle, he was indeed living inside a massive VR game. Why wouldn’t there be dungeons like the MMORPGs of his time back on Earth?

"Wait a minute..." He moved his eyes around, squinting as he tried to adjust to the slightly dim light of the corridor compared to the brighter light of his ability. Suddenly, he realised his vision had returned to its normal state.

"Why is my ability cancelled? And if this is a real game with dungeons, does that mean I can get drops, weapons, and even treasure chests?"

[Ding! The teleportation clashed with your ability and crushed it!]

[Ding! You’ll discover things on your own in this dungeon!]

"Why are you acting a bit... Weird?" John muttered, his brow furrowing. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but the system sounded different.

It felt more amused, more like a mischievous young kid poking fun at him rather than the stern, official interface he had grown used to. It was as if the Bug Dungeon environment was affecting the system itself, loosening its administrative restraints.

When the system didn’t respond to his question, John decided it was better to take the advice and start thinking about how to crush this dungeon. He was trapped until he reached the end, and standing still was just a waste of time.

"Wireframe Sight!" The first thing he did was check if his crushed ability could be used here or not. To his relief, the world shifted. The stone walls dissolved into a grid of digital codes, yet something was fundamentally wrong.

Usually, he could see through objects to a great distance, but here, he couldn’t see anything outside the twenty-metre thickness of the code walls forming the dungeon corridor.

"Beyond that distance is complete darkness," John muttered, feeling a slight chill. The code didn’t just end; it looked as if it were being eaten by a void. He decided to shift to a different, close-range tool. "Frame Recognition!"

This time, the darkness within the walls vanished. He could see the internal structure of the stony layers, but even then, his vision only penetrated about five metres deep. This place seemed designed to interfere with his tools, dampening the range of his abilities.

"The code structure here is... Bizarre... It’s different." He was used to the world being composed of a green code structure, with white codes acting as a signature for special codes, like those he saw in Ricky and Cissel.

Yet this world was an inversion. The entire structure of the codes was built on a brilliant, flickering white light! There wasn’t a single trace of green code at all.

"I’m in an entry corridor, just like back in the game days," he whispered, his voice echoing in the hollow space. He had spent countless hours playing MMORPGs back on Earth, and this followed the classic layout: an entry, a safe spot designed to let the player buff up before the first encounter.

"At least tell me how many stages I need to clear in this place, what’s the level of the monsters, and all other basic information about this dungeon!" He felt a surge of frustration at being left without the most basic intel. He didn’t know if there were bosses, what the general difficulty was, and the other basic stuff known in the games.

[Ding! There are a total of five stages in this dungeon!]

[Ding! The monsters will show their information on top of their heads!]

[Ding! Other questions you’ll find answers to when you start clearing the dungeon!]

The system was generous enough to answer at least two of his questions, though the "figure it out yourself" attitude was still grating. John didn’t hurry to jump into the fray just yet. He paused, looking back at the initial notifications that had greeted his arrival. One detail in particular stuck in his throat.

"Azure Academy Bug Dungeon 51..." His eyes widened as the implication hit him. "Does that mean there are fifty more of these dungeons hidden just inside the academy?!"

He was surprised to realise the scale of it. In his eyes, such a massive number of bugs would be enough to cause a catastrophe in any standard system! Yet it felt like getting access to these dungeons wasn’t as easy as simply stumbling upon them physically.

He recalled how the garden wall had looked the moment his ability duration ended, just before he had found the tree branch to make a cut at his thumb. It had looked perfectly normal; nothing glitchy, distorted, or abnormal appeared on the surface. To the naked eye—and even to those with special abilities—the entrance was invisible.

So, it wasn’t easy to spot one of these. On top of that, to access these dungeons, one needed their blood to bridge the gap. Even if someone accidentally brushed against a bugged spot, they wouldn’t trigger the dungeon entry mechanism and wouldn’t be forcibly sucked inside.

Realising this explained everything. It explained why, even though Cissel followed Ricky like his shadow, she didn’t show any of the abnormal improvement he did. She was watching a boy walk into a wall of trees and vanish, but she couldn’t follow him through the gate.

It also explained why, on that previous night, John had lost track of him so suddenly. It wasn’t because Ricky had detected him and hid; it was because he had simply stepped out of the normal world and into a dungeon.

Ricky never cared if anyone followed him because he knew no one would ever uncover what he was doing just by watching from a distance.

"On top of that, dungeons are common ways to raise one’s level, stats, and overall strength! They are like treasure troves, where any player can find skills, weapons, potions, and even treasure chests!"

His eyes gleamed with the light of realisation! "That explains why that bastard kept growing stronger every time I checked him! That damn bastard! He was farming this dungeon since day one in the academy!"