Urban System in America-Chapter 31: Mysterious System Space

"HUH? Where am I?"

Rex muttered, glancing around in confusion.

He was in a pitch-black space that seemed to stretch into infinity.

Everything around him was completely dark, and strangely, even though it was pitch-black, he could see everything clearly.

His body felt weightless, suspended in midair. It was a bizarre sensation, he could still feel every part of himself, yet something felt off, as if he were trapped in a lucid dream. Too real to be an illusion, too surreal to be reality.

Just then, a blinding flash of light erupted before him. Instinctively, he shut his eyes, and with a deafening boom,

Everything came to a halt.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

Before him stood a room, his own room. But something was off.

It had no walls, no roof, just the floor and everything within it.

He could see an old comic book thrown on the floor, exactly where he had tossed it the night before, the book he had randomly placed on his bedside. Every detail matched, one-to-one.

Just as his confusion deepend.

A system interface appeared in front of him.

"Welcome, Host, to the Independent Training Space, created by yours truly."

Seeing this, he suddenly remembered the prompt he had seen before being dragged here.

"Hey! What the heck is this? And was that true?" He immediately lashed out.

[Bingo! You guessed correctly. This is the place you will be spending your next couple of years (maybe).]

"WHAT?! Don’t be kidding me! There’s no way in hell I would be staying here, in this strange space. Absolutely no way!"

"Hurry up and get me out of here! I just traveled through, I have so many things I want to do, I didn’t even have a chance to splurge my $100 million, and now I have to spend who knows how much time here?!"

[Ahem! Host, please calm down for a second and listen to me.]

"How the hell do you expect me to calm down after you just dragged me here without any warning?!"

[Ahem. Host, this is system protocol. There’s nothing I can do, and the only way to get out of here... is to honestly follow the system rules.]

Hearing this, Rex took a deep breath and calmed down a bit. If the system couldn’t help him get out of here, then there was no use losing his temper.

Anyway, losing his temper wouldn’t solve anything.

"Phew! ..."After taking a few deep breaths, he calmed down. It was strange to say that, even though he couldn’t feel any air here, he could still breathe normally.

"Okay. Fine. Explain. What the heck is going on? And what was the meaning of that system prompt?"

[Okay, let’s start from scratch.]

Immediately, a system interface appeared in front of him with the exact same information he had read before being dragged here.

[Skill Acquisition Initiated. Transferring Consciousness to the System Training Realm.]

[Host will remain in the Training Realm until he masters the basics of Hacking.]

Rex’s eyes widened. "What the hell does that mean?! Explain properly!"

[Well, it’s exactly as written. Host will be living here until he can master the basics of hacking.]

[But Host doesn’t have to worry, this is a special plane created by the system. Anything learned here will have 10X–100X effectiveness.]

"...Wait, what?What?! 10X–100X? That means if I study something here, even at the lowest rate, I’ll learn 10 times faster?" Rex was shocked, almost incredulous.

[Yes, exactly! Isn’t it amazing? That’s why the system brought you here.]

"B-but what about outside? Won’t I die? And how can I explain my vanishing? Won’t others list me as missing?" He barraged the system with questions.

[Relax, Host. Of course, the system has a solution for this too,] the system replied with a smug tone.

[You didn’t think this space was so simple, did you?]

[This is a special realm created by the system. The outside world’s rules don’t apply here. Everything is under the system’s control.

Here, you won’t feel hunger, thirst, or even exhaustion. Even fundamental forces like gravity, space, and time... ]

"T-time?"

[Yes, time too. Time here flows differently. It moves 1,000,000% faster than the real world.]

Rex’s breath hitched.

"What? 1,000,000%?! That means..." He quickly tried to calculate the exact difference.

"1,000,000% would be 10,000 times the real world. Which means 1 hour in the outside world would be roughly equal to... 1.14 years."

His eyes widened in horror.

"WHAT?! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NUTS!" He exclaimed in shock.

[Humph! Now do you fathom the greatness of the system? This isn’t something a mere mortal like you can imagine. But for the great Almighty System, this is as easy as blinking...]

The system continued to boast, but Rex wasn’t listening anymore. His mind was spinning with the implications.

"If 1 hour equals 1 year, then if I study here from now....., wouldn’t passing my exams be a piece of cake?"

But the system’s voice interrupted his wishful thinking.

[Ahem! Host, snap out of it. This is a limited-time system space. It is only available during skill acquisition. You can’t enter or leave freely. Its only function is to aid you in acquiring skills as soon as possible. Everything else you are seeing is just imaginary.]

Hearing this, he entered the room and tried moving things around, but everything was stuck as if fused together.

The only functional object was the computer that had mysteriously appeared.

"Tch! Why so petty? Wouldn’t it be okay to do what I want?"

[These are the system’s rules. There’s nothing you can do about it.]

[So, start learning the hacking skill honestly. The faster you master it, the faster you can leave.]

He suddenly thought of something and tried opening the system warehouse. It opened up normally. Seeing this, he was ecstatic and took out his Aeon glasses.

[Oh yes, you can use system props in this space.]

"Haha!" He immediately laughed out loud. With these glasses, he didn’t have to worry about losing focus and would understand everything much faster.

Normally, he noticed that after wearing them for a while, he would get extremely tired, as if his brain was working in overdrive.

But here, he didn’t have to worry about anything like that, but here... there were no physical limits. He could use them to his heart’s content.

After putting on the glasses, he asked the question that had been on his mind from the start.

"System, why go to such great lengths? Why not just instill the knowledge directly into my brain?"

[Oh, about that... While it would be much easier, the system doesn’t have the authority to tamper with the host’s brain. I can’t implant or erase any memories. The most I can do is communicate with you.]

Hearing this, Rex was confused.

"Why?"

The system hesitated for a split second before responding.

[Oh, why is that? Maybe it’s to prevent the system from tampering with your memories and manipulating Hosts into becoming mindless slaves. Or maybe... there’s another reason. One even the system doesn’t know.]

Rex felt a chill crawl down his spine.

"Mindless slaves...?"

He had never thought about it, but... what if the system could alter memories? What if, one day, it decided to make him forget something crucial?

The thought made him shudder.

"...Right. Anyway, now he doesn’t have to worry too much." He exhaled, pushing those concerns aside.

"By the way, System, what are you exactly? Who made you? And where did you come from?"

Ding!

[System does not have the authority to access this information yet.]

"Tch!" He knew that he wouldn’t be able to get Ultimate Boss-level information so easily.

He was just trying his luck. Who knows? Maybe he’d get lucky.

Anyway, now that he had satisfied his curiosity, it was time to get back to the task at hand.

Stretching his body, he sat in front of the computer. After browsing for a while, he found tons of educational materials related to the basics of hacking, from the A of computers to, well, the C of computers.

The screen glowed in the dim room, displaying an overwhelming sea of files, scripts, and encrypted archives. This was it.

A complete collection of hacking knowledge from around the world, techniques, exploits, loopholes, security flaws, all condensed into this computer.

This wasn’t just a collection of notes or some half-baked tutorial. This was everything. Every known method to exploit security, every tool to infiltrate systems, every weakness of modern technology, laid out before him like an open secret.

His heartbeat quickened. Where did he even begin? frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

There were entire libraries of penetration-testing tools, tutorials on bypassing firewalls, exploiting network vulnerabilities, hijacking accounts, things he had never even imagined were possible.

Keyloggers, reverse shells, social-engineering scripts, brute-force algorithms, all neatly categorized, just waiting to be used.

He scrolled further, Wi-Fi attacks, malware development, phishing frameworks, operating system backdoors, it was dizzying, almost absurd, how much knowledge was packed into this one place.

And now, it was all his to learn.

He clenched his fists.

This wasn’t just a collection of files; it was the kind of information governments hid, corporations feared, and the unprepared fell victim to.

A guide to moving unseen in a world that thought it was secure. This was a gateway, one that, once crossed, could never be undone. If he mastered everything here, he wouldn’t just be a hacker; he would be a ghost in the system, invisible, unstoppable.

But first, he had to start from the beginning.

Taking a deep breath, he clicked on the first lesson.

(End of Chapter)