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[Ding! Hacking is successful!]
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"Hahaha, nothing can stand against !"
John was standing deep within the heart of his zone. He had spent the better part of the last day in a frantic, high-stakes marathon between his territory and the battlefield that had served as a graveyard for the Demon fleet and the Dragon vanguard.
Upon his return to the site, he found the battlefield eerily silent. It seed the surviving Demons and Dragons were too preoccupied with their own licking wounds or other stuff to bother burying their fallen kin.
This neglect was a goldmine for John. He had initiated a looting spree, moving like a phantom through the carnage. He had kept his Sandbox ability active at all tis. He couldn’t risk a stray Demon flying ship or an accidental Dragons’ patrolling unit catching a glimpse of a lone human scavenging their fallen comrades.
The result of his risk was staggering. Thousands of combatants had fallen in the at grinder, and John had claid the spoils of every single corpse he could find.
The Dragons, he discovered, had a weird respect for their scaled bodies; their storage devices were shaped like oversized, iridescent scales. They ca in different sizes and colours, so deep crimson, others a shimring gold or sea-foam green.
John couldn’t yet decipher the hierarchy represented by the hues, but he knew that red colour usually denoted high level or rarity.
As for the Demons, the haul was even more significant. He had found four additional winged commanders among the fallen, along with the equipnt of over two thousand wingless warriors.
According to Zingy, the total detachnt force of the Demons numbered over twenty thousand strong. For a race that operated on such a massive scale, losing ten percent of their landing force, roughly two thousand individuals, was a sting, but hardly a crippling blow. However, the math for the Dragons was far more dire.
John knew the Dragons were strictly capped by the pocket trial rules, likely at a maximum of ten thousand. Losing more than 1,000 of their elite warriors in a single skirmish was a catastrophic blow to their plans.
That explained their sudden, decisive retreat following the human withdrawal; they couldn’t accept losing more of their limited numbers in a fruitless battle.
"Luckily, I retreated at the right ti," John muttered, realising he had exited the stage just as the true price of the battle was being tallied.
He turned his focus toward one of the large, golden Dragon scales he had pulled from his inventory. He prepared his Shell ability and the stored simple hacking program that had never failed him before.
At first, the handshake process went smoothly. But the mont he launched his standard hacking program, he was t with a jarring red notification, the first hacking failure he had encountered since he tried hacking the storage devices in the pocket trial.
"Interesting," John said, his competitive spirit ignited. If the Dragons had built a strong wall, he would simply use a bigger hamr.
He instantly began writing a more sophisticated, multi-threaded script, layering logic loops to confuse the scale’s protection. The second attempt was a partial success, but it was cut short by a bizarre system notification.
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[Ding! You succeeded in hacking the storage device, yet the lack of a proper power supply stops you from successfully finishing the hack!]
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John reread the prompt several tis; his brow furrowed. "It’s the Mana again," he sighed, shaking his head. The Mana problem was growing into a persistent thorn in his side.
It wasn’t that his hacking skills were insufficient; it was that the new world items required Mana to actually succumb to him and open their secrets. Seeing this result made John realise sothing. "It seems my system is operating separately from the laws of the world here."
The solution, however, was within reach. He walked toward the blue Mana Gemstone mine that Goven had shown him earlier. He placed the Dragon scale directly against the glowing blue rocks and re-initiated the hack.
This ti, the reaction was instantaneous. As the program ran, the surrounding rocks erupted in a blinding blue light. The discharge was so powerful that it painted the sky of the zone in a neon hue, drawing eyes from miles away.
By the ti Cissel, Ricky, Luke, and Elena arrived to investigate the light show, they were greeted by a sight that looked like a king’s treasury. Hundreds of shimring scales, demonic rings, and various ornants acting as storage devices were spread across the ground around John like a treasure trove.
The sight spoke for itself. They didn’t need to ask to understand what they were looking at.
"Dammit, John! You went back all on your own!!" Cissel shouted, her voice a mix of frustration and worry.
John simply nodded, his eyes still glued to his Shell interface. "The battlefield was left littered with thousands of pieces of precious loot. Why wouldn’t I go back? It would be a cri to leave those resources to rot."
He said it with such casual indifference that it made the round trip into the battleground sound like a morning stroll. Everyone knew the Demon fleet was still hovering at the borders like hawks, and the Dragons were likely scouring the plains for the Demons.
"You used your illusion trick again, didn’t you?" Ricky asked, shaking his head with a wry smile. It was becoming clear that John was evolving into sothing far beyond a standard Anomaly. He was becoming a force of nature.
"Still, let’s see what’s inside. I bet those lizards have so incredible gear tucked away in those scales."
"Did you take a glimpse yet? What do they have?" Luke asked, easily bypassing the topic of John’s daring solo adventure.
He had stopped worrying about John’s safety a long ti ago, having cultivated a rock-solid belief that nothing in this world could truly touch or harm the man.
"I didn’t," John replied, his eyes focusing on the Shell interface without blinking. "Let first take care of opening these treasure chests, then let’s start going through everything they contain. One step at a ti."
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