Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 399: The Black Fog!

"It’s the black damn fog," John spat, the words coming out as a faint roar through his clenched teeth.

"I should have known. I should have linked that fog in the basement to the one we experienced before. It didn’t just infected her; it’s already spreading inside her."

The mention of thebBlack fog, the thing that still haunted Ricky’s darkest nightmares, caused the youth to tremble visibly. A look of pure horror washed over Ricky’s face, a reaction so intense that it caught the attention of every teacher and the Headmaster. They realised then that this wasn’t a random thing; it was a real threat.

"Make way!" the Headmaster ordered, his voice cutting through the chatter like a command from a god. The authority in his tone was absolute. "Let him handle whatever is hidden in her body. Everyone else, back off!"

"But Headmaster!" the lead medic teacher protested, stepping forward. "I’ve inspected her with our most advanced diagnostic tech! Nothing came back abnormal! Her vitals are stable..."

"Our John is special," Luke bellowed, interrupting with a tone that was half-arrogant and half-warning. "Your toys can’t see what he sees. Now shut up and watch."

"Don’t come near me!" Cissel shrieked as the wall of teachers began to part. She saw John approaching like a relentless, inexorable force of nature. To the entity within her, John wasn’t a friend; he was the most feared monster in existence. "Stop it! Don’t touch me! Get away!"

John paid no heed to her screams. When she tried to activate her second ability to repel him, he calmly countered her move. He reached into his inventory and unleashed a torrent of metal scraps, filling the gaps around her bed with them. The clatter of iron and steel echoed in the room, startling the teachers.

"No matter what you are," John said, his hand hovering inches away from the first cluster of black code pulsating near her temple, "I swear to God, I will burn you to ash."

The moment his fingers made contact, the system interface exploded in his mind.

-

[Ding! You can pay 5k Mental Points and extract all the the Source Code Trial Fog Essence in her body!]

[Ding! Please note: This extraction process is only available on top of your Object Lockdown Ability - The extracted codes can be used in coding potions!]

[Ding! Do you accept? Y/N]

-

It was exactly as he had feared. It was the same black fog infection that he met in the pocket trial.

’Take whatever you need,’ John thought coldly, addressing the system as he activated his Object Lockdown ability. ’Take every Mental Point I have. Just make sure you don’t leave behind a single speck of that filth in her.’

The system’s requirements were steep, but for John, they were a necessity. It demanded a steady toll of five thousand Mental Points and he had to remain physically connected to Cissel’s body for nearly an hour.

John didn’t mind the drain, nor did he mind the desperate, violent attempts Cissel made to break his grip. Her body thrashed with a strength that wasn’t hers, but John was a statue of iron resolve.

Every few minutes, he would reach out with his free hand, dragging more metal scraps toward him, touching them, and sucking them dry to keep his Mental Points from bottoming out.

For the gathered onlookers, the scene was nothing short of a miracle wrapped in a nightmare. The teachers exchanged silent, unnerved gazes. To their eyes, the word exorcism was the only one that fit. They saw a boy holding down a screaming girl while weird black liquid came out of her skin like black sweat. But the Headmaster and Nikolas knew better.

They had heard the grim stories of the Black Fog. They knew it wasn’t just something trivial; it could affect one’s mind and getting it out was a hellish experience in itself. Ricky had previously spoken of his solo venture into the fog, a mission driven by curiosity that had ended in a terror so profound it had altered his personality.

Looking at Cissel now, the teachers finally understood why Ricky’s voice had trembled back then. They were witnessing the physical manifestation of a nightmare.

For John’s friends this was a hauntingly familiar sight. It was a recall of the darkest moments in the pocket trial. John had performed this same ritual for all of them at one point or another, purging the contamination from their bodies.

Cissel’s defiant roars turned abruptly into agonising, high-pitched screams the moment John began to extract the black codes. It was like he was pulling barbed wire out of her nerves. The medic teachers, driven by their instincts to protect their patients, couldn’t take the agnoy and screams. Two of them stepped forward to intervene, intending to pull John away, only to be met by the Headmaster’s towering presence.

The old man didn’t move a muscle, but he glared at the medics with a fierce, warning gaze that rooted them to the floor.

In the Headmaster’s mind, a different dilemma was taking place: if a student had been infested with a lethal anomaly right under their noses and his experts hadn’t found a single clue, they were either dangerously incompetent or complicit with the enemy.

In either case, he was already planning a hellish week of interrogation and confinement for every staff member present. For now, he watched with fascination as a viscous, black substance began to seep out of Cissel’s skin, gathering under John’s hand.

"Give me bottles!" John suddenly shouted. He had been working for thirty minutes straight, and Cissel’s screams hadn’t faltered for a second. His brow was slick with sweat, and his hands were stained with the dark residue.

The friends moved instantly. They knew the drill, yet in the chaos of the infirmary, none of them had come prepared with an empty bottle.

"You can use these," the Headmaster said, stepping forward. As always, the old man was prepared for every contingency. He reached into his storage device and produced a collection of glass vials, the kind usually reserved for storing volatile medicines and precious potions. Ricky and Elena grabbed the bottles and handed them over.

John took the vials one by one. He directed the black fluid he extracted into the containers. As soon as a bottle was filled, he capped it and vanished it into his inventory.

Every teacher in the room was mesmerised by the fluid. Its very existence was the ultimate proof of John’s claims. It was a substance that defied their latest diagnostic technology, a biological ghost that had been hiding in plain sight. Instantly, the black fluid became the most coveted substance in the academy; the medic teachers in the room were already salivating at the thought of studying it.

But John had no intention of sharing. He kept his hand moving across Cissel’s body, clearing the clusters he saw through his Frame Recognition. He moved from her temples to her chest, then to her limbs, extracting and bottling the essence, never letting a single vial stay in the open air for more than a second.

Even the Headmaster felt the itch of curiosity. He considered asking John for a single sample. If they were truly going to go to war with Mark, they needed to understand the mechanics of the weapons being used against them. Seeing how the black fog had fundamentally took over Cissel’s personality and the medic teachers couldn’t detec it, made the Headmaster crave a proper laboratory study.

However, John would have rejected such a request. He knew the true nature of the fog; it was a deadly toxin. He planned to use these samples to craft specialised anti-fog potions. He had seen Mark use the fog outside the pocket trial for the first time ever, and he knew that the next time they met, he needed a surplus of antidotes ready to go.

One hour of constant, throat-tearing screams and violent, bone-snapping twitches felt like a lifetime to everyone in the room. But John’s persistence was absolute. Finally, the nightmare reached its end.

Cissel’s body suddenly went limp, as if it had been unplugged from a power source. She fell back against the pillows, her muscles finally relaxing and her frantic thrashing ceasing entirely.

The vicious mask that had distorted her features melted away, replaced by her natural, peaceful beauty. Cissel closed her eyes, her breathing shifting into the slow, steady rhythm of a deep sleep. It was a well-earned reward after the psychological and physical torture she had endured.

"Is it over?" Ricky asked, his voice a mere whisper. He spoke for everyone in the room, teachers and students alike.

John waited a few more minutes as he performed a triple-check on her. He searched for any missed black cluster until he was satisfied. Finally, he gave a slow, weary nod.

"Phew! That was too close for comfort!" Luke heaved a deep, theatrical sigh of relief, wiping sweat from his own forehead.

Elena, however, wasn’t ready to relax. She spun around, her eyes flashing with anger as she faced the medic teachers. "You should have let John visit her from the very first day!" she bellowed. "If we had waited any longer, who knows what that thing would have done to her!"

John raised a hand, the calm shaking of his head silencing her before she could truly snap. He didn’t blame the teachers. He knew that the Black Fog was designed to be an unknown phenomenon to the world’s technology.

The medic teachers had simply been following Cissel’s stated wishes, and in a way, they had all been victims of the same deception. Mark had used her own voice to keep her saviour away. Now, finally, danger was over.

Yet one issue still remained: How come the black fog came to this world? And how could Mark use it to take control over Cissel’s body as if she was a cyborg?