Hardware Hacker

The screen went black. Jon was dead.

It seemed the clever choice was not necessarily the right choice.

Although Hawkins regretted Jon's death, that feeling lasted only an instant. After all, everyone had to bear the corresponding risks and responsibilities for their own choices.

What concerned him more was the origin of those paper figures.

Those paper figures had clearly come for him. The fact that they could so easily slice open Jon's throat revealed two things: first, they possessed terrifying cutting power; second, they did not fear water, not even bloody water.

He just did not know whether those paper figures feared fire.

Hawkins decided to further modify this body.

Because air resistance was greater than bodily resistance, even with electric cells, he still could not discharge electricity directly.

But now, he had a new idea: adding part of a silicon-based lifeform's structure to his body.

In the previous universe, he had studied the bodily structures of quite a few silicon-based lifeforms. One-third of them possessed the ability to control electric currents, and there were many excellent structures he could use as reference.

Over the next three days, he continued eating enormous quantities, extracting the elements he needed from food.

His optimized stomach possessed formidable digestive abilities. In a single day, he could consume as much food as an ordinary person ate in a month. Fortunately, the Pras Sea had never been overfished, and its abundant fish stocks were enough to fill his stomach.

At night, Hawkins stood bare-chested by the ship's rail. Devil-like muscles rippled across his back, covered in black lines that formed a circle. Within that circle lay countless intricate patterns.

Those black lines were actually superconductors. They allowed him to control electric currents more effectively, even granting him the ability to manipulate magnetic and electric fields.

He stretched out his right hand toward the sea. A black dot sat in his palm. Electric currents burst from the tips of all five fingers in an instant, gathering at the black dot in his palm. Then, a ball of lightning shot from his hand and plunged directly into the seawater.

"It worked!"

Hawkins smiled faintly, then extended his fully healed left hand as well.

Both hands aimed at the sea. The next moment, currents continually surged from his fingers, while an endless barrage of ball lightning hammered the ocean like two Vulcan cannons firing at once.

After roughly half an hour, every stored charge cell in his body had been drained, and the bombardment stopped.

His body contained both electric cells and charge cells. The electric cells needed to consume physical energy to generate electricity, while the charge cells continuously absorbed naturally generated static electricity and solar energy, consuming very little.

Moreover, aside from acting as solar panels, those hairs also contained a special "core" within them. They could modify other organisms and even read memories.

After exhausting his stored charge, Hawkins sat in a deck chair. Strands of hair wriggled like snakes, capturing bacteria from the air.

The human eye could only see objects measuring 0.1 millimeters or larger. To see anything smaller required tools such as magnifying glasses and microscopes.

Hawkins's eyes had been modified. One point of the six-pointed star possessed the function of a microscope. Viruses and bacteria that ordinary people could not directly observe with the naked eye were visible to him whenever he wished to see them.

Although his modified body already possessed considerable abilities, he did not like putting all his eggs in one basket.

If the paper figures feared neither fire nor electricity, then he could only transfer his consciousness. Bacteria were highly suitable carriers.

Smack!

Suddenly, a bat landed atop the blade at the ship's bow. Then a large number of bats flew over, all landing on the sails of the Black Knife.

Hawkins looked at the bat on the bow. It stared at him and said coldly, "Found you, pirate's son!"

"Not a paper figure?"

Hawkins was slightly surprised inside, but did not show it on his face. Looking at the bat ahead, he asked, "Is this the power of the Lineage Curse?"

"Hmph, lowly pirate, you will never understand the nobility of nobles! Tomorrow, your head will hang in Jon Harbor and be spat upon by ten thousand people!" the bat snarled.

The Lineage Curse was a secret every noble and noble attendant had to guard with their lives.

Hawkins asking that question meant he had learned something from Jordas, and that was something no noble could tolerate.

All the bats opened their crimson eyes and locked onto him, baring sharp fangs. Then they spread their wings, beat them once, and dove down together, swiftly attacking Hawkins.

Hawkins remained seated in the deck chair. The instant the bats drew near, his right hand fell upon the Black Knife beside him. A flash of blade light swept past, and every approaching bat was cleaved in two.

His brain entered an overclocked state, his nerves had been replaced with superconductive silicon-based material, and thirty different muscle fibers formed new muscle groups. With all those conditions combined, Hawkins had no fear of attacks from ordinary creatures.

The swarm of bats still charged in headfirst. Hawkins raised his blade and brought it down, and countless bats that had lost their wings but had not yet died fell onto the deck.

Julian stood atop the ship's bow, his gaze gradually turning grave. In his eyes, Hawkins was no longer an ordinary pirate.

No ordinary pirate could possess such ability. Over a hundred bats had attacked at once and lost their wings at once. That was absolutely not power a mortal should possess.

"The pirate's son truly possesses a cursed relic!"

Julian came to a conclusion and decided to rendezvous with Joyce first, then find a way to deal with Hawkins.

But the moment he spread his wings, a bolt of electricity struck them. He crashed straight onto the deck, pain nearly making him pass out.

Hawkins rose from the deck chair and smiled. "The Black Knife isn't a place where you can come and go whenever you please. So this is your true form after all, isn't it?"

He walked over, gripped the neck of the bat Julian had become, and lifted Julian straight up.

A consciousness virus was injected instantly, but it soon vanished for no apparent reason. Clearly, some force had directly annihilated the consciousness virus, but that force was of a type Hawkins could not observe.

All lifeforms relied on various organs to perceive this world. Eyes saw color, noses sensed smells, ears heard vibrations.

But the world did not contain only smells, colors, and vibrations. It held far more besides, yet without the corresponding organs, humans could not see the other side of the world.

Some animals were color-blind, while others could see only infrared light. In their eyes, the world was another entirely different sight.

Therefore, what the world looked like depended on the organs a creature possessed. If humans grew organs capable of seeing time, then the world would become a four-dimensional existence in human eyes.

Hawkins could not see the truth of this world because he lacked the corresponding organs to observe it. Just like the unknown force within the bat's body, he could neither observe nor understand it, and naturally could not master it.

"Lowly pirate, you will die. You will die horribly. You have mastered power you should not possess, and this power will bring you a calamity that towers to the heavens!!!" Julian recovered from the pain and glared at Hawkins, gritting his teeth.

Hawkins looked at Julian and smiled, utterly unconcerned by Julian's threat.

He was more curious whether Julian was truly a bat or a human. Julian looked completely like a bat, yet his behavior was no different from a human's.

"Let's see what you're hiding in that little head of yours."

Hawkins's hair stood up strand by strand. If Julian's eyes could see nano-scale objects, he would have discovered that the tips of Hawkins's hair were spinning. Then slender metal needles, each only one nanometer wide, extended from their centers.

Those fine needles pierced Julian's cervical vertebrae and quickly connected with his nerve endings.

If the consciousness virus was a software intrusion, then what Hawkins was using now was a hardware intrusion, forcibly decrypting the information in Julian's brain.

As the information in Julian's brain was successfully read, Hawkins's eyes grew brighter and brighter...