Sitting on his makeshift bed, William stared at a white blob labeled simply with ???.
"How is this supposed to be a book?" he muttered in frustration. Even using his skill to gather more information, it remained an enigma.
Pouring mana into the mysterious blob, it suddenly glowed brightly and revealed an interface:
Solomon's Codex: The Registry of Demons.
Owner: William Shallot.
Description: The book binding demons captured by Solomon. It possesses immense power and adapts to its owner accordingly.
Owner's class: Exploit Engineer
Solomon's Codex has transformed into the Codex of Exploits.
William realized the book was actually an interface, and it had now been absorbed to create a new interface that contained a library of Exploits. However, it was currently empty, and he needed to fill it.
Codex of Exploits
Exploits: 0
-----------------------------------
It seemed there was no magical shortcut to mastering his skill—William had to create his own exploits. But it was not all for naught; the codex held something unique, and that uniqueness would help him craft his first exploit.
William extracted the data from the goblin that his vulnerability scanner had analyzed and attempted to create an exploit based on it. His first approach was mana poisoning. In this new world, every being relied on mana, even if they didn't practice magic. Mana was as essential as air. He planned to supply his own mana in place of nature's, infiltrate the goblin's system, and create chaos.
He studied the mana and its circuits as much as his data allowed, and after hours of practice, he successfully created a mana bomb. It was simple and based on cookie poisoning, one of the common attacks hackers used to infiltrate systems.
He manipulated the mana flowing into the target system, aiming either to gain access or elevate his mana privileges to a higher level, like taking control of the target's brain. It was a gamble, as he didn't know how the body would react to foreign mana entering it.
But he had to try it, and for that, he needed a target much weaker than himself, so he could have enough time to conduct his experiment.
After spending hours studying mana and goblin anatomy, he was utterly exhausted. The experiment would have to wait; today, he was going to rest.
---
Location: Clearing Campsite, Noon
It was already noon when William woke up.
"Umm... I slept like a horse," he mumbled, still groggy.
Today, his plan was to test the mana bomb he had created the night before going to sleep.
After taking care of his daily necessities, he was ready to head towards the forest to hunt. Unfortunately, there were no quests this time, and he wasn't particularly interested in taking another herb-gathering quest. He had something else on his mind.
'What could Bran, Eric, and Eren be up to now...I thought they might come to threaten me one last time.'
After the meeting in the planning room, he never saw them again. However, while buying bread for last night's dinner, he heard from a food vendor about Elisa. She had recently slain a group of ogres on her own and was now known as the Specter Lady.
'Spectar Lady, what a cool name! I wonder what her level is now. Her class is definitely an archer, maybe even a special one.'
Gathering his thought William was ready to hunt and test his new ability.
---
In the forest, a group of goblins gathered, half of their members already slain by a man clad in leather armor, stained with both fresh and dried blood of their fallen kin. They shrieked in fury, lunging at him with weapons laced in poison and teeth sharp as razors. But with each strike the man delivered, they fell like flies. A single hit was all it took to kill them, as if the man instinctively knew the quickest path to their demise.
Soon, the remaining goblins were slain, leaving one with a severed leg. Unable to move, it struggled desperately, trying to thrust its poisoned blade at its enemy.
But it was futile; its hands were cut off too. William wanted to be as cautious as possible before testing his new ability. He leaned toward the goblin and said, "Exploit." He might not have needed to say the skill's name for it to activate, but he did anyway—to look cool.
The mana around the goblin shifted, slowly entering its system. The goblin didn't even resist it; to him, it wasn't an attack. Yet, the attack had already been delivered.
For minutes, nothing happened. The goblin continued groaning and screaming in pain; it might have been calling for help, but William wouldn't know—he wasn't well-versed in goblin literature.
"Come on, do something," William muttered, his voice low as he waited for a response.
But nothing happened. The goblin kept screaming, his voice echoing endlessly. William felt the urge to just kill him and abandon the experiment, but suddenly, the screaming stopped. The goblin's expression slowly faded, replaced by a blank stare.
Whatever William had planned was complete. It was a privilege escalation. William had gained root access.
"Hell yeah!" William was overjoyed beyond belief. He had successfully hacked the goblin and taken over as the highest authority. Now, he just needed to plant a backdoor or rootkit, if possible, for permanent access to the goblin's system.
Basically, he has enslaved the goblin, and even that wasn't the craziest part. The most unnatural thing was that he could use this infected goblin to spread the infection to others like a worm, creating a botnet in the process. Not only will he soon amass a legion of goblins, but in the future, he might be able to command many other monsters, maybe even humans.
He commanded the goblin to move, and though it was now limbless, it still attempted to walk. William proceeded to give it various commands to see what else it could do. After a series of experiments, he concluded that not only was the goblin fully enslaved, but its powers were also under his control. He could essentially take away the goblin's skills or stats and add them to his own. This was insane—he could not only level up but directly absorb stats from the hacked monsters.
"I am like one of those overpowered characters from web novels..."
But there was a catch...