A bizarre school day

It was the 5th of April, a Monday. Ben woke up at 4:47.

He begins with one of the most satisfying things to do, looking at the new reviews of Swordland.

Ben was positively surprised. The game was only published four days ago, so it wasn't guaranteed that anyone would download an unknown game.

But Swordland was downloaded over 1395 times and had 97 Reviews.

The average rating was at 4,5 stars.

The most liked were as follows:

„ All those people saying this game is hard,I have only one thing to say. GIT GUD. Every boss has a particular weakness,and a particular strategy you need to use. I died 13 times and 7 was at the last boss. The game is completely playable and very fun. Every treasure is attainable if you use your head. The boss fights don't take as long as the people say. You need to power up properly and get the right items. Also advice. Don't buy health potions,and focus on armor. I heavily recommend this game." (5 Stars; Muhammad Ahnad)

„Impressive game. When you have nothing to do, this is the perfect game for passing time. Intriguing adventures, intense battles, shiny treasures, and a lot more. There were a couple of small bugs, such as sometimes the controls wouldn't respond instantly after throwing an object. However, for the most part, it was quite the experience. Definitely recommended." (4 Stars; killkillua)

„This is literally the greatest mobile game on the play store. You can attack enemies in different styles and proceed through an interesting plotline. I love the plot. I love the style. I love the theme. I love the characters. I only wish there would be a multiplayer where you go on quests with friends and that there were companions or pets to help with your death defying journey!" (5 Stars, Goku999)

„This is the best game I ever played. My interest goes on increasing as it proceeds to the next levels. Great great effort by the team, I really appreciate it. There are different challenges in every level, new objects to interact with, powers ups, mega swords you have to collect, and much more. Every boss has its weaknesses. You just need to think how to defeat him. For Gamers, If you didn't play this game, you played nothing...!!!" (5 Stars, Nabel Roul)

Sadly, every developer had to read through the worst reviews to see possible problems and see possible updates-idee. It was quite the worst thing to do in the morning as it completely ruin your mood. It made the creator want to tear the person into pieces.

For the reviewer, it was blessing that they couldn't hear the swearing from Ben while trying to calm down.

„The enemies that we have to challenge are to OP and its really hard. When we actually do "Finally" win the boss battles, it comes out with other thing right away. Meaning once we finish the boss battle, we'll be on one or two hearts and the weapon takes too long to load up, which means one or two more hits then we are dead. It doesn't even save, so now we have to start the whole boss battle all over again, which means it's going to take 30 or even an hour to finish it again!!!!!!" (1 Star; ###)

„This game says run, jump and slash but what I'm gonna do to jump when I can't reach the desired/further platform after trying 1000 times with maximum effort and all the controls I have. This game can be good and fun if the problem is solved because every day I get stuck somewhere in this game and can't go further because there is no other way. Solve this." ( 1 Star, ####)

„I have 6 problems with this game 1.The graphics looks like n64. 2.There is no voice acting. 3.The game doesn't feel polished. 4.Why the Main character looks. like it came straight out of roblox. 5.There is no sense of adventure in the game you just go solve a puzzle, get the item and repeat. 6.The world doesn't feel connected like there's an island floating with a house on nothing. It should be more like zelda 2." ( 1 Star; ######)

„my problem is that plate armor and boardsword are toooooo expensive..! I can't afford it the plate armor must be 150 and board sword must be 100 please fix this problem" (1 Star, *#*)

No, every 1 Star was unconstructive, but they were things that Ben wouldn't change. Either it was too time consuming or it was part of the puzzle to solve.

´If you can't advance to a place, it means you should look for another way or have a minimum of skills. No equipment is tooooo expensive. You have to work a minimum to have enough coins or the monster would be killed too easily. These lazy players! Thankfully, it isn't my job to manage an app.´

People were always criticizing. It was only natural that Swordland wasn't on par with games that cost or have ads.

He didn't want money from them. His game was just to kill some of their time and have programming experience.

Now Ben could feel how every creator felt after reading their worst reviews.

Ben then went to the site of the exchange market.

It was his second favorite occupation, his first one was fighting and the third one was training.

At the end of the day, fighting was surviving. As long as he didn't die in fights he loved it.

This could be said from most of humans' hobbies. Rock climbing, mountain biking, skydiving, motorcycling, etc.

Risk and fun were closely related. You wouldn't have a high risk if you followed the rules and followed your instincts, but if you are at the limits the risk would always be there.

The reason, why Ben liked looking at the exchange market was because he saw the money he was going to win. The money by itself didn't interest him, but he knew how essential money was for improving your stats, improving your skills, and to level up faster.

In normal cases, Ben would have much more fun in training, but as he had knowledge of his older timeline, he was making money like nobody else.

Neurolink stock was now at 1323 Euro, Ben could have waited longer, but he knew that Tesla Inc's reputation would shortly be damaged, which also set Neurolink back. He also had to pay back the bank for the loan of 26 million.

Ben didn't even calculate the potential profit like so often and directly made a sell order of all his stocks for 1325 Euro. Ben was sure that others would fight over for these stocks, so he rounded a bit higher.

The rest of the morning, Ben studied hard for the exams till school began.

...

It was 8:30. Ben was now in class, where he observed something mind-boggling. His best friend, Alex, was participating in the lesson with good answers. Even Ben, who is very good in biology couldn't find mistakes in his explanations and answers. Biologie was for Alex the same as German for Ben. In the first moment, Ben was speculating that he didn't go back in his past, but went to a parallel dimension, where everything was the same except his best friend, who became a genius. Such speculation was complete bullshit, which Ben also concluded.

Ben was sure that such a day never happened in his last timeline and that this had to be a Butterfly-effect,

Ben thought it was strange, but as his best friend, he didn't even try to suspect him of taking a smart drug. Everyone who was motivated could read through the next topic in the book and become an expert in a few hours.

Even in the break, Alex seemed much more mature and knowledgeable, which led to a good short discussion.

The only person who was suspicious was Jonas.

„Hey, Alex. What happened to you? Did you take Modafinil?" Jonas greeted and asked in a joking manner.

„Then shouldn't Ben also have taken modafinil. Did every genius take drugs? No of course not." Alex lied without batting an eye and nobody han anymore suspicious over his sudden rise.

After the break, the class continued like before just without hearing Alex's answer.

It was only when Ben looked at Alex's table that he saw Alex sleeping on the table.

He looked at the teacher, but she didn't show any intention of even glancing at Alex.

Sleeping in class wasn't a good thing to do, but the teacher won't punish you as everyone is responsible for their own achievement in school.

The table neighbor tried to wake up Alex, but it was all in vain.

Only after the lesson did he finally wake up.

When Alex woke up, he sent a little probe down into his brain. No surge of brilliance came up to greet him. He felt thick and stupid -- a shuffling zombie. In short...

Alex was back.

All of his energy seemed lost. The 6 hours of sleep also weighed on his mind.

In the residual school hours, Alex was practically not present. He only listened and didn't even try to solve the exercises.

After school, Ben met Louis to improve his computer science and learning hacking.

Ben was still at the beginning of this big hacking world and till now he only knew about the sections in these worlds, but not how to hack.

The difficulty of every hacker is that there are a number of languages used for hacking depending upon your requirements.

For web exploitation, you need to know PHP , .NET , JS ,JQuery , SQL and many more.

This is also the main reason why hacking takes years to learn the basics. Thankfully, Ben found Louis, who was a genius in this field and could have lessons how often he wanted. But even with such a teacher most people would not be able to keep up. Good for Ben that with his high Intelligence and his computer science skill, he was the odd one out and had a high potential in the hacking field.

First thing one has to know is „hacker" is not equal to „hacker". They are three types of hacker: black-hat/white-hat/grey-hat. The names of these types originated from the Western movie, where the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white hats.

A black-hat hacker is an individual who attempts to gain unauthorized entry into a system or network to exploit them for malicious reasons. The black-hat hacker does not have any permission or authority to compromise their targets. They try to inflict damage by compromising security systems, altering functions of websites and networks, or shutting down systems. They often do so to steal or gain access to passwords, financial information, and other personal data.

White-hat hackers, on the other hand, are deemed to be the good guys, working with organizations to strengthen the security of a system. A white hat has permission to engage the targets and to compromise them within the prescribed rules of engagement.

White-hat hackers are often referred to as ethical hackers. This individual specializes in ethical hacking tools, techniques, and methodologies to secure an organization's information systems.

Unlike black-hat hackers, ethical hackers exploit security networks and look for backdoors when they are legally permitted to do so. White-hat hackers always disclose every vulnerability they find in the company's security system so that it can be fixed before they are being exploited by malicious actors.

Grey hats exploit networks and computer systems in the way that black hats do, but do so without any malicious intent, disclosing all loopholes and vulnerabilities to law enforcement agencies or intelligence agencies.

Usually, grey-hat hackers surf the net and hack into computer systems to notify the administrator or the owner that their system/network contains one or more vulnerabilities that must be fixed immediately. Grey hats may also extort the hacked, offering to correct the defect for a nominal fee.

Second important things to know are all the common ways to hack different targets.

Each way had its strong and weak points. After a new way has become famous or mainstream most systems are updated and protected. It was comparable to your immune system.

To learn all these ways and then practice them was a long process.

Still, if you understood it, it was quite similar to a game.

Ben practiced one after another, beginning with Bait and Switch.

The others were as follows: Cookie Theft, DoS, DDoS, Eavesdropping, Keylogging, Malware, Phishing and Related Phenomena, Watering Hole, and WAP Attacks, etc.

These hacking terms are foreign for most people, but the result, which the media often talks about are for example Botnets, Browser hijacks, Ransomware, Rootkits, Trojans, Viruses, and worms.

Even Ben became more and more worried about how much the companies and the government knew about him.

Only by understanding the complexity of a topic could one really understand it.

Still, Ben wasn't a naive person in the beginning, so after a short shock, he was calm again. He wasn't a person who was affected by ads and other things. He didn't even use a lot of social networks. Even though it irritated him, he knew that without power he couldn't change a thing and even less guarantee the safety of his family.

This gave him again another boost of motivation.

Another small surprise was the 5 phases of hacking.

Reconnaissance, which is to collect information about the target.

Scanning, which is collecting any information that can help them perpetrate an attack.

Gaining access, which is the main hacking.

Clearing Tracks, so that no one can reach them.

After every hacking session with Louis, the day already ended and Ben went home dead tired.