Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 172: Leave the Den to Me!
Lanmar’s words weren’t surprising to his mates at all. The Bulltors were suffering from the same immense, bone-deep shock.
When they had watched Luke, Elena, Cissel, and Ricky transform earlier, they thought they had witnessed the absolute ceiling of human potential, a freak occurrence of nature, a miracle that wouldn’t get repeated, not to get beaten.
Yet, as they watched the flickering lightning dome around John, they realised they hadn’t seen anything yet. To John, it seemed there was no limit at all. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
The shock was mirrored inside John’s friends, though theirs was tempered with a fierce, manic pride. They were pleasantly surprised, almost relieved, by John’s sudden surge in power. It was the anchoring presence and inspiration they didn’t know they needed.
"Hahaha! Big bro is something else indeed!" Luke roared. Despite being surrounded by a literal sea of over a hundred thousand monsters, he threw his head back and laughed with pure excitement.
Elena laughed as well, her sledgehammers whistling through the air as she pulverised a monster’s skull.
"I knew it," Cissel whispered to herself, a small, knowing smirk playing on her lips even as she carved a path of blood. "I knew no matter how high we climbed, my man would always find a way to outshine all of us combined. He’s just built differently, hehehe!"
She was as excited as the rest, perhaps even more for her own personal reasons. Ricky, however, reacted differently. He gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his swords’ hilts. He felt as if he had just received the loudest, most public slap to the face in his entire life.
He had been so proud of his twelve tentacles and his new shockwaves and bleeding effects, only to see John clear a hundred-meter radius by a single sword slash while standing still.
"Dammit, John!" Ricky couldn’t help but roar at the top of his lungs; his voice boomed across the field. "Can’t you even let us beat you for once? Just once in our damn lives?!"
The question made the rest of the group burst into further laughter, even amidst the massacre. Up on the walls, the Bulltors shifted their gaze between the laughing humans and the silent, lethal John as if they were watching a group of insane lunatics.
"Lightning Dance," John muttered lowly to himself, feeling the hum of the sword through his fist. He began walking toward his friends, his every step calm and deadly. "I came with presents for all of you, but first, let’s kill these monsters and talk later!"
"They won’t stop coming!" Luke shouted, his voice strained as he brought his club down on another group of monsters. "The den is going to send double this number in the next wave... And the new wave of Wrathers is already upon us! We’re going to be sandwiched!"
"Leave the den to me," John turned his gaze towards the other bank of the river.
He had originally wanted to spend more time salvaging the yellow cores for his cannons, but he knew they were reaching a breaking point. If he allowed the yellow tide and the Wrather wave to converge on his friends simultaneously, it would be overstretching their luck. He needed to decapitate the source of the monster tide now.
As he walked, he moved his sword in simple moves. To any observer, it looked casual, yet every flick of his wrist sent a wave of lightning that scorched and killed thousands of monsters.
"I’m heading to the den now!" John shouted, his voice deep and strong. "You four stay here and keep the perimeter clear. Don’t let a single one of them touch the walls!"
"Leave things here to us!" Cissel shouted back, her daggers flashing. "But be careful of the lightning! It rains down on that den with a vengeance the moment the monsters start to thin out!"
"I know!" John replied simply.
He didn’t slow down, walking straight toward the underwater bridge. Due to the staggering number of monsters, they had spread out over a massive area, thinned by the base’s wall defences and his friends.
However, as he approached the underwater bridge, he saw the bottleneck, the largest concentration of yellow monsters he had seen yet, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a desperate attempt to push forward, to reach his base and friends.
"Lightning Dance!"
He didn’t hesitate to activate the sword’s special effect again. Yet this time, he broke into a high-speed sprint, his silhouette blurring as he lunged into the pack. He was a lightning bolt in human form, spreading the deadly, lightning slash effect over a wider area. He didn’t hurry to cross the river immediately; instead, he stayed on the bank until he had exhausted the special effect five more times in rapid succession.
In a mere one hundred seconds, John managed to slaughter tens of thousands of densely packed monsters. He had effectively cleared the primary threat to his crossing, leaving the riverbank piled high with smouldering, yellowish remains.
"The ground here... It’s different."
The moment John stepped onto the far side of the underwater bridge, he felt the change. The texture of the ground shifted from natural rocks and mud to a cold, metallic covering that wasn’t there before. It was as if the den were terraforming the area around it.
He wasn’t alone there. Waiting for him around the metallic ground of the den were tens of thousands of yellow monsters. They weren’t protecting the den out of loyalty; there simply wasn’t enough room on the other side of the bridge for them to cross yet. When they spotted John, they didn’t hesitate. They surged toward him like a frantic, mad yellow tsunami, seeing him as the only target in sight.
"Lightning Dance!"
John welcomed the charge with blood and death. His blade created a dome of electrified sword slashes. The monsters fell like moths drawn to a furnace.
He pushed his killing speed to the limit, moving at his highest possible speed, slashing in every direction to ensure the special effect hit as many targets as possible. Then he started to fight normally, without using any ability or special effect at all!
