Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 88: Fire In the Hole!
Cissel suddenly climbed down the tree, leaving John behind with a gaping open mouth and a frozen mind!
He had expected a sharp rebuff, a cold laugh, or perhaps a dagger at his throat—anything but a quiet, affirmative "deal." Because of the shadows and his own internal panic, he totally missed seeing the tinge of redness over her cheeks or the true, happy smile that appeared faintly on her face.
Once she jumped down to the ground, she didn’t hesitate to ignite a fire of her own, and she curled up to sleep beside it. John stayed all alone in the canopy for a long time, the silence of the night feeling heavier than ever.
He kept asking himself what had gone wrong to lead him to ask her for a date in the first place, and more importantly, what had happened to the cold and fierce Cissel he knew to make her accept it right away! And above all, why the heck did the idea appeal to him now?!
"I was just trying to distract her," he whispered to the darkness, rubbing his face with his hands. "How did I end up scheduling for a date after a death-match?"
The next morning, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of tension. John led the two girls through the rest of the diverging paths they had mapped out, while Luke, looking distinctly unwilling and nervous, followed the silent and brooding Ricky.
John’s mind was still busy with the events of the past night. He stole glances at Cissel from time to time, searching for a crack in her armour, but he saw only the familiar icy cold queen staring back at him. It was as if the conversation on the branch had been a collective hallucination.
"This..."
After ten hours of steady progress, as they waited for a new wave to hit a pocket they had just created, something felt fundamentally amiss. The fog didn’t gush out a wave; it felt like it was entirely being displaced by a solid mass.
"I can see tons of monsters coming in our direction!" John’s Frame Recognition flared with warning icons so numerous that it was easy to spot. The shadows were so dense that even parts of the fog weren’t showing their dark grey structure anymore; the void was being painted over with pale grey codes of a thousand overlapping entities.
"Elena, you’ll fight with us this time," John hurriedly commanded, his voice dropping all traces of the morning’s awkwardness.
Cissel and Elena both paused, momentarily thinking John was trying to crack a joke. He had been excluding Elena from any fight until now, but his last order to include her in the upcoming fight, alongside that look on his face, left no room for hesitation. The look in his eyes told them everything: this time it was different. This wasn’t a wave, this wasn’t a joke; it was a massacre.
*Roar!*
Just before any of the girls could say a word, a huge gush of Fog Seekers lunged at their cleared pocket area. It was as if a dam had burst. In the space of a few breaths, almost the entire cleared area was flooded by a sea of monsters, their skinless bodies pressing against one another in a frantic, starving mass.
"Retreat?!" Cissel shouted, her daggers already out and spinning. She had never seen this many in such a confined space, in such a short span of time.
"No, we push our way through," John firmly replied, his grip tightening on his sword. He didn’t like the idea of retreating; behind them was nothing more than a narrow path that wouldn’t be suitable at all to fight these monsters. They would be cornered and picked off one by one. "Use everything you have! Use the bottles I gave you!"
He plunged into the fray, his blade becoming a blur. He started slashing right and left as fast as his arms allowed. The sheer scale of the monster wave this time meant that he didn’t even need to aim; with every slash anywhere, at least one monster would be killed. But for every one that fell, three more took its place.
’Agh, I can’t hold them back,’ he thought, glancing back to see Cissel and Elena struggling. Even with their attributes and weapons, the sheer physical weight of the monsters was pushing them back toward the narrow entrance of the path. He saw Elena’s face go pale as a monster’s claw grazed her shoulder.
He gritted his teeth. ’Let’s go all out then... Object Lockdown!’
He activated his mobility limitation ability. Moving with a speed that pushed his body to the limit, he crossed the entire area from east to west in a jagged zig-zag. He didn’t try to kill; he simply moved fast, placing his palm over the monsters in the front row, touching their legs, torsos, and joints, freezing their mobility.
The effect was instantaneous. As the front row stumbled and locked up, the monsters behind them—driven by mindless momentum—were taken by surprise. They crashed into their paralysed kin. It was like a domino effect in reverse, and in mere breaths, a big, writhing wall of entangled monsters appeared to shield the team.
Yet he knew this was a temporary fix. The wall was already beginning to buckle under the weight of the thousands behind it.
’Logic Bomb... Five seconds!’
He lunged forward, touching the cluster of monsters at the very centre of this living wall. He suddenly retreated, his voice booming through the frantic roars.
"Take cover! Fire in the hole!"
The two girls were taken by surprise—first by the way he had forced the monsters to form this wall, and then by his sudden shout. Yet, a flash of what he had done back at the academy—that devastating display of power before they arrived here—lingered in their minds. Their legs moved reflexively, dashing to follow him. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂
*Boom!*
A violent explosion followed, brighter and louder than anything they had experienced since coming to this world. A massive shockwave rippled outward, sending monsters in the immediate vicinity flying through the air like ragdolls. The ones entangled in the wall got the absolute worst of it; caught in the epicentre of the explosion, they died instantly.
"John... What the fck was that?!!" Cissel shot to her feet, her ears ringing. She glared at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.
As for Elena, the shock of seeing something so brutal—reminiscent of the high-casualty frontline battles she had experienced with her family—made her lose her senses for a few moments. She stared at the smoking spot where the monster wall had been, her breath hitching.
"No time for that, there are tons of them coming!" John shouted, pointing toward the fog where the grey codes were already regrouping. He took the lead, his sword glowing with a faint cold light.
"I’ll repeat the same attack a few more times to buy us time, but I can’t do this forever. Elena, your task is to expand the area starting from here! Use the cores, create a large and spacious arena, enough to let us fight freely! Cissel, stand by her side! Guard her and kill any monster that gets past me! Keep a close eye on the fog wall at all times; there are a shitload of those bastards everywhere!"
He didn’t wait for a "yes." He charged back into the Fog Seekers’ tide.
