They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

The temperature in the cavern hadn’t just dropped... it died.

The frost creeping across the stone floor crackled under the sheer, oppressive weight of the entity standing in the center of the dead ritual circle.

Tessa let out a strangled gasp, her hands clamping onto my side with such frantic, terrifying strength that I could feel her fingernails digging through my coat.

She was trembling so violently she could barely stand, her eyes locked in sheer, unadulterated horror on the faceless obsidian mask of the demon.

My own breath caught in my throat, turning to a cloud of white mist in the freezing air.

The red warning screens from my debug vision were multiplying, flashing violently across my retinas, completely painting my vision in panic.

Zero percent...?

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I clenched my fists so hard my knuckles popped, my mind reeling.

That’s it? After surviving Shax, after crawling through this hellhole, after finally finding a way to fight back... is this really the end?

To my right, Scarlet’s knees buckled.

The proud, feral demi-human hit the frosted stone, her beast instincts completely and utterly shattered by the apex predator standing before us. Ears pinned flat against her skull, her emerald eyes blown wide and glassy.

"We’re going to die," She whispered, her voice completely hollow. "All of us."

The veterans weren’t faring much better.

Garf’s massive war axe slowly lowered a few inches, his broad shoulders stiffening as a cold sweat broke out across his dirt-caked forehead.

Mira’s bowstring hand was visibly shaking, the arrowhead rattling faintly against the wood of her bow.

Even Yenna, whose hands still flickered with residual fire, stared at the creature with wide, paralyzed eyes.

Edric slowly pushed himself up from where the explosion had thrown him. Blood dripped from his chin, freezing the moment it hit the ground.

He stared at the towering, multi-jointed nightmare, his dark eyes widening in a terrifying realization.

"A 4th Grade..." Edric muttered, his voice barely audible over the crackling frost. "It’s a 4th Grade demon."

My stomach plummeted completely into the abyss.

I remembered Edric’s story. The demon core he had shown us... the one that had nearly cost him his life to obtain... belonged to a 3rd Grade. The higher the grade, the exponentially more catastrophic the entity.

The demon slowly tilted its smooth, faceless obsidian head to Edric.

The violet flames crowning its skull flickered lazily.

When it spoke, the voice didn’t travel through the air; it vibrated directly inside our skulls.

"A Demon Hunter?"

Everyone’s eyes snapped to Edric.

"A... a demon hunter?" Mira whispered, her shock momentarily piercing through her paralyzing terror. "Edric?"

The demon took a single, silent step forward. The bone-white armor shards orbiting its miasma-core clattered softly.

Garf tightened his grip, bracing his shield. Mira forced her shaking arms to pull the bowstring taut.

"In this age?" the demon mused.

And then it vanished. Manifesting directly in front of Edric.

Before the swordsman could even flare his silver-black aura, the demon casually backhanded him with its elongated, scythe-like fingers.

The impact sounded like a cannon firing.

Edric swatted through the air, slamming so violently into the cavern wall that a spiderweb of cracks shattered the solid limestone.

He collapsed into the rubble, violently coughing up a spray of dark blood.

"You’re weak," the demon stated.

There was an absolute silence for heartbeat, then...

"Edric!" Yenna screamed, her paralysis shattering.

Completely ignoring the suicidal odds, she ignited her flames and sprinted toward the rubble.

The demon vanished again, reappearing perfectly in her path.

"Where are you going?" It raised a multi-jointed leg and kicked her squarely in the gut. The sheer kinetic force launched Yenna upward like a ragdoll, slamming her brutally into the cavern ceiling.

Garf roared in horror. Mira screamed. "YENNA!"

Yenna’s limp body peeled off the rock, plummeting toward the floor.

The demon slowly opened its obsidian maw, a terrifying, jagged tear of swirling void, preparing to catch her as she fell.

But my neural processing speed flared, slowing the world to a crawl.

I can’t let her die.

Then I dove forward, hitting the edited stone floor. It rebounded like a trampoline, launching me upward in a desperate arc.

I snatched Yenna out of the air mere inches from the demon’s maw, tucking her against my chest. And twisted my body, editing my own gravity for a split second to land softly a dozen feet away, sliding across the frost.

Then quickly laid Yenna down. She was completely unconscious, blood leaking from her nose and mouth, her breathing terrifyingly shallow.

I gritted my teeth, rising to my feet and placing myself between her and the entity.

The demon slowly turned its faceless head toward me. "Who are you?"

I didn’t answer and clutched Oathstorm with both hands, flooding the blade with voltage.

"Rolling Thunder!" I roared, unleashing a point-blank torrent of violently destructive black lightning right at its chest.

But the demon didn’t even try to dodge. It simply raised one of its elongated hands and casually waved it through the air, like brushing away a nuisance of a fly.

The dark thunder, the exact same attack that had instantly vaporized three high-level assassins, snapped, sputtered, and cleanly dispersed into nothingness. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

My eyes widened so far they hurt.

Not even a scratch?

Then suddenly...

"Attack!" Mira screamed, snapping me out of my shock.

She unleashed a blistering volley of armor-piercing arrows. Garf charged from the flank with a deafening roar, his war axe raised high.

The demon didn’t even look at them.

"Enough playtime."

A pulse of raw, invisible pressure erupted from its body. Mira’s arrows shattered in mid-air.

Garf and Mira were lifted off their feet and violently thrown backward, tumbling across the ice.

I couldn’t let it press the advantage.

And did multiple edits, some on myself, others on ground and environment.

I lunged, putting every single ounce of my unnatural, edited momentum behind the thrust. Oathstorm’s tip actually pierced the bone-white armor, burying itself an inch into the swirling black miasma of its chest.

The demon froze.