Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 122: I Surrender!

"Stay put!" John’s ice-cold voice landed, marking the end of his fight against the leader of the giants and his henchmen.

Minutes ago, the leader and the other three guards roared in unison, a sound like a mountain collapsing, as they tried to crush John under the weight of their sheer fierceness and mightiness.

Yet the result was starkly opposite to their lofty imaginations and arrogant intentions. They were the ones hitting the muddy ground on their knees; they were the ones tattered with many wounds and gruesome-looking gaps in their stone-like flesh, while John stood perfectly fine in front of them, his breathing steady and his gaze sharp like daggers.

Since he vanished from their sight back there, he simply used his Sandbox ability in a relentless sequence. He had realised early on that the shielded giants weren’t nearly as threatening as those capable of firing white beams from their arms. Putting aside the mystery of how they channelled such energy, he had aimed specifically for those five giant first.

He had placed Logic Bombs on them, meticulously timing the detonation for a thirty-second delay. Then, a mischievous, dark idea had popped into his head. He had used his stealth to whisper to the leader from the direction of the special five, baiting the leader and his three bodyguards into attacking their own kin by mistake in a frantic, confused frenzy.

Then he had simply circled, stepping out of his ability’s area of effect just as the duration faded, pushing the leader’s madness over the edge.

When John realised these giants were well aware of the human presence and even viewed them as a fallen race, he decided he needed more than just a victory. He needed answers.

He decided to take prisoners to interrogate later. And who would serve better for this than the leader of the giants himself and his most trusted subordinates?

So, John had deliberately refrained from using his lethal Logic Bombs on the leader or the three guards beside him. He set his gaze upon those four, marking them as his high-value prisoners.

Instead, he used a combo of Object Lockdown and Code Destruction, making sure to cripple their movements and shatter their defensive layers without delivering a killing blow.

Once the four giants thudded their massive bodies onto the ground, burdened by their endless frustration and the agony of several deep wounds, John finally moved to handle the remaining giants.

Out of the initial fifty-three giants, and aside from his four crippled prisoners, only seven remained standing. Seeing the pathetic fate their leader had ended up with made these seven hesitate.

A visible conflict played out on their faces—a struggle between succumbing to their fate and surrendering, versus the ingrained instinct to look down on humans as a weak, fallen race and try their luck in one last desperate fight.

"I... I surrender."

Just before the majority could make up their minds, one of them suddenly threw his massive sword onto the ground. The heavy weapon landed with a thud that shook the earth. The giant knelt and lowered his head to John, exposing his neck in a universal sign of defeat.

"Me too..."

"I also surrender!"

Seeing one of their own make the choice made it infinitely easier for the others to follow suit. Within seconds, like dominoes, all seven fell on their knees, throwing away their weapons. Seeing the result—a total surrender he hadn’t fully predicted or planned for—John hesitated for a brief moment.

They might have surrendered for now, but there was a total of eleven of them, and John’s team was only five. Putting aside the numerical disadvantage, they were giants with immense physical strength and weird magic tricks. They posed a great threat of revolt; they could easily kill everyone in their sleep if John’s guard slipped for even a second.

Amidst his hesitation, caught between accepting this surrender and dealing with the risks later, or killing those seven right now on the spot to eliminate the danger, Elena suddenly came running from a distance.

"What the fck are those?!!"

The fierce sounds of the battle and the constant tremors of the earth must have alarmed her back at the magical core. No more than half an hour had passed since the first clash occurred, but to her, it must have sounded like the world was ending.

She had come running the moment she confirmed something was wrong, especially when she heard the distinctive series of explosions that were the trademark of John’s deadliest attacks.

When she arrived, she was rooted to the spot, shocked to see the towering giants she had never seen before in her life, her three friends lying unconscious and motionless on the ground, and John’s exhausted appearance.

"Elena! Wake them up," he commanded, not even shifting his eyes away from the kneeling giants.

He turned his cold, commanding gaze toward the survivors. "As for you—deactivate those shields and stop using those chest gems or whatever those things are. Do it now, or I’ll kill all of you!"

He didn’t need to continue his threatening words. The seven giants instantly deactivated their shields, a move that didn’t actually make much of a difference to John.

Even without the shimmering white barriers, the risk they posed still rang loud alarms in his mind. Their sheer physical mass alone was enough to crush a human if they managed to close the distance.

"Ouch! My head!" Luke was the first to wake up. He groaned, slowly pushing himself up from the dirt and rubbing the back of his skull. He had taken the brunt of the shockwave earlier and fallen directly on it.

"Dammit, John!" Ricky followed, blinking away the stars in his vision. He couldn’t help but exclaim in a mixture of surprise and a heavy tinge of admiration. "How come you killed most of them and even forced the rest to surrender without us?!! We were only out for a minute!"

"He is my man," Cissel blurted out. She was still feeling drowsy as she shot to her legs, her mental control non-existent as she processed the sight of John standing victoriously over kneeling behemoths.

"Ahem—I mean—he is my friend!" Realising what she had just said and noticing the weird, silent gazes from everyone—John included—she was forced to clear her throat and cough in deep embarrassment.

She quickly shifted her eyes toward the horizon to evade their stares, her face flushing a deep red.