Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 185: Fighting the Second Wave of Wrathers

"Oh, they are doing the same as before... That’s interesting!"

Just after the passage of the first hour, John and his friends had advanced far enough away from their base that the silver walls were now just a faint silhouette against the horizon.

John led the way like a relentless storm, carving a path through the Wrathers horde using the combination of his Lightning Dance and Logic Bombs. Periodically, he would step out of the slaughter to replenish his Mental Points using the MP Absorption ability.

The results were staggering. Much like his trial run on Lanmar, a single usage of this ability on a Wrather allowed him to recharge over two thousand Mental Points in one go!

To ensure he remained undisturbed for the required five seconds of physical contact, he developed a routine: he would use Object Lockdown to freeze the frontline monsters closest to him, then deploy the Sandbox ability to mask his position from the surrounding Wrathers.

For a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on, the Wrathers reacted differently to his illusions than the Bulltors had. When he used the Sandbox ability to manifest an illusion of a colossal dragon breathing fire, the same illusion he had used to intimidate the Bulltors, the Wrathers went absolutely mad. They shifted their attention entirely toward the phantom dragon, their aggression redirected with a weird ferocity.

It seemed that having a dragon in their midst was far more attractive, or perhaps infinitely more threatening, to the Wrathers than the sound emitters. This distraction bought John all the time he needed to absorb Mental Points from his frozen victims.

As for his friends, the chaos of the second wave had finally forced Elena’s hidden gift to manifest. She discovered her unlocked attribute was Speed. This revelation wasn’t a surprise to the group, as speed and agility had always been her strongest suits.

However, the special ability she developed was a quantum leap beyond what they imagined. It allowed her to phase shift within a circular area of twenty meters radius, jumping from one point to another so instantaneously it appeared as if she were teleporting. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Coupled with her usual heavy-hitting fighting style, she had transformed into one of the fiercest combatants in the entire group. Her sledgehammers were like rattling machinegun ammunition now; she would slam them hard against a target with bone-shattering force, then vanish in a blur of light to catch and throw them at another foe before the first monster had even realised what just hit it.

Seeing this evolution in his team gave John a profound sense of reassurance about their upcoming clash with the Hivemind race. Watching the entire team keep pace with his own blistering speed was a pleasant scene in his eyes.

Whenever a few Wrathers managed to bypass John’s initial wave of explosions and charge toward the rear, the four of them executed a new tactic. Luke would take the lead, planting his feet and using his heavy club to knock the monsters backwards with great force.

Simultaneously, he would trigger the lightning protection from the black clouds, depriving the monsters of their strongest asset right from the start, and slowing them down greatly afterwards.

Then, Elena would step in, her hammers and new ability landing a relentless barrage of attacks to stumble further and disorient the monsters. Finally, Ricky and Cissel would move in like serrated blades, acting as the real finishers. They would end the lives of the staggered monsters with lethal strikes while Luke and Elena maintained the perimeter, securing the two from any newcomers.

Everything was going far more smoothly than John had initially expected. He and his friends were doing a great job killing everything that appeared in their path, but he hadn’t even found the time or a valid reason to use the Sandbox ability to lay down his planned network of scattered towers and cannons.

He decided to save that particular strategy for the Hivemind. Yet he had to test and try it out with everyone, so they’d train on how to fight with his fortress-in-a-box tactics. So he decided to make time after the end of this quest for that purpose.

However, the moment of calm was broken when John took a glance at the map. He wanted to see how the secondary group of three thousand Wrathers was faring against the two traps he had laid in the southern region, but the map showed something unexpected.

Part of the Wrathers had stayed behind at the old den, mimicking the behaviour that gave birth to the yellow monsters in the previous wave. This time, there were exactly four hundred of them leaning over the metallic ground of the old den. Seeing this pattern hold steady made him question the final wave. If the escalation continued, would the last wave see seven hundred of them stationed there?

Aside from this group, the rest of the Wrathers were currently embroiled in a losing battle against his first trap line. They had managed to destroy a few of his sound emitters through sheer weight of numbers, but most were being killed by the towers. Only a handful of a few hundred were still struggling through the kill zone. Knowing they wouldn’t last much longer, John shifted his attention back toward the old.

"Does anyone know how long it took for the yellow monsters to appear last time?!"

Out of the blue, he turned toward his friends, shouting the question over the roar of combat while simultaneously lobbing a few Logic Bombs at the nearby Wrathers to clear a speaking space.

"What? Are they coming?!!" Luke shouted back in surprise, his club pausing mid-swing.

The others also momentarily paused their relentless attacks, all eyes snapping to John with a mixture of confusion and sudden alarm. John inwardly sighed. He realised he had reached a point where he could no longer hide anything from them.

"A few hundred Wrathers are in the den," John said, motioning with a sharp nod toward the den’s direction on the opposite riverbank. "Just like last time."

"But..." Elena looked in the direction of the old den, her brow furrowing as she scanned the horizon. The others followed her gaze, searching the black sky above. "There was no lightning this time. Without the lightning, the Wrathers shouldn’t be able to unleash the yellow monsters, right?"

*Rumble!*