Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 35: The Three New Abilities

John had barely managed to stabilise his breathing when the notifications flooded his vision, detailing the new abilities he had unlocked by crossing the threshold.

[HP Regeneration Ability: (Basic – Passive)]

[Description: Actively regenerates the user’s HP by 5 points every 1 minute.]

[Cost: 10 Mental Points per fight.]

[Conditions: Requires HP to drop below 80% in a fight mode to get automatically triggered and deduct Mental Points.]

[Requirements: Intelligence = 20, HP = 20.]

[Code Destruction Ability: (Basic – Active - Compound)]

[Description: Once the user freezes the code of a target using Object Lockdown, he can actively use the ability to destroy a group of codes in an area of ten-centimeter radius. The destroyed codes won’t heal or regenerate for some time, even with medical intervention.]

[Cost: 20 Mental Points per activation.]

[Conditions: Requires using Object Lockdown first before it can be applied.]

[Duration: 20 seconds.]

[Requirements: Intelligence = 30, Strength = 25, Defense = 25.]

[Encrypted Skin Ability: (Basic – Active)]

[Description: Covers the user’s body with a thin layer of special, encrypted coded skin that protects him from any special ability’s effect.]

[Cost: 30 Mental Points per activation.]

[Conditions: Requires Defence stat to be higher than the enemy’s.]

[Conditions: If Strength stat is higher than the enemy, 50% backlash will be triggered!]

[Duration: 30 seconds.]

[Requirements: Intelligence = 30, Strength = 25, Defense = 25.]

"Wow!" John sucked in a cold breath of air as the implications of these abilities appeared in his mind. "HP Regeneration might be a safety net I hope to never use, but the other two... Dammit, boy! I now have an absolute defence against people like Ricky and Cissel!"

He was particularly fixated on Encrypted Skin. In his previous fights, he had been vulnerable to the special abilities of Cissel and Ricky. But a layer of encrypted code meant their abilities wouldn’t be able to touch with his body.

"Still, the requirements are quite tricky," he mused, lying against the cold, white-coded ground. Against his classmates, he clearly held the upper hand now. But the second-year students were the real threat.

They had spent a full year optimising their attributes and likely had higher base stats. If their Defence or Strength surpassed his, his new trump card would fail. "I hope I can squeeze more stat points out of these monsters before I have to face the real deal next week."

John scanned the hall. The space that had once been teeming with Goblins was now half-empty. The remaining monsters stood like statues, their wooden clubs resting on the floor.

He then considered Code Destruction. It was a brutal ability. However, the 20 MP cost on top of the Object Lockdown cost was steep. Not to mention the short duration it had.

"I have to test it, but paying twenty Mental Points just for a trial run is too taxing right now," he decided. He didn’t want to burn through his Mental Points on low-level fodders. He would save that particular experiment for a worthy opponent.

As for Encrypted Skin, the 30 MP cost made it his ultimate survival tool. It wasn’t something to use for grinding; it was for when the walls were closing in, and a special ability was aimed at his head.

He sat on the floor, closing his eyes for ten minutes. He waited till the physical fatigue vanished and the ache in his knuckles subsided. He felt revitalised, his body humming with the new power of his elevated stats. He stood up, ready to finish the remaining goblins and clear Stage 1.

But the moment he started a killing spree again, and just as he stepped into the second dormant Goblin’s five metres zone, something new happened.

[Warning! The monsters have entered Frenzy state!]

[Warning! All monster stats are doubled for five minutes!]

[Warning! The monsters will actively and collectively attack you now!]

"Dammit!" John hissed.

He didn’t need the system to tell him the situation had changed. The silence of the hall was shattered by a collective, guttural roar that vibrated in his very bones. The Goblins all around snapped their heads toward him simultaneously. Their eyes, previously dull and glazed, were now literally burning with a flickering red fire.

They didn’t wait for him to approach them. They moved as one, a green tide surging across the stone floor. Their speed was no longer laughable; it was a frantic, jerky sprint.

[Goblin Bug Monster Level 1 – Frenzy State!]

[HP: 40 | Str: 20 | Defense: 20 | Speed: 10]

Seeing three of their stats cross the 20 threshold made John feel more than a little worried! He knew firsthand what happened to a body when those numbers ticked over; the sudden surge of power and the unlocking of latent potential wasn’t just a number change. He didn’t know if the same rules that applied to him would apply to these monsters, but he couldn’t take the risk.

"I’ll assume they have the same rules as me," he decided, wrongly,, his eyes narrowing as he watched the lead goblin’s muscles bulge with flickering white light. He had to be cautious rather than sorry.

In the previous hour, he had fought the monsters one by one, a methodical and safe grind. But this time, the safe hunt had evaporated. He had to take out forty-eight monsters at the exact same time!

The sight of nearly fifty Frenzied Goblins shrieking and sprinting toward him was enough to make anyone panic. The air in the hall grew hot, vibrating with the sound of flat feet slapping against the stone. Yet John’s mind, sharpened by his high Intelligence stat, thought fast.

"Five minutes is a long time for me to keep running in circles," he muttered.

John knew running wasn’t going to solve this. The monsters kept chasing him relentlessly, and with their doubled stats, their speed had jumped to ten—dangerously close to his own eleven.

They weren’t just mindless meat masses anymore; their doubled intelligence showed up in their teamwork. They didn’t just follow him in a straight line; they began to fan out, trying to flank him and block his paths of escape.

"I’ll need to test and see if I can hit and run instead," he decided. He had to fight back with everything he had. Instead of just sprinting as fast as he could, he instantly started using his Object Lockdown ability as the first measure of crowd control.

He wove through the first wave of attackers like a ghost. His hands moved in a blur, tapping a dozen goblins on their legs and torsos.

*Clack!* *Clack!* *Clack!*

The sounds of his palms hitting their coarse skin were punctuated by the sound of bodies hitting the floor. However, with so many enemies, even his Frame Recognition, that never missed any attack trajectory before, couldn’t track every club. He felt a sharp sting on his shoulder, then another on his ribs as he was clipped by the wooden sticks. He winced, expecting a massive chunk of his life to vanish.

[-1] [-1] [-1] [-1]

The moment he saw the small red numbers floating on top of his head, John realised he had overestimated these Goblins—or perhaps he had underestimated his own growth.

"Even if they got their stats doubled, I still have higher Defence than their Strength," he muttered, a surge of confidence replacing his fear. Their Strength was 20, but his Defence was 27. The math was in his favour. He stopped prioritising pure evasion and focused more on the immobilisation of the horde.