Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 64: The Fog Seekers Are Here!

John’s Frame Recognition ability had always been his greatest compass since having his system.

Back in Athanasia, it showed him the world in a steady green code structure, where special items and abilities stood out as brilliant white. In the depths of the Bug Dungeon, the reality had inverted—white code structured the world, and green codes marked the anomalies.

Yet here, in the Source Code World, the environment was built of entirely different coding colours, creating a canvas his eyes had never experienced. It was a dark, haunting masterpiece.

The oppressive fog was structured from dense black code, swirling like a heavy liquid. His teammates remained in the familiar green and white codes they had possessed in the game world, making them look like misplaced stars in this graveyard of codes.

As for the monsters... They were rendered in ghastly grey codes!

Trying to track them in the middle of the absolute blackness of the fog wasn’t easy. The background swallowed almost everything. But as John focused, he began to spot silhouettes—paler code structures moving stealthily through the dark background.

’One, two, five, seven... We have seven at once as our opening clash... Not bad!’ 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

John counted silently, his eyes darting as he followed the movements of these entities. They were circling the group, pacing with patience, seemingly enjoying the palpable scent of horror rising from them. John could feel the shift in the air; they would strike at any moment, and he was determined to give them a lethal welcome.

"Get ready," John shouted as he detected the first twitch in their movement. "Seven monsters are coming! Stay alert—this is just the appetiser!"

His shout startled the group. John looked like a man possessed, standing at the forefront of the team, his head moving in slow, rhythmic arcs as he tracked the invisible threats. To the others, he was looking into a wall of impenetrable ink, yet he spoke with absolute certainty.

"He can see them," Luke whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of awe and excitement. He was stating the obvious, but in this nightmare, the obvious felt like a miracle.

Before Luke could say anything further, the monsters lunged. They exploded out of the black fog and into their small piece of land.

The safe zone they occupied was barely a hundred meters in length and width. It felt suffocatingly narrow, surrounded by the crushing weight of the black fog. When the seven monsters jumped into the light, the area suddenly felt claustrophobic.

The Fog Seekers had arrived.

*Roar!*

Each of the seven monsters was the size of a warhorse. They were horrifying to behold: skinless, glistening grey bodies that looked like raw muscle. They had two short front arms that arched forward, allowing them to lean on their knuckles or slash with four long, razor-sharp claws. Their rear legs were abnormally long with three distinct joints, built for explosive speed and powerful propulsion.

They were faceless, possessing no eyes, only a cavernous, wide mouth armed with rows of teeth like daggers. Their ears were the most prominent feature—abnormally wide with a bony, fan-like structure designed to catch even the faintest high-pitched vibration from kilometres away.

John didn’t see the gore or the muscle. In his specialised vision, he saw the grey, structured codes, but his attention was drawn to two distinctive clusters. One resided in their bellies, glowing with a pale red hue; the other sat at the nape of their necks, a vibrant green.

’What bad luck! Two special codes... Does it mean they have two abilities?!’ John was momentarily taken aback by the complexity of the Fog Seekers’ structure. But he didn’t allow himself to be fazed. ’I need to test their abilities first, then worry later! MP Absorption... Object Lockdown!’

He initiated the combat by layering two more abilities. In such a high-stakes situation, he needed to verify if he could dismantle these threats using the most efficient, low-consumption abilities in his arsenal.

Then, the fight erupted in a flash of grey and steel.

The Fog Seekers took the initiative. One of the monsters crouched low, its rear legs coiling like heavy springs. In an instant, it propelled its massive body forward, a grey blur aimed directly at the centre of the group.

"I’ll hit it first, then it’s all yours!" John roared.

He didn’t panic. To his eyes, the monster’s trajectory was highlighted by a glowing path of predictive line. The spot it intended to strike was already marked in his vision. With a fluid motion, John took a single, effortless step to the side. The monster sailed past him, its claws whistling through the air where his chest had been a second before.

As the beast flew past, John’s sword moved in a smooth arc. He slashed upward, catching the skinless monster along its flank.

[-27!]

"What the heck?!!"

John was startled the moment a big number floated on top of that monster’s head! He even blinked twice, yet the number was there, glowing in a digital crimson. He only experienced such a phenomenon once before, back at the Bug Dungeon! In the game world, he never had such a thing happen, ever!

Before he’d even find an explanation for this bizarre thing, a second surprise kicked in!

Roar!

The monster’s roar wasn’t loud and fierce; it was low and fading, as if it were a dying breath. John didn’t even have time to extricate himself from the shock of seeing the damage floating in midair before he noticed what happened to this monster.

"Damn! One hit and that scary monster is dead?!!" Luke was the first to speak, his tone holding tons of surprise.

"They have no defence, it seems," John tried to find a plausible excuse, even to himself. He gripped his sword tighter, looking at the other six monsters. "Anyway, it’s good news! I’ll get rid of those I can reach, you handle the rest!"

He had initially thought, from the system’s initial trial and the ominous words he’d heard from everyone, that these Fog Seekers would be incredibly hard to handle. Coupled with his lowered stats, he had braced himself for a marathon—assuming it would take him and the others a long time to get rid of even one.

Yet, when that monster fell by a single hit from his sword, John realised he had overestimated these Fog Seekers.

That was what he thought. He was greatly mistaken. The true nightmare was just getting started, but it wasn’t the monsters’ strength that was the problem—it was the disparity between himself and his team.