Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 70: There Is Hope!

[-6] [-6] [-6]

John watched the red single digits of damage flare above the monster Luke was currently attacking. A genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. The damage output was staggering compared to their initial, pathetic attempts.

’Luckily, he had the luck to pump Strength,’ John thought, his body moving on instinct. He ducked low, feeling the displacement of air as three Fog Seekers lunged simultaneously, their claw pincers snapping at the space where his head had been a second before.

’Tsk! Dealing with this many is becoming tiring. They aren’t just getting more numerous; they’re getting more aggressive. It’s taking too much time to put them down!’

*Roar!* *Roar!* *Roar!*

John didn’t give them a second chance. His blade hummed, carving a beautiful arc through the air. The three Fog Seekers fell upon his sword slashes, their forms hit the ground. Without missing a beat, he pivoted on his heel, parrying a desperate ambush from a fourth monster that had tried to take his flank. With a swift thrust, he ended it.

John wasn’t the only one gauging the progress. Ricky, Cissel, and Elena were watching Luke out of the corners of their eyes. Even without John’s Hacker Mind to visualise the numerical damage, the reality was undeniable.

Luke was moving with a newfound weight and power, ending his assigned three monsters with a brutal efficiency that left Ricky and Cissel—who were still struggling with two foes—in the dust.

The results were written in the dirt and the big bodies of the fallen. Every one of them, Luke included, silently swore that they would consume every core they could get their hands on the moment the perimeter was clear.

In their eyes, John’s status had been elevated from a team leader to an absolute authority. If he told them the sky was raining, they wouldn’t look up; they’d start building a roof.

"Wait," John called out as the last monster fell.

The battle was barely over, and his friends were already diving toward the corpses, their hands stained with the black blood of the fallen creatures. They didn’t even stop to wipe the sweat from their brows or catch their breath. They were hungry for the power to stop feeling like victims.

"We need to set an order for this," John said, stepping into the centre of the carnage. He did a quick mental tally. There were fifty-two monster corpses scattered across the area, making it look much smaller now than ever. Counting the initial five cores they had already extracted, that left forty-seven cores to be distributed.

"From now on, we divide everything equally. No hoarding, no squabbling. We keep the party balanced so we don’t have a weak link later." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"What if the numbers don’t add up?" Cissel asked. She didn’t stop moving, her hands busy extracting a core from a fresh corpse before immediately eyeing the next one. She was moving with a frantic energy, her ambition finally finding a target.

"We keep the extras for the next round and divide them evenly then," John said, rolling his eyes. For a moment, he felt less like a team leader and more like a kindergarten tutor trying to ensure all kids got the same number of apple slices.

"Then let’s divide the corpses right now," Ricky suggested, pointing a defensive finger at Cissel and Elena. "They’re faster at this. If we don’t count them out now, they’ll store them away and mess the count on purpose."

"Say it again, I dare you!" Cissel snapped, glaring at Ricky with an intensity that all but confirmed he had caught her red-handed in her own sneaky thoughts.

"Enough. Let’s do as Ricky suggested," John said, shaking his head helplessly. He pointed to a section of the area. "This will be my spot. Everyone else, pick a corner and move your share there. Once done, throw the body into the fog to clear more space for us."

It was as if he had flipped a switch. The four of them moved instantly, becoming machines of labour. They didn’t argue or waste breath on small talk. They simply hauled the heavy carcasses into four distinct piles. John watched them, an inward sigh escaping him.

"Before anyone asks," John added, sensing the next round of questions, "pick an area close to the edge of the clearing. Use your first core to expand the safe zone like I showed you. That’ll be your personal space."

He was growing weary of the constant hand-holding. He needed them to be self-sufficient if they were going to survive the trip to the noise devices. With the instructions given, he turned to his own share—eleven monsters. Despite the weight and the grim nature of the task, the entire group had their piles sorted in less than thirty seconds.

’Time to show them that there’s more than one way to use the cores, John thought.

While the others began greedily activating and swallowing their cores, John took a different approach. He held all eleven of his cores, with one extra he got from Luke, to demonstrate how this worked. Their activated red glow flickered in his palms. He didn’t eat them. Instead, he raised his Goblin Long Sword, holding it horizontally before his eyes.

He placed the first core directly onto the flat of the blade. Rather than rolling off, the core seemed to react to the cold steel. As if a cube of ice had met a white-hot furnace, the core began to melt, turning into a liquid crimson stream that seeped into the metal. The sword hummed, the edge glowing with a brief, sharp light.

In his vision, the red cluster of codes decomposed, seept into the sword green structure of codes, ending up vanishing there.

[Ding! Your Goblin Long Sword has gained +1 Sharpness stat!]

’A nice start indeed,’ he thought, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. In a randomised system like this, he had been genuinely worried the sword would funnel the energy into a secondary, less impactful stat, like Durability.

By increasing the Sharpness, he had effectively bumped his damage output by a full point with a single core.

"What did you just do?!"