Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 78: Exhaustion Kicks In!

The transition from starving desperation to sudden abundance was almost as jarring as the arrival of the black fog itself. As John led his weary companions back along the thin, flickering path he had carved, the anticipation in the air was thick. When the massive silhouette of the ancient tree finally materialised at the end of their path, the group’s discipline shattered.

"I can’t believe how tasty they are!!" Elena exclaimed, her face stained with the dark blue juice of the fruit.

The moment they reached the trunk, the four of them practically turned into monkeys. They scrambled up the gnarled bark with a frantic energy that defied their supposed exhaustion. John watched them from a lower branch; he had already sated the worst of his hunger, so he focused on plucking the fruit and storing it.

"Don’t eat everything," he warned, his voice cutting through the sounds of wet crunching and satisfied moans. "We don’t know if we can find more of these trees around, and we have no idea how long it takes for them to grow their harvest!"

"A rule of thumb," Luke interjected, his voice muffled by an entire cluster of Blue Serpentile fruit he had stuffed into his mouth. He swallowed with a hard gulp before continuing, "A tree never grows alone! If there’s one this big, there’s a forest nearby. That’s just how nature works."

"Come down here; let’s clear the area around first," John commanded, sceptical of Luke’s theories. He knew Luke’s earlier success in finding the right direction had been a stroke of luck—a lucky guess from a man who was a warrior, not a woodsman. He wasn’t about to bet their lives on the idea that they had found a literal orchard in the middle of a nightmare.

Everyone was parched and famished, so they gathered several extra piles of the fruit, nearly stripping the lower half of the massive tree bare before they finally descended one after another.

"I’d pay anything right now for a nice sleep," Elena sighed, stretching her arms over her head. Now that her stomach was full and her thirst quenched, the adrenaline that had been keeping her upright was rapidly evaporating. The sheer toll of the constant combat and psychological stress was finally settling into her bones.

She wasn’t the only one. John noticed the way the others moved—their steps were heavy, their shoulders slumped. Even the bitter-sweetness of the fruit seemed to have a sedative effect once the initial rush of glucose passed.

"Are you sure these fruits aren’t poisonous?" Cissel asked, squinting as she rubbed her temples. She didn’t like the heavy, lethargic feeling creeping over her limbs.

John, trusting the system’s lack of a "Toxin" warning, gave a slow, reassuring nod. "I ate them before I even came back to get you," he said, slightly, giving them a plausible, real fact that they’d understand. "It’s just the toll of the day. It’s been a long, hard fight just to survive this far. But we aren’t safe yet."

Mentioning their precarious situation acted like a splash of cold water, dragging them back to their senses. John checked his internal clock; there were fewer than four hours left until the twenty-four-hour survival quest reached its conclusion.

He calculated that once the timer hit zero, the relentless aggression of the Fog Seekers would finally break, reverting to standard environmental behaviour.

"Let’s expand the area first," Ricky said, forcing a wide yawn behind his hand. "We’ve collected close to four thousand cores so far between the four of us. John, how much do you have?"

"A bit above five thousand," John replied flatly.

The number hung in the air. He could see Cissel’s eyes narrow as she did the math, her mind racing to figure out how he had out-farmed the four of them combined while he was supposed to be searching. John resisted the urge to laugh at her expression.

"That means we have slightly over nine thousand cores," John continued, stepping into the centre of the area. "Let’s use two-thirds of that to expand this area into a proper base. We’ll save the rest for emergencies."

The team fell into a rhythmic work cycle. For the next ten minutes, they moved in a coordinated expansion, throwing cores around to push back the black veil. By the time they finished, they had carved out a massive sanctuary nearly one kilometre in length and two in width.

To John’s genuine surprise, Luke’s "rule of thumb" proved correct. As the fog retreated, more of the charcoal-grey trunks emerged from the gloom. Within their new perimeter, they counted twenty of the massive Blue Serpentile trees.

*Roar!*

The expansion had triggered a massive response. The fog at the new edges of their territory rippled as a fresh wave of Seekers surged forward.

"Gather up! Let’s exterminate this wave and keep expanding after!" John shouted.

The exhaustion was a real factor now. They couldn’t regroup with the lightning speed they had shown before, but the cores they had consumed had turned them into individual powerhouses. Even separated by tens of meters, each member of the team was now a blender of steel, tearing through the monsters with ease.

John watched them, a proud smile touching his lips. They were no longer the terrified friends he appeared with at the start of the day.

"Let’s gather the cores and keep expanding," John ordered once the silence returned. They had just slaughtered over five hundred monsters in a single, chaotic clash.

"Won’t they ever stop coming?!" Elena shouted across the growing area, her voice cracking with fatigue. "I’m so tired, John! I need to sleep!"

"The sound devices are gone, but it seems this didn’t help at all," Ricky responded, still maintaining his role as the group’s grounding force. "We have no choice but to keep fighting till they stop coming."

John feigned ignorance, focusing on the work. He knew exactly when the bells would ring for their torture to end, but for now, they needed to finish expanding and defending their new home.

By the time they fought through three more waves, the transformation was complete. They stood in the centre of a vast territory that stretched five kilometres in every direction. Over a hundred of the blue-fruited trees stood like silent sentinels within their territory, providing a lush, alien canopy over the ground.

"This is it," Luke said, looking at the expansive sanctuary. "This is our base in this cursed world."