Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 106: The Fruit Grenades!

"Wait for me!" he shouted, his voice a bit shaky. He ran back as fast as he had run away before, his boots drumming a frantic beat on the soil until he skidded into the fog to join everyone.

"Incredible!" Cissel was the first to comment, reaching out to touch the fog vapour. "The fog... It looks nicer, that isn’t a dark or grey like before. It’s now close to white, like milk."

"It’s a degree of colour known as #FAF9F6, or widely known as Off-White!" Elena said, her voice dropping into a lecture-like tone. She looked like an expert in the field of colours. When the others gave her a flat look, she huffed.

"What? I need to know the most famous colour codes, so I won’t pick the wrong ones for my clothes! Do you even know how many grades there are in white alone?"

"Thanks, we don’t need to know that," Ricky blatantly said once he joined the team, still panting from his sprint. He adjusted his collar, trying to regain his dignity. "Now what? Are we all going to have a stroll in the deadly fog and end up like how I was a couple of days ago? Drooling and trying to kill each other?"

"Relax," Cissel couldn’t help but chuckle, the memory of his terrified sprint from earlier still fresh and funny. "John here will warn us if we pass over our limit. By the way, John, who is following the time for us? We don’t have watches."

"I am," John said simply. He didn’t explain that he was monitoring a digital, glowing countdown in his peripheral vision. "Make sure to be ready to use a core the moment I give you the order for it. Don’t faff around when I say ’now’."

The team was feeling incredibly stressed at first, their muscles tense as they waited for the madness to take hold of them. Yet, after trying the first warning from John, they began to actually enjoy the adventure. It was like a forbidden walk through a ghost world.

John was moving his eyes around constantly, his Frame Recognition ability working all the time. He wasn’t looking for monsters anymore; he was looking for any sign for their friends getting infected. The moment he spotted lingering whiteness bleeding into anyone’s body code structure, he instantly signalled them to use their cores.

"So, your time limit is seven and a half minutes," John finally decided after repeating the process ten times. They had spent over an hour drifting through the fog, mocking Ricky enough to make his ears turn red. "Now, I’ll need every one of you to count your breaths. When I tell you to stop, use a core at once."

"Ok," Luke said, his voice buzzing with excitement. To him, the sight of John walking into the fog had always been the image of a legendary figure heading to fight an epic battle.

Now that he was doing it too, he felt like he was finally stepping into that legendary stage. Elena and Cissel felt a similar rush, and even Ricky, who was still struggling to get over the teasing and lingering past nightmarish experience, felt the thrill of conquering his greatest fear.

"Stop," John commanded after a measured period. "Did you count it?"

He moved his eyes among everyone, and they all nodded, reciting their numbers.

"Now, that’s your count for a five-minute safe period, memorise it as your life depends on it. That means you’ll have an extra two minutes and a half of buffer just in case something bad happens and you can’t use your cores immediately.

Remember, once inside the fog, keep counting your breaths until it becomes a habit. The full count is your safety mark; the extra half of that count is the red flag for your stay. Got it?"

He had devised this strategy right on the spot. He recalled the desperate battle with the D-1000s, where he couldn’t easily use cores because he feared getting spotted, and needed to use his Sandbox to hide his use of the core. Yet his friends couldn’t use his ability, and he wasn’t sure he’d stick to their side all the time. So this way was the best way he could think of.

"Now, let’s turn all the blue fruits we have into seeds," John said. Their journey to the blue Serpentile trees alone had taken three hours, and they had gathered every last fruit from the towering trees before heading to the fog. It was time to mass-produce the seeds.

One by one, they held the fruits out into the off-white mist.

*Sizzle!* *Sizzle!* *Sizzle!*

After a few initial attempts marked by exclamations of shock, surprise, and admiration, the team began the process of converting their entire stock of fruit into seeds.

The specific phenomenon that had terrified Ricky earlier wasn’t fully witnessed by the others, so they hadn’t seen the exact way the blue fruit ignited into shimmering fire, nor had they fully glimpsed the ethereal, gigantic blue serpent of flame that erupted from the reaction.

"I’ve finished all the fruits I had," Luke announced, carefully picking up the last seed left behind after a blue serpent vanished into the fog. He looked around at the others. "Hey, Elena, lend me some of yours!"

"I’ve finished mine too," Elena replied, pouting her cheeks in disappointment. Between the two of them, they were the heaviest eaters on the team, and their personal supplies had dwindled faster than the rest.

Luke turned toward Cissel, hoping for a contribution, but he was met with a sharp, warning glance that caused his request to die in his throat with a quiet hiss. "Forget it," he muttered, quickly averting his eyes. When he looked toward Ricky as a last resort, he was met with a look so deadly that he immediately dropped the idea of even asking.

"We are officially done," Cissel said, holding the last seed produced from her fruit supply. She looked at the glowing blue seed with a mix of curiosity and regret. "It’s a shame to lose the fruit, but that dazzling fire and the sheer force of the explosion... It might be useful as something more than just a seed. What do you think, John?"

John had finished his own stock by processing several fruits at once to save time. He wasn’t that interested in blue fire or the serpent, like others. He looked out into the off-white fog, considering the tactical implications.

"I haven’t tested their effect on the D-1000s or the monsters before," he admitted, "but there’s a major drawback. The light and the roar from that serpent can pinpoint your exact location to anyone—or anything—inside the fog."

This was the primary reason John had hesitated to view the fruits as a viable weapon. While the explosion was impressive, the near-instantaneous reaction upon taking them out in the fog made them difficult to handle without revealing one’s position.

"We could clear a small area first using a core, then throw the fruit from within the light into the fog," Cissel suggested, refusing to drop the matter. Elena nodded eagerly beside her. Seeing the peaceful-looking fruit produce such a violent reaction had sparked a desire in Elena to weaponise them.

As the only member of the team with her attributes still locked, she was often considered the weakest link in a direct brawl; the idea of fruit grenades gave her a sense of potential utility.

John listened as the two girls began brainstorming more elaborate theories. They discussed digging shallow holes in the ground, covering dirt over their hands, then placing the fruits as improvised landmines before retreating.

"Are you really going to let them keep dreaming like this?" Ricky asked, approaching John as the girls grew more creative in their theories to use the fruit grenades.

"Finally, you’ve moved past your anger," John said with a calm smile. He glanced back at the girls. "Leave them be. In a world like this, it’s better to have wild, tricky ideas for desperate situations. Even if only a couple of them work, it’s an advantage we didn’t have yesterday."

Ricky’s face twitched as he was reminded of the silly situation John had forced him into earlier. "Tsk. I understand now why you persisted in pushing me into the fog, but still... What if I had faced that same terrible fate?" 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"I would have cured you just like I did the first time," John said, rolling his eyes as if Ricky’s fears were entirely groundless.

"Still over relying on those magic tricks of yours," Ricky muttered. He paused for a long moment, his eyes darting toward the others to ensure they weren’t listening, before whispering, "Mind sharing some of those tricks with me?"

John raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips. "You have plenty of your own secrets. Mind sharing yours with me first?"

As John expected, Ricky immediately dropped the subject. He wasn’t willing to trade his own hidden information for a glimpse into John’s system-backed abilities. He turned away, ending the conversation as abruptly as it had started.

With the seed production finished, the team moved back out of the fog and stood before the towering Blue Serpentile trees. The goal was clear: they needed to cross the river to reach the cattle herd location, plus the new, silver-leafed trees. However, standing at the base of the massive wooden towers, the practical reality of their plan hit them.

"I know we were excited about taking these down to build a raft," Luke said, looking up at the hundreds of feet of solid wood, then back down at the relatively minuscule weapons the team had. He looked genuinely hesitant.

"But how in the world are we supposed to cut these wooden towers down using nothing but swords and daggers?! It’ll take us a month just to get through one trunk!"