Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 119: Fighting the Giants!

"Get ready!"

Without saying anything further, a tacit understanding of respecting John’s secrets was established silently during their march towards the incoming giants.

John didn’t mind things ending up this way; after all, Ricky and Cissel kept their secrets close to their hearts, and he intended to do the same.

In this world, survival was the only currency that mattered, and if John’s intuition kept them alive, they were willing to overlook the impossible accuracy rate of his predictions.

Once they arrived near the roiling brown fog wall, John checked the map one last time. Out of the initial one hundred giants, only fifty-three had survived the deadly fog tide’s thunder and lightning. They were exhausted, terrified, and only minutes away from breaching the perimeter into the clear zone.

He calmly warned the others, and no one said a word to question his order. No one took it lightly. Even Luke, usually the slowest of the bunch, gripped his massive wooden club and waved it through the air a few times, testing the weight and readying himself for the upcoming danger.

Then, the giants appeared.

"What the heck are those...?!!!"

Seeing the group of fifty-three giants bursting through the fog as if they were escaping the literal gates of hell made the other three freeze in their steps for a long second. They were massive—towering nearly ten to a dozen meters tall, with skin the colour of wet slate and muscles that looked like knotted iron cables. But John didn’t freeze. He had been watching them through his map for hours; he was already mid-stride.

"Let’s kill them first, ask questions later!" John roared, running forward and instantly activating everything in his arsenal.

He was fighting enemies he had never seen before, beings with far superior physical proportions and the advantage of numbers. He didn’t know if they had sturdy, metallic bodies like the machines that would snap a blade, or if they were as vicious and mindless as the Fog Seekers.

The best and safest way to handle the situation was to take absolutely no risks. He knew better than the others that these giants were depleted, they were terribly wounded, and their limbs were heavy from hours of frantic running.

The moment the first giant staggered out of the fog, John acted. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

’Logic Bomb... Ten seconds... Logic Bomb... Ten seconds...’

After activating Frame Recognition and MP Absorption as his base battle abilities, he became a blur of motion. He didn’t swing a sword; he reached out, his palm glowing with a faint, distorted light as he slapped the stone-like skin of the forefront ten giants, infusing his Logic Bomb and stealing a few Mental Points in return.

Just waking from their initial shock, the team spotted John’s signature move—the "touch and run." They realised what would happen next and braced themselves for the shockwave.

*Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!*

Out of the blue, and before the incoming giants could even process the presence of the small humans, ten fierce explosions detonated. The shockwaves were immense, throwing the massive creatures aside like they were broken kites caught in a gale.

The leading ten were decimated instantly, and three more were crushed under the weight of their falling comrades or sent tumbling by the aftershocks.

"Humans?!!" one of the giants roared, his voice like thunder.

"Watch out! They are strong!"

"Attack! Kill them!"

The giants hadn’t been aware of the four humans at first—not until the explosions landed. But the sounds of their exclamations told John a simple, chilling fact: this wasn’t the first time these giants had encountered humanity. They knew what they were dealing with.

"Change of tactics!" John shouted, shifting his priorities the moment he heard them speak. "Leave a few alive! We need to dig for information later!"

He didn’t stop his barrage of attacks, but as he closed in on the next giants, he was met with something he never expected: magic.

The moment the giants realised they were under a coordinated assault, the central gems in their chests began to shine with a fierce, blinding light. The gems were a pure, brilliant white, and as they flashed, a translucent, shimmering shield hummed into existence around their bodies.

In John’s special vision, the giants were structured out of dense blue codes. But the gems? They were made entirely of white codes.

When the gems shone brighter, a radical change occurred in their body code structure. A complex code web extended from the white gem, infiltrating every limb and organ in a few heartbeats.

"Interesting," John muttered, the corners of his mouth tilting into a cold, curious smile as he dodged a massive fist that shattered the ground where he had stood a second before. "Is this some sort of magical trick?"

The white, ball-shaped shields appearing around every giant were a thick, pulsing layer of complex white codes in John’s eyes. He gritted his teeth, his mind racing through his options. ’As long as this is made out of codes, then it won’t stop my Logic Bombs...’

He surged forward, his hand outspread to slap the shimmering surface of the nearest barrier. But the moment he touched the shield, trying to infuse his Logic Bomb explosive code into the structure, a notification popped almost instantly.

The ability code—the one that had never failed him, the one that had shredded steel and bone alike—got pushed away and withered as if it had met its absolute nemesis.

[Ding! The infiltration of your Logic Bomb failed under the special effect of the enemy’s special shield!]

"Dammit!" John hissed, his feet skidding on the grass as he recoiled. He was frustrated by the sudden failure of his deadliest move, yet he didn’t let the panic take hold. ’Let’s try something different then...’

"Stop it already," one of the giants smirked from behind his translucent white sphere. The creature looked down at John with eyes full of contempt.

Nearby, Luke, Cissel, and Ricky were hammering away at the shields, their weapons rebounding with dull thuds. "A fallen race like you can’t dream of touching a single hair of supreme beings like us..."

*Crack!* *Crack!* *Crack!*

*Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!*