Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 155: The Fog Wrathers Are Here!

"This place will be good enough to distract them away from the base!"

John stood alone in the heart of the fog, positioned at the far south-eastern zone of his territory. He was surrounded by a swirling, white world of fog that seemed to swallow everything, yet his inventory was packed with the thousands of noisy mechanical devices Luke and Elena had brought to him. He had picked this spot with purpose in mind. It was the furthest point from his base while remaining close to where his real enemies were.

Per Reody’s forecast, the black clouds would take roughly an hour to fully occlude the sky and begin the rain of lightning. John hadn’t wasted a single second of that window. He had been running at his top speed, his lungs burning and his heart hammering against his chest like a trapped bird. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"He said after hearing the sound of the first thunder strike, I’ll have exactly one hour before the first wave emerges," John muttered to himself. "Luckily, I’ve got the map. I finally spotted where that den is located."

He kept his gaze on the map, watching for any abnormalities. The moment the first thunderclaps rolled across the sky, a deep, unnatural sound that felt like the earth cracking open, a pulsing red icon appeared at the northernmost tip of his area.

The Den had manifested. He felt he was finally a bit lucky for the den to be located far from his current target. Even if the den appeared near his destination, he wouldn’t have changed it.

But now he would lure the swarm all the way south. This path would force them to bypass his base, providing a perfect test environment to see if his cannons and towers could kill them despite their lightning shields.

According to Reody, these Wrathers were designed to prioritise the loudest noise source. Once they locked on, they would move as a single, devastating tide to swarm the source. Only after the noise was silenced would they scan for the next loudest spot and shift their focus.

John knew he had exactly one chance to pull this off. If he failed to create a loud enough distraction, the five thousand monsters would head straight for the lake and the farm, where his friends were currently braced for impact.

"The main problem is the return trip," John grumbled, his brow furrowed. "I can’t get back to warn them in time if things go south. I have to run all the way back to the base on foot, and these things... Reody said they’ll be way faster than any human."

As he moved, John played through dozens of scenarios. Each time he recalled the system’s sub-quest notification, a fresh wave of rage washed over him. He felt like a pawn being moved across a board by a grandmaster who knew all his secrets. The system hadn’t just outplayed him; it had waited until he felt secure, until the base was complete, before pulling the rug out from under him.

Every twenty minutes, he paused for a fraction of a second to take out a core. He let a small bubble of fog clear around him to reset his countdown and take a moment of rest before he resumed his frantic pace.

He used these precious few seconds to gulp down water from a flask Elena had filled with the fresh lake water. It was the only thing keeping his muscles from seizing.

By the end of the second hour, John had crossed a distance that would have normally taken a man ten hours to trek. His legs felt like they were made of solid lead, and a thousand invisible needles seemed to be pricking his skin and muscles with every step. He finally came to a halt at the southeastern border, his body trembling from the exertion.

"No time to waste," he gasped, checking the northern red icon on his map. Luckily, the den hadn’t released the first swarm yet. "I’ll first deploy a thousand of these noise devices over a large area, then run further toward the border to add more."

He decided against dumping the entire inventory in a single pile. Instead, he fanned out, distributing a thousand devices across a wide, circular zone within the fog. Activating them was simple; with a single click on a side button, a cacophony of loud banging noises erupted into the fog.

"One thousand deployed," John whispered. In ten minutes, he had turned the silent fog into a screaming nightmare. "This will be enough to lead them here first. Then, once they destroy these, the remaining devices I place further south will act as the secondary lure."

As he laid down the initial wave of decoys, he finally slowed down, trying to catch his breath. His eyes remained glued to the map, watching the red den area like a hawk.

Just half an hour later, a violent tremor shook the ground, nearly knocking him off his feet. Without any delay, he checked the map and zoomed in on the northern den as if he were standing right in front of it. He sucked in a sharp, cold breath of air.

"This..."

The Fog Wrathers were finally here. They were giants, every bit as tall and imposing as the Bulltors, just as Reody had described. Their bodies were terrifyingly skinless, the raw, deep-red muscle exposed to the air.

Their claws were massive, curved blades that shimmered with a bright, silver metallic sheen. They moved on all fours with a gait similar to the Fog Seekers, and their faces were smooth expanses of flesh with no eyes, only wide mouths filled with serrated teeth.

"They are just a big version of the Fog Seekers," John muttered under his breath, watching the red blips on his map close the distance with terrifying efficiency. "With their huge bodies, they can cover a massive distance in a fraction of the time. Their speed... It’s like my top-end speed before I was dragged into this world. Tsk!"