Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 169: Cissel and Elena Will Go Buts about the Core Bombs!

Soon enough, the lightning faded away, yet John remained mesmerised at his spot for a few more seconds. He stood perfectly still, examining the swirling black sky above with narrowed eyes, making sure there wasn’t another hidden bolt waiting for him to make a move.

"Wait... This area..." As he was nervously looking around, he activated his Frame Recognition ability to scan for any hidden threats or anomalies. What he found made him pause; he had missed something significant in the initial chaos. "It’s way more spacious than the area cleared by the Fog Seeker cores!"

Everything had happened too fast for him to fully grasp the scale. But as he waited to ensure no more lightning would descend, he realised that the pocket of clear air he was currently standing in was far wider than anything the Fog Seeker cores had ever produced.

The cleared zone was at least a few hundred meters in length and width! He stood in the dead centre of a massive bubble of visibility, a literal oasis in the middle of the fog.

"Impressive," he murmured, recalling Lanmar’s earlier ramblings about how nature would interfere to restore balance. "Using these cores, we can easily push away the fog from the entire territory! Not to mention, if I let the Magical Core in my inventory consume these, we might even end up clearing the entire territory using only a few of them!"

After a full minute of silence from the clouds, he finally dared to step forward. He reached down and snatched the activated, pulsating core from the scorched earth. The moment his skin made contact, the same long rows of notifications appeared. This time, he read them slowly, while keeping one eye fixed firmly on the sky above!

"So... The bonus effect mentioned here is in the form of getting baptised by lightning... Would it have killed the system to warn me about it?!" John rolled his eyes, his heart rate finally beginning to settle. He began to study the implications of ingesting this core.

"They are doing it all wrong!" The first conclusion he reached was that his friends were consuming these cores incorrectly! They were gaining only a fraction of the true potential might. Recalling how they had also ingested the other yellow cores from the yellow monsters the same way, he expected the same dormant vs. active logic applied to those as well.

"Luckily, their hands are tied by the fighting right now, and many of the Wrathers were killed away from the northern walls. So, they probably haven’t ingested too many of them yet," he mused.

He knew that even with missing the grand gains they’d have if they activated the cores first, they had still gained enough new power to survive the immediate threat, which was the priority.

"Time to test it then." He didn’t hesitate. He placed the purple core inside his mouth and instantly felt the immense power stored within. It didn’t just dissolve; it felt like a jolt of pure lightning racing through his body.

He quickly pulled up his profile interface. Seeing that he had truly gained an additional point to every Stat and a substantial ten more points increase to his Mental Point cap, brought a wide, triumphant smile to his face.

"Now we are talking business," he said, his voice gaining a new edge of confidence. He swept his eyes around the kill zone. Hundreds of dead Fog Wrathers were scattered among his traps and the towers.

"These will barely suffice my personal needs till I hit my limit, yet there was a total of five thousand monsters in that first wave alone! There will be more than enough to arm up my sword and extras left for their bodies and gear..."

Just as he was in the middle of calculating his gains, a thought, something truly formidable and game-changing, struck him. It left him freezing in his tracks, his eyes widening as the logic unfolded in his mind.

"Can I... Can I use these cores on the walls, the towers, and the cannons?!!" He muttered the words in a low, breathless tone. His mind didn’t even dare to fully imagine the significance of that possibility.

If he could upgrade his defences using the same cores that were currently supercharging himself and his friends... Then it’d be a real game-changer without doubt!

"Ok... Ok... I need to calm down first," he whispered to the empty air. "I need to test if the system even allows for using the cores on my various defences before getting overly excited about it!"

Yet he couldn’t help but open the notifications again and check the content one more time. He scrolled through the text with expectation, looking for any sign or hidden hint.

There was nothing explicitly stating he could use the cores to upgrade stationary objects or structures, yet there wasn’t a single line saying anything against it either.

In the logic of the Source Code World he tested so far, if it wasn’t forbidden, it was a possibility waiting to be exploited. He simply decided to give it a try right here, in the safety of his cleared zone, to see for himself if it would work or not.

"Cissel and Elena will go nuts about the bomb part related to these cores, hehehe!" John chuckled to himself. He was in a great mood now, his mind wandering to how his friends would react to the enhanced usage number one’s description.

The idea of turning these cores into lightning-infused explosives was exactly the kind of chaotic utility that his team would find both terrifying and indispensable. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"Yet the amount we’ll get won’t be enough..." He quickly did the math in his head. He had to consider the sheer number of cores needed to satisfy his personal limits, his friends’ limits, and the potential needs of his big base defences in case his theory about upgrading them worked.

He realised he was already planning for a shortage despite the potential tens of thousands of Wrathers coming his way in two days. "I swear, if Lanmar were here, he’d scream in panic if he knew I was taking the prospect of fifty thousand monsters in the last wave so lightly, hahaha!"