Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 247: We Meet Again, At Last, Mr Mirage!

"It’s a relief we spent that time laying down those outposts."

Elena said, her eyes scanning the reinforced structures they had left in their wake. "Now we have a hardened line to fall back on if things turn ugly. We aren’t just standing in an open field anymore."

"Let’s move," John commanded, resuming the march. This time, he didn’t just walk; he broke into a high-speed sprint. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"The new group is closing the gap with the three hundred; they are now running to match our speed. Yet they are way slower than us. We need to intercept them before they merge. If they merge, our window for a peaceful resolution vanishes. And perhaps something even worse will happen."

With the enhanced Speed attributes, the distance that would have taken a normal human an hour to trek was swallowed in less than fifteen minutes. During the sprint, John’s eyes remained locked on the map.

He watched the thousand green dots picking up pace, narrowing the distance to the stationary cluster. Thanks to their higher speed, John and his team managed to cross the final distance and skid into the area ten minutes before the larger group arrived.

"This..."

The team came to a sliding halt, and for a moment, the only sound was their heavy breathing. The sight that welcomed them was so far beyond their expectations that it bordered on the surreal, except for one member of the group.

"Told you already," Luke said, shaking his head grimly as he pointed toward the centre of the area. "This is clearly a Fog Seeker den. They are doing exactly what the Wrathers did with the old dens!"

"But... How... That’s not possible..." Ricky stuttered. He moved his eyes frantically across the landscape, looking for a logical explanation, until his gaze stopped on the ground beneath the three hundred.

The natural ground was gone. It had been replaced by that familiar metallic layer, the same metallic ground that was always left behind after a massive surge of lightning hitting a Fog Seeker den, terraforming it into a yellow monster den.

Everything pointed toward Luke’s theory, the one they had laughed at only hours ago. "I don’t see any black clouds or Wrathers," Ricky noted, his voice trembling. "There’s no atmospheric charge, yet the ground is already transformed. How can the den be active without the trigger?"

"We don’t even know what’s happened here during the past few weeks while we were busy in the North," Cissel sighed, her hand tightening on her daggers. "Let’s go in there and try to wake them up. If they’re in a trance, maybe a physical shock can break the connection."

"Did you forget what happened the last time a yellow den appeared?" Luke looked uncharacteristically hesitant, his club lowered. "The lightning didn’t just hit once. It kept striking the den many times. If we step onto that metallic ground and a lightning strike is triggered, we’re dead."

"..."

The silence that followed was heavy. Even without a single black cloud in the sky, the threat still forced them to stop and hesitate. They feared the sudden death of a fierce lightning shower. all of them, except for one.

"Leave this to me," John said calmly. His eyes were glowing with a dangerous light. "I have a way to stay alive even after getting roasted by that lightning."

"We don’t need to risk it that way," Cissel interrupted, her mind already spinning. "Let’s just circle these three hundred and stand between them and the incoming group. Whatever this cluster is doing, the one thousand humans marching toward them must be aware of it. They’re the ones we need to talk to; they are the ones we need to interrogate and squeeze information from."

"Good idea," John agreed, liking the sound of it. "Let’s move. They’re almost on top of us!"

John vanished in a blur of motion, utilising his maximum speed to circle the three hundred. His friends followed, though they were a half-beat slower, struggling to match his frantic pace.

John arrived at the intercept point first, positioning himself a couple of hundred meters in front of the motionless human behind, creating a buffer zone. His friends arrived seconds later, forming a defensive line just as the thousand human silhouettes loomed from the distance.

"Hey! What are you doing here, so far away from your territory?" Luke shouted the moment the group of a thousand came to a halt one hundred meters away. He waved his massive club, pointing it toward their front line. "Who is your leader? Step up and explain yourselves!"

His words echoed across the area, yet nothing changed. The thousand humans stood in a silent, eerie block. Luke and the others were busy scanning the crowd, trying to discern if these were fellow survivors or potential hostiles. Consequently, no one noticed the sudden change in John’s expression.

John wasn’t looking at their clothes or their weapons. He was already using his Frame Recognition ability. Through that specialised vision, he spotted glaring anomalies.

The code structure of a normal human was usually all green, with special clusters appearing in white or blue depending on how far they unlocked, enhanced their attributes, and honed their abilities. But this group was an abomination.

Through John’s eyes, their bodies were bifurcated. One half of their code was the familiar human green, but the other half was a sterile white. It looked as if a saw had cut through their frames, stitching two different entities together.

And that wasn’t the only weird part; there was a dense, pulsating cluster of black codes nestled deep within their brain, the first black codes for John to ever spot. It was a corruption John had never seen before.

"I’ll take the lead on this," a middle-aged man said, stepping forward from the ranks. He looked athletic and healthy, with a sharp, intelligent face that belied the harshness of the trial. He stopped a dozen meters in front of his group, and all of a sudden, a vicious, mocking smile spread across his face.

"We meet again, at last... Mr Mirage!"

"..."

The voice was different, deeper and more melodic than it should have been, but the words were absolute. John’s eyebrows shot up, and the look of immense shock on his face made his friends’ hearts skip a beat. They had seen John face terrifying enemies and monsters without blinking, but right now, he looked immensely shaken.

"Unbelievable!!!" The first words out of John’s mouth were a muffled whisper. "You can’t be here... No way! How is this possible?!"

"John? Do you know him?" Cissel asked, her voice trembling as she tried to make sense of the situation.

But John didn’t answer her directly. Instead, he let out a faint roar that signalled the end of all negotiations.

"Get ready for a fierce battle!" he shouted, "Those... Those aren’t humans! They are enemies, our deadliest enemies!"