Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 90: The Cliff, and the Den!

Just as Elena said, it felt like a veil was suddenly removed from their senses. The psychological block of survival had been so intense that their ears had filtered out anything that wasn’t a roar, but now, the world was singing a different tune.

"No way!" Cissel’s eyes went wide, her daggers lowering slightly as she tilted her head. John didn’t need to see it; his earlier suspicions were confirmed the moment he focused.

Through the eerie silence of the fog, there it was—the faint and unmistakable melody of a running stream of water. It wasn’t just a trickle; it sounded like a heavy flow, perhaps a river or a big branch of it.

"It’s coming from that direction," John pointed out, and the three of them instantly began working with a renewed, feverish eagerness. Every core they tossed felt lighter, every foot of fog they reclaimed felt like a victory. John kept a vigilant watch, his eyes darting across the dark grey codes, preparing for the monsters to exploit this moment of distraction.

Yet, he looked everywhere but failed to spot any incoming danger.

"Watch out! Agh!"

Just as they were clearing a dense patch of fog, a sudden, open stretch of air appeared where there should have been solid ground. Before they could realise they had reached an edge, Elena’s lead leg slipped on loose shale. She let out a piercing scream as her centre of gravity vanished over the precipice!

"Got you!"

John was half a beat faster than Cissel. He lunged forward, his fingers locking around Elena’s wrist with a tight snap. With his other hand, he stabbed his sword deep into a sturdy rock formation, creating a short crack, anchoring them both.

"Are you okay?" he grunted, the strain of her weight and the suddenness of the move pulling at his shoulder. He moved his eyes around, wondering how his Frame Recognition had missed a literal hole in the world.

"It’s a cliff," Elena gasped, her face pale as she was pulled up with the combined strength of John and Cissel. John climbed back onto the ledge, retrieving his sword with a sharp tug. "I can’t miss this feeling... It was as if I were falling from a high building to the ground. We’re on the edge of a cliff!"

Elena’s voice was as shaky as her body, vibrating with stress and adrenaline. "I hate high altitudes," she muttered, hugging herself.

"Great. Put that on the list right next to darkness and monsters," Cissel remarked, as if her fear of high places was far worse than losing her life.

"Stay here," John ordered, leaving Cissel to steady the trembling Elena. He moved with extra care, crawling toward the edge to examine the drop-off they had nearly plummeted over.

He activated his far-sighted ability, Wireframe Sight, and looked down. Through the swirling grey codes of the fog, he peered twenty meters straight down to see what he had been looking for. The danger hadn’t been in front of them; it had been beneath their feet.

Using his ability, he saw how high this hill truly was. It towered for over twenty meters, a sheer face of dark grey colored coded rock that ended at a grand, swirling gathering of Fog Seekers.

Even from this height, the density of the pale grey codes below was nauseating. Thousands of them were moving in a slow, hypnotic circle around a central point.

’That must be their den,’ John thought, squinting his eyes to penetrate the deeper layers of the valley. He tried to locate the source of the water. Yet his ability’s range wasn’t quite enough to spot the liquid itself. Based on his ears, the water was roughly five hundred meters to a kilometre away, tucked into the basin below the cliff.

’There is a slope here at this side,’ John muttered to himself. After scanning the monster population to gather intel, he shifted his attention toward the cliff’s shoulder.

Circling the entire ridge would be a gruelling task they weren’t equipped for, a risky adventure that’d cost them lots of time and unguaranteed success. Luckily, the terrain offered a compromise.

He spotted a sloping side where the cliff crumbled into a steep but manageable incline. The angle was safe enough for them to slowly walk down toward the valley floor.

To confirm it, he threw more cores, clearing the area until the path was fully apparent. He faked leaning on the ground to check the stability before shouting in feigned surprise to draw the girls over.

The girls hurried to check the side he pointed at. "We can easily descend this without ropes," Cissel noted, her mind already envisioning the descent. "We can just slowly work our way down. But... John, what exactly is down there?"

She looked at him as if he were an oracle. This time, there was no way to beat around the bush.

"It’s the den," he said simply.

Elena let out a sharp gasp, her hand flying to her mouth, while Cissel’s lips curled into a smile of triumph.

"Let’s go and bring the boys here," Cissel said, standing up and dusting off her gear. She gave John a meaningful look. "But first, let’s expand this area entirely. We need a fallback point. If we get pushed back from the den, we need to know this plateau is clear."

John didn’t stop her. He was far more interested in the geography of the cliff than the girls were. After clearing enough area, he realised that they hadn’t felt like they were climbing higher ground earlier because the slope on their side was so gradual. The cliff was like a knife-edge between the den and the lands they had come from.

"That’s why the monsters looked like they were being thrown at us from above!" John exclaimed in realisation. During their last battle, the Fog Seekers had seemed to move with a bizarre, downhill momentum. Now he understood—they had been charging down the shallow side of the hill, using the elevation to gain speed and momentum.

"Satisfied now?" Cissel asked. "Shall we return for Luke and Ricky? We need to brainstorm to discuss how to breach that den."

"Let’s go," John said, taking the lead.

The return journey was eerily quiet. On their way back through the tunnels they had carved, they didn’t meet a single monster. It felt as if the entire local population of Fog Seekers had been summoned to that one last massive battle, leaving behind nothing but the dark, silent fog and a weird sense of emptiness.

As they walked, the girls kept talking to fill the void. Elena spoke about the luxury of Athansia’s resorts she visited before—of warm baths and silk sheets—while Cissel nodded along, her icy demeanour softened by the success of their mission. John, however, stayed silent, his Wireframe Sight constantly scanning the horizon.

They decided to run half the distance and walk the rest to save time. But as they approached their main territory, Elena suddenly stopped talking. She froze, her head tilting toward the direction of their base.

"Something isn’t right," she whispered.

John’s Wireframe Sight caught it a second later. Usually, their territory was a clean oasis that was void of the dense grey codes. But now, he could see vague shapes in the far distance, shrouded in the grey fog. What made his blood run cold was the colour—distorted flickers of green codes!

The three of them ran as fast as their legs could carry them, their boots thudding against the dirt. They crested the final rise and stopped in a state of absolute daze and shock at the border of their territory.

"Heck! What are these things?!!" Elena gasped, her voice trembling.