They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World-Chapter 196: Scarlet Helfang!

My debug vision pulled up Shax’s full stats while I struggled to stay standing.

[ENTITY_SCAN: COMPLETE]

name: "Shax Morval"

level: 29

class: Assassin/Warrior

element: WIND

"Fuck," I cursed, spitting a wad of bloody saliva onto the stone.

Twenty-nine. He was nearly at the threshold of the next tier.

Gritting my teeth against the blinding pain in my chest, I pushed myself off the wall.

Oathstorm, hummed in my grip, responding to my rising adrenaline. Faint blue sparks of thunder arced across the steel blade, casting harsh shadows in the dim cave.

And lunged, pushing off my back foot, thrusting Oathstorm forward in a vicious, crackling arc of electricity.

Shax didn’t even blink. He casually swept his sword up.

A spiraling current of wind wrapped around his blade, completely deflecting my thunderous strike.

CLANG!

"Too slow," Shax mocked, his voice carrying over the ringing steel. "I expected more, but guess this is what can you do... you pathetic piece of trash."

I twisted, tried to come around from a different angle—

He sidestepped, his movement fluid like water, and his blade kissed my shoulder in passing.

Pain flared. Blood welled through my shirt.

Then he stepped into my guard. I barely brought Oathstorm up in time to block. The impact felt like getting hit by a cannonball.

Why the hell is he so strong for his level? I thought frantically, my boots skidding backward across the dirt.

A level 29 shouldn’t have this much raw, concentrated kinetic output.

Shax pressed the attack in a blur of wind and steel.

"Look at you," he sneered, delivering a sweeping kick that I barely dodged.

"Your little friends are watching you die. And my men outside?" He gestured with his chin toward the cave entrance, where the silhouettes of his four remaining lackeys stood guard, blocking our only exit.

"They’re just waiting for their turn with the girls."

"Shut up!" I roared, swinging Oathstorm in a desperate, horizontal slash.

Shax parried it effortlessly, the wind magic dampening the electrical feedback.

He twisted his wrist, bypassing my guard entirely, and slammed the pommel of his sword directly into my sternum.

All the air left my lungs.

I flew backward, hitting the jagged cavern wall for the second time. My vision blacked out for a split second before I crumpled to my hands and knees, gasping for air.

I didn’t have time to guess anymore.

I need more data.

And instantly, a secondary window popped up in my vision, scanning Shax’s movements, his mana density, and his muscle twitch rate.

[COMBAT_ANALYSIS]

name: "Shax Morval"

combat_level: B- RANK

What the fuck.

My stomach dropped. And I immediately ran the scan on myself for comparison.

[COMBAT_ANALYSIS]

name: "Jin Raith"

combat_level: D+ RANK

Dammit.

That explained the overwhelming gap. Levels were just a measure of accumulated stats and mana.

Combat Ranks—which ranged from F to SSS, with three sub-ranks for each major tier: negative (-), normal, and positive (+)—measured actual lethality.

It factored in technique, battle IQ, and mastery over affinities.

He wasn’t just higher level. He was fundamentally a better killer.

"Aw, look at him," Shax laughed, slowly walking toward me. The wind whipped around his boots, kicking up dust. "Can’t even stand. Should I just end it now?"

I wiped the blood from my chin. "Not yet."

And forced myself up, my legs were trembling but refusing to give out.

I shifted my feet, settling into a low, defensive stance. Oathstorm crackled violently, the thunder affinity roaring to life.

If I couldn’t beat him with raw power or technique, I had to break the rules.

Shax lunged, faster this time, aiming to take my head off in a single gust of wind-enhanced steel.

[Target: Terrain -> Modify Property: Friction Coefficient = 0.01]

Right as Shax planted his lead foot to swing, the rough stone beneath his boot became as frictionless as polished ice. His foot slipped forward violently, throwing his perfectly balanced strike completely off axis.

His eyes widened in shock as his blade whistled inches past my ear.

[Modify Property: Air Density = +400%]

Before he could recover his balance, I edited the very air surrounding him.

It instantly thickened into an invisible, gelatinous wall. Shax grunted, his movements suddenly sluggish, as if he were trying to swing his sword underwater.

His wind magic sputtered, fighting against the sudden atmospheric pressure.

[Target: Oathstorm -> Modify Property: Electrical Conductivity = Max]

This was my opening.

I didn’t swing at his sword. I stepped inside his compromised guard, Oathstorm roaring with blinding blue thunder. And thrust the blade upward.

Shax managed to rip his arm through the dense air just enough to avoid taking the blade through his throat, but he wasn’t fast enough to escape completely.

SLSK!

Oathstorm’s electrified edge tore through the reinforced leather on his shoulder, biting deep into his flesh before glancing up and slicing a clean, burning line across his cheek.

Thunder discharged directly into his wound. Shax let out a sharp howl of pain, stumbling backward and clutching his face.

Silence fell over the cavern. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Tessa and Scarlet watched in stunned disbelief. Even the men outside shifted nervously.

Shax slowly lowered his hand from his face. His fingers were stained crimson. He stared at his own blood for a long, terrifying second.

When he looked back up at me, the mocking arrogance was completely gone.

His eyes were cold, dead, and swirling with a murderous storm. The wind pressure in the cavern violently spiked, extinguishing the nearby fire orbs and plunging us into semi-darkness.

"Alright," Shax whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal intent. "I’m done playing around."

The cavern floor trembled as the air pressure skyrocketed. The faint blue light from my sword struggled against the crushing, suffocating gale swirling around Shax.

He wasn’t just angry anymore. He was going to erase me.

I didn’t hesitate.

I opened my system interface wide, pushing my debugger privileges to the absolute limit.

[Target: Jin -> Modify Property: Neural Processing Rate = +300%]

[Target: Jin -> Modify Property: Agility Base = Max Cap Limit]

[Target: Jin -> Modify Property: Muscle Fiber Output = +150%]

[System Warning: Severe Stamina Drain Detected. Tissue damage imminent.]

[Override Warning. Disable Stamina Limiters.]

The world snapped into agonizingly sharp focus. Time seemed to dilate, slowing down just enough for me to track the micro-twitches in Shax’s muscles.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a jackhammer, pumping hyper-oxygenated blood through my veins.

Shax vanished.

My overclocked brain registered the blur of movement to my left, but even with my agility maxed out, ranked body could barely react in time. I threw Oathstorm up in a desperate block.

CLANG!

A shockwave of compressed wind and violently sparking thunder exploded outward.

"Die!" Shax roared, twisting his blade.

He didn’t give me a single breath to recover. He unleashed a relentless hurricane of strikes.

Thrust, slash, overhead cleave, each attack flowed perfectly into the next, carried by the momentum of his wind affinity. I parried frantically, Oathstorm leaving trails of blue lightning in the dark, but I was entirely on the defensive.

When I saw an opening, a fraction of a second where his guard drifted high. I lunged, thrusting Oathstorm toward his chest with a surge of thunder mana.

But it was a trap.

Shax didn’t block. He simply pivoted, letting the wind carry his body out of the blade’s path with sickening grace. My strike hit empty air, pulling me dangerously off balance.

"Amateur," Shax whispered right in my ear.

I tried to pull back, tried to type a frantic terrain edit into my interface, but he was too fast.

Schlk!

The sound was wet, and final.

I looked down.

Three inches of blood-slicked steel protruded from my back. Shax’s sword was buried hilt-deep in my stomach.

The heat of the wound didn’t register at first, only the terrible, paralyzing cold of the wind mana invading my bloodstream, tearing at my insides.

I let out a choked gasp, dropping Oathstorm. It clattered uselessly against the stone.

Shax ripped the blade out with a vicious twist.

Blood poured freely from my gut.

I staggered backward, my legs suddenly feeling like lead. My edited stamina crashed completely. I fell hard to my knees, clutching my stomach as the world spun into a dizzying smear of shadows.

"Jin!" Tessa’s voice was a distant, muffled shriek.

Through half-closed eyes, I saw Shax step over me. He raised his sword high above his head, the wind swirling around the blade to ensure a clean decapitation.

"Say hello to your mother in hell," Shax sneered, bringing the blade down in a lethal arc.

I couldn’t move. I just waited for the dark.

Then...

CLANG!

A shower of orange sparks rained down on my face. The sickening thud of the killing blow never came.

"Huh?"

I forced my eyes open.

Standing directly over me, shielding my broken body, was Scarlet.

Shax’s mana-infused sword was stopped dead in its tracks, caught perfectly between Scarlet’s claws.

Her glamour was entirely gone.

A magnificent mane of vibrant, blood-scarlet hair fell wildly around her shoulders, framing a face that had turned feral.

Her pupils had narrowed into dangerous vertical slits, glowing with a piercing, predatory emerald green in the cavern’s gloom.

Shax stared at her, his eyes wide. He tried to wrench his sword free, but Scarlet’s claws didn’t budge a single millimeter and let out a low growl.

"...Stay away from him."