They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

The dozen jagged spears of solid void hurtled toward me.

Before I could even target them with a system edit, a blinding crescent of silver-black mana tore through the freezing air.

"Not on my watch!"

The abyssal spears shattered into harmless, evaporating shadows. I spun around, and saw him.

Edric was standing a few yards away. He was breathing heavily, his tattered armor soaked in his own blood, and he was clutching his injured shoulder.

But his pitch-black sclera and glowing silver irises were burning with absolute, unyielding defiance.

"You should be resting," I called out over the crackle of my lightning.

Edric spat a wad of blood onto the ice.

"And let a kid handle this? Not a chance."

The demon slowly lowered its multi-jointed arm, its faceless obsidian mask tilting toward the swordsman.

"Ah," the entity vibrated, a dark, scraping chuckle echoing in our skulls.

"The little broken sword decided to wake up."

Edric ignored the taunt, taking a rigid, two-handed stance beside me.

"I don’t know why you’ve been hiding your real strength, Jin, but you’re matching it. If you fight it one-on-one, it won’t end well for either of you. But with me together..."

Edric’s aura violently flared, pushing back the creeping frost.

"We can win."

The demon didn’t wait. It vanished, reappearing directly above us with both scythes descending like an executioner’s block.

We sprang backward in perfect sync.

"Phantom Cleave!" Edric roared, unleashing a massive, vertical wave of silver-black energy that violently collided with the demon’s descent.

"Rolling Thunder!" I followed up instantly, driving a concentrated blast of black lightning directly into the entity’s chest.

The combined force of our attacks actually worked.

The demon skidded backward, its bone-claws carving deep trenches into the solid stone floor to stop its momentum.

It slowly stood up straight, brushing a spark of dark lightning off its shoulder.

It threw its head back and laughed, a sound so much like grinding tectonic plates.

"Yes! Just like that! Dance before you die, pitiful parasites!"

It lunged again, the cavern warping around its sheer speed.

I didn’t blink and pulled up my cyan root panel.

[Target: Edric -> Modify Property: Agility = +200%]

[Target: Edric -> Modify Property: Tissue Density = +200%]

Edric’s eyes went completely wide as the cyan code wrapped invisibly around his muscles.

He blurred forward, moving at a speed that completely defied his massive injuries.

He parried a lethal sweep from the demon, his newly dense muscles absorbing the crushing shockwave without shattering.

We engaged in a blistering, three-way war of attrition.

Edric became a silver-black whirlwind of steel, while I continuously spammed Rolling Thunder, detonating the demon’s bone armor at point-blank range.

But it wasn’t enough.

I blew a massive hole through the entity’s side, but the swirling black void inside simply stitched the bone and flesh back together in a fraction of a second.

I tried to suppress it directly—

—but the cyan code flickered and violently shattered.

The abyssal energy was too dense; my localized edits could only hold for a maximum of two seconds before the void forcefully overwrote my commands.

I clicked my tongue, dodging a scythe that sheared the fabric of my coat.

"Edric!" I shouted, parrying another heavy blow. "Distract it! Give me ten seconds!"

Edric didn’t ask questions. He roared, entirely abandoning his defense and diving directly into the demon’s guard, turning his body into a relentless, suicidal flurry of slashes.

Let’s hope this works, I thought, sliding backward out of the immediate clash.

Then closed my eyes, entirely shutting out the deafening roar of the battle and summoned every remaining drop of mana in my core.

I couldn’t beat the demon’s regeneration with raw explosive power. I needed to change the very nature of the physics governing my mana.

My hyper-accelerated mind processed the root edits in milliseconds.

[Target: Dark Lightning -> Modify Property: Volatility = 0]

[Target: Dark Lightning -> Modify Property: Density = Absolute Singular]

[Target: Dark Lightning -> Modify Property: Output = Implosive]

The violent, deafening crackle of my lightning instantly stopped.

I opened my eyes. Oathstorm wasn’t glowing anymore. The blade was completely pitch black, actively eating the ambient light around it.

It felt impossibly heavy, vibrating with a terrifying, silent pressure.

I shifted my stance.

The sudden, unnatural absence of sound and light from my direction caught the demon’s attention.

It swatted Edric away and slowly turned its faceless mask toward me, freezing in place.

It didn’t even have time to react.

FWOOSH!

I vanished, editing my coordinates to appear a millimeter from its chest.

[Void Thunder!]

I thrust the silent, pitch-black blade directly into the center of its abyssal core.

There was no explosion, no concussive shockwave. The absolute, singular density of the lightning violently imploded, creating a microscopic singularity inside the demon’s chest.

The 4th Grade entity let out a soundless, distorted scream. Its physical form began to violently twist and spiral inward, sucked into the black hole I had just ignited inside its own miasma.

In a single, blinding flash of negative light, the demon was simply erased.

There was no trace of it left. No bone shards.

Just a perfectly spherical, glassed crater in the stone floor, and a few lingering, silent sparks of black electricity fading into the cold air.

Is it dead? I thought, my chest heaving as I stared at the empty space.

Thud!

Edric dropped onto one knee a few feet away, his sword clattering to the floor as he finally exhaled, his aura entirely sputtering out.

I turned away from the crater. The timer in my peripheral vision was violently flashing.

[00:59]

I didn’t have time to rest. I ran over to the rubble where Scarlet and Tessa were huddled.

A quick pulse of my Debug Vision confirmed they were physically unhurt, though paralyzed by shock.

Then I found Yenna and sprinted towards her.

She was still unconscious on the frost.

Her ribs were bruised, and she had a concussion from the impact, but there was no internal bleeding, I edited the major injuries.

The rest of simple bruises.

She would heal naturally.

Then, I turned to the wall.

My expression completely hardened as I walked over to Mira’s unconscious, mutilated body.