Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 191: The Enhanced HP Regeneration Potions!
"Wait..." John looked at his health bar, which he expected to lose one point per second, as the system warning said. "The damage I’m receiving... It’s getting lower."
Once he passed into this thin area of purple fog, he didn’t lose one HP per second. Instead, he started to lose one per ten seconds. Seeing this, and linking it to the cores he threw earlier, there was a single conclusion in front of him.
The cores weren’t just luring the Wrathers out of the fog. The cores were clearing the purple fog; they were actively neutralising the damage he should have received from it.
"Let’s see if I can further lower this fog’s effect..." He didn’t hesitate to take a massive handful of cores, leaving them in a pile on the ground to saturate the area with their energy. He then retreated a large distance, even getting entirely outside the purple fog area, and waited to see if a new change would happen.
He waited for an entire minute before going back into the fog to check the results. "The cores thinned the purple fog again, but it seems they hit a limit," he observed, watching his profile and HP value. The damage tick had slowed significantly, now becoming one point per thirty seconds.
When he took that pile out, he left more than a hundred cores in that spot, aiming to theoretically push the damage to be over one hundred seconds per single point lost. Yet, there was a visible limit that he didn’t expect.
The fog remained a hazy violet, and the damage never fully reached zero. It was as if the system had placed a hard floor on the difficulty, ensuring there was no direct shortcut through this quest for him.
"Anyway, losing one point per half a minute is way better than losing it per every passing second," he consoled himself, looking at the half-full part of the glass. He felt much more confident about the time he had available now. He began walking deeper into the thinned purple fog while moving his eyes around, looking for any lurking enemies.
As the fog thinned, his visibility improved, allowing him to see all the way to the edge of the currently thinned zone. Yet, as he looked around, he didn’t spot a single Wrathers at all! The area was eerily quiet, the usual predatory growls muffled by the thick atmosphere.
After repeating the process for the fifth time, throwing thirty cores into the distant, thicker purple fog to thin it out, then walking to the end of that newly cleared path and redoing the process, he finally spotted something new.
Far in the distance, through the purple haze, he saw several red-coded silhouettes. Seeing them made him realise the benefit of his earlier luring tactics.
"It seems I killed lots of the guarding Wrathers using the cores," he muttered, coming to a halt. He realised that his fishing method had cleared the outer layers of the den more effectively than he had hoped. He took out a single core and hurled it towards the group of silhouettes.
As the core travelled through the distance and hit the ground near them, the red-coded bodies snapped into focus, turning and running directly towards his position.
Without thinking twice, John turned around and ran directly towards the outside of the purple zone. He didn’t risk fighting anything inside this fog for several different reasons.
First, he didn’t know if his abilities would trigger an adverse reaction with the hostile fog. Second, he was stingy with his Mental Points; he didn’t want to exhaust them on any minor target when the real prize, Sorolith, was still hidden.
Finally, the fog’s density still made tactical awareness difficult, and he had no idea how many Wrathers were left hidden in the deeper pockets. He had to be careful and not risk a direct clash until finding the real target.
The group he had attracted was formed of exactly one hundred Wrathers. Yet, as they drew closer, John noticed these Wrathers were a bit different. They weren’t the standard skinless monsters he was used to.
Their raw, muscular bodies were covered with a thin, scale-like layer at the shoulders and their knees, a primitive form of natural armour. At the same time, they moved with a much higher speed and looked far stronger than the rest of the horde. These were the elite guards, the evolved version of the Wrathers meant to safeguard the final boss of this den.
Yet, even with their improvements, they didn’t pose any real threat to John. His Speed stat was already way higher than theirs, and he moved like a blur compared to their lumbering charges.
Even if they managed to sustain themselves longer under the relentless barrage of attacks from his towers, and even if they managed to actually damage a few of his stone walls for the first time since he started using walls in his defence, they were still outmatched. Between his own sword slashes and the overlapping fire from the outposts, the hundred elites were eventually dismantled.
"I’ll need to check their cores later," John said, looking at the purple fog with a serious look on his face. The fact that the walls took damage was a warning. If the minions could chip away at his fortifications, the boss would likely tear through them like paper. "But it seems the real deal is nearby. I’ll have to adjust my setup a little bit..."
Instead of heading immediately back inside the purple fog, John started to take back all the smaller outposts he had laid around the perimeter. He was consolidating his resources.
He rearranged them into a single, grander outpost, a fortress filled with hundreds of defensive towers and surrounded by ten thick layers of reinforced walls. This new super-outpost was positioned directly facing the area of the thinned purple fog from which he had drawn the special Wrathers. It was his ultimate fallback point.
Then, he checked his HP stat before taking a special item out of his inventory, intending to use it for the first time.
[HP: 385.4/418.4]
He hadn’t lost much HP during his venture into the purple fog, but he had no intention of entering the heart of the den without a full bar. Back during the Bug Dungeon event, he had acquired several HP Regeneration Potions, the same items he had distributed to his friends when they first arrived in this pocket trial. Yet, he had never actually considered using them for himself until now. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖
[Ding! You consumed Enhanced HP Regeneration Potion!]
[+20 HP]
[Ding! You consumed Enhanced HP Regeneration Potion!]
[+20 HP]
