Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 192: Fighting Sorolith!

"This Sorolith is a noisy bastard!"

John’s voice was barely a whisper, swallowed by the oppressive presence of Sorolith. As he navigated through the newly thinned purple fog, he met nothing but an eerie emptiness.

Once he reached the far edge of the thinned zone, he took a deep breath and began hurling clusters of cores in multiple directions. His goal was two-fold: to erode the remaining density of the purple fog and to flush out whatever special Wrathers might be lurking in the depths of the den.

The reaction was instantaneous. As the cores struck something inside, the ground itself seemed to heave. John watched, astonished, as a literal sea of Wrathers began to emerge from the deeper fog. But moving among them was a silhouette so massive it made the surrounding monsters look like insects, a gigantic was coming.

Unlike any Wrathers he had fought so far, this particular group was weirdly, unnervingly slow. They moved at a snail’s pace, their limbs dragging as if they were wading through waist-deep tar.

It took them ten whole minutes just to traverse the distance from the thick fog into the kill zone John had prepared earlier outside the fog. He watched with narrowed eyes, his hand steady on his blade, sensing the wrongness of the entire situation.

The moment they breached the perimeter of the outpost’s range, the charade ended. As if they were a spring finally uncoiled, the entire group exploded into motion, regaining their terrifyingly high speed in a single heartbeat. There were roughly a thousand of these armoured, special Wrathers, acting as a vanguard for the colossal behemoth they escorted: Sorolith!

The first thing John did was initiate a tactical retreat. He needed to thin the herd before he could even think about the boss. He lured the special Wrathers toward his grand outpost, leading them on a high-speed chase that circled the fortified walls.

He let the defences roar to life, the hundreds of towers raining fire down on the pack to exhaust their innate lightning protection. Only when the protective shimmer around the elites began to flicker did John pivot.

He unleashed his Lightning Dance, weaving through their ranks with lightning shadows of sword slashes, followed by a series of Logic Bombs to stall their pursuit.

With the minions momentarily scrambled, he turned his full attention to his primary target.

During this entire skirmish, Sorolith had remained unbothered. The titan stood in place, watching the slaughter of its elite guard with a cold, detached silence, as if it were absolutely confident in the eventual victory of its minions. But now that John had broken free from the chase, he directed his gaze fully toward the behemoth.

Unlike Ogolith, which had been a bloated, massive evolution of the Fog Seekers, Sorolith was completely different from the Wrathers. It was a towering giant, reaching thirty metres in height, placing it head-to-head with the massive walls John had constructed. It didn’t have two legs, or even four. It stood upon twenty thick, chitinous limbs, a sight that made John’s mind immediately link it to the segmented worms of Earth.

Yet, any similarity with a common worm stopped at the legs. The monster was encased entirely in a thick, overlapping layer of scales that shimmered with a sickly purple hue. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

A long, powerful tail whipped behind it, ending in three sharp needles that dripped with a viscous fluid. It looked vicious and deadly, yet John noticed the telltale lack of eyes. It was blind, depending entirely on vibration and sound to detect its prey.

John opened the engagement with a volley of Logic Bombs. He needed to test the waters, to see if his standard explosive code could dent this titan or if he needed to overhaul his entire strategy on the fly. As the bombs detonated against the scale-covered torso, the world shook.

Sorolith didn’t just take the hit; it looked as if it were jolted awake by the audacity of the attack. It unhinged a massive, cavernous mouth, revealing rows upon rows of long, spear-like teeth that vibrated with a low hum. It reared back and roared, a sound so fierce and loud that John’s eardrums throbbed with white-hot pain.

"Shut up, you overgrown—"

John’s curse was cut short by a sudden, primal dread in his heart. It was a sensation he had felt before, a specific tension that occurred right before the Wrathers cores were activated. Lightning was coming, but this wasn’t the lightning to activate his cores; it was one designated to claim his life.

He didn’t stop to think. He threw his body to the side in a desperate, lunging jump. Before his boots even touched the ground, a thick, violent bolt of purple lightning fell from the black sky, obliterating the exact spot where he had been standing a microsecond prior.

Before John could even make head or tail of the mechanics of the attack, another roar tore through the air, and with it, another bolt of violet death descended.

"Screw you!" John spat, rolling back onto his feet. He was certain now: the lightning wasn’t randomly attacking. It was following Sorolith’s will. The monster was directing it using its noisy roars. "Let’s see how you’ll stop me then... Speed Lock... Encrypted Skin... Logic Bomb... MP Absorption!"

John didn’t hesitate to unleash his abilities in a rapid-fire sequence. The Speed Lock was triggered first, not to slow the giant, who was still standing still like a mountain, but to augment John’s own moving speed to its absolute limit.

He felt the urgent, desperate need to be faster than the lightning strikes. Next, his Encrypted Skin shimmered into existence, a necessary precaution to keep him from being vaporised by the sheer heat of the near-misses.

Even as he prepared for a brutal fight of evasion and defence, he refused to stop the pressure. He kept planting Logic Bombs at the giant’s many feet, seeking to compromise its stability.

When his Mental Points dipped dangerously low from the intensive casting, he darted into the fray of the special Wrathers, grabbing one and sucking it dry to replenish the exhausted chunk of his reserves.