Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 193: A Brutal Battle of Attrition!

"Lightning Dance... Logic Bomb... Sandbox... Object Lockdown... Lightning Dance... Code Destruction!"

As John circled Sorolith, he didn’t stop madly using his abilities in rapid succession.

Great numbers of damage kept rising above the big behemoth, flickering in red and purple digits that should have signified a quick end for any other creature. And yet, looking at the massive figure of the titan, looking as if he didn’t suffer any damage, it felt like he was still merely pricking it with needles!

John had held very different expectations in his mind. He had imagined a brutal clash of strength between himself and this monster. Instead, the reality had devolved into a gruelling battle of attrition, a high-stakes, high-speed nightmare.

All Sorolith kept doing was roaring and roaring, its voice acting as a ruler for the lightning. With every shriek, it launched tons of lightning that tracked John’s movements with terrifying accuracy. Whenever the timer on his Speed Lock ability ran out, he would instantly reactivate it.

All of this placed a monumental pressure on his Mental Points. He didn’t hesitate to break away from the titan periodically to refill his share from the Wrathers currently throwing themselves against his outpost’s defences.

He realised now, with a jolt of clarity, how lucky he was to have laid down this grand fortification. Without the outpost, he would have been strangled by the surrounding horde while lightning rained on his head nonstop. The walls and towers provided the only breathing room he had in this chaotic storm.

However, at some point, he was faced with a predicament he never expected: the last of the special Wrathers died! As the final armoured minion fell under the concentrated fire of the towers, John’s stable source of Mental Points vanished.

He was now forced to scavenge; he had to apply his MP Absorption ability over five to six of these dead behemoths just to extract the same amount of Mental Points he could have taken from a single living one.

"I can’t complain that my outpost is quite scary," he muttered, watching the towers finish off the stragglers. The challenge now lay in how he would scavenge what he needed while evading the incoming lightning from Sorolith. "If I can just lure it towards here, perhaps these towers can help shoulder some of the attacks and aid in killing it..."

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a flash of inspiration struck. He decided to put a new theory to the test. He instantly turned on his heel and ran in the opposite direction from the boss.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, as he crossed a certain distance threshold, it felt like the colossal behemoth got irritated by the perceived escape of its prey. The titan, which had remained largely stationary, finally shifted its twenty legs and started to move.

"At last!" Seeing the monster finally give chase made John heave a deep sigh of relief. Even if he was going to lose many of those towers to the concentrated lightning strikes, he didn’t mind. He still had more than enough resources for his upcoming plans. He had simply grown tired of this massive punching bag that refused to budge or die.

Once the monster lumbered into range, a fierce barrage of attacks erupted from the towers. Heavy energy beams slammed into its scales, creating a mess of explosions. Seeing the giant occupied, John accelerated, looping back to join the fray at the centre. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

*Roar!*

"Keep roaring, you bastard. I’ll make sure to kill you once and for all... Object Lockdown... Logic Bomb... Code Destruction... Lightning Dance!"

Once the focus of the behemoth shifted toward the outpost, unleashing a flurry of lightning strikes that shattered metal, John instantly closed the gap. He didn’t just stay at the edge of the range this time. He closed in until he could actually touch the behemoth’s scaled body.

Yet as he drew closer, the tail suddenly sparked into action! It twisted and moved fast, as if it had a conscience of its own! It tried to prick the chest of John, yet the latter managed to evade it thanks to his Frame Recognition evasion path. Even with the presence of the annoying tail, John didn’t flinch and kept pushing forward.

During all the previous time, he had been using his abilities from a distance to stay safe. He had realised, however, that this resulted in almost halving the damage effects of each ability. To end this, he touched Sorolith’s scaled hide directly, landing a long, violent series of his abilities point-blank before retreating in a blur.

At the same time, he kept evading the relentless attacks of the tail, before finally retreating after planting enough bombs to bring his Mental Points close to zero.

*Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!*

Fierce explosions rang out, muffled by the monster’s own painful roars. Sorolith had finally started to suffer significantly more serious damage. Once the pain became too great, it stopped its focus on the outpost towers and turned its head to roar again over John.

John didn’t mind the shift in aggression. He hadn’t sought the intervention of the towers to shield him from the lightning; he wanted to place Sorolith under the constant, passive pressure of the towers’ fire while he maintained the aggro using his own violent abilities, but first, he headed to replenish his almost emptied Mental Points.

The fight lasted for more than one whole hour! During that time, John lost count of how many times he had attacked the colossal giant, how many times he had frantically absorbed Mental Points from the corpses of the fallen Wrathers, and how many times he had evaded a lightning bolt at the very last second.

Sorolith looked vastly different by the end of that hour than it had when it first emerged from the fog. Its twenty legs, once strong and chitinous, were now mostly severed or broken, dragging uselessly in the dirt.

Most of its thick scales had been blasted away, exposing deep, gruesome-looking wounds and gaps in its body. It lost its tail half an hour ago when John grew tired of it and decided to use his Code Destruction ability frequently on its base, severing it entirely in less than a couple of minutes!