Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 205: The Wrathers Scales and Tail!
John kept the full extent of this bounty hidden from his friends, alongside another haul of loot he had stumbled upon while dissecting the remains of the battlefield. It was a discovery born of pure accident that had turned into a windfall of Unique-grade materials.
[Ding! You have acquired Wrathers Scale (Level 40)!]
[Wrathers Scale: Unique Grade!]
[Description: A very sturdy item with high endurance and defence capabilities. Can be used in coding specialised armour that can withstand high-impact attacks!]
[Ding! You have acquired Wrathers Scale (Level 50)!]
[Wrathers Scale: Unique Grade!]
[Description: An apex defensive material with superior energy-dispersal properties. Can be used in coding high-level armour that can take a blow from a giant without flinching!]
These scales had covered the shoulders and knees of the Elite Wrathers and the entirety of the behemoth, Sorolith. Initially, John had walked past the scales, thinking they were worthless like the Wrathers muscles.
It wasn’t until he had literally dug his hands into Sorolith’s massive chest to extract the core that he touched the scales and received a notification about them.
He had spent hours stripping the corpses of these scales, even crawling through the blood-slicked mud to retrieve scales that had been ripped off during the battle. When he finally tallied the count, he was astonished.
The Level 40 scales numbered over forty per Elite Wrathers, giving him a staggering total of over fifty thousand units. As for the Level 50 scales from Sorolith herself, he had secured slightly over five thousand. It was enough to code many armours, not only for himself and his friends, but for a small army of thousands if needed.
But the true prize was the tail.
[Ding! You have acquired Wrather’s Triple Blade (Level 50)!]
[Wrather’s Triple Blade: Special Grade!]
[Description: A deadly, multi-segmented weapon component. Can be coded and integrated into an existing weapon to massively upgrade its stats, level, lethality and special effects!
John recalled his fighting experience against the tail with a shudder and excitement. The tail was at least twenty metres in length, tipped with three serrated, oscillating spear-like blades that could cut through reinforced steel like paper. He still recalled how this tail cut through the walls and destroyed a few of them.
When he acquired the tail, he was overly excited, yet his excitement soon died down. He had tried to code the tail with his sword, but the process failed. His Weapon Coding Proficiency was simply too low to handle the process, per the notification that appeared back then.
"I’ll keep grinding my proficiency until it’s high enough to add that tail to my blade," he muttered, his hand instinctively reaching for his hilt. "When I do, I’m sure I’ll be shocked by the result."
He continued his steady march toward the southern borders of his territory. He already asked Lanmar many times about their journey through the fog towards here. The fog in the transition zones was similar to the old white fog of his territory. So, John shifted his focus to the map, where he was met with an unexpected turn of events.
"They are really busy today," he noted, his eyes narrowing to thin slits as he watched what the Hiveminds were doing. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
On the map, the Hivemind territory was a hive of activity, literally. Different breeds of the collective were moving restlessly within and around their base. Over the past few days, the Hivemind had been passive, rarely venturing beyond their walls except to do one specific thing, the same thing that revealed to John everything about their true nature.
But today was different. Their movement was so dense and looked urgent. It looked as though they were either expecting a massive, coordinated attack from an outside force or they were preparing to launch one themselves.
Seeing the Hivemind’s sudden shift in behaviour made John hesitate. From his extensive talks with the Bulltors, he knew the rules of the Blue Sacred Challenge were absolute: he had to present the head of a ferocious enemy to earn the right to face the twelve Bloodline leaders. In this pocket trial, there was only one race that truly fit the criteria of a deadly enemy in the eyes of the Bulltors, the Hiveminds.
John’s original plan had been to slip into their territory, do a real-time recon, gather more intel about their territory, and wait for the usual squad to leave the safety of their base. Once they were isolated, he would hunt them down, take his trophy, and head towards the Bulltors. But the target was acting out of the norm, and that deviation signalled either a grand opportunity or a lethal trap.
He kept walking towards their direction for a few hours, lowering his march speed to collect enough intel before deciding what to do. As he kept checking and following what they were doing on the map, he spotted something, a detail so unexpected it made his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. In an instant, his hesitation evaporated, replaced by a firm resolve.
"Hahaha, I can’t believe my luck is this great! Hahaha!"
He had every right to feel such a surge of joy. The revelation he had just stumbled upon changed everything. It allowed him to scrap his cautious scouting mission in favour of a far more daring, far more devastating play.
The first thing that caught his eye was the massive redistribution of the Hivemind’s members. As he watched their movement, he noticed they were shifting the bulk of their strength toward the distant eastern regions of their territory. On paper, there was absolutely nothing there, yet the Hiveminds were fortifying the area as if they were expecting a threat to materialise from the void.
While John puzzled over the nature of this hidden enemy, a secondary movement caught his attention. A group of one hundred Hivemind Beasts, creatures that resembled massive, armoured bears but with unsettling, multi-jointed limbs, moved toward the northwestern perimeter. In a spot close to the fogline, they deposited three distinct items and erected high, reinforced walls around them.
