Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 236: Struggling Against Soroliths
"John, help!"
Luke’s voice erupted in a shout of pure distress, jolting John out of his momentary shock. Luke was being swarmed by a battalion that moved with a terrifying speed. "The monsters... They aren’t like what you described! There are lots of them, scaled ones, and that boss monster is leading them... Help!"
"Gather up! Back to back!" John’s fierce command cut through the chaos, amplified by his inward confusion and rage. "Do not let them isolate you! We fight them as a single group; let’s take them down one by one."
He inwardly felt lucky he had scattered many bigger outposts all around the perimeter of the purple fog before the elite waves fully manifested. If he hadn’t, trying to establish a foothold while being hunted by the groups of Elite Wrathers and Soroliths would have been a futile, suicidal endeavour.
Instead of wasting time on how or why the den had spiked the difficulty so drastically, John dived instantly into the heart of the battle. Experience had taught him that the pocket trial nature rarely gave peace to those who stood still.
Luckily, he had previously described his solo fight against Sorolith in painstaking detail to his friends. They weren’t walking into this blind; they knew the tell-tale rattle of the behemoth’s light calling ability using roars, and they knew they had to run as fast as they could the second the monster roared in their direction.
Or else, there would be no time to evade when the lightning struck. They were prepared for the battle, even if the sheer scale of the encounter was overwhelming.
John had struggled immensely against a single Sorolith before, but he knew this battle was going to be different. He knew all the cards of the behemoth.
He waited with patience until Soroliths took the bait, targeting the outposts with their roars and landing subsequent lightning strikes. The moment the monsters committed to the roaring super cannons and towers, John moved. Yet, even with his foreknowledge, it was never easy!
"Scatter," he shouted, "the behemoths took the bait and are now focusing on the defences. Attack from behind, drive their attention away from the cannons and towers, and keep them confined in the range of our defences..."
He laid down a series of orders before he went directly towards the nearest monster battalion and fought the Sorolith there. The Elite Wrathers were already focused on the outposts, trying to damage the walls. Yet they failed to damage them before the cannons and towers tore them apart.
They weren’t like Sorolith; they had scales only covering small parts of their bodies. So they didn’t last long, and all that remained was the noisy behemoths calling lightning like they were throwing rocks from the ground.
"Dammit! My super cannons are actually too fierce!" John hissed as he had to retreat when he wanted to advance. Just as he tried to draw near to land a sword slash on a Sorolith’s underbelly, a fierce volley of azure energy tore through the air, lasting for an entire uninterrupted minute!
He recognised the pattern instantly; it was the combined effect of Lightning Push triggering an extra volley and the Lightning Charge doubling the output. The cannons were doing exactly what he had designed them to do, but their relentless, high-output fire created a no-man’s-land around the monster, almost impossible for anyone to enter.
’Forget it! Logic Bomb... Lightning Dance!’
Since he couldn’t get within sword range without being vaporised by his own defenses, he launched his two AOE attacks in rapid succession. The battle shifted from being doable to extremely challenging, but the super cannons played a much larger role than he had anticipated.
In his previous clash against Sorolith, John had been the main damage dealer, a fight that had dragged on for gruelling hours. This time, the engagement didn’t last more than two.
By acting as the aggro lead, stealing the focus of the Sorolith and luring it into the pre-set kill zones, John allowed the high-output artillery to do the heavy lifting.
The behemoth’s armour of scales, which usually resisted normal sword slashes and most of his old cannons’ fire, couldn’t withstand the constant, pressurised bombardment of the super cannons. The behemoth collapsed faster than John had ever expected.
"They are struggling," John muttered, turning his attention away from the dead Sorolith to assess his friends’ situation.
Cissel and Elena were performing remarkably well. Thanks to their naturally high Speed stats and specialised abilities focused on rapid-fire and evasion, they were already closing in on their respective targets, kiting them quite well.
They moved like blurs against the Sorolith, whittling down the behemoths with death by a thousand cuts. However, Luke and Ricky were in a different situation altogether.
Their fighting style focused on power and defence, and without the same agility boost the girls possessed, they were being pinned down by the Soroliths’ lightning strikes, deadly three needled tails, and their scales proved annoying to their attacks.
"Hold on, I’m coming to help!" John shouted toward Ricky. He then pivoted toward the two girls. "Once you’ve finished your targets, move in and help Luke immediately!"
It took another thirty minutes of frantic, high-stakes combat to bring down a total of four Soroliths. The battlefield was a graveyard of scorched earth and shattered monster flesh. Yet, the victory felt hollow.
"There are still seven Soroliths active around," Ricky said, leaning on his shield and struggling to catch his breath. He used to fight with two swords, but when he found himself facing death on many occasions, he decided to play it safe and use the shield.
The shield that was once bright and had a nice lustre to it was blackened by the lightning strikes it defended. "Those damn monsters are really something else! How in the hell did you manage to kill your first one so fast and so easily?! How did you even kill that bastard before on your own?!!"
John didn’t waste time answering the question. He could see the fatigue setting in, and he knew they had to adopt a more efficient approach before the remaining seven Soroliths converged on them. It was far too risky to let Ricky and Luke continue fighting these behemoths in solo. He had to pivot his strategy.
"Change of plans! Form two specialised strike teams," John commanded. "Ricky, you’ll fight alongside Cissel. Elena, you’re paired with Luke."
He paused when he spotted the immediate, glaring looks exchanged between Ricky and Cissel. Their body language was stiff, radiating a sudden, sharp tension, but John didn’t have the luxury of playing therapist like he used to.
"The girls will lead the charge," John continued firmly. "You have the speed to take the aggro and dodge the lightning. Ricky, Luke, you stay to the side. Your job is to wait for the opening and hit them with your heaviest strikes while they’re distracted by the girls. Do not engage head-on."
"Fine," Cissel spit out. She looked like she wanted to retort, to object to being paired with Ricky, but when she glanced over at his singed shield and realised the dire situation he was in, she accepted her fate with a slow nod. She turned to Ricky, her eyes narrow and fierce. "Follow my lead and never, I mean never, try to play the hero. Got it?"
She glared at him with a ferocity that made John wonder if the two had gotten into another fight lately.
What John didn’t know was that while he had been away, Ricky had naturally taken the lead of the group. However, when they had started going in the wrong direction in the fog, Cissel had been adamant about changing their direction, sensing they were lost.
Ricky, trusting Lanmar’s knowledge of the terrain, had insisted on pushing forward. That decision had led them into a near-fatal ambush. While the mistake had ultimately allowed them to reunite with John, Cissel was still fuming.
She wasn’t thinking of killing him, not as she might have felt in the early days of the trial, but she certainly wasn’t in the mood to fight together with him.
