Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 37: Coding His First Ever Weapon!

As John stepped into the second hall, the size of the hall was the same, the number of monsters was the same, but the pressure in the air had noticeably shifted.

[Goblin Bug Monster: Level 2]

[HP: 30 | Str: 15 | Defense: 15 | Speed: 8]

"Their base stats increased by fifty percent!" John muttered, his eyes narrowing as he performed a quick scan. "My Strength is still higher than their Defence, so I can still penetrate their code, but that HP increase might be a little problematic."

It took four, sometimes five strikes to kill a single goblin. The increased physical effort wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

"This dungeon... It’s getting stingy," he noted, glancing at the notifications he got after his first few kills.

Previously, he had received a bounty of stats. Now, the rewards were alternating. For every monster he killed, he either received a single stat point or a one-point increase to his Mental Point cap—never both. It was as if the dungeon was tapering his growth, forcing him to work harder for every increase of power.

"Is it related to my progress into the dungeon?" he wondered. There was no answer, so he pushed forward. By the time he had cleared fifty-two of the normal state Goblins, his profile had bloomed. He had gained twenty-six points to his MP cap, but his stats had only crawled upward: +6 to Strength and HP, and +7 to Intelligence and Defence.

Then, it was time for the second phase of fighting.

[Warning! Frenzy State Activated!]

This time, John didn’t panic. He didn’t even take a moment to rest. It was as if his body, pushed to the brink by the previous hour of combat, had entered a state of growth as his stats. The fatigue was there, but it felt distant, secondary to the flow of the battle. However, doubling these Level 2 stats turned the goblins into a nightmare. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Their Defense jumped to 30. His Strength was now barely scratching them. Coupled with their doubled HP of 60, John found himself in a gruelling war of attrition. He wasn’t just fighting; he was carving. It took nearly thirty hits to take down a single Frenzied Goblin.

"That... Was... Quite... Intense..."

An hour later, John stood in the centre of a silent hall. His HP was sitting at a terrifying 7 points. His vision was a bit hazy, and every muscle in his body felt like it had been shredded and reattached with rusted wire.

Even trying to stand erect was a struggle that required a Herculean effort of will. He didn’t push his luck. He collapsed where he stood, lying flat on the cold, stony ground, letting the HP Regeneration ability do its wonders.

As he lay there for almost thirty minutes, his mind raced. "I should expect a similar increase in their levels and stats in the next hall. If they hit Level 3, their Frenzy state will be beyond my current bare-handed limits."

He thought of Ricky. "I can’t believe that bastard comes here to clear this every time! He can’t have the same limitations I have with my system... He would never have cleared the whole thing... With this kind of progressing difficulty, with his slight increase in his special codes, it doesn’t make sense!"

The sheer scale of the growth John was experiencing was terrifying. He had more than doubled his initial stats in a few hours. If Ricky had been doing this a few times, he would be a god by now. But Ricky wasn’t that strong; he was barely on his level.

The realisation hit John: Ricky probably only cleared the first hall and left. He was farming the easy stage, too afraid or too weak to handle the exponential curve of the deeper stages.

"Aside from this, making that sword is now a must!" John grunted, forced himself into a sitting position. Unlike Ricky, he had a system that tied up his hands. "In the next hall, the monsters will surpass my base stats in their Frenzy State. If I don’t have a weapon to increase my damage output, I’ll be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and might even die."

[HP: 34/34]

[Mental Point (MP): 191/248]

After thirty minutes of rest, his HP was fully restored, and his Mental Points were healthy thanks to the effect of MP Absorption. He stood up, eyes gleaming with a mix of exhaustion and excitement. He activated Frame Recognition and began to scan the hall for the loot.

His luck held. He found eight pieces of Goblin Iron Code scattered across the hall. Combined with his previous four, he had twelve pieces of these code clusters.

"Let’s see if this is enough," he whispered. He opened the Shell window, and as he watched the Iron Codes vanish into the interface, only ten of the twelve clusters vanished into the command prompt, leaving two behind on the floor.

"A threshold success!"

He didn’t hesitate. He began mentally writing the sword’s five code lines, and he input the parameters. He calculated the Strength, the Durability, the Sharpness, and the Weight, balancing them against the mass of the ten Iron Codes. Then he hit ’Enter’.

[Ding! Congratulations! You succeeded in coding a sword!]

[Goblin Sword: Level 5]

[Stats: Strength: 12.5 | Durability: 8.8 | Sharpness: 6 | Weight: 5]

[Status: Cannot be upgraded further.]

[Description: A piece of trash, yet it can slash!]

[Ding! Coding Weapons Proficiency increased by 5 points!]

"I made it!" John’s voice echoed through the vast, empty hall, a shout of pure triumph.