Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 73: MP Pulse Fragment

A realisation hit him: he couldn’t keep relying on these small islands of safety. "I need to adapt to this blackness. If I want to find those machines, I have to be able to find and fight those monsters inside the fog itself."

It was a daunting task—one that stretched his current abilities to their limit. To play it a little safe, he developed a hit-and-run strategy. He would lunge into the darkness, strike a monster, and retreat to the area of light to regain his bearings before jumping at the next shadow.

"There were ten of these things crawling around me the whole time..." he noted, his voice low. He realised his mistake; because he had walked into the fog right after his friends had cleared a massive wave, he had assumed the immediate area was safe. Reality had kicked in hard. It seemed the entire black fog was teeming with Fog Seekers.

He collected the ten cores from the fallen creatures, stored them in his inventory, and performed a final sweep of the area. Then, he moved deeper.

As he walked, he strained his eyes, looking for even the slightest variation in the black code structure. Slowly, his vision began to adapt to the structure of the fog.

After a few minutes of intense focus, he began to perceive five distinct shadows moving at varying distances through the fog. They weren’t fully visible, but they were there—slowly moving distortions in the static of the fog black codes.

Since he was still mostly blind, he decided to adopt Cissel’s erratic, high-speed fighting style. He dashed in a straight line toward a target, then, a mere two meters before impact, he sharply changed his trajectory. He expected to have to guess the timing of his strikes, but then his Frame Recognition flared with a new stream.

"This..." John’s eyes widened.

As the monster lunged to counter his movement, the system highlighted its intended attack path and highlighted the location of its attack on his body. In the middle of the pitch-black, moonless night of the fog, the trajectory appeared as a faint, glowing line of starlight, ending with a shining star on his body.

"It’s easier this way," he heaved a deep sigh of relief. With his ability doing the heavy lifting, John’s confidence surged. He leaned fully into the new style, baiting the monsters into attacking him so he could follow the starlight lines and end them before they could even touch him.

For the next twenty minutes, he became a death god within the fog. He killed more than fifty monsters, his inventory growing with their cores. He used a handful of them to clear three strategic checkpoints along his path, creating a breadcrumb trail of light leading back to the camp.

Then, the sound changed. The clanging was no longer a distant echo; it was growing in intensity, a device was close by.

He didn’t stop to celebrate. Even when the battles grew chaotic—sometimes linking one group of monsters to another he had accidentally stumbled upon—he kept his momentum toward the noise. After another half an hour of relentless trekking and combat, he finally skidded to a halt.

Standing before him was the first sound-emitting device. It was an alien-looking item, pulsing with a sickly light that matched the frequency of its roar.

"I’ll clear enough area here first," John decided. Having killed over a hundred and twenty monsters since leaving his friends, he had more cores now than when he left on this hunt. He pulled out twenty cores and activated them in a rapid sequence, clearing a spacious arena.

The increased number of cores resting in his inventory made John let out a smirk. If Cissel could see the cores he had harvested in such a short time, she wouldn’t just be jealous; she would likely lose her mind entirely.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he surveyed the territory he had just reclaimed. The activated cores had carved out a corridor of light, spanning nearly two hundred meters in length and twenty meters in width.

It was providing more than enough room for him to manoeuvre against any Fog Seeker while he focused on the device.

"Time to see what you really are," he muttered.

He moved toward the device, though he kept his peripheral vision locked on the edges of the fog. He was no amateur; he knew that the moment he grew complacent was the moment a Fog Seeker would find its way to his throat.

The device was perfectly circular, polished to a pure white sheen. In the light, it looked like a miniature version of a UFO, sleek and devoid of any visible seams. On its upper surface, two small microphones were mounted, pulsing rhythmically as they broadcast the high-pitched signal that served as a siren for the monsters.

To John’s Frame Recognition, the appearance was merely a shell. In his vision, the object was a dense cluster of green code. His first instinct was to simply cleave it in two with his empowered long sword, but curiosity stayed his hand.

’If there’s a switch to turn this off and on at will,’ he reasoned, ’this isn’t just a nuisance. It’s a farming tool.’

The potential to summon Fog Seekers and their precious cores whenever the group needed was too valuable to destroy this device blindly. However, the moment his hand made contact with the cold, white surface of the device, a notification popped up.

[Ding! You have come into contact with an item rich in Mental Power!]

[Ding! Hacking this item will yield 1x MP Pulse Fragment!]

"What?!"

John froze, his hand still resting on the smooth hull. Before he could process the notification, the low roar erupted from the darkness behind him. He didn’t even have to think; his body moved on reflex.

He spun, his sword tracing a lethal arc, then more slashes followed, ending up silencing seven approaching Fog Seekers in a matter of seconds. He didn’t even stop to marvel at his own strength. He harvested their cores and returned to the white UFO.

He didn’t hesitate this time. He cut the tip of his finger using his sword, letting a few drops of his blood smear across the white surface of the device.

[Ding! System Handshake Established!]

[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Sound Emitter 5746551185475!]

[Ding! Optional: Pay 1 Mental Point to initiate Hack and transform this item!] 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

[Ding! Hacking will convert this item into a purer form: MP Pulse Fragment!]

[Ding! Do you wish to proceed? Y/N]

For John, there was no choice. This was what he had been looking for. "Sure, do it!"

The green-coded structure in his vision began to warp and vibrate violently. The UFO-shaped shell didn’t break; it folded in on itself, the body collapsing and reshaping until the circular device vanished, replaced by a small, tubular structure that pulsed with a soft, neon white glow.

[Ding! Hacking successful!]

[Ding! 1 Mental Point has been deducted.]

[Ding! You have acquired 1x MP Pulse Fragment!]

[MP Pulse Fragment: Low Grade]

[Description: A foundational component. Can be used to code the MP Pulse item.]

"I can code the MP Pulse using this?" John’s pulse quickened. "Now that is interesting."

He didn’t know what even an MP Pulse would do, but it must be something nice. He called upon his Shell ability, watching as the green code vanished from the world and reappeared within the window of his coding ability.

But before he could read the first line of the code, more grey silhouettes began to drift toward the edges of his light corridor.

"Tsk, wait your turn," he muttered, his tone annoyed but his eyes burning with greed. He dashed toward the newcomers, his sword humming as he dismantled the monster group. Twelve more kills. Twelve more cores. Once the area was silent did he return to his mental workspace to analyse the fragment’s parameters.

[

&\text{PARAM MP} = 10; \\

&\text{PARAM Power\_Supply} = 1; \\

&\text{PARAM Power\_Recharge} = \text{Sun\_Energy}; \\

&\text{PARAM Range} = 0.5; \\

&\text{PARAM Durability} = 0.1; \\

&\text{PARAM Weight} = 1;

]

The code was more robust than the simple Iron Code he had coded before. He carefully stored the fragment in his inventory, the gears of his mind already turning. He knew what to do to code this MP Pulse.

"Time to hunt the rest," he said, looking toward the next direction of sound echoing through the fog. "The system didn’t give me a mission of a hundred devices for nothing. I’m going to need every single one of these fragments to code the MP Pulse in my first attempt."