Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 95: Source Code Trial Fog Essence Code

"Can he see through the fog?!!" Luke whispered from behind. Elena gave him a look of pure exasperation, as if the fact that John was their "eyes" had been obvious since the first day.

"They are," John said, nodding slowly as he took his time absorbing what was going on down below. "The machines are slaughtering them. But the machines... They have a deadly..."

Just before he could voice his deep thoughts about the effect of the fog on the machines, something new happened down below—something that changed the course of the battle entirely and tilted it decisively in the machines’ favour.

All of a sudden, the fog in a very wide area cleared without any warning! It was as if the machines had used tens of thousands of cores simultaneously, creating a massive space in the fog.

However, John could easily tell this wasn’t the case; the machines he saw were clustered in few groups, not spread out to fill the area cleared, not to mention the fog was cleared even in the area they came from. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"The fog... It got cleared!!" Luke, Elena, and Cissel were all shocked by the sudden change. The clearance wasn’t limited to the battlefield below; it expanded rapidly, pushing the grey walls back until they covered tens of kilometres in every direction.

"A river! There is a river down there!!" Luke suddenly shouted, pointing frantically toward the bottom of the cliff. There, at a distance of two kilometres from their spot, a thick, sparkling river branch extended across the basin, running from one wall of distant fog to another on the opposite side. The sight of real, flowing water was like a hallucination made real.

"What are these? Are they cattle?!!" Elena pointed in another direction. In the newly revealed meadows, some sort of big behemoths with blue skin and thick fur stood in calmness.

They were massive, placid creatures eating from densely packed grass that stretched deeper toward the distant fog wall, seemingly not disturbed by what happened to the fog or the intense battle nearby.

"There is no time for that," John alerted the others, his voice sharp. "The machines. They are coming closer from behind!"

Everyone turned back toward the plateau they had just fled. There, they spotted many groups, amounting to over fifty D-1000 units total, walking steadily toward the cliff edge. Without the fog to blind them, the machines were moving at a higher speed, easily regrouping.

"Hurry, let’s descend this cliff and find a safe spot," John said. He looked at the unconscious Ricky, and his brows furrowed in deep worry.

’That damn cluster of grey code... It grew in the past couple of hours!’

Using his specialised vision, John saw that the cluster he had spotted before—which had been smaller than three centimetres—was now the size of half a closed fist. It was like a cancer growing on steroids.

"I’ll carry him," Luke whispered, fearing their voices might now travel further in the clear air.

The team began the slow, treacherous descent down the sloping side of the cliff. John kept scanning the entire battlefield as they moved. Below them, the Fog Seekers numbered in the tens of thousands, but they had lost their primary advantage: the fog.

Without the fog to provide cover and disorientation, the D-1000s were picking them off with their laser shots before the monsters could even get near them.

The machines kept flooding the den location, and their numbers grew slightly over three thousand. A battle of this magnitude was hard to escape from, but luckily the area the team had picked to descend featured a deep groove—a natural ravine that acted as a barrier to shield their presence from the combatants in the valley, even protect them from any astray laser beam.

John kept a close eye on the battlefield while throwing a glance from time to time at Ricky. He also kept looking back at the cliff above, waiting to see if the D-1000s would attempt to descend the slope or use another method to get down to join the fight.

"Agh!"

Just when the tension reached its peak, a muffled, gurgling groan from Ricky stopped them in their tracks.

"Is he awake?" Elena approached and whispered, but it was clear he wasn’t conscious. He was groaning in pure agony. His eyes remained shut, but his face contorted into a mask of unbearable pain.

With this change, John immediately checked the dark grey cluster again. ’It grew again!’ It was now almost the size of a full closed fist. John realised Ricky didn’t have until the end of the battle; if he didn’t act now, the fog codes would kill him.

’If it’s a cluster of codes, then it can be affected by my code abilities, like Object Lockdown,’ John thought. He instantly threw the idea of using Code Destruction aside. That wasn’t a way to heal a friend; that was a way to leave a permanent disability or kill him outright by the gruesome hole left behind.

"Make way," John commanded. He decided to take the risk. If Object Lockdown didn’t work, he would be forced into more desperate measures. He could see, just as clearly as the others, that Ricky’s face was growing pale.

Under the watchful, nervous gazes of Luke, Elena, and Cissel, John calmly placed his hand over Ricky’s left flank, right above where the grey cluster of codes was.

’Object Lockdown!’

He activated the ability, freezing the growth of the grey parasite. Instantly, Ricky’s features eased, his breathing levelled out into a deep, normal sleep.

"Phew, I thought he was a goner," Luke wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. But unlike what the others expected, John didn’t pull his hand away. He remained frozen, his eyes narrowed as a series of system notifications exploded in his field of vision.

[Ding! You came in contact with Source Code Trial Fog Essence Code!]

[Ding! You can pay 10 Mental Points and extract the Source Code Trial Fog Essence!]

[Ding! Extracting the essence code will take one minute and cause immense pain to the host!]

[Ding! You’ll get SCT Fog Essence Code that you can use to code a potion out of it!]

[Ding! Please note: This extraction process is only available on top of your Object Lockdown Ability!]

[Ding! Do you accept? Y/N]