Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 173: Ding! You Can Hack the Core After the Tenth Wave!

In less than ten minutes, the massacre was complete. He had wiped out every monster on the far bank, leaving only a few stragglers that had managed to bypass him and run toward the other side.

He couldn’t tell if they were fleeing in terror or simply following an instinct to attack the loudest source of noise, but they were no longer his concern.

"You caused enough damage already," John muttered as he finally reached the inner zone of the den. The first thing he did was pull up his map to assess the situation. When he saw tens of thousands of red dots still swarming the base, he knew his friends were holding, but the pressure was constant. It was finally time for him to act against this massive yellow core.

The core in front of him was so large it rivalled the size of a house. Standing in front of it made him feel dwarfed. It glistened with blue arcs of lightning that danced across its surface like caged serpents.

Activating his special vision, John peered into the code structure of the object. He saw the intricate yellow coding structure, but nestled within were dense, pulsating blue code clusters scattered throughout the core.

He counted exactly ten of these special clusters, a number that corresponded perfectly with the ten waves that had already emerged from this site.

John’s first instinct was the most natural one: touch the core and store it away in his inventory to study later. Yet, when his hand reached out, he was surprised to feel something holding his hand back, like an invisible shield that stopped his hand from touching the core. And then he received a notification that flashed across his vision.

[Ding! You cannot obtain the Fog Golden Core until after the fiftieth wave!]

[Ding! You cannot destroy the Fog Golden Core until after the thirtieth wave!]

"What the fck?!!" John’s voice cracked in the silence of the den. His mind immediately went to the cruel nature of this den, the doubling law of every new wave.

If the tenth wave was a hundred and fifty thousand, how many would be in the thirtieth? The fiftieth? The numbers were astronomical. "Will you force me to fight against tens of millions of monsters now?!! That’s bullshit!!!"

He felt a surge of fury at the system’s blatant attempt to lock him into an impossible war of attrition. Yet, before his shock could materialise into an endless rage, a second set of notifications popped up, flipping the entire hopeless situation over.

[Ding! You can hack the core after the tenth wave!]

[Ding! Hacking the core will change it into something else!]

"Hacking it?!" John raised an eyebrow, his mind immediately jumping to a certain conclusion. This was a familiar yet bizarre method to handle a core. He didn’t hesitate. He cut the tip of his finger with the edge of his sword, letting a drop of his blood touch the yellow surface. "We are at the tenth wave already; let’s see if it’ll work!"

[Ding! You cannot hack the core until after the end of the tenth wave!]

The system notification was clear. The tenth wave wasn’t considered over until every last monster spawned by it was dead. John looked back across the river toward his base, where the show of his friends’ brutal fighting was still on.

"Ok, let’s get it over with quickly," John said, shrugging his shoulders. "If you expect me to risk merging both wave monsters by waiting for my friends to finish killing the eleventh wave, then you are really underestimating me!"

John knew that by waiting for the tenth wave to end, the eleventh would instantly kick in! Even if he could hack the core by then, there was the problem of hundreds of thousands of yellow monsters to settle. Or else the newly developed Wrathers wave would mark his base as their target.

John moved toward one side of the den, his boots clanking loudly on the metallic ground. He began a frantic session of construction. Reaching into his inventory, he started pulling out the massive stockpile of cannons he had been hoarding.

He placed two hundred towers in tight, disciplined layers, creating a battery of fire that looked like a wall of death. Then, he moved to the front, placing three layers of heavy walls to protect the expensive machinery.

Yet, he didn’t confine himself behind those walls like a turtle. Instead, he left a strategic gap in the outermost layer. In that opening, he placed ten specialised cannons, including the three he had previously fully enhanced with the activated and enhanced Wrather cores. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Sorry, guys, I wanted to give you twelve cores each, but let’s postpone this for later," he whispered to the thin air as he fed one more cannon its full forty-core cap. Then, he stepped out ahead of his fortifications, raising his sword and waiting.

Seeing him perform this massive fortification attracted the immediate attention of both his friends and the Bulltors on the other bank.

"Damn! What is he up to now, this lunatic human?!" Lanmar hissed, his voice trembling. Everyone was puzzled by John’s seemingly erratic actions, but his friends grasped his intent.

"We’ll finish here, then move to help him!" Cissel shouted to the others, her daggers flashing and killing. "For some reason, he needs to kill the next wave right there at the source before destroying the den!"

That was exactly what everyone concluded, and it was partially the truth. John’s safest course of action would usually be to let the next wave move toward the base’s established defences.

However, he knew that if he left the eleventh wave, which would be over three hundred thousand monsters, for his friends and base to handle, they’d be trapped in a meat grinder for hours. Meanwhile, the second wave of Fog Wrathers would show up, creating a pincer movement that could overwhelm them.

He had to move decisively to shift the battlefield. Even if he couldn’t kill all the monsters at the den, the loud, concentrated noise of towers and cannons would act as a massive siren, attracting the Wrathers away from his friends and base, leading them towards his position.