Athanasia: My Hacker System

Everything happened exactly as Ben and Elena predicted.

Just half an hour later, a bigger group of enemies came from a distance. The two had already rested enough to fight, but the number of enemies this time was triple that of the first wave.

Seeing this made Elena know this fight was going to be harder.

"How about we wake him up?"

Ben looked at the nearby John, who was snorting in deep sleep.

"No, leave him to rest," Elena turned dead serious, "something tells me much bigger waves will come next."

She paused before looking at Ben.

"Are you sure we'll do it this way?"

"I can handle it," Ben had no confidence in his voice at all, yet he still acted like a hero, "I can tolerate some damage and get hurt without crying."

Elena didn't say anything, still kept staring at him for a few seconds. She knew the new tactic they had agreed upon was going to be risky, far more dangerous than what they tried the first time.

Yet she didn't say anything to change his mind. She knew this was their only shot to handle such a large number in a short time. As for Ben, she stressed that if things went wrong, and he received far too much damage than he could handle, he must retreat fast.

The two ran towards the incoming enemies with determination. When they came closer, the enemies suddenly divided themselves into two parts, one headed directly to meet them, and the other took their distance and remained far behind.

Seeing this made Elena inwardly curse. It was so hard to fight an enemy like that. She already expected such development, yet when it happened, it still felt bad.

Mark's plan was simple: if they depended on dividing up and alternating their roles, then part of the enemies would be stationed and waiting outside, for her to come out and then attack and kill her.

She already knew that, and yet she didn't feel any pressure.

"Let's do it!"

She coldly said to Ben, and the latter understood the entire situation like hers and heavily nodded. The next instant, the two attacked like before, Ben's tornado expanded and surrounded the vanguard enemies, while Elena was entrapped inside with them to attack.

Yet before the enemies would attack both of them, she suddenly took two cores out of her storage device.

"Let me show you how we survived the hell of the pocket world… Let there be fire!"

She instantly touched the two purple cores together and threw them at the incoming enemies. The moment the two cores landed, a deadly pillar of purple fire erupted and went to the sky.

It enveloped and expanded, yet Elena instantly turned and ran outside. This was the plan the two agreed upon, built entirely over a little detail that Elena noticed in the previous fight.

When she went outside, she noticed how big and tall Ben's tornado was. In a way, it looked quite scary; in another, it looked like the perfect cover-up for using the purple grenades.

Just linking the two together was enough to make up for the main disadvantage that tied down their strongest weapons. Elena wanted to start by testing the deadliest and hardest weapon to cover up, the purple grenades.

These grenades were deadly, but they had a big con; the pillar of purple fire rose tens of metres high off the ground. Yet with Ben's tornado, this weakness was finally covered.

The moment Elena went outside, she instantly raised her head and couldn't help but laugh.

"It's working," she shouted, "just keep yourself away from it as much as possible."

Solving a problem created another. Or actually, it created two different problems.

The first was in the risk for Ben to get involved in the purple pillar's attack. Luckily, he could expand and shrink the tornado at will, so he ended up being fine.

Yet the second problem was something quite tricky to solve.

As an experienced user of the purple grenades, Elena knew each pillar would last for ten whole minutes. That meant even if the enemies inside were incinerated and killed, Ben couldn't undo his ability or relocate it.

In other words, Ben would be fixated in his spot, removed from the equation. And seeing how Mark divided his enemies into two groups like that, she knew she had to keep them busy on her own for the entire time.

The first thought she had was to keep going in and out of Ben's tornado. Like this, she wouldn't get surrounded or overwhelmed by the enemies. Yet there was a catch.

Only she could pass through the tornado, as Ben could open a safe passage for her. As for the enemies, even if he opened paths for them, they wouldn't willingly and foolishly walk into a trap on their own volition.

So they would stay outside, and that would create different types of problems.

They could easily surround the tornado with their numbers and ambush her whenever she went outside. With their number around fifty, they were capable of doing this.

Or worse…

They could just leave a group behind to pin her down, send another to kill the sleepy John and Cissel far at a distance.

The last scenario totally scared Elena, forced her to keep fighting against the enemies and not even withdraw for once back to the safety of the tornado.

"I now deeply regret starting with the purple grenades," she painfully muttered, while she retreated with a deep wound on her left shoulder. It was aiming at her heart, but luckily, she moved fast enough to evade the deadly hit.

During the past five minutes, she kept fighting brutally and desperately against well-organised enemies. They knew how she fought, they knew her weak and blind spots, and they best utilised all this to keep pushing her back and wounding her.

At the end of the sixth minute, Elena knew she couldn't keep doing it. She had to retreat inside the tornado, and there she finally fell to the ground, losing any strength to fight.

"Hey, hey, don't stop now," Ben's urgent voice came to deliver the scariest scenario she feared, "they are going to kill John and Cissel. Either you go, or I relocate my ability and kill them now."

And she couldn't decide, as both options were quite deadly for her, for both of them, for the entire team.