They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

Chapter 224: Jin vs Demon! [1]

"Hmm?"

My mind floated in a sea of absolute, soundless static. The crushing agony in my shattered ribs, the freezing cold of the cavern floor... it was all completely gone.

"Huh?"

I slowly opened my eyes, blinking against a blinding, unnatural light.

And I found out that, I wasn’t dead.

A jagged chunk of debris falling from the ceiling was suspended perfectly in mid-air. A drop of blood from my own chin hung frozen inches above the ice.

Everything was in agonizingly slow motion. Time had practically stopped.

Suddenly, my system interface violently violently flickered to life.

[ADMINISTRATOR MODE ACTIVATED.]

A new window expanded in front of my eyes, aggressively pushing the red death warnings aside.

[System Functions:]

[Root Access: UNLOCKED]

[???: LOCKED]

[???:LOCKED]

[???:LOCKED]

I blinked, my mind instantly latching onto the only available option. I mentally focused on Root Access, reading the cyan description that materialized.

My eyes darted to the top right corner of my vision. A stark, digital timer box was violently counting down in milliseconds.

[05:49]

Five minutes and forty-nine seconds, I realized.

That’s how long this state lasts.

I didn’t waste a single fraction of a second and scrambled to my feet, my shattered ribs effortlessly knitting themselves together under the cyan code wrapping my bones.

Then targeted my own interface.

[Target: Jin -> Modify Property: Agility = ROOT MAX]

The universe didn’t just slow down; it completely broke.

I vanished from where I stood.

Crossed the massive, cavern in a space of time that didn’t technically exist.

Materialized directly in front of Scarlet, just as the demon’s scythe-like fingers were descending toward her throat.

I wrapped my arm securely around her waist, kicked off the ground, and completely removed us from the entity’s path.

Snap!

Time violently resumed at its normal, chaotic pace.

A deafening sonic boom ruptured the air where I had just been standing, the displaced oxygen shattering the frost on the cavern walls.

"Gah!"

Scarlet violently gasped, her eyes blowing wide as the world suddenly blurred and snapped back into focus.

She stumbled, coughing wildly as I set her down gently near the cavern entrance, dozens of yards away from the demon.

I didn’t feel tired. I didn’t feel the paralyzing burn of mana exhaustion. I quickly checked my peripheral vision.

[MP: 0/813]

My mana was completely dry.

Root Access means I don’t need to worry about the cost anymore, I thought, a terrifying, absolute calm washing over me. I can spam Debug Vision as much as I want.

In the center of the room, the demon’s scythe violently cleaved the empty air where Scarlet had just been kneeling.

It froze. Slowly, the towering, bone-armored nightmare turned its faceless obsidian mask toward me. The violet flames crowning its head violently flared, twisting into the distinct, terrifying shape of a predatory grin.

"Good," the demon vibrated, the sheer malice in its voice shaking the dust from the ceiling.

I didn’t flinch. I tightened my grip on Oathstorm, the steel instantly roaring to life with a completely unhinged, violent storm of black lightning.

"Get back, Scarlet," I ordered.

Then turned my back to her and leveled the crackling tip of my blade right at the Abyssal Entity.

"Now," I said, my boots cracking the stone beneath me. "It’s your turn."

Then I vanished again.

Simply editing my spatial coordinates. And reappeared directly above the demon’s head, bringing Oathstorm down in a brutal, two-handed executioner’s strike.

But demon’s reaction speed was completely abhorrent.

It didn’t look up. It just casually raised its multi-jointed arm, catching my black-lightning-infused blade against its bone-white forearm armor.

The impact created a crater beneath the demon’s feet, shattering the ritual circle into dust.

[Target: Demon -> Modify Property: Armor Density = 10%]

The cyan code wrapped around its arm, instantly softening the impenetrable bone. My blade bit deep, slicing cleanly through the armor and into the swirling black miasma beneath.

But the demon simply grabbed the flat of my blade with its other hand.

"Insolent," it hissed.

A localized pulse of pure gravity erupted from its core. And I was thrown backward, but I immediately dug my boots into the air itself.

[Target: Space (Local) -> Modify Property: Friction = Maximum]

I skidded to a halt on thin air, completely defying gravity. I pushed off the invisible wall, launching myself back at the demon like a railgun slug.

We clashed in the dead center of the cavern, the impacts a blur of cyan and violet light.

CLANG!

BOOM!

CLANG!

I used Root Access to edit the density of the air around its scythes, turning the atmosphere into thick sludge to slow its strikes, while simultaneously stripping my own air resistance to zero.

I parried a horizontal sweep that would have cut me in half, redirected the kinetic force into my boot, and kicked the entity squarely in the chest.

It staggered back half a step, but immediately countered with a blinding barrage of thrusts. Its abyssal miasma was so dense, so inherently hostile to reality, that my edits were struggling to take permanent hold.

Every time I changed its physical properties, the void inside it forcefully overwrote my code seconds later.

We were perfectly, terrifyingly matched.

I parried another massive strike, but my foot slipped on the floor. I wobbled dangerously, barely ducking under a scythe that sheared a lock of my hair off.

"Tch!" I clicked my tongue, violently backpedaling to gain an inch of breathing room.

My muscles twitched, completely out of sync with my hyper-accelerated mind.

Dammit. I’m not used to this new power.

It felt like trying to thread a needle while strapped to a rocket engine. If I miscalculated a single edit or pushed my agility a fraction too high, I’d end up tearing my own molecular structure apart before the timer even ran out.

The demon didn’t give me a second to adapt. It raised both of its hands, and the shadows in the cavern violently peeled off the walls, forming a dozen floating, jagged spears of solid void.

"Die," it commanded, sending the spears hurtling toward me at supersonic speeds.