Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 258: The D-1000s, S-1000s, and Flying Drones Are Here!!

During their hasty travel, Blakar kept pressing for details. What John told him was out of anything he expected. He had fought monsters his whole life, but the idea of a constantly doubling, evolving machine army that was coming in waves out of the dens like the yellow monsters did was a nightmare beyond his wildest imaginings.

"I told you before when we first met," John said, his voice weary from repeating the same grim truth.

"The presence of the machines in a pocket trial that shouldn’t involve them is the least of the mysteries you don’t know yet. Following me will uncover more of these events, more horrors you can’t imagine. So arm up and get ready to fight with all your might..."

Just before he could finish his sentence, John suddenly slid to a halt, his boots carving deep grooves into the soil. They had been sprinting through the fog for two hours now, steadily closing the distance to the southern territory. When John abruptly stopped, the Bulltors behind him mimicked the move, their heavy armours and weapons clattering as they braced for a fight.

"What happened?!!" one of the Twelve barked, his hand instinctively flying to the hilt of his massive axe. Even as he asked, the answer was already beginning to take shape in their gut.

"They are here, aren’t they?" Blakar lowly roared, his eyes searching the fog.

John nodded solemnly, his gaze fixed on a point only he could see. "The first wave of three hundred has spawned. It’s happening at all three dens simultaneously."

John never stopped checking the map. Three hundred red icons had come into existence in three different spots on the entire map. "Pick up the pace. This is going to be a hard battle."

John didn’t wait for a reply. He shifted his stance and ignited his highest speed. "I’ll go ahead. When you arrive, make sure to station your men inside the defences I’ll have laid down. Don’t engage in the open!"

"Wait..." Blakar wanted to ask about the nature of the incoming enemies, but John had already turned into a blur. He vanished from their sight in mere seconds, leaving nothing but a faint trail of afterimages.

Seeing his maximum speed made the Bulltors suck in a cold breath of air. They had been running as fast as their massive legs could carry them, yet they couldn’t even match the human’s highest velocity.

"Tsk! Was he holding back all this time? That’s quite annoying," one of the Twelve sighed, his pride taking a visible hit. "Seeing a small human run circles around me is... Quite frustrating, to say the least."

The others nodded in grim agreement, but there was no time for bruised egos. They kept running, muscles straining, while John used his Speed Lock in rapid succession. He had become a bolt of lightning, tearing through the final stretch toward the southern territory.

As he ran, John’s mind was analysing at his fastest speed everything that was happening at the three dens. On his map, the three hundred machines appearing shared the same composition, and there was something concerning. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Each wave consisted of two hundred standard D-1000s, the cannon fodder Mark threw in to shield the other specialised units. Then there were fifty units that looked fundamentally different.

They were humanoid, walking on two legs like the D-1000s, but their frames were massive, standing as tall and broad as a Bulltor. They possessed heavy, reinforced plating and featured two small pulse cannons mounted directly onto their shoulders. Seeing them, John’s intuition whispered their identity.

"These must be the S-1000s!" he muttered. He could feel how dangerous they were even from miles away. And yet, they weren’t the most dangerous part of Mark’s opening gambit. That honour belonged to the final fifty units.

They were massive flying drones, twenty meters in width, seven in length, and three in height. They didn’t hover like the smaller scouts; they used powerful combustion engines to scream into the high altitudes, rapidly creating a vertical gap between themselves and any ground-based defences.

Seeing these aerial machines made John realise this war was going to be trickier than a simple ground skirmish. He thought back to the strategic bombers of Earth’s big nations, beasts that could rain down hell and death from tens of thousands of meters up, staying well out of reach of conventional anti-air fire.

"I don’t think I have any dedicated anti-air weapons besides the cannons and towers," he thought, frantically scrolling through his massive inventory. He doubted the towers he had enhanced could effectively track and hit targets flying at least a kilometre above the battlefield.

"Wait... They’re building a fortified base around the dens!!"

John slowed his pace slightly as he watched the ground units on his map. After the drones took to the sky, the remaining machines began deploying walls, cannons, and towers of their own. They were constructing a fortified outpost surrounding the den itself, layering it with a dozen walls and dozens of defensive turrets.

But as he zoomed in, he noticed the mutation Mark had boasted about. Parts of the machines were covered in patches of raw flesh, without skin covering them, reminding him of the skinless yellow monsters. These weren’t just useless extras; the flesh was coated in a thin, shimmering layer of white lustre, as if encased in a protective bio-mechanical field.

John watched the scene with narrowed eyes. The drones were circling the territory like vultures, searching for any hostile target to kill, while the ground units turned the den into an impregnable fortress. Mark’s plan was clear: turn the den into a hardened base so John couldn’t get close enough to shut down the portal.

"He thinks he can keep me out," John shook his head, a cold smile touching his lips. "He still doesn’t know who he’s dealing with."

Despite the odds, John felt no stress. With his absolute defensive ability, he feared nothing. He ignored the fortifications around the dens for a moment and shifted his focus to the territory where Cissel and Luke were stationed.

The drones there were already beginning their descent.

"They’re going to attack," he muttered, zooming in on Cissel’s position. He found her standing atop one of freshly deployed outposts, ones he didn’t remember he put there, so it meant she and Luke must have done it, her daggers raised, her eyes fixed on the sky. She was tracking the drones with a deeply furrowed expression. He could tell she recognised the threat.

"Are they going to drop bombs? How does she plan on handling these?!" he whispered with a mixture of worry and curiosity. But then, as the drones tilted their wings and began to dive in a grand arrow formation, he saw something that stopped his heartbeat for one second, for a totally unexpected reason.

"She... She is smiling?!!"

John blinked. Cissel wasn’t afraid. She slowly developed an evil, knowing smile, playing on her lips, the kind of look one would wear when he had already walked into a trap that he saw through and could easily counter.

Seeing that expression, John felt the tension drain from his body. Whatever Mark was planning with those drones, Cissel had gotten everything under her control.