Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 268: The Bulltors Are Here!

"What’s going on here?!!"

Blakar’s voice cracked out loud as he emerged from the fog, leading the one thousand and five hundred of the Bulltor forces. The sight that greeted them was nothing short of an apocalyptic, brutal scene. By the time they arrived, the fifth wave had just erupted from the den.

The numbers were staggering: four thousand and eight hundred machine units in total. Two thousand four hundred D-1000s that stopped around the den, laying down lots of fortifications there, led and directed by one thousand two hundred of the hulking S-1000.

But it was the sky that truly paralysed the Bulltors. One thousand two hundred flying drones hovered in a massive, silver-winged formation that reflected the light of the pocket trial. To any other warrior, the sight was a death sentence. To John, it was another day in the pocket trial.

John was already a blur of motion, soaring through the air. Since the third wave, he had settled into a lethal, effective routine.

In the time he waited for the ground units to leave the den and approach his location, he would spend ten minutes working on the new weapons he had scavenged, enhancing them into their advanced forms. Then he would expand his network of outposts, yet keeping the new toys away, not deploying any yet.

During the fourth wave, he had decided to give more time to enhance the six new weapons. After slaughtering the six hundred drones of that wave, he had ignored the D-1000s and S-1000s entirely, leaving those flies to be chewed up by his towers and cannons. He was a man possessed, more interested in enhancing more of the loot he kept gaining with every wave, rather than the ground war.

When the Bulltors finally arrived, they were met with the impossible sight: John was leaping from drone to drone, his boots ringing against their metallic bodies.

Every few seconds, a Logic Bomb would detonate, sending a fierce shockwave through the sky that crumpled drones like tin cans. Following him was a persistent, deadly sphere of lightning sword shadows, the Lightning Dance, that damaged and killed anything within a hundred-meter radius.

He was fighting an army the Bulltors had never even dreamed of, and he was doing it solo with a domineering ease that made the slightly over one thousand of the flying drones look like clumsy children.

"You are finally here," John shouted, landing gracefully near Blakar as the last of the twelve hundred flying drones spiralled into the dirt behind him. He didn’t even bother looking back at the carnage or confirming the kill. "Let me brief you about the situation while I work to get the loot out of them."

"..."

The Bulltors exchanged hollow, silent glances. Blakar looked at the smoking wreckage of thousands of different-shaped machine units, then back at John, who was casually wiping a non-existent sweat from his face. To the Bulltors, it felt like they had just interrupted John while he was having a quiet breakfast, not concluding a battle against a legion of metallic flying demons.

For the next ten minutes, John worked with ease, his hands dancing over the drone remnants to hack their storage programs and add the grand loot to his inventory while he explained everything.

"... So, in brief, there are two waves of enemies each time, and the numbers double with every wave. This is the fifth wave, with four thousand eight hundred units in total.

The flying drones are the priority; they can be fought exactly how I just demonstrated. You jump on their backs, bypass their laser guns, and attack and destroy them. As for the ground units, they are significantly easier to deal with..."

"Well," Blakar cleared his throat, his massive hand trembling slightly on his weapon. "Perhaps it’s easier for you, John. We suffered a massacre against the D-1000s last time. We don’t even know how we’ll fare against these new enemies, the S-1000s or the flying drones."

"You’ll do brilliantly well," John said with a calm smile. "You won’t be fighting them in the open like last time. You’ll be fighting from within the embrace of my outposts.

I’ll stay by your side for the next wave to watch over the fight, guide you through it, and intervene if needed. Once you’ve got a good grasp of the mechanics, I’ll leave the defence wholly to you while I go handle other, more important matters."

John could see the lingering psychological trauma in their eyes. They remembered the screaming of their kin and the relentless cruelty of the machine units. Even in victory, the Bulltors had felt small.

John needed them to handle this task for him. He needed them to be his iron wall while he focused on mass-enhancing his new toys and starting the hack operation for the den’s dense fortifications.

He was confident they could handle the incoming machine units on their own. And if the waves grew too large for the Bulltors to handle alone, he had contingency plans, the new mobile fortresses and other new weapons he kept hidden so far. He knew that they could turn the tide in seconds.

"Take your positions," John commanded. He gestured for the twelve members to distribute their one thousand and five hundred troops among the outposts he had constructed.

Once they were settled, John dashed toward the centre of the zone. The territory was strategically divided by a wide river branch, dividing the territory into northern and southern halves. Over the past five waves, John had managed to fortify nearly one-third of the northern bank.

But it wasn’t enough. Starting with the third wave, the machines had begun to split their forces into three distinct directions, each aiming for a different crossing point. They were using the three underwater bridges to traverse the river, attempting to flank his position.

There was a bridge at the north, one at the south, and one in the middle. The shifting geography of the territory meant John had to stretch his defences thin to match this unexpected tactical development.