Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 279: The Giant D-1000s, the Thruster S-1000s, and the Metallic Wasps!

John was sure Mark would activate the dens in these two western territories, so he always checked them out, looking to see if the humans ever made a move there.

Yet nothing like this ever happened, and that made him jump to the only situation that could explain all this.

"That bastard! He must have activated the dens while walking with those one thousand cyborgs! He activated them and concealed the changes in these two territories, even before meeting with me... Wait, does this mean they have been running for an entire day without interruption?!!"

John’s heart skipped a beat as the terrifying realisation set in. If those dens had been active for twenty-four hours while hidden, the ten-wave escalation rule would have been applied, and the den wave count would have reached an exponential peak by now.

His mind froze for a moment when he recalled what the system told him before about this point. If a den crossed the one-hundred threshold, it would evolve the wave coming out from it.

He instantly zoomed in on the red tide, and the red dots he saw were composed of units that looked far more ferocious and structurally different from anything he’d faced so far.

"It really happened as I feared," seeing the new breed of machines made him suck a cold breath of air. And with it, all of the plans and moves he thought of became worthless. He had to first assess the new situation properly and set up new plans to counter this disastrous situation.

There were ground and flying units, with the ground forces divided into two distinctive types. It was the standard set-up of the machine waves he and his friends fought against for an entire day now.

Yet, the changes that happened after these machines evolved were radical; these weren’t the standard D-1000s, S-1000s, or the flying drones he had been farming. Not anymore.

The D-1000s had undergone a grotesque evolution; their bodies had tripled in size, transforming from standard infantry units into towering, metallic juggernauts. Their standard laser guns had been replaced by shortened versions of cylindrical cannons that shimmered with a dangerous, oscillating blue light. John could tell at a glance these were portable plasma cannons, the first hand-held variants he had witnessed in the trial so far.

Yet, that wasn’t the end of the upgrades. On their backs, two additional cannons were mounted on a dual-axis pivot, capable of rotating three hundred and sixty degrees.

These secondary cannons seemed they could track and fire in any direction independently, meaning the unit never had to break its forward stride to neutralise threats from the flanks or the rear. And the delay time they always suffered to adjust their postures and target new threats was gone.

On top of that, the outer alloy plating covering these units was clearly on another level entirely. It looked thick, heavy, and was permeated by a translucent layer of blue energy that hummed with defensive potential. They now looked more threatening than the standard S-1000 units.

"I’ll call you the Giant D-1000 units from now on," John muttered while shifting his attention towards the next evolved machine unit.

The S-1000s had doubled in size, but the way they moved had changed fundamentally. Instead of heavy hydraulic legs, they now featured powerful rear jet propellers.

These thrusters allowed them to hover at a constant height of fifty meters, moving with a high speed and a reaction time that was smoother and faster than anything John had seen before from the ground models.

Their back-mounted weapon platforms had also expanded, now sporting four large-scale plasma cannons that mirrored the output of the standard plasma cannons he used before.

Their armour was reinforced with reactive, very hardened plating, and their faces were encased in fierce-looking helmets adorned with two distinctive metallic horns. John decided to call them the Thruster S-1000 units from now on.

However, all of these changes paled in comparison to the transformation of the flying drones. The original drones had resembled small planes of old Earth, but these enhanced models were fundamentally different. They had shifted from being purely mechanical constructs into something disturbingly biological, reminiscent of the Hiveminds.

"They are like... Wasps!!"

John struggled to find a better comparison. The new Metallic Wasps were three times larger than the previous drones, and nearly twenty percent of their bodies appeared to be composed of skinless, pulse-pounding flesh and corded muscle interwoven with the rest of their metallic body.

Their heads were wide and more alien than machine, featuring two sets of compound metallic eyes that looked like shimmering beehives from a distance.

Their bodies were segmented into two main parts. The midsection was broad, housing three pairs of long, translucent metallic wings that beat with high-frequency intensity. They appeared to be made of organic membrane rather than metallic alloy.

The rear section was longer and narrower, tapering into a threatening, oversized, down-arched needle. It didn’t look like a simple stinger; the tip featured a hollow opening that looked more like the muzzle of a cannon rather than the tip of a needle.

The only thing that seemed unchanged was the base armour, but the sheer lethality of the design was undeniable. "I can’t call them flying drones anymore... I suppose Metallic Wasps fits them better," John muttered.

He shifted his gaze to the last territory flooded with red dots: Ricky and Elena’s sector. The sheer volume of enemies there wasn’t the surprise; it was their behaviour.

Just like the hordes emerging from the other two western territories, every single red dot was converging on a single coordinate: his. He even suspected that if Cissel and Luke’s territory wasn’t emptied during the day, the machines there would have flooded his direction as well.

The machines were effectively evacuating their territories, performing total mobilisation, heading towards him. They weren’t simply travelling; they were mobilising in a desperate, all-out sprint and flight toward John’s position, moving at their highest speed, without even synchronising with each other. Seeing this bizarre and shocking scene left no doubt in his mind as to Mark’s intent.

"So, you’ve placed me at the very top of your hit list? I wonder, Mark, just how much is my head worth to you?"