Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 84: Cissel’s Idea, and Elena’s Strategy

’What a complicated quest it is, and yet... The timing can’t be coincidental!’

John couldn’t resist stealing a glance at Cissel. His system had remained frustratingly silent during the past ten days—not a single quest had been issued, no matter how many monsters he slaughtered or how far he pushed into the fog.

He had assumed he needed to find a clue first, a piece of ancient technology or a hidden landmark, for the next stage of his Evolution Trial to trigger. Who knew the trigger wasn’t an object, but a realisation voiced by one of his teammates?

’That means her theory is right,’ John thought, his eyes narrowing as he mentally re-read the quest objectives. ’Stable food and water. Not just scattered trees, but a permanent source. And it’s tied directly to the heart of the monster population.’

"Say something," Cissel prompted, her voice barely a whisper. His silence was stretching on a bit too long, and she watched him with an intensity that suggested she was waiting for him to either validate her or tear her logic apart.

"I believe your theory has a very high chance of success," John said, his voice firm. "Let’s follow this idea. We stop the random scouting. We must find the den."

"But how?" Ricky interjected, not forgetting to shoot Cissel a blaming look. The two had already argued in private about her den theory.

Ricky had spent a few hours in the last two days trying to dissuade her from saying it out loud, fearing that if John bought into it, the team would waste their remaining time and effort on a wild goose chase. "We spent ten days looking, and yet found nothing but more fog and more grey monsters!"

"There is something we didn’t take note of," Elena muttered from the sidelines. As for Luke, he could practically smell the gunpowder in the air between Ricky and Cissel, and she seemed content to watch the show from a safe distance, remaining silent and saying nothing.

John, however, didn’t share his friend’s viewpoint. "Which is?" he asked, encouraging Elena to speak further, as her voice sounded bright with a sudden spark of inspiration.

John took the lead in the discussion, effectively stepping in to direct the talk instead of Cissel. To him, he was simply facilitating the brainstorm necessary to fulfil his quest; to Cissel, it felt like he was stepping up to shield her from Ricky’s biting backlash.

As for Ricky, he glared at Elena, feeling like she was going to add more to Cissel’s logic, and leading John and the team astray.

"Let’s consider this as a battlefield back in Athanasia," Elena said, her tone shifting. She sounded like she had been waiting for this specific moment to prove her worth.

She stood up, grabbed a sturdy branch from a nearby Blue Serpentile tree, and began drawing a rough map in the dirt at their feet. "We are here, in the middle of an intense exchange of fire between two armies..."

"Yet we are only fighting one enemy," Ricky snapped, rolling his eyes in impatience. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but listening to a lecture on military theory, when their situation was far from what Elena was describing.

"Let’s say we belong to one side—this side," Elena continued, ignoring the interruption. Under John’s encouraging nod, her confidence grew. "And we are desperately looking for the enemy’s base camp.

If the terrain is obscured, and the enemy is everywhere, what is the one thing they cannot hide? What’s the biggest clue that can lead us to their base camp? The monsters’ den?"

"That’s the million-dollar question we are trying to crack here, genius!" Ricky threw another harsh comment, but this time, no one paid him any attention. Even Luke started to grow tired of his constant negativity, glaring at him in warning to shut his mouth.

"The best and easiest way is the only way the enemy would never fake," Elena said. She had rich field experience thanks to her family; they were experts at frontal assaults and large-scale clashes.

John realised now that what she was explaining was something she had learned from her family—a mix of a war theory and brutal practical application. "We don’t just roam blindly, hoping to stumble over a sign."

"Humph," Ricky grunted. He realised he had lost the support of the room to Cissel and Elena, so he leaned back against a tree, issuing disgruntled noises to express his frustration.

"That’s what we did in the past ten days," John reminded her, giving Ricky a silent, cold warning with his eyes. He had a quest on the line here, and the failure conditions were too steep for him to allow any more distractions. He needed to fully understand what Elena was trying to explain. Perhaps she had the keys to solve the mysteries of his quest.

"I know, but that’s why I said we were doing it wrong." Elena paused, placing several deep marks on one side of her dirt map. "See, we were just attacking the enemy as they appeared, aiming to decrease their numbers.

That’s a war of attrition, not a scouting tactic. To locate the base camp, we have to change our whole perspective, change our tactic and adopt a new one."

She drew four large circles around their central point, finally raising her head to look at John and the others. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

"Instead of running away from the waves, we pick four certain spots, marking the four cardinal directions: East, West, North, and South. We set up bait in each. In case of the monsters, we use the hunting grounds strategy, and then we count.

We count exactly how many enemy soldiers come at us in each area over a fixed period of time. The direction with the highest numbers and the fastest reinforcement time..."

She paused here, a triumphant glint in her eyes as if the rest of the strategy were too obvious to state. Yet, when she looked up and saw the blank, confused stares of her companions, she realised they hadn’t quite grasped the tactical nuance of her family’s doctrine. She sighed and spilt the beans entirely, speaking slower as if addressing children.