Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 202: The Humans, the Hiveminds, the Bulltors, and the Krogers!

"Even if we were lucky enough to slip past them with every human survivor in tow," Elena added, her voice heavy, "we’d still be the only race left on the board to fight the Hiveminds. We’d be isolated."

Cissel was the last to speak, her eyes sharp. "We may have six thousand humans waiting for us in the southern regions of the pocket trial, but they are weak. They aren’t organised, and they certainly aren’t trained for what’s coming," she said, effectively ending the debate.

"We can’t expect much from them. We all saw what happened to us when we dropped into this hellhole. We suffered, we almost died. If not for sheer luck and having John on our side, we wouldn’t have survived, let alone grown this strong. Don’t pin your hopes on a miracle from them."

"But..." Luke started to argue, his idealistic streak still fighting for air.

John raised a hand, a simple gesture that instantly commanded the silence of the group. All eyes snapped to him.

"We need to recruit the Bulltors," John said slowly, his voice carrying the weight of a final decision. "Even if we only end up with one thousand of them by the end of this, our chances of crushing the Hivemind will be ten times higher than if we do it alone."

John had other reasons, of course, reasons he chose not to voice just yet. While his friends were recovering, he had spent hours scouring the updated map. He had located the site of the grand battle between the Bulltors and the D-1000 units. The map showed a graveyard of metal wreckage stretching for kilometres. To John, that wasn’t a battlefield; it was a treasure trove.

He had no intention of letting the Hivemind pick those bones clean. If they overran the Bulltor territory, they would strip everything, leaving John with nothing but dust.

More importantly, during his late-night surveillance, John had cracked a secret that Lanmar and the other races had completely missed. Lanmar was wrong, the other races were wrong!

By overlaying his upgraded Wireframe Sight onto the map, he had glimpsed the Hivemind’s true nature. And honestly, what they could do stood as a grand obstacle in his path towards gathering resources, walls, towers, cannons, energy cells, and more.

This wasn’t the only thing he lied about. He had lied about the Bulltor numbers, too. They were hit hard, yes, but they weren’t down to a mere two thousand. His map showed roughly two thousand healthy combatants and nearly the same number of wounded and recuperating elders and younglings within their base. It looked like the battle against the D-1000s was recent, the wounds still fresh.

He knew that if he gave Lanmar the real number, more than four thousand, the giant would be too stubborn to negotiate. Lanmar would think they had a fighting chance on their own.

By halving the number, John had created the necessary desperation to force obedience and willingness to help. He needed the Bulltors as his frontline, and he needed them compliant.

The humans were a similar story of hidden complexity. While there were indeed six thousand green dots on the map, they weren’t a unified force. Actually, they were far from it. They were scattered across the southern regions in dozens of small, fractured camps.

Without a central base or a leader like John, they had devolved his territory into. Through his map, John could see the positioning of their camps; they weren’t arrayed against the monsters, but against each other. He even spotted a few of them raising arms against other groups, in weird situations that he couldn’t yet grasp or fathom.

He expected his arrival to be met with hostility, not cheers. He was already mentally preparing to use force if needed, to break them before he could lead them. It was a cold thought, but he needed a unified front if he wanted to win this trial and elevate humanity from being a fallen race to a real race racing in the ongoing apocalypse.

"About the Hivemind," Cissel said, as if sensing the dark direction of his thoughts. He couldn’t help but jolt awake and give her a weird look, as if she really could read through his thoughts. Meeting his gaze, she chuckled. "Did you find out anything useful about them? Anything we can actually use?"

"Well, in fact, the Bulltors seemed to really attack them before," John told his friends, finally revealing the detail he had strategically omitted when speaking to Lanmar. "The Hivemind lost roughly two thousand of their forces in the recent clashes. It’s a blow, but compared to the near-total devastation the Bulltors suffered, it isn’t a crippling one."

"Still, it means the Bulltors actually know how to kill them, right?" Ricky intervened, his eyes lighting up with much interest. "That adds even more to their value as an asset. If they’ve cracked the Hivemind’s defensive patterns, we need to secure them to our side for sure!"

Everyone nodded in agreement. The logic was sound: a wounded ally with the know-how to kill the primary antagonist was worth ten healthy allies who were flying blind. Yet, the final decision-making didn’t rest on a democratic vote.

John began to elaborate on what he truly required from the Bulltors. As Ricky had pointed out, they needed to secure their total support, but John was looking further ahead. He wanted to harvest as much as he possibly could from the Bulltor territory without losing his own people in a meat-grinder rescue mission.

The team spoke for a while longer, dissecting John’s plans for the Bulltor base once he officially secured their allegiance. The conversation naturally drifted toward the enigmatic fourth race that shared this pocket trial: the Krogers.

"They are confined strictly within their own territory," John said, recalling the immense surprise he felt when he first saw their stronghold on the map. "But don’t let their stigma as a fallen race fool you.

They’ve built a massive base, covering their entire territory in walls far stronger than ours and towers with significantly deadlier output. On top of that, their interior is packed with blacksmithing and mechanical shops; it looks like a small town of factories.

I don’t know exactly what they’re churning out in there, but I’m certain that if we gain their allegiance, we’ll be adding a powerhouse to our coalition."