Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 215: The Mysterious Human Race Ritual!

"Why are you so gloomy? I thought you’d like what I proposed, hahaha!"

The leading Bulltor let out a booming laugh. Following his earlier proposal to John, a wave of agreement had rippled through the Sacred Bloodline descendants.

They quickly organised themselves into twelve different groups, each with twenty elite Bulltors, led by one of the Twelve. Even Galnar, despite the gruesome wounds John had inflicted upon him, didn’t hesitate to join the party.

From the looks on their faces, anyone could tell how excited and impatient they were to march toward their enemy’s territory and confirm John’s wild claims. Behind the vanguard, several small groups of Bulltors formed up, intended to act as a communication chain back to the main base.

Even the two thousand wounded moved to the walls, watching the different groups of their kin walk away, with eyes filled with a mixture of doubt and desperate hope. The entire atmosphere was charged with a frantic anticipation.

Everyone was excited. Everyone, that was, except John.

"Tsk! Believe me, it’s a total waste of time," John said, shaking his head and crossing his arms. "The nightmare I left for them will keep them busy and preoccupied for many days. I’d much prefer to fight you right here, right now, and save myself the trouble of a cross-territory hike!"

"Hahaha! He speaks like a true lord!" the leading Bulltor, whose name was Blakar, laughed in genuine amusement. He slammed a fist against his chest plate. "Don’t worry, little human. The travel from here to the Hiveminds border won’t even take half a day at our pace."

"I know," John rolled his eyes, his gaze drifting toward the horizon. Suddenly, his eyes froze, locking onto a specific spot in the distance. A glint replaced his annoyance.

"If we are going there anyway, why don’t we stay behind for two more hours?" He paused, and when he felt the weight of the confused giant stares, he added, "Waiting for two hours won’t make any difference at all to the Hiveminds fate."

"That’s indeed true," Blakar said, narrowing his eyes as he studied John’s expression. "Two hours is nothing for us, and it certainly won’t save them. Still, I’m curious, what could a human possibly want to do in these two hours?"

"There," John said, abruptly shifting his direction the moment he sensed their subtle agreement. "I have business to attend to in that region."

"We’ll tag along then," Blakar said. Unlike what John expected, the giant didn’t let him go alone. Instead, he signalled for the entire group to follow.

"That direction leads to where our grand battle with those damn machines occurred. By the way, do you have any idea how those machines appeared in our pocket trial? We’ve been squeezing our minds for an answer, but we couldn’t find any..."

"Don’t play the fool with me," John sighed, his boots crunching over the ground. "You know the reason behind their appearance. At least, my Bulltor friends told me the rumours that are already common knowledge among your people."

"Oh, is that so?" the female Bulltor, Lilith, asked. Her tone confirmed John’s suspicion; they were already debating the same rumours Lanmar had shared. "But even those rumours don’t explain how or why they appeared here..."

"After you join me under the Holy Right, I promise you’ll get to the bottom of all this," John interrupted her, his voice firm. "On top of other things, you don’t even realize are happening right under your noses."

They arrived at the battlefield shortly after. The ground was littered with the massive, dead forms of Bulltor warriors and the silver wreckage of five thousand D-1000 units. To the Bulltors, this was a graveyard of sorrow and defeat. To John, it was a goldmine.

As his trip to the Bulltor capital had taken this unexpected turn, John decided he wouldn’t leave the area without claiming something useful. He set his sights on the massive harvest of loot waiting in the storage programs of the fallen machines and the storage devices of the dead Bulltors.

"Does anyone know anything about human culture?"

After half an hour of watching John work, Blakar whispered the question to his companions, his brow furrowed in deep confusion. The giants stood in a wide circle, watching as the small human moved through the wreckage, doing something none fathomed.

"He keeps cutting his hand and placing it all over the destroyed machines," Blakar noted, gesturing toward John. "He’s even touching the dead bodies of our fallen people! Is this some kind of... Burial rite? Or is he truly as mad as he looks?"

Blakar’s words echoed what everyone else was seeing with their own eyes. He was profoundly confused, yet deeply intrigued. His mind drifted toward the possibility of some unique human ritual, perhaps a blood-bond or a way of honouring the fallen by marking them with one’s blood.

To most races in the apocalypse, humans were viewed as a failed race. No one had ever wasted time studying a fallen race, especially one perceived as too weak to serve as effective slaves and lacking any special talent or skill like the Krogers. Consequently, no one in the group could offer Blakar an answer, and he resolved to simply press John for the truth later.

"A ritual?!"

John was currently in a spectacular mood. He had just finished the hacking of five thousand D-1000 storage programs and over six thousand Bulltor storage devices.

The sheer volume of items he added to his inventory was enough to keep him grinning for a week. So, when he was finally approached and asked about the ceremony he had been performing for two straight hours, he almost burst out laughing.

"You kept leaving blood marks on every single one of the fallen," Blakar explained, gesturing to the thousands of smudged red fingerprints drying on the machines and the cold skin of the giants. "I’m curious. Is it a ritual to bring good luck before a grand war? Or perhaps a curse designed to make your enemies fall before you?"