Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 219: Plans For the Small Outpost

The problem wasn’t a lack of lethality. The four humans were tearing through the yellow and red monsters as if they were fragile toys, their attributes and gear far outpacing the mobs.

The real issue was the sheer, suffocating volume. The density was so high that any gap they carved into the tide was instantly backfilled by a dozen more monsters, leaving them effectively swimming in place.

"Listen up!" Reody suddenly shouted, his voice finding a new authority born of desperation. "Let’s form a tight circle! All eleven of us will overlap our shields to create a mobile fortified perimeter. As for the four humans, you stay in the centre and fire, keep attacking from inside the shell without pause!"

"That’s right! This will work!" Lanmar shouted, sounding like a drowning man who had finally found a sturdy straw to cling to. "Let’s do it now! Form the phalanx!"

"But..." Cissel paused, her daggers flashing as she decapitated a lunging Wrather. She looked at her teammates, her brow furrowed. "We don’t have many long-distance attacks... Except for Ricky." She fixed her gaze on him, her eyes silently communicating that she knew all about the hidden truth of his second ability.

"Leave it to me then," Ricky said with a shrug, though his expression remained grim. "But I can’t promise that I alone will be enough to clear a path twenty kilometres long."

"Then we will leave gaps in the shields for you to venture outside," Reody proposed. He recalled their previous skirmishes and realised that all four humans were primarily close-quarters, brutal warriors who excelled at high-intensity melee.

"Aim to trigger their lightning protective shields first, then move to finish them. If you meet any significant danger, just retreat; we’ll protect you using the overlapping shields."

"That can work," Ricky agreed, slamming his glaive into a yellow monster’s face to create a momentary pocket of emptiness that soon got refilled with more monsters. "Let’s do this!"

"We can also use our purple and golden grenades!" Elena shouted, "We have more than enough Wrathers here to scavenge and recharge our stock on the move..."

"No! We must limit our use of the grenades!" Cissel shouted back, her short-distance explosive speed allowing her to blur between targets. "We have no idea what the situation will look like once we actually reach that outpost. We need to save our deadly cards for the final breach!"

"Okay, here is what we are going to do," Ricky took command of the formation. "Lanmar! Start forming the shield around us! Do it now!"

The response from the Bulltors was immediate and synchronised. They poured their Mana into their bodies, activating a series of interlocking translucent shields. All of a sudden, the physical pressure that had been suffocating the group vanished as the monsters began clawing fruitlessly at the energy barrier.

"Luke! Elena!" Ricky shouted next. "You two take the lead. Push against the front of the shield and hit every monster you spot with your strongest attacks. Don’t worry about the killing blow; Cissel and I will handle any stragglers that leak through the gaps. You just keep the momentum! Keep pushing forward and don’t even look back!"

This shift in tactics yielded immediate and amazing results. No longer stalled by the need to watch their own backs, Luke and Elena became a twin blade of destruction at the front of the formation.

The entire group began to move through the endless ocean of Wrathers and yellow monsters like an armoured prow of a ship, cutting a faster and steadier pace toward the distant, silent walls of the Hivemind outpost.

The closer they got to the structure Lanmar had spotted, the more the initial spark of hope began to flicker and dim. They had expected a fortress similar to the deadly outposts John had meticulously constructed back at their home territory. Instead, they saw only a skeletal stretch of triple walls, devoid of a single defensive tower or cannon. It looked like a graveyard of abandoned architecture.

But the disappointment didn’t last long.

"Don’t count us out yet! I grabbed a few cannons from the base before we left!" Cissel’s voice cut through the thumping of the Bulltor shields and the roars of the monsters falling on Luke and Elena’s attacks.

She killed astray Wrather and shouted, "I have around a hundred pulse cannons in my storage device. We can mount them on the crest of these walls and turn this useless pile of stone into a real fortress!"

"I have the juice to back them up!" Elena shouted from the vanguard, her sledgehammers thrown in the air in a lethal arc. "I’ve got hundreds of ready energy cells. We can power these cannons up for a day or two!"

"This sounds like a plan!" Ricky roared. He had fully deployed his secondary ability, his tentacles lashing out like whips of shadow to snap the lives of encroaching yellow monsters. "But what about expanding the outpost? That place looks too small for all of this!"

"I’ve got many walls!" Luke bellowed, swinging his massive club with such force that a cluster of three Wrathers was launched into the air like ragdolls. "I’ve got enough to lay down ten folds of this current perimeter!"

"We have the defensive towers!" Reody added from the flank. He was panting, his massive chest heaving, but his eyes were bright. "We managed to pack up the activated towers John placed around the initial Wrather den. Our storage devices are limited; we can only fit a few in each!"

"That’s more than enough!" Ricky’s voice carried a newfound surge of courage. The grim desperation of the march was being replaced by the hunger for a counter-siege.

"We clear the perimeter the second we reach that outpost. Cissel, Reody, you two handle the layout. I want that damn spot turned into a real human-style killing zone!"

"Let’s do it!" Lanmar shouted, his massive shield glowing with a renewed mana surge. "Thirty minutes tops and we’ll be there. Get ready!"