Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 225: John Is Here!
"We need to take a break!"
After a few hours of constant, gruelling combat around the perimeter of their renovated outpost, Luke’s voice cracked as he shouted. He was leaning against the cold metallic surface of a towering wall, chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath.
Despite the enhanced gear, attributes, and abilities, they were still bound by the limitations of human bodies. They weren’t like the tireless D-1000 machines they fought; they were creatures of flesh and bone that required rest, food, and hydration to maintain their edge.
As Luke spoke, a collective wave of nodding passed through the group. Even the Bulltors, for all their massive stamina, looked frayed at the edges.
"I can’t believe we jumped from the safety of our base into this literal hell," Lanmar complained between massive bites of well-cooked meat Elena had prepared back at the main base. He looked like a man who had aged a decade in a single afternoon.
"We agreed to follow John’s lead, even if he wasn’t here to point the way," Ricky said, casting a sharp, warning glare at Lanmar. "We came here to save your people, Lanmar. And yet, so far, we haven’t seen or heard a single sign of life from them. Not any defensive towers fire, not a signal clash against the monsters, nothing."
"That’s the part that’s bothering me the most," Reody added, his eyes scanning his fellow Bulltors with a troubled expression. "I don’t want to be the one to say it, but there is something fundamentally wrong about this territory... It doesn’t feel like our mountain home."
"What do you mean by that?" Elena asked, pausing as she took a bite of her own rations.
"Our people are warriors of the peaks," Reody explained, his voice dropping while he was imagining the worst. "Even in a crisis, they wouldn’t just shield themselves behind walls and wait for the end. They would have sent out aggressive patrol groups to cull the monster densities and clear the zones around the main base. This place... It feels like a tomb."
"So..." Cissel’s gaze drifted toward the distant horizon where the roars of monsters formed a constant, oppressive background noise. "In other words, you’re saying this isn’t your territory. And if this base isn’t yours, then it can only belong to one other race, the only race aside from the Bulltors that is situated south of us."
"The Hiveminds," Elena finished the thought, her hand tightening on the hilts of her sledgehammers.
"No way," Lanmar shook his head vigorously, though his voice lacked conviction. "I’m sure we followed the right path! I know how to walk and navigate through the fog! I would have never mistook the direction to my own backyard..."
*BOOM!*
A muffled, heavy explosion rolled across the wasteland, cutting Lanmar off mid-sentence. The sound was distinct, a faint thud that vibrated in the soles of their boots, drawing everyone’s attention toward the southeastern horizon.
"It came from the central base?!" Lanmar scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide with desperate hope. "Are our people finally fighting back? Is that a counter-attack?!"
"No," Luke said, pointing his club toward a direction far from the heart of the territory. "It’s coming from the fog-rim there. Look..."
"It’s John!" Cissel was the first to declare it, a sudden, bright spark of certainty in her eyes. "He’s here!"
As if to confirm her words, a rapid series of muffled booms erupted in sequence. These weren’t the erratic sounds of defensive towers; they were the fierce barks of plasma cannons. The air at the far fog line began to shimmer with the distant, telltale flashes of light, the signature of John’s modified artillery.
If it had been the hum of defensive towers alone, they might have suspected a Bulltor rally. But the cannons were John’s thing.
"That’s the very edge of the territory," Ricky noted. They were too far away to see the individual structures, but it was apparent that the attacks were originating from a pocket carved deep inside the fog walls. "He must have breached the perimeter and cleared the fog himself... Which means we really are inside the Hiveminds territory."
Ricky turned his head slowly, his gaze freezing on Lanmar for several long seconds. The giant pointedly ignored the silent accusation in Ricky’s eyes, choosing instead to stare transfixed at the horizon where the sounds of explosions continued to ring out like a promise of salvation.
"Shall we move toward him?" Elena asked, voicing the question that had immediately jumped into everyone’s mind.
"No, it’s too risky to abandon a fortified position now," Cissel said, shaking her head firmly. "The density of monsters between us and those flashes is too high. But I’m sure he knows where we are. I’m even sure he realised we were off-track and came all the way here specifically to bail us out."
Cissel’s words landed with a weight that shifted the entire mood of the outpost. Realising they weren’t isolated in this nightmare reignited their spirits.
The fatigue that had threatened to overwhelm them seemed to recede, replaced by a fresh surge of adrenaline. They returned to their posts with renewed ferocity, the distant, thundering percussion of John’s cannons acting as a heartbeat for their renewed resolve.
"It’s time to see if this hypothesis actually holds water!"
Inside the reinforced base he had erected, John was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Spread out before him was a group of mechanical devices, power generators he salvaged from the D-1000s. A web of wires and glowing conduits connected them. He adjusted a final connection, his eyes narrowing as he prayed he had connected everything right and it wouldn’t end up exploding in his face.
According to his theory, the items he could enhance using the cores were strictly limited to those whose coding structure he had already meddled with and edited. To test this theory, John reached into his inventory and pulled out a group of items he had previously deemed nearly worthless: the standard power generators.
