Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 239: The Grand, Upgraded Hiveminds Base!

"Tsk!"

John shook his head, looking down at the mysterious egg with a mix of awe and annoyance. "Fine. I’ll store you away for now until I can actually read your description and know what to do with you."

John swept the egg into his inventory but weirdly failed. The egg hit the surface of the inventory illusionary interface as if it hit a solid wall, bounced off and fell to the ground.

"Damn! Totally forgot you can’t be stored!" he recalled the initial sequence of notifications he received when he first came in contact with this egg, "let me put you in my pocket for now!"

It was the first time for him to place something in his pockets since having the inventory. And luckily, the egg was small enough to fit comfortably in there. Then he turned to survey the area around. The change was immediate.

The thick purple fog was slowly dissipating, not exploding outward to cover the entire territory as it had during the Sorolith back at his territory, but simply fading away into nothingness.

As the fog cleared, the area that had been occupied by the Mother of All Eggs transformed. In its place, a mighty base had been erected as if by a god’s hand.

"These walls..."

The first thing John noticed was the sheer, staggering scale of the fortifications. The walls he had meticulously built with his own hands were twenty meters high, impressive by any standard.

But the walls standing before him now were a staggering one hundred meters in height, reinforced with a dark, shimmering material that looked like a blend of purple lightning and carbon fibre.

Away from the walls, he spotted defensive towers that didn’t look like towers at all; they looked like self-contained outposts. Each one was several hundred meters tall, and at least a hundred meters in radius, bristling with fierce-looking weaponry that made his super cannons look like children’s toys.

"Hmm, I don’t recall the Hiveminds’ base looking like this before," John muttered to himself. He was certain of it. His memory of the initial map check before the Hivemind ran away didn’t match the monstrosity standing before him now.

Despite the silence and emptiness, he didn’t take a single step forward. Instead, he opened his map, toggling through to check the base from every possible angle.

The layout was reminiscent of the fortress he had constructed in his own territory, resembling the base the Hiveminds hid behind its walls before running away, but it was scaled up to an absurd degree.

It was reinforced by ten concentric layers of walls and ten rows of defensive towers at regular points that looked more like orbital cannons than terrestrial turrets. As he zoomed in on the courtyard, he saw the aftermath of a slaughter.

Thousands of Hivemind Beasts and Insects littered the ground, their metallic flesh shattered and their circuits scorched. It was a massacre that looked as if a superior opponent had moved through them with merciless brutality.

John wondered if the mysterious entity within the Mother of All Eggs was responsible for this massacre, or if the Soroliths had turned on them when the shift of the den happened. Either way, the sight of the fallen Hiveminds didn’t bring him pity; it brought greed.

"That’s a grand loot waiting for me," he whispered. His eyes roamed over the towers and the several thousand Hivemind corpses. He had already scavenged nearly five hundred storage programs from the ones killed during the initial Wrathers wave.

He always felt puzzled by the math, as he watched eight hundred leave and enter the southern territory, while he found five hundred bodies scattered east from the base. Thousands were missing, and he didn’t know where they went or what happened to them. But now he knew. And this revelation turned this place into a goldmine for him.

"What happened here?"

His friends finally arrived, their voices breaking his concentration. They had dashed forward the moment the purple fog thinned into nothingness. Luke was the first to reach him, but his greeting died in his throat as his eyes travelled upward. "Wow! What the heck is wrong with these walls?!!"

The comment drew everyone’s gaze and attention away from John. They stood in a semi-circle, paralysed by the sheer, fierce scale of the fortress up front.

"Is it just me, or did those walls grow taller than usual?" Elena asked, her head craned back so far she was almost looking straight up. She paced a few steps to the left, then paused as she spotted the silhouettes of the distant defensive towers. "Hey, hey! Do you see those towers out there? The cannons up there are the size of houses!!"

"Don’t get any closer," John snapped, his voice sharp and authoritative. He slowly turned away from the map to face them, his expression grim. "Don’t let the lack of visible threats and enemies fool you. These aren’t our walls, and those aren’t our towers. These belong to the Hiveminds, our enemies."

"You mean..." Cissel’s eyes widened as she looked at the silent, dark fortifications. "But the Hiveminds aren’t here anymore. They fled to the southern territory. Are you sure these aren’t ownerless now? Maybe their defeat and retreat wiped the permissions when they were gone."

"I can’t tell without testing," John said, shaking his head slowly. He turned back toward the fortress, his gaze locking onto the nearest tower. "Stay here. I’ll test the waters and see if they are neutral or hostile."

Without waiting for an objection, he began to move. Encrypted Skin!’ he thought, activating his supreme defensive ability. ’Let’s see if these towers recognise me as a friend or if they’ll fire on sight... Speed Lock!’

*Rumble!* *Rumble!* *Rumble!*

The answer came before he could even finish the thought. The air groaned as the ground beneath him vibrated. The nearest tower didn’t just fire; it unleashed a focused volley of energy.

John spotted the flash of blue light from the tower’s big cannon and instinctively pivoted. His Speed Lock was at work, allowing him to move with a velocity that blurred the world around him, turning the incoming projectiles into slow-moving streaks of doom.

"Damn! That’s overkill!" John gritted his teeth as he sprinted.

He narrowly evaded a growing ball of dangerous blue shot that hissed through the space he had occupied a second prior. Unlike his own towers, which fired concentrated bolts, these shots expanded upon impact.

A single shot hit the ground fifty meters behind him, and the energy didn’t just dissipate; it ballooned into a sphere of destruction one hundred meters in radius before exploding into a violent shockwave.

He didn’t stop for even a second to look back. He focused entirely on the path ahead, weaving through the kill zones. He had twenty-five seconds of peak defensive uptime, and he intended to use every tick of that clock to reach the base of the tower.

Back at the perimeter, his friends watched with bated breath. They saw the terrifying explosions overlapping, covering the entire approach in a web of azure fire and concussive force.

They heaved a simultaneous sigh of relief when they saw John’s flickering silhouette emerge from the smoke, standing safely in the blind spot directly beneath the first tower.

John didn’t waste a second. He pulled his blade, made a quick, sharp cut across his index finger, and slammed his bloodied hand against the cold, metallic plating of the tower’s base. And then he waited, while counting seconds, fixating his gaze towards the row of nine more towers lined up behind this one.

[Ding! System Handshake Established!]

[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Magically Enhanced Defensive Tower 5780!]

[Ding! Ownership transferred! Tower 5780 is now under your command!]