Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 259: Cissel and Luke - Part 1

"We are on our own now!"

Half an hour after John’s departure, the group had divided into their pairings. Elena and Ricky had disappeared into the distance, heading towards the fog, sprinting to the south-eastern territory, leaving Cissel and Luke standing alone in the quiet of their territory. The silence didn’t last long. The two immediately began to use the items John had gifted them.

Over the next few hours, they worked hard, deploying the walls, the defensive towers, and the cannons. They didn’t just scatter them; they built a sophisticated kill zone. The territory was already filled with outposts John had laid before, yet Cissel had another idea in her mind.

A series of extra outposts rose from the ground, forming a half-circle with the concave arc facing the direction of the distant machine den.

It was a classic crescent trap, designed to funnel any emerging force into a crossfire of the defences and overlapping fields of fire. It was also the perfect set-up in Cissel’s mind, suited for a low number of defenders fighting against large enemies.

Finally, the work was done. Cissel and Luke stood atop the ramparts of the central outpost, the heart of their special trap.

Luke looked around at the towering walls, the towers, the cannons, and the humming power generators, his hands clenching and unclenching around the grip of his massive club. Despite the heavy fortifications and the brilliant idea Cissel provided, he was visibly vibrating with a deep nervousness.

"Don’t feel this way," Cissel suddenly said, sizing Luke up and down. She had retreated behind her old, cold mask, the one that made her eyes look scary.

"Like what?!" Luke bellowed back, trying to force a bravado he didn’t truly feel, yet his shifting eyes betrayed him.

"Like this," Cissel said, her voice a flat monotone. She motioned with both hands while twirling her daggers as if she were holding wooden sticks. She looked more dangerous than she ever had in the academy. "Exactly like a frightened, cornered chicken waiting for the slaughter. It’s pathetic."

*Gulp!*

Luke had always played the part of the tough guy, the muscle of the group, yet when faced with hard moments, moments like the one he was now living through, his resolve often crumbled like dry parchment.

His anxiety had a habit of suffocating his courage, turning the brave and loud youngster into a coward. The memory of his failure back at the academy, when they competed against the second-year class, was a bitter proof of that weakness that still haunted his dreams.

"Just have more trust in yourself," Cissel said, her tone softening just a fraction. She knew Luke’s bluster was a shield he used because he felt overshadowed by John’s genius and other members of the team’s lethality.

"You aren’t that loser anymore. You have your attributes unlocked. You’ve become hellishly stronger than you were in those academy days. And most importantly, you have a mighty weapon that John personally entrusted to you, a weapon that you enhanced alongside yourself, right?"

Hearing those words made Luke turn his gaze toward the oversized club he was currently strangling with both hands. For a fleeting moment, the fog of fear and the suffocating feeling of anxiety seemed to clear and dissipate. His eyes landed on the metallic outer shell of the weapon, and he replayed Cissel’s reminder in his head.

"He really gave me this club, I really grew stronger in here," he muttered. He said it thrice, and with every repetition, his voice grew sharper, stronger, and more confident. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, engraving the weight of that trust deeply into his soul. "I’m ready!"

He snapped his eyes wide open, an intense, fiery look replacing the hollow flicker of doubt from before. Seeing the change, Cissel allowed a faint, content smile to touch her lips for a fraction of a second.

"That’s it," she nodded slightly. "Now, let’s speak about our plan and strategy before the first wave arrives."

"How are we supposed to plan for that when we don’t even know what type of machines are coming our way?!" Luke asked, his voice steady now, though the curiosity was sharp.

"I can guess roughly what’s coming," Cissel said, suddenly pausing. Her face went completely blank, exposing nothing of her thoughts to Luke.

"Don’t ask," she added with a sharp glare when she noticed the suspicious way he was looking at her. "Anyway, I believe we are going to meet the regular D-1000s, plus the reinforced S-1000s and the flying drones."

"Flying drones?! What the heck are those?!!" Luke had heard whispers of the S-1000, the deadlier form of D-1000s, the ones that could use pulse cannons not laser guns. But this was the first he’d heard of an aerial threat.

"Consider them like flying D-1000s," Cissel explained, her gaze drifting toward the sky above the den.

"They can fly at high altitudes and move with a speed that makes them a blur to the naked eye. They are incredibly agile and have a reinforced outer shell that can survive a direct hit from a standard plasma cannon.

To make things worse, they are usually mounted with a cluster of five independent laser guns that can track and fire at five different targets simultaneously."

"Hey, hey! What the heck?!!" Luke’s newfound courage faltered for a moment, and he bellowed in a fresh wave of fear. "That sounds like an unstoppable nightmare! How the hell are we supposed to fight something that flies that high and fires that fast?!!!"

"They are formidable, indeed," Cissel said, nodding slowly as she checked her two daggers and body armour, making sure she was ready for what was coming. "Yet they have a very glaring weakness, Luke. One that is absolutely fatal if you know how to exploit it."

She intentionally paused, letting the silence hang heavy between them until Luke started to sway over the edge of his fear again. Only when his eyes began to dart toward the horizon did she continue.