Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 266: Gaining Six New Weapons!

The first thing John did was move toward the nearest wreck to replenish his Mental Points reserves. He reached out and touched a broken piece of a flying drone.

"Just wow! A single touch and my Mental Points returned to full max."

Moving through the wreckage of the fifty drones, he felt a surge of security. With these many batteries scattered across the battlefield, his Mental Points would never run dry for the duration of this skirmish.

Then, he began the real work: hacking the storage programs embedded in every fallen unit.

"This is what I call a good harvest, hahaha!"

After half an hour of frantic hacking, John had finished stripping everything Mark had sent with this wing. The standard haul was impressive enough: tons of reinforced walls, defensive towers, plasma cannons, energy cells, and generators. But the new stuff he found there made John’s breath hitch.

[Laser Cannon: Basic!]

[Description: A high-precision, fierce cannon that can launch two laser bolts at the same time. Designed specifically to track and neutralise high-altitude flying targets.]

[Anti-Air Trap: Basic!]

[Description: A proximity-based trap that, once activated, launches itself into the upper atmosphere. It can hover for a full hour, automatically engaging and destroying any hostile flying entity within its detection range.]

[Flying Grenade: Basic!]

[Description: A throwable explosive that locks into a hover state 100 meters above the ground. It patrols a 50-meter radius, detonating on contact to create a globular explosion that persists for 10 seconds, melting anything caught within.]

"The girls will go nuts over these grenades, hehehe!" John was in a fantastic mood. These weapons were the perfect answer to the aerial advantage Mark was trying to establish. Even in their basic form, they were enough to help in the upcoming, fierce battles against the flying drones.

He pulled up his map, checking the progress of the ground forces. The D-1000s and S-1000s were nearly finished with the fortifications around the den. "I’ll have to lay down more outposts first," he decided, "then I’ll see what I can do with these items once I’ve personally enhanced them."

The haul was massive: he had gained nearly a thousand of each specialised item, averaging twenty per flying drone. While it seemed like a modest gain now, John knew the growth curve of the den waves. By the time they reached the later waves, he would be swimming in hundreds of thousands of each item.

"Mark is a really generous son of a btch, hahaha!"

As he worked, John started filling the northern sector of the territory with a dense grid of his own outposts. By the time the two hundred and fifty ground units finally marched out from their newly built fort, John was ready.

The D-1000s were mere fodder; he didn’t even acknowledge them. His focus was entirely on the S-1000, more specifically, their plasma cannons. He kept a close eye on them, watching how they fought against his defences.

"Their cannons are good, but they’re limited by a narrow firing arc, and the explosive yield is lower to accommodate the smaller frame," he noted.

After watching the initial clash against his outposts, John confirmed they were barely enough to scratch his reinforced walls. Once he had seen everything they had to offer, he decided to end the experiment. He moved through their ranks like a reaper, dropping a few Logic Bombs that devastated the remaining machine units.

Then he began hacking and looting everything they carried inside their storage programs. And there, he found a few new items he had never seen before that made him chuckle.

[Sensory Detector System: Basic!]

[Description: A ground-based detection array that operates by linking independent sensor anchors to a central control unit.]

[Capacity: Maximum 100 anchors.]

[Feature: Directly integrated with high-decibel warning sirens.]

[Sensory Aerial Detector System: Basic!]

[Description: A specialised detection grid for high-altitude units. It utilises flying anchors linked to a central control unit.]

[Capacity: Maximum 50 anchors.]

[Feature: Integrated with early-warning sirens.]

[Mobile Cannons: Basic!]

[Description: A heavy-duty mobile, heavily reinforced cart, mounted on ten wheels. It can manoeuvre freely within a 2-kilometre radius of its central control unit to intercept threats.]

John analysed the new toys Mark had gifted him. The detectors were a masterpiece of an early-warning system. By placing the ground anchors, each covering a hundred-meter radius, he could create an invisible tripwire across an entire territory.

The aerial anchors were even more impressive; they looked like small mechanical ladybugs that hovered at various altitudes, patrolling a two-hundred-meter sphere. With these, no flying drone could ever hope to surprise his outposts again.

But the real prize, the crown jewel of this harvest, was the Mobile Cannons. These were massive carts, twenty meters in length and width, built with a heavy, threatening silhouette. Each was designed to carry a small number of cannons, walls, and towers.

He found a dedicated energy cell at a heavily fortified drawer, aiming to power up the cart and any defensive structure above.

Unlike his static defences, these could reposition themselves to meet a flanking manoeuvre or be used to patrol the perimeter at night, safeguarding from any potential threats.

John knew this was just the beginning. He had gained twenty of each item from every single unit destroyed in the vanguard, and this was only the first wave. He hadn’t even begun to dive into their source code or apply his unique enhancements.

The hoard of cores resting in his inventory suddenly felt more valuable than ever. He even entertained the idea of triggering another Wrathers and the yellow monsters’ dens in a neutral territory, just to farm the precious cores needed to fully upgrade this new arsenal.

"The second wave is here," John muttered, raising his head as he spotted the new red dots at the den location on his map. One hundred red dots were screaming out from the den, moving with aggressive speed towards his spot.

"It seems I won’t get a proper moment of rest until the truly massive waves arrive. I’ll have to wait for the Bulltors reinforcements to catch up before I make my move to seize the den itself."