Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 271: Setting a Kill Zone Around the Den
John retreated several kilometres away from the den, finding a suitable distance away from the den to lay down his defences. Then, he began the work. He started by laying down a thick layer of walls, followed by a layer of defensive towers. He repeated this process for a full hour without even taking a single moment of rest.
Once the skeleton of the fortress was set, he began to fill the battlements with his upgraded arsenal. He placed super cannons and big laser cannons in overlapping fields of fire, ensuring there wasn’t a single square meter of the den that wasn’t covered.
High above, he threw the big anti-air traps into the sky, watching as they ascended and locked into their hovering patrol patterns. Having worked for hours on these enhancements, he had thousands of these evolved units ready for deployment. Now was the time for the ultimate field test.
On top of that, he took out two hundred mobile fortresses. These were the real! Every single one of these behemoths was three hundred meters in length and one hundred meters in width.
They moved on massive, reinforced wheels that lifted the entire armoured deck twenty meters into the air, allowing them to roll right over smaller obstacles and debris. John retreated several kilometres to give these giants the space they needed to operate freely without colliding.
The fortresses were largely empty, save for four high pillars at the corners that ended in weird-looking gems. John noted that these gems were a distinct purple-golden colour. He guessed this was a mutation, a direct result of the cores he had used to enhance the initial mobile cannons.
He started by lining the outer border of the decks with double-layered walls, then he started to fill the rest of the deck with towers. On top of the walls, he placed the two different types of cannons, ending up making a master-killer piece, a weapon of mass slaughter.
As he deployed the two hundred mobile fortresses, he distributed them strategically. He placed ten at each of the major wall intersections he had designed, with another ten patrolling the outer perimeter to intercept the incoming waves before they could even reach the walls.
He finished the layout by adding secondary walls at the outer side of the encirclement, layering them two deep and mounting additional laser cannons on top.
When he finally stepped back to look at his creation, he saw a killer zone; he had never made something like it before. The mobile fortresses moved at a slow, relentless pace, their massive wheels grinding the soil as they maintained a regular patrol around the den.
John looked at all this in pride, a sign of his overall growth in this pocket trial, with an evil grin stretched across his face.
"The Big Sensory systems will be a good addition to all this," he whispered. He put the final touches on the kill zone by scattering hundreds of ground sensors around the den’s entrance and launching the aerial versions into the sky above it.
Everything was now linked. Any machine that stepped out of the den would be instantly detected, tracked, and targeted by a thousand guns before it would even make a single move.
With the trap set, John turned around and dashed as fast as he could. He used his Speed Lock in rapid succession, his body becoming a streak of afterimages as he headed back toward the river where the Bulltors were finishing their fight.
"Phew! That was a close one!" Blakar gasped, leaning heavily on his weapon. He had just finished the gruelling task of killing the final machine ground units, a process that had taken six agonising hours. His muscles were screaming.
They kept running in the fog for hours, then ended up joining the fray without a single moment of rest. Yet, before he could even rest his back against the walls of the outpost, he spotted a bolt of lightning tearing across the plain toward him.
Seeing John running in such a frantic, high-speed manner gave the Bulltor leader a near heart attack. He assumed a new, even more terrifying threat was hot on John’s heels.
And yet, when John skidded to a halt and explained what he had come for, Blakar could only stare in a mix of exhaustion and awe. He wondered, not for the first time: When would this man ever take a moment of rest?!!!
"Listen up!" Blakar shouted to the Bulltors’ army, his voice booming across the exhausted ranks even before John could take another step away.
"We are going to mobilise immediately! We’re moving toward a strong encirclement around the den. Follow John and run as fast as you can! Eat and drink while you move, do not stop! Tonight, if we survive this march, I’ll cook us a feast of Blue Terakos meat from the northern bank!"
John heard the promise of a hot meal and couldn’t help but wonder if Blakar’s culinary skills were a byproduct of spending so much time around Elena, or if the warrior was actually a natural chef. Regardless, he didn’t have time to dwell on food. He recharged his Mental Points by touching a shattered drone from the vicinity, then began the return dash.
*Rumble!* *Rumble!* *Rumble!*
Minutes after he had led the Bulltors away from the river, a series of earth-shattering noises and massive explosions erupted from the direction of the den. The ground beneath their feet shook with the violence of the attacks. Without stopping, John opened his map to see what was happening.
A massive smile broke across his face as he looked at the den.
"This... This is a complete overkill!!"
In front of him, the defences he had meticulously layered started a barrage of deadly attacks over the heads of the machines the moment they appeared.
John was usually too busy handling lots of tasks at the frontline or the intricacies of enhancing the new weapons to witness exactly how the machines appeared from the den during the later, more chaotic waves.
In the early stages, the machines would all appear simultaneously within the den, yet the spawning rules seemed to shift the moment the wave count crossed the fifth threshold.
