Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 289: The Situation Escalated at Ricky’s and Elena’s Front

"We can’t keep going on like this! Where the fck is John?!!"

Last night, Ricky had been sleeping peacefully when he was jolted awake all of a sudden. When he had finally lain down, he was beyond exhausted, his muscles aching from the hectic fights he had lived through.

However, at that time, the situation in the territory had seemed well under the control of his two primary fortresses and the stationed five hundred Bulltor.

Just a couple of hours after he had drifted off, the next wave of the machines had erupted at last. The Bulltors needed to work that hard to lure the mechanical tide toward the two fortresses. Even with their massive frames and numerical advantage, it was obvious they were struggling to replicate the results of the two humans.

Even if they possessed incredibly strong and large bodies, they weren’t an agile race. Bulltors were built for the crushing weight of close-quarters confrontation, not the delicate, high-speed luring and kiting warfare that the current situation demanded. They tried to compensate for their lack of finesse with large numbers, but the friction was starting to show.

The intermittent roar of the defence systems, firing in rhythmic bursts to thin the machine ranks, had been like distant background music to Ricky’s ears. But the melody of the battle changed fundamentally a few hours later when the true weight of the night fell.

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

The noise of the explosions and the constant, ear-deafening roar of the fortress defences became a continuous, noisy chorus. The vibrations travelled through the ground, shaking Ricky’s body and pushing him out of his peaceful sleep. He jolted to his feet, his heart hard, feeling extremely enraged by such a lousy act of the Bulltors.

The first thing he thought of was that the Bulltors were slacking! He thought they lured lots of machines over, and hid behind the fortress walls, letting the defences do all the work for them. He recalled Lanmar and how cowardly and soft boned that giant was, and couldn’t help but fume in rage.

"What the heck is going on here?!!"

The moment he scrambled out of his tent and headed toward the nearby ramparts, he found Elena already standing there. She had chosen to sleep closer to the walls, making her the first to have her rest disturbed by the escalating violence.

The two exchanged grim, disturbed glances as they looked out over a world covered in dense explosions and the fierce, orange glow of the fortress towers and heavy cannons.

The machines weren’t just attacking; they were moving in a coordinated migration. A grand, staggering number of units filled the distant fog, marching and running with a singular purpose. They weren’t trying to siege the fortresses anymore; they were trying to bypass them, heading from the southern territory and streaming toward the north.

Seeing this, John threw away all the false ideas he had in his mind. This couldn’t be the work of the Bulltors; this was something even grander and more evil behind this situation. And he knew the root cause of all this just from the first moment his eyes fell upon this scene.

"They are going for John," Ricky said, stating the grim truth that hung in the air. "We can’t let them bypass us! I don’t know what the situation is up there, but adding this horde to his troubles will only delay his arrival here."

"We can’t risk that," Elena shouted over the roar of a nearby cluster of cannons. "We can’t let them strangle him. The next waves will be even deadlier tomorrow, and we absolutely cannot hold this territory on our own if he’s delayed."

Ricky nodded slowly in agreement with her words. Even if his ego was hurt massively by admitting this, without John, he couldn’t do anything at all to salvage the situation. The current wave was already crossing a threshold of over a million strong machine units.

If they allowed this force to converge on John, it would mean he would be delayed for at least a full day, if not more, while he cleared his path. That delay would leave Ricky and Elena facing the subsequent wave alone, a wave that would likely consist of at least two million units.

Just thinking about that number made Ricky’s scalp go numb. The weight of two million machine army was enough to crush any hope they had. "They are just moving out now, so we still have a window of time," he said firmly, his mind settling on a desperate course of action.

"What shall we do?" Elena didn’t flinch. She stepped closer to Ricky, her eyes reflecting the fire from the horizon as she waited for his proposal.

"We’ll build more fortresses with everything we have," Ricky finally said. It was a massive gamble.

"We still have a stockpile of walls, towers, and cannons. And we have the new high-tier weapons John provided us with, the Bulltors he sent. I suppose we can build a dozen more of these fortresses, but we won’t have any left for any disastrous situation that may happen..."

"I know," she said, rolling her eyes with a touch of her usual sarcasm, though her voice lacked its typical bite. "But can’t you see the ground? The machines have already completely covered the area surrounding our two main fortresses. We’re pinned."

"We’ll open a path using our grenades," Ricky replied. He knew the grenades were precious, irreplaceable items, but this was exactly the kind of break glass in case of emergency they had saved them for. "Let’s use the purple grenades. We clear a path to the rear, and we lay down the new fortresses there."

"The back? Won’t we move sideways to extend the line?!" Elena had assumed Ricky would propose expanding the current horizontal wall between the two existing fortresses, but he clearly had a different tactical vision.

"We can’t do it sideways, even with the grenades," he said, casting his eyes towards the distance where the machines were so dense they formed a tsunami wave.