Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 311: The Sixth Den Machines

"He is indeed quite rash and domineering!"

Cissel’s voice carried a mix of exasperation and awe as she watched the distance where John was carving his path.

She had spent hours attempting to break through the suffocating encirclement that had closed in behind him, but the machine density in this twelfth territory was unlike anything they had faced in the previous territories.

Just as she began to feel the weight of the stalemate, her friends and the Bulltors started to gather.

She hadn’t realised how much time she spent in her frantic struggle until everyone arrived. She knew Luke and Elena had been left far to the south and should have taken more than half a day to cross the distance, yet here they were, spurred by John’s emergency summons. Even with their arrival, the path to John remained a solid wall of shifting, grinding steel.

"Don’t worry about him," Luke said, stepping up beside Elena and clapping a hand on her shoulder to steady her visible nerves. "He is going to be fine. He is my big bro, and nothing can harm him at all! He’s probably enjoying the fight."

"Tsk."

From the side, Ricky stood with his arms crossed, his face a mask of irritation. He was still feeling the sting of his last quarrel with Cissel, the words they had exchanged about their identities still echoed in his mind like a persistent headache.

When the word had reached him that the final den was located, he had run toward it to help. Watching John handle the crisis single-handedly without waiting for their help made his bitter feelings resurface.

"What?" Cissel turned her head, glaring at Ricky in a heavy silence that practically commanded him to behave.

"Nothing," Ricky muttered, swallowing another mouthful of bitterness as he looked away from her piercing gaze. "It’s just that we can’t help him by standing out here like spectators."

"That’s what I have been doing all this time, genius!" Cissel rolled her eyes, her daggers spinning in a nervous, rapid motion. "Can’t you see? Every time I break through a layer of those bastards, more machines jump in and refill the gap instantly. It’s like trying to punch a hole in water."

"That was because you were alone," Ricky said, his tone shifting into a challenging tone. "Now we are all here. We shall lay out every single defence we have in our inventories and attack with everything we’ve got."

He didn’t bother waiting for her reaction, merely raising one eyebrow as if inviting her to try and find a flaw in his logic. He turned his attention to the Bulltors and then toward Luke and Elena.

"Let’s spread out," Ricky commanded, taking the lead by habit in John’s absence. "Let’s lay down the strongest and biggest base we have ever made in this trial! The Bulltors will fan out and intercept any machine squads coming to interrupt us. Once the perimeter is solidified, we all attack the centre together."

As the orders were disseminated, Luke moved to lay out the heavy defences with Elena, while Cissel and Ricky pointedly moved in opposite directions to manage their respective flanks. Seeing the icy distance between the two, Elena paused her deployment and whispered to Luke.

"Is it just me, or is there even more tension between those two today? It feels like the air is going to snap."

"Don’t ask me," Luke replied, his brow furrowed as he watched Ricky. "I feel like a bomb is going to drop next between these two. I just hope they are intelligent and responsible enough not to snap at each other before we finish this trial."

Elena sighed, taking a broader look at the two figures moving further away from one another. "I feel like things won’t get solved easily. Not unless he intervenes and meddles between them. John is the only one they both actually listen to."

Luke let out a long, weary sigh of his own before turning his gaze toward the heart of the territory. "I just hope he is doing all right deep in there. I know this is the last stretch to end this trial, but this battle seems too much to handle alone, even for him."

Luke could feel the sheer pressure of the machine swarm even from the safety of their nascent spot. Yet, for John, the situation was far more controllable than it appeared. Armed with his abilities, he was simply walking forward, his blade a blur of light, slashing right and left. Thousands of attacks landed against him, yet they left not a single scratch behind.

As he pushed deeper into the heart of the territory, he kept looking for the location of the sixth den. After half a day, he finally encountered something different. A new breed of machines began to appear. At first glance, they were huge, towering monstrosities that dwarfed the D-1000s, yet they seemed strangely sluggish and weak, posing very little threat as he approached.

When he got closer, however, he pinpointed the reason behind their weird behaviour and the lack of evolution in the rest of the den.

"Mark wanted to give these machines time to consume the weaker versions," John whispered, an appreciative glint in his eyes. He watched as the giant D-1000s, the thruster S-1000s, and the metallic wasps were being harvested and absorbed by these far larger, more dangerous-looking machines.

John was sure these behemoths were now in their weakest moments. Given more time, and if they absorbed enough energy to operate fully, then even he wouldn’t be enough to stop them. And yet there was a dilemma.

Thinking back to the incredible loot he had gained from the high-grade machines, John couldn’t help but let an evil smirk cross his face.

"If you want to send me such a precious gift, Mark, how can I possibly say no?"

As the reality of the situation solidified in his mind, John shifted his attention away from the fodders to the real deal. He assaulted the mechanical behemoths, though he quickly discovered that devastating their large, heavily reinforced bodies took significantly longer than usual.