Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 321: Learning Valuable Lessons from the Bulltors’ Experience

"This is an insane plan!!"

Ricky’s exclamation was loud, but it was a cry of disbelief rather than rejection. John had been speaking, outlining the intricate layers of his vision, for almost half an hour straight.

During that time, his friends had remained deathly silent. No one moved to interrupt him; they were all too busy absorbing the sheer scale of his dauntless mind.

At its core, John’s plan was deceptively simple: they would weaponise the unique privilege of being the owners of the first and only human territory in the Source Code World.

John had meticulously constructed this strategy based on the information he had gathered from Lanmar and, more importantly, from Blakar.

Since John had effectively absorbed the four thousand Bulltors, he had spent his free time focused on extracting every detail regarding how their race had historically dealt with the reality of an apocalypse.

He had started by asking Blakar a simple, foundational question: When the first group of Bulltors successfully went through their pocket trial and entered the apocalyptic Source Code World, what was the reaction back on their home planet?

The answer had been a revelation. John had initially assumed the Bulltors would be a culture that naturally embraced the idea of a multiverse or the existence of other races. However, reality proved that they were just as insular as humans.

The Bulltors had believed they were the only intelligent life in the entire universe. When the first survivors returned from the pocket trial with tales of the horrors they faced, the monsters they fought, the different races they met, and the alien landscapes, the public dismissed them as lunatics or frauds. No one believed a single word they said.

It wasn’t until that first group managed to seize a territory for their own in the Source Code World that the paradigm shifted. When they returned to their home world, they brought back living proof: they were able to summon the race they had subjugated in their specific pocket trial, the Krogers.

Seeing a completely different sentient race with their own eyes spoke a thousand times louder than any tale or recorded video. The Bulltors finally had the undeniable proof they needed to believe in the apocalypse.

From that moment on, the entire race pivoted toward a single, obsessed goal: to become the apex race in the Source Code World.

According to Blakar, the group that first conquered the territory gained total control over the portal leading back to the pocket trial. They became the absolute arbiters of who could enter the new world.

They established fixed portals in strategic locations and placed heavy conditions on anyone wishing to pass through.

The Bulltors chose a path of elites; they nourished only the strongest, training their warriors for years and establishing brutal contests where only the absolute winners were granted passage into the Source Code World.

Blakar spoke at length about the immense privileges afforded to these first conquerors. They didn’t just gain territory; they changed the existing rules of their civilisation.

Old powers that had ruled for millennia perished in the transition; legendary families lost their glory overnight, and entirely new forces rose to fame. Even the balance of riches tilted, and the economic map changed.

Yet, the biggest winners remained the initial conquerors, at least, until a rival group discovered a dark secret of the apocalypse.

Ownership of the portals and the cleared territory was not a fixed inheritance!

The Source Code World was a realm of brutal meritocracy. Even if the Bulltors had established a harsh selection process for their elites, the World itself was far harsher.

The System recognised strength above all else; anyone capable of killing the current conquerors would instantly inherit the ownership of the portals and the territory in the new world.

This revelation had sparked a series of devastating civil wars on the Bulltor home world. The initial conquerors were eventually replaced by a succession of usurpers.

In the end, a group comprised of the strongest and most ruthless warriors took control of the portal and the final territory. They did something the others hadn’t: they stopped playing naively and started playing on their points of strength.

Blakar explained that they used the defensive towers from the Source Code World back through the portal to fortify their base in their home world. Per what Blakar described, it cost more power to activate these, but it was worth it.

The result was a fortress of nightmares. No one had managed to break through those defences since laid.

No one ever dared to challenge the ruling council again. Entire armies had broken themselves against the walls of that mighty base, incinerated by the same fire of the defensive towers that John currently commanded.

John realised then exactly why the Bulltors were so obsessed with towers. To them, those structures weren’t just weapons; they were the symbols of eternal rule. And it was this history that inspired John’s future path.

His plan was to mirror the Bulltors’ success while avoiding their failures, while keeping in mind the different power theatres inside the human race. They would take over the Azure Academy and use it as their hidden base of operations.

They would select a secret location within the academy’s vast grounds and fortify it to the core with everything they gained from the pocket trial.

He was totally confident in the strength of his defences; he knew that with the walls, the towers, the cannons, and traps, he could create a perimeter that nothing, human, Paragon, or machine, could breach.

Yet, John wasn’t so foolish as to rely on external forms of power alone. He could see why the initial Bulltor conquerors had died: they weren’t individually prepared for the sheer scale of the greed they provoked. Laying down defences was a necessity, but in the end, individual strength remained the ultimate insurance policy.

He didn’t believe the current rulers of the Bulltors’ territory were weak. To maintain their grip for such a long time, they needed to venture into the world, to enjoy the prestige of being the saviours of their race, and to handle different stuff and challenges of their Source Code World territory personally.

If they hadn’t been individually powerful enough to protect themselves outside of their towers, they would have fallen to an assassin’s blade long ago.