Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 149: A Race Against Time!

The words seemed to strike Lanmar like lightning, sticking the rest of his words in his throat. He opened his mouth to argue, but as he recalled how long it had taken him to accept the reality of John’s powers and the machines’ bizarre existence, his rage began to drain away, replaced by a hollow sense of helplessness.

"Anyway," John continued, returning to his work, "I’m fairly certain the machines don’t have enough numbers yet to completely wipe out your people in a single blow. But I’m sure they’ll do enough damage to weaken your defences."

"Then we have to..."

"Did you forget how the Mechanical Hivemind race operates?" John interrupted him again, his voice firm. "I told you before: they are cowards in the traditional sense. They use dirty methods to weaken their enemies from the shadows. They’ll poison the water, sabotage the defensive bases, and pick off the weak. They never go into a full frontal confrontation."

"Yes, but still..." Lanmar’s jaw tightened, his ivory teeth gritting together with an audible crunch of bone and frustration. "If things are as you say, they have no chance at winning this trial at all! My people will be walking into a slaughterhouse without even knowing who the butcher is!"

John looked at Lanmar, his expression neutral, almost surprised by the Bulltor’s line of reasoning. "Who said anyone else but us ever had a chance?" John asked plainly. He didn’t say it to be cruel, but as a matter of objective fact. "Lanmar, look around. No matter what happens out there, this trial pocket is ours."

Lanmar’s gaze shifted, moving slowly between John and his friends. He saw no hesitation in their eyes, only a quiet, ironclad confidence that felt almost alien.

He looked past them, watching the previously open area that had transformed into a looming fortress of steel, defensive towers, and a deadly upcoming maze. The sheer scale of what they had prepared in such a short time was staggering. Finally, the big man let out a long, defeated sigh.

"That’s why..." he paused, lowering his massive head as if he despised himself for the admission. "That’s why you never bothered to ask me about my people’s fighting styles or their military tactics. You knew... You knew from the very start that they had no chance at all in this pocket trial. That’s why your focus has been solely and entirely on those mechanical bastards."

John remained silent. He didn’t feel the need to justify anything. He had partially guessed the real face of the Mechanical Hivemind’s strategy from the moment he spoke with Lanmar for the first time.

Even if the Bulltors were strong enough to eventually crush the machines with their power, they would pay a price so hefty it would leave them broken. They wouldn’t understand the nuance of the attack; they would be confused, just as John had been initially, about where the strike was truly coming from.

In John’s mind, the outcome was already being simulated. He could see the Bulltors, driven by rage and grief, throwing everything they had left into a vengeful counter-attack against the nearest visible enemy—the beasts and insects—only to suffer a crushing defeat and total annihilation at the hands of the Mechanical Hivemind’s ready forces.

It was why the system had likely placed a one-week limit on this quest. If there were a chance for a long, drawn-out war, if there were enough wise leaders among the Bulltors to see the trap, the quest duration would have been much longer.

The short timeframe for his quest was a testament to the impending carnage, for how limited time he really had to conquer the entire pocket trial, or the Mechanical Hivemind would win it instead.

"It’s done!" John announced, standing up and stretching his stiff limbs.

He had spent the remainder of the day and the better part of the night finalising the cannons. He had even pushed through the early morning hours, fueled by adrenaline, to prepare the main killer weapon that would change everything in his eyes.

Once the heavy hitters were finished, he moved on to the smaller motors and sensors, crafting anti-personnel guns until he had exhausted every last scrap of material in his inventory. Yet he decided to keep these smaller guns for a later time, after ending the current quest.

"I can’t wait to see the entire base walls armed with these things," Luke said, following closely behind John. The rest of the group trailed after them as well. It wasn’t because they were idle—everyone had their own tasks—but John had specifically asked them to tag along for the final deployment phase.

They all stood on the inner side of the massive walls. From this vantage point, looking up at the sheer height and thickness of the fortifications, a profound sense of security settled over John’s friends.

"It’ll need a huge army just to think about taking these walls down," Elena remarked, her eyes sparkling with a mix of awe and relief.

She watched as John began a strange ritual: he would take out a cannon, leave it for a second, then recall it, only to repeat the process a few feet away, while changing his body posture every time. "What is he doing now? Is he second-guessing the placement?"

"Never mind him," Cissel said with a weary sigh, though there was a hint of a smile on her face. "He did the same thing with the wall segments yesterday, and we ended up covering miles of distance in record time. Just let him calibrate and test."

The group began trading theories about John’s funny behaviour, trying to figure out the logic behind the flickering movements. It was Ricky who finally cracked the secret once Lanmar had hoisted John onto the top of the walls.

"He’s testing the spawn-point physics," Ricky said, his eyes shining with realisation. "He’s finding the exact body orientation that lets him land the cannons on the precise right spots on the walls without having to manually shift and edit their posture."