Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 255: Ricky-Elena and Cissel-Luke teams!

Luke and Ricky were powerful, but neither was a high-speed fighter. Cissel and Elena were lethal at range and very agile fighters, but they lacked the raw defensive power to hold a line if they were swarmed, nor the superior strength that the two boys had.

"This is the split," John declared. "Luke, you’ll be with Cissel. Your raw strength and high HP will provide the shield she needs to pick targets apart. Ricky, you’re with Elena. Your knowledge, strength, and multi-targeting ability will complement her long-range suppression. It’s the first time you’ll work in these pairs, but you have to make it work."

The group looked at each other, the new lineup of their partnerships settling in. It was a risky move, but logically sound.

"What about the Bulltors?" Ricky asked suddenly, his mind already jumping to the next phase. "Once you warn them, what will their role be? We can’t just have them sitting idle if the machines are flooding in from all sides."

"I’ll save them first," John said, while checking his map and zooming into the flickering icons of the Bulltors. He took a long glance to see how the frontline was progressing.

"Then I’ll distribute their forces over your teams, leaving enough of them back at their home base, our own, and the Hiveminds original base, just in case something unforeseen happened."

"So we can actually expect reinforcements," Cissel sighed, her shoulders dropping in a moment of genuine relief. "But even at top speed, coordinating with Blakar and moving those troops will take long hours, perhaps even a day or more, considering they will be moving in the middle of a hectic battlefield. We’ll be holding the line alone until then."

"We have to kill whatever comes out of these dens," Elena added, her voice hardening with resolve. She threw her sledgehammers in the air before catching them in natural moves.

"No matter what that program says, we are far stronger than we were when we arrived, and we have the advantage of the defences you’ve built. We just need to stay focused and play on our strengths, not theirs."

"That reminds me," Luke said suddenly, his brow furrowing as he looked at the walls surrounding them.

"We have these defences here, and we have them back at our home base and the Hiveminds. But we don’t have a single wall, tower, or super cannon in the other two southern territories. And I suppose the Bulltor home base is well fortified, but they have zero super cannons, right?"

He stopped there, letting the weight of his words settle. The logic seeped deeply into everyone’s minds. They couldn’t protect a territory they hadn’t fortified, and John couldn’t be everywhere at once to drop the outposts. John had already been chewing on this problem, and so he turned toward the only source that could offer a solution at this stage: the System.

’Tell me, how can I give the defensive structures I own to my friends? How can they own and deploy them as I do?’ he asked mentally. The answer came with the familiar chime.

[Ding! They need to bind the items the same way you do!]

[Ding! Give them the items with the intention of giving them away for the method to work!]

[Ding! 10 Mental Points have been deducted!]

John raised his eyebrows at the simplicity of the answer. To the others, he appeared to space out for a second before reaching into his storage device and pulling out a deactivated, weird-looking, pyramid-shaped, defensive tower. He handed it to Cissel, who looked at the object with a mixture of confusion and doubt.

"Cut your thumb and hold this thing with your bloodied hand for a few seconds," John commanded simply. His eyes were filled with the same anticipation as everyone else’s.

Cissel didn’t hesitate. She pricked her thumb using one of her daggers and pressed the red droplet against the cold metal of the pyramid. Instantly, a weird, translucent aura enveloped the item. It pulsed once, twice, and then vanished into thin air, absorbed into the defensive tower, signalling she owned it.

"Try to activate it," John said, nodding toward a clear area of ground near the walls. When she raised her head in puzzlement, he added, "Just think of the structure’s final form, then think of triggering the deployment with all of your intention and will."

*Fwoosh!*

The next moment, the air shimmered, and a massive, gleaming defensive tower materialised instantly. Seeing this made John heave an inward sigh of relief.

’And they call us the fallen race? Fck them all! We are the most superior race in the entire apocalypse!’ he thought with a silent, savage snort of pride.

He didn’t waste another second. He began pulling out tons of inactivated items, walls, towers, and traps, and distributed them among his friends.

"When you reach your designated territories, use these immediately and lay out outposts at regular intervals the same way I do," he paused, his voice turning grave as he finalised the meeting.

"Cissel and Luke will remain here to hold this first den. Ricky and Elena, you two will head to the south-eastern territory. Here, take these heavy cannons, the energy cells, and the generators with you."

He didn’t just give them the standard gear; he handed over the items he had personally enhanced. They followed Cissel’s example, binding the items with their blood. Within half an hour, the group was transformed.

They were all storing a grand loot of deadly military weapons in their storage devices, and broad smiles finally broke through their masks of tension. They could now wage wars on the same level as John, which made them feel more at ease even in such a situation.

"Come on, don’t smile like that," John joked, a small chuckle escaping him despite the dire circumstances. "We haven’t won this war just yet. Let’s save the laughing and the celebrations for when we finally clear this trial and own it."

Once the distribution was finished, John stood at the top of the walls. He turned his head, giving each of his friends a deep, lingering nod of respect and trust.

"Stay alive. Crush every machine that crawls out of those shitholes. And in case something emerges that you absolutely can’t handle... Don’t be heroes. Just run as fast as you can towards the fog. The machines’ sensors are blind inside that fog, and there you can easily escape, or hunt them down if you want to!"

Without waiting for a goodbye, John turned and began running. He pushed his body to its absolute limit, activating his Speed Lock regularly to tear through the landscape like a lightning bolt. He kept the dead cyborgs bundled on his shoulder, while his eyes never left the map, searching for the first sign of the machine tide.