Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 153: Reody!

"Let me talk then," another Bulltor stepped forward, placing a steadying hand on Lanmar’s trembling shoulder.

"My apologies. Whenever Lanmar gets nervous and scared, he speaks as if there is no end to the stream of words coming from his mouth. But I can tell you the specifics of what we face."

"Then do it," John said, trying to recall this particular giant’s name and failing. He waved his hand, urging the warrior to continue.

"The first and unmistakable sign of their coming is the rise of those black clouds you see gathering on the horizon," Reody explained, his voice deep and resonant, a stark contrast to Lanmar’s frantic tone.

"Then comes the series of fierce ground tremors. The number of those quakes is crucial; they aren’t just random tremors. They determine exactly how many waves the Wrathers’ den will produce as a total before the den finally crumbles and vanishes from this place."

"The earthquakes were five in total," Ricky noted, quickly doing the math in his head. His voice carried a sudden, palpable sense of relief that made his shoulders drop. "So that means we only have to endure five waves? That’s it? That sounds like good news."

Reody, the name of that Bulltor, paused, a grim shadow passing over his features. He looked at Ricky with a pitying expression that quickly stifled the young man’s burgeoning hope. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"That is right, there will be five waves. Yet, let me be clear: that is not news worth celebrating. Our people told us that a Wrathers’ den can release anywhere from a single wave up to ten. Having five is considered..."

"Terrible news! It’s a death sentence!" Lanmar suddenly shouted, breaking free from the other giants’ grip to loom over Ricky. "This means each wave will carry a baseline of at least five thousand of these monsters! And the intensity doesn’t stay static—each wave increases exponentially compared to the one before it.

The fifth and final wave alone will consist of fifty thousand of those death reapers! We can’t stop this, John! Look at us! We are too few! We need to run, John, we need to run while the clouds are still forming!"

John was a hair’s breadth away from issuing a command to silence Lanmar permanently, his patience wearing thin as the pressure mounted. However, Reody stepped in again, patting Lanmar firmly on the shoulder and physically dragging him back a step.

"My apologies for his outbursts," Reody cleared his throat, looking genuinely embarrassed by his leader’s mental breakdown.

"Lanmar has a... A deep trauma when met with something he feared. Anyway, as he said, each wave will be significantly larger than the last. That final figure of fifty thousand is a terrifying reality we must face. Yet, believe it or not, the sheer numbers aren’t what make these monsters the stuff of legends..."

The Bulltors all instinctively looked toward the black sky. The clouds were churning now, swirling in motion, heading directly towards the base in a slow pace from all directions.

"When the sky is totally covered by those black clouds, a thunderstorm will erupt," Reody continued, "These monsters will be bathed under the lightning in the open air. They hit with a fierce might and use the lightning to create a shield that protects them from almost any normal attack."

"The lightning will power their bodies!" Lanmar yelled from the background, refusing to stay silent. "They’ll be moving like bolts of lightning through the ground, invincible and glowing with the wrath of the lightning!

My people in the controlled area after the pocket trials struggled hard every single time they met them, and they were veterans!

They had advanced weaponry, they controlled entire fortified areas, and they had ten times the support any of the races competing in this pocket shithole could ever dream of! Open your eyes, John! We don’t have a chance! Not a single one!"

"Sorry again," Reody sighed, motioning for two other giants to grab Lanmar by the arms and drag him further away.

"Was he always like that?" John asked, truly surprised. He had seen Lanmar act as a tough, reliable warrior for days. To see this side of him—this raw, hysterical panic—was a jarring shift.

"It seems he didn’t tell you the story of how we ended up in your territory to begin with," Reody said with a heavy sigh. "Lanmar was leading our scouting group when he bumped into a Hivemind team.

He panicked just like this, convinced a full invasion was imminent. He led us on a forced march North to escape a threat that wasn’t even chasing us, which is how we fell into that Fog Tide and eventually met you.

The truth is, Lanmar is a magnificent warrior in a fair fight, but he’s a bit of a crybaby when the odds turn impossible."

The revelation shed light on the mystery that had been bothering John since their first meeting. He had entertained theories about the Bulltors being elite scouts or perhaps lost explorers, but the reality was far simpler and weirder: their leader was prone to catastrophic mental meltdowns under pressure.

"As Lanmar mentioned," Reody got back on track, "the thunderstorm will power up and enforce these monsters beyond anything you can imagine. We have a strong base here, I can see that, but I’m honestly not sure if the cannons and towers will even be able to hurt them, let alone hunt them down, while they are bathed in that lightning."

"But lightning doesn’t hit all the time, right, Reody?" Elena asked, trying to find a weakness in the description. "There are gaps between the strikes. We can hit them then."

"Well, the lightning in this specific kind of thunderstorm hits before a strike would hit the monsters. Yes, they don’t come every second, but the gap between their arrival is narrow, less than a minute actually," Reody explained.

Finally, John committed the giant’s name to memory: Reody. "And the strange thing is, the bolts never hit anything else—not the ground, not the defences, not even us."