Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 164: Ricky and Cissel Join the Fray!
"Get ready!"
The moment the sixth wave ended, Ricky’s voice tore through the ringing silence, alerting everyone. The last wave had been more than just a skirmish; it was a gruelling test that pushed their base defences to the absolute brink.
The sheer, suffocating number of monsters had been overwhelming, a yellowish sea of flesh that pressed against a large section of the base walls. For one hour straight, the silver-barreled cannons and sleek defensive towers had roared without pause, as they unleashed death into the swarm.
During the height of that sixth wave, a crisis had emerged: the cannons that had been firing continuously since the very first encounter finally hit their limit. One by one, they ran out of juice and stopped firing.
Cissel had screamed for Elena, who was already positioned by a large number of energy cells. With two Bulltors providing the heavy lifting, Elena worked as fast as she could, replacing the exhausted energy cells with fresh, fully charged units. Only then did the cannons thrum back to life, returning to the chorus of destruction.
Despite moving fast, despite being prepared, she still wasted precious minutes in doing so. During the high-intense battle unfolding outside the walls, this window allowed the yellow monsters to gather more around the walls, prolonged the ongoing fight and threatened the base for real for the first time ever! All the monsters got pushed back later by the reignited cannons, but they wasted more time than expected to clear the entire sixth wave.
As the dust settled, another worry gnawed at them. Luke, who had left over two hours ago with a detachment of Bulltors to collect the Blue Serpentile branches for a raft, had not yet returned. No one knew what was happening at his end. They could only hope the group hadn’t stumbled into astray group of monsters or something even worse.
By the end of the sixth wave, the grim reality was clear to everyone: it was time to join the fray. The next wave was destined to be double the size of the last. It was expected to cover an even larger area than all previous waves combined. It was expected for more cannons to stop firing, and more dangers to loom around them.
The maintenance of the exhausted cannons was the final nail in the coffin. Replacing energy cells was a task that took several minutes, even with the strength of giants helping to replace the heavy cells. Elena had taken over fifteen minutes just to service ten cannons.
When they looked at the hundreds of cannons encircling the northern side of the base, the ones that kept firing since the first Wrather monster appeared till now, they realised the inevitable truth. They wouldn’t make it through the next wave even if every single person moved down to help her.
The only way forward was to go down there and engage the monsters directly to thin the herd, buy more time for Elena to do her task. And that was exactly what they did.
"Remember," Ricky shouted, drawing both of his swords, prepared to go all out from the get-go.
"These monsters have the advantage of numbers, but individually, they aren’t that strong! We all saw how many of them were killed just by the aftershock of the plasma shots! Stick together, watch each other’s backs, and most importantly, stay away from the line of fire of our own cannons and towers!"
The defences were a double-edged sword now. While they knew John had registered their voices and appearances into the cannons, no one was suicidal enough to test that on a chaotic, high-stakes battlefield.
On top of that, if the cannons detected them and stopped firing in their vicinity to avoid friendly fire, they would inadvertently create a safe zone for the monsters, crippling the base’s defensive capabilities.
They decided on a flanking manoeuvre: they would run toward an area far behind the underwater bridge, wait for the yellow swarm to spread itself thin against the walls, and then move in to strike the monsters from behind.
As they began their descent, the sky groaned. A thick, violent pillar of lightning slammed into the yellow ball at the den once again.
"Keep running!" Ricky and Cissel urged. They were being carried on the broad shoulders of the Bulltors, crossing massive distances in the few minutes of grace they had. "Stop! We are safe here!" Ricky finally gave the order, and the giants skidded to a halt.
"We need to keep running, fools! We’re sitting ducks!" Lanmar gritted his ivory teeth, his massive frame trembling with a mix of adrenaline and lingering cowardice that looked almost comical on someone so large. With a single, icy glance, Cissel silenced him, making him squeeze the handle of his golden glaive in frustrated silence.
The Bulltors had sent a runner to retrieve their heavy war-shields and weapons from the base while they waited for the right moment to strike. As they stood in a distance from the base walls, all eyes turned to Ricky. By unspoken agreement, he was now their acting leader.
"Wait... Hold..." he whispered, his eyes fixed on the riverbank. Even as the insane tide of monsters flashed across the water and slammed with a sickening thud against the base walls, he didn’t budge. "Hold... Get ready... Move!"
When the swarm had finally fully committed to the walls and began to thin out in the rear, Ricky gave the command. Two humans and six Bulltors moved in a single, unified surge, heading toward their foes with determination.
The Bulltors were the first to clash with the yellowish tide. Thanks to their massive strides and higher speed, they reached the monsters’ backlines far faster than the two humans. They hit the rear of the swarm like a landslide, their heavy weapons crushing the skinless monsters by the dozens.
"They are terribly weak! It’s like hitting wet clay!" Reody commented, swinging his massive broadsword in a wide horizontal arc that cleared a ten-meter radius.
