Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 158: The Weaker Wrathers Theory!

"Give them hell, baby!"

Away from John, his friends were watching the ongoing fight between the cannons, defensive towers, and the Wrathers with excitement. The first time a Fog Wrather had actually appeared on the horizon, the entire team had been momentarily paralysed. The sight of those massive, skinless giants was enough to freeze the blood in anyone’s veins.

Unlike what they all expected, when the sky was covered totally with black clouds, it didn’t go entirely dark. They could see well enough as if it were twilight in the world.

They had been positioned far to the west, separated by a distance that made it impossible to realise the sheer intensity of the initial clash happening at the northern perimeter.

Yet, when the Wrathers got separated into groups, and one took the longest part around the base, they finally experienced what fighting against the Wrathers was like!

They saw how the cannons and the sleek defensive towers rained fire relentlessly over the monsters, and then the dread was replaced by awe. The earth-shattering screams that erupted from the Wrathers as they were torn apart echoed across the base, prompting the team to ask the Bulltors to carry them to the top of the walls.

For safety, they climbed the massive wall structure tucked behind the reinforced closed gate nearest to their location. From that vantage point, it wasn’t just the humans who were stunned; even the Bulltors, including the usually Lanmar and Reody, were taken aback.

They stood on the walls, staring down at the carnage with wide eyes. The defences John had laid down were working with a fierce effectiveness that defied all their shared information from the Bulltors.

"Shush, Luke," Elena whispered urgently, her eyes darting toward the horizon. "Did you forget already? They are attracted by the noise! You’re going to bring them right to our section of the wall!"

"Didn’t you hear Reody? He said once they’ve fixed on a target, they won’t get distracted by anything else!" Luke didn’t give Elena’s warning any heed. He was buzzing with boundless excitement, his hands gripped tight on the edge of the wall. He kept shouting and screaming every single time a Wrather was shot dead, his voice cracking with a mixture of shock and triumph.

"I can’t believe it!" The most shocked of all was Lanmar. The massive giant actually had to rub his eyes multiple times, as if he expected the scene to vanish like a mirage. "How come these towers and cannons can kill them so easily? I’ve heard stories... The races in the Source Code World have struggled for hours against a single wave! This is impossible!"

"Perhaps they are a weaker version than the real ones?" Ricky suggested, trying to apply some form of grounded logic to the scene. "Maybe they were scaled weaker to fit the pocket trial?"

What he said made perfect sense to everyone. It was the only way to reconcile the myths of the death reapers with the reality of the smoking heaps of flesh piling up outside their walls.

"Luckily, we have John on our side," Cissel said slowly, her voice calm. She moved her eyes across the carnage below, then looked toward the far distance where a tsunami of lightning and explosions perpetually lit the sky. The northern front was still a literal wall of fire. "If not for him, we wouldn’t have ended up with any of this. We’d be dead in the mud by now."

"That’s a fact," Luke paused, his chest heaving as he caught his breath. He turned back toward the incoming monsters from a distance and cupped his hands around his mouth. "This is all thanks to John, you bastards!"

Everyone gave him a silent, knowing look. They didn’t scold him for the outburst. They knew he was like all of them, carrying an immense, crushing weight of worry and stress ever since the earthquakes began.

Seeing their boogeymen getting slaughtered in such a way allowed them to breathe for the first time in hours. It felt like Luke had to shout and scream to vent the frustration and sheer terror he’d been suppressing.

"See the lightning? It rains just before an attack lands on them," Elena pointed with a trembling finger. "It’s like the black clouds are trying to stop the attacks."

"It’s no use! Lightning or not, it’s no use, hahaha!" Luke screamed again. Gradually, his silly comments and constant shouts began to press on everyone’s nerves, but they let it go. The relief was too intoxicating to ruin with an argument.

Fortunately for them, the group of Wrathers that passed through the western side was relatively small. They moved with high speed till they got attacked, then they died even faster.

Within half an hour, the world around their section of the wall ushered in a heavy, ringing silence, negated only by the fierce explosions still rocking the opposite side of the base, and a few attacks that came from the wall defences every time a group of monsters passed through this place.

"The battle there is still hot," Cissel noted, her eyes narrowing as she peered through the haze. She shifted her gaze toward the South, toward the thick, roiling fog where John had disappeared. "Will he be alright? He’s out there alone."

"Don’t worry this much about big bro," Luke laughed, waving a dismissive hand. "He is a man like no equal! And he said it many times already, there is nothing in this world that can threaten him! So... How about we move to the other side and watch the rest of this battle?"

Luke didn’t even wait for a consensus. He hopped toward the nearest Bulltor and asked to be taken down. "I’m going anyway! I want a front-row seat!"

"It’s a good chance to check on the damage that happened at the other side," Ricky shrugged, not admitting he wanted to go there to satisfy his curiosity about how the northern section handled the heavy blow of the entire wave.