Athanasia: My Hacker System

"The sky, look at the dancing lights up there!"

John led his friends back toward the massive hill they had ascended earlier. On their initial trek toward the Dragon zone, they had taken over two hours, moving with caution and curiosity.

Now, fueled by the urgency of John’s command and the chilling retreat of the Draconic race members, they crossed that same distance in less than thirty minutes.

John resisted the urge to push his body to its absolute limits. He knew he could outrun the wind if he used his top speed, but he couldn’t leave his friends behind, not when an unknown threat was closing in. Once they reached the plateau of the hill, he didn’t waste a second.

"Lay out the defences, secure the perimeter!" he barked. "Walls, towers, cannons, turn this height into a fortress!"

Because he still lacked the Mana gemstones Goven had mentioned, John kept his truly elite defences in reserve. He didn’t want to overextend his best assets before he knew what he was facing.

The result was a modest fortification: walls barely ten meters high and towers that stood at thirty meters, while the cannons looked more like oversized field guns than the legendary artillery of the trial.

Just as the last turret clicked into place and the group caught their breath, Elena’s arm shot out, pointing toward the western horizon. She wasn’t pointing at the ground where the Dragon dome was far away, but high into the velvet sky.

There, emerging from the vibrant streaks of the aurora, the Pirates came.

"Damn! I thought that Dragon girl was being over exaggerating when she called them pirates," John muttered, his knuckles whitening as he clenched the hilt of his sword.

The sight was a surreal nightmare. Descending through the clouds was a fleet of tens of massive vessels. Their hulls were forged from a shimmering, silver metal that gleamed like polished steel under the starlight.

Despite the futuristic material, the silhouettes of the ships were hauntingly familiar; they were designed exactly like the seventeenth-century wooden ships of Earth’s history.

The biggest ships were Galleons, which boasted four distinct decks, five towering masts, and a forest of sails. However, the sails weren’t white linen; they were a void-like, abyssal black that seemed to swallow the light of the aurora.

Rows of heavy cannons poked through the portholes along the silver hulls. What struck fear into the group wasn’t just the sheer number of ships, but their altitude. They were cruising at a height that looked down upon the hill, casting long, gloomy shadows over the landscape.

"How are we even supposed to hit those?!" Ricky asked, his voice low and tight. He turned to John, his eyes searching for an idea to attack faraway ships that didn’t seem to exist. "Should we keep running? If we head for the distant forest we passed by a few hours ago, maybe we can lose them in the canopy."

"Running isn’t an option," John replied, his gaze locked on the lead Galleon ship. "We have no covering whatsoever till we reach that forest. They’ll spot us easily. And we’re twenty hours from our zone’s protective bubble.

They’d pick us off in the open long before we reached the Great Wall. Besides, we came out here for a reason. We need to see how the powers of this world fare against our tech, our abilities, and our way of fighting."

"But John..." Cissel started, her voice trailing off as she looked at their ten-meter walls. In the shadow of those flying silver big ships, their defences looked like children’s toys, a makeshift playset against a professional navy.

John didn’t wait for her to finish. His hands moved in a blur, accessing his inventory and taking out lots of stuff while moving around at a speed that left afterimages. If the small defences weren’t enough, he would simply overwhelm the sky with volume. Suddenly, the hilltop erupted with metal.

He laid out a few of the advanced weapons he had in his inventory: towers that stretched a hundred meters into the air, specialised anti-aerial cannons, a sophisticated sensory grid and aerial traps.

Even with the world’s demotion rule shrinking their physical size and overall strength, the sheer density of the deployment was staggering. John was making up for the loss of individual ferocity with overwhelming numbers.

However, he still held his trump cards close to his chest. He didn’t deploy the weaponry he had harvested from the colossal machine behemoths of the twelfth territory. Those items, the spoils of the last epic fight in the pocket trial, were his ultimate insurance.

Even with demotion, they were still huge in size and retained devastating firepower, but they were also irreplaceable. Without Mana gemstones to evolve the rest of his defences, they were risks he wasn’t willing to take unless the situation turned suicidal.

"Will these be enough?" Ricky asked in doubt, eyeing the few hundred-meter towers that now appeared around them. "They did well against the flying machines back in the trial, but those ships are different. They have mass and broadside cannons that look like they could level a few hills flat."

"And we still don’t even know who they are," Elena added, her small sledgehammers resting on her shoulders. "The Dragons called them natural dwellers, but we’re fighting a completely alien enemy with zero intel."

"The race doesn’t matter," John said, his voice dropping into a calm, icy tone that signalled he was fully comfortable with the battle ahead.

"The principles of this fight remain the same. We came here to scout the possibilities and the dangers of the Source Code World. It’s a stroke of luck that we met them while we still have time to spend on the lesson. Let’s absorb as much experience as we can. If the tide turns, we retreat."

John stood his ground, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the silhouette of the fleet cut through the shimmering ribbons of the aurora. The scene was breathtakingly surreal, possessing a dark, majestic beauty that felt like a masterpiece painted by a legendary artist.

The contrast between the ethereal light and the cold, silver hulls of the flying ships created a tangible tension that made the air feel heavy with impending violence.

"Putting all this aside," John said, "we’ll fight with everything we have. Elena, Cissel, take the summits of the two tallest towers. Use the height to monitor the approaching ships. The moment you see an opening, use your speed and agility to board their decks and strike.

Don’t waste too much time on a single ship, jump off to another the moment you spot a chance, and cause as much chaos as you can. Luke, you’re our anchor. Stay here on the hilltop; if any of them try to land or flank us, you crush them. Ricky, you’re with me."