As John monitored the map, he saw the machines erging in successive batches, each ford of a few thousand units.
The mont they appeared, the sensors of his tight grid picked up their presence, locked on them, and sent the data back to the defences around. Instantly, a fierce wave of attacks erupted from the towers, cannons, and the massive mobile fortresses he had spread around the periter.
He had expected a strong wave of attack, but he never expected the devastation to be this absolute, or for the machines to struggle so violently just to find a footing in the middle of the deadly storm raining on top of their tallic heads.
When he thought back to his previous encounters, he recalled that the yellow monsters were always protected by a shroud of lightning during their appearance. Furthermore, they always moved in batches out of the den.
It felt as if there was a hard limit to how many units could pass through the spatial portal and manifest in this world through a single den at once. Realising this limitation drove a wide, evil smile onto his face.
"So this is the way..."
He realised just how effective this bottleneck was. If the machines’ spawn rate remained fixed regardless of the total wave size, then waiting for even the hundredth wave wouldn’t be impossible; it would simply be a longer ga of whack-a-mole.
John knew that taking over the den’s centre wasn’t a hurdle for him, as he wouldn’t be hard by anything thanks to his Encrypted Skin ability.
Yet, a new question arose: how long could this setup actually last? And more importantly, how was he supposed to accurately count the waves now? There was no tell-tale lightning to signal a new wave, and the machines were being slaughtered so rapidly upon spawning that they didn’t even have ti to take a single step away from the den.
When he finally arrived at the edge of the deadly encirclent, he found that his presence wasn’t even required for the battlefield anymore. The entire setup was performing flawlessly. There was nothing for him to do but periodically replenish the exhausted traps and the sensors.
So, instead of joining the fray, he started to walk along the outer periter of the walls. He began picking through the pieces of destroyed machines that had been thrown in heaps outside the kill zone by the force of the explosions, hacking their storage programs until the Bulltors finally arrived.
"Fck it, John! What the hell is that?!!!"
Blakar’s voice bood across the area, getting instantly muffled by the fierce, explosive noise. He had spotted John working casually on the ground amidst the wreckage and had jumped off the ramparts to run toward him. The mont the Bulltor leader arrived at the kill zone, he and every other warrior on his side stood totally shaken by what they witnessed.
To the Bulltors, the concepts of war involved blood, glory, and a desperate struggle for every inch of ground. No one had ever dread of seeing such a battle happening to their chanical enemies.
It wasn’t a fight; it was a cold, one-sided slaughterhouse. The warriors felt there was no need for them to even draw their weapons; they could simply stand there, gasp in shock, and laugh to their hearts’ content as the machines that had once hunted them were reduced to scrap in seconds.
"Believe , even I never expected such a performance," John said, offering a genuine smile. He was telling the truth; the synergy between the advanced mobile fortresses, the cannons, the towers, and the detection nets was far exceeding his wildest imagination.
"Anyway, this is great news for all of us! We can survive this disaster easily. Yet, I’m not sure how long this specific setup can hold, or if Mark will try another dirty trick once he realises his ground path is blocked."
"Then... What shall we do now?"
After taking several long minutes to absorb the imnse shock of the scene, with the fierce, relentless explosions and laser fire raining down on the heads of the trapped machines, Blakar finally found his voice.
"I need five hundred Bulltors and two of the Twelve to get prepared to leave for the southern territory imdiately," John said suddenly. He didn’t stop working as he spoke, jumping from one smoking wreckage to another, his hands leaving trails of bloodied handprints on the tal.
If John had suggested splitting their forces before this display, Blakar would have felt a surge of nervous anxiety. But looking at the literal slaughterhouse before him, there was no longer a speck of worry inside his soul.
He calmly nodded and turned toward the Twelve mbers standing by his side. He pointed to two of them. "Go. Pick five hundred of our best and prepare to move out to the southern territory right away."
"Wait, let explain exactly what they are going to do there," John interjected. As he finally felt he had cracked the code to winning this quest and crushing Mark’s overarching sche, he decided to include a ssage for his friends.
"Tell Ricky and Elena to hold out until nightti. Tell them to focus on defence and conservation. I’ll visit them after dark and set things up there exactly the sa way I did here. Also, I need you to send a separate runner to the territory where Cissel and Luke are stationed, and tell them I’ll do the sa to their den, most probably by the next day, early hours."
"We have about ten hours until night falls," Blakar calculated. "My Bulltors can make it to the northern territories in that ti. I’ll also send a ssenger to Lilith and the others fighting the Hiveminds to notify them of the change in strategy."
John nodded, satisfied. The gears of his force were spinning towards the closure of this exhausting pocket trial and evolution task of his system.
"And what about you?" Blakar asked, moving his eyes back toward the massacre at the den. "I doubt the machines can even threaten the walls here, no matter what they tried."
"I’ll spend the remaining hours preparing the sa weapons for the other territories," John said, looking at the Bulltor leader.
"During which, I want the remaining one thousand Bulltors to help. Carry the walls, towers, and cannons I’m about to take out and add more concentric circles around this den. I want this place so fortified that a god can’t walk out of that place alive. Then they’ll move down south, lay down more outposts and fill the entire area to the brim."
"Sure," Blakar replied without hesitation.
All of a sudden, the fierce Bulltor warriors, once the most feared fighters in the pocket trial, had been turned into simple couriers and construction workers. And yet, Blakar swallowed any lingering bitter pride he might have had. In the presence of such a human, he had nothing left to do but nod his head and obey every command.
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