Chapter 742.2: Great Lord of Plague
Chapter 742.2: Great Lord of Plague
Shooting at drones that carried limited ammunition was exactly what those swamp-dwelling slugs wanted.
If his forces ever faced such opponents, the greatest challenge wouldn't be distinguishing drones from optical camouflage. It would be identifying the few real soldiers hidden among a crowd of fake ones.
That was true at the tactical level. At the strategic level, the headaches awaiting his officers would likely be even greater.
Although the Academy hadn't demonstrated it during this battle, Liam believed that if they could provide tactical concealment through holographic projections, there was no reason they couldn't create strategic deceptions as well.
For example, a handful of drones could masquerade as an entire army, creating large-scale strategic misinformation.
Those swamp slugs might not excel at large-scale warfare, but their skill at scheming and manipulation ranked among the best in the wasteland.
The more Liam thought about it, the more alarmed he became. His palms even began to sweat. He silently resolved that once this battle was over, he would personally write a detailed report and send it back to Triumphant City.
The people in the north were far from as weak as they appeared. In fact, they might even be far more dangerous than the Ideal City freeloaders...
While Liam was lost in thought, the Academy's Alpha Mobile Task Force had already advanced to Blood Peak's halfway point.
After enduring the earlier barrage of utterly unreasonable bombardment, the mutants on Blood Peak appeared thoroughly cowed, hiding inside their caves and refusing to come out.
Of course, it was also possible that they had intended from the very beginning to move the battlefield into the caverns and tunnels beyond the reach of supporting firepower, using the terrain to wear down the invaders.
The soldiers of the Alpha Mobile Task Force did not waste words with them. Under the cover of drones and holographic projections, the forward troops charged into the cave entrances halfway up the mountain.
Almost the instant they entered, battle erupted.
The flashes of gunfire illuminated the pitch-black caverns like daylight. Tracer rounds carved paths forward for squads pushing deeper into the tunnels, while rifle grenades exploded in bursts of fire and shrapnel, continuously harvesting mutant lives.
The twisted, grotesque appearance of these mutants was enough to make one's scalp tingle, but that was all.
Faced with the dense firepower woven by assault rifles and Gauss rifles, the mutants relying on flesh and blood were driven steadily backward, unable to mount anything resembling effective resistance.
Under the cover of optical camouflage, a four-man squad smashed through the Bloodhoof Clan's defenses like a hot knife through butter. They had already cleared two tunnel sections without suffering a single casualty, losing only five drones in the process.
The four gas-mask-wearing operators fired in silence while exchanging wordless messages over their communication channel.
"Smells awful."
"Really awful."
"Like fermented herring."
"Worse than that."
"... How are you smelling anything?"
"...?"
The four immediately realized the severity of the situation. Their personal protection systems had been breached.
The foul stench lingering throughout the tunnels became increasingly obvious, and it brought not only nausea but also mental disorientation and unnatural hallucinations.
Though all of them, as personnel affiliated with the Academy's Scientific Committee, had received cybernetic implants and enhancements to improve physical performance, those were merely universal combat modules designed to increase operational efficiency. They could even be removed after death or retirement and reused by someone else.
None of them were wealthy enough to possess custom-designed bionic immune systems like Academy researchers or Enterprise citizens.
Realizing they might have been infected by Na Fruit or something similar, the squad leader immediately ordered a retreat. However, the moment their offensive momentum faltered, the Bloodhoof Clan mutants suddenly revealed their vicious fangs.
They could tell that the optical-camouflage phantoms were merely disguises created by these human creatures.
That was only fair. After all, they had been disguising themselves as well. Not only had they feigned weakness and vulnerability, some had even lain motionless on the ground pretending to be dead.
Watching those corpses rise from the floor, the squad leader felt both shock and a sinking dread.
Survival probability: less than 13%.
He instantly made his judgment, transferred the combat recordings stored in his neural chip to one of the drones, and programmed it for automatic return.
Almost the moment he completed that action, an ugly-looking monster stepped out from directly ahead in the tunnel. Its body was bloated and obese, its eyes dull and vacant. Its stomach had split open like a giant mouth, loops of thick intestines hanging outside like a mop dragging along the ground, even obscuring its two stunted legs.
Within the Bloodhoof Clan, it was merely one of the Plague Monks, a servant of Prophet Sodo and a follower of the Great Lord of Plague.
It carried a bizarre-looking oversized firearm and wore no armor whatsoever. Yet its body was covered in wounds and scars so severe that the four Alpha operators could not immediately identify any obvious weak point...
...
The battle at the front continued unabated.
Meanwhile, on distant Broken Blade Peak, a group of Wilanteans stood observing the fighting.
General Modlin, commander of the Army’s 310,000-man force, held a pair of binoculars and stared intently toward the middle of Blood Peak.
Everything at the front appeared to be proceeding smoothly. Yet what caused him to frown slightly was the fact that the red mist previously dispersed by the thermobaric bombardment seemed to be gradually returning.
Standing beside him, his adjutant could not help twitching at the corner of his mouth as he muttered quietly, "So what was the point of that ridiculously long operation plan? In the end they're doing exactly the same thing we would."
Even the heavy artillery support had been provided by the Army.
General Modlin remained silent, merely continuing to observe the battlefield. He had heard that the Academy's operation plan occupied dozens of gigabytes of data, with the operation code index alone spanning more than ten pages. Their preparations had been extraordinarily thorough.
Not only his adjutant. Even he himself was curious about what exactly was written in those dozens of gigabytes.
Unfortunately, the Academy had no intention of making the plan public. They had only submitted it to the Allied Supreme Command under strict confidentiality. Essence, they only told it to Chu Guang.
As a result, the only way for him to learn the Academy's methods was to watch with his own eyes.
It was a rare opportunity to understand a potential rival, and he had no intention of letting it slip away.
Coincidentally, atop Broken Blade Peak, Storm Corps Commander, Spring Water Commander was also staring at Blood Peak.
Unlike NPCs such as General Modlin, he, as a player, could access the full contents of the Alpha Mobile Task Force's battle plan through the Wasteland OL official forums.
The only problem was that it left him completely bewildered. Not because the Academy people spoke incomprehensibly or described things too abstractly.
It was quite the opposite.
They had written things in too much detail.
The Academy had classified every mutant type found on Blood Peak and used battlefield-analysis AI to break down their attack methods and identify their weaknesses.
Not only that, but based on those statistics, they had meticulously designed tactical responses and equipment loadouts for frontline soldiers depending on the size, weight, and characteristics of the mutants they encountered.
The dozens of gigabytes of data resembled an endlessly detailed strategy guide for a video game, even specifying which abilities should be used against which enemy types.
To be fair, there was nothing inherently wrong with that. Military handbooks issued by various armies also contained battlefield tips for recruits to memorize in order to improve their chances of survival.
However, no matter how detailed those guides became, they never reached the absurd level of specifying how many shots to fire at what type of target.
For a moment, Spring Water Commander could not tell whether this was merely the Academy's unique brand of bureaucratic formalism, or whether their commanders genuinely believed such impossibly lengthy plans could be useful.
Then again, considering that Alpha Mobile Task Force soldiers, like Enterprise troops, were equipped with bionic enhancements and received training even more specialized than Enterprise recruits, perhaps they simply had their own unique understanding of warfare.
"Holy crap... Do they really need that much ammunition just to take one mountain?"
Standing beside Spring Water Commander, Sideline Slacking, who had come to the front lines simply to watch the show, could not help commenting.
Unlike Spring Water Commander, whose attention was focused on the operation plan, Sideline Slacking was still thinking about the earlier barrage from the 902mm heavy guns.
The fireworks had certainly been impressive, but that level of fire density felt excessive.
Watching round after round of heavy artillery crash into the mountain, he even felt a little sorry for their administrator’s ammunition stockpiles.
Spring Water Commander frowned. "If they can chew through that position, it'd still be worth it even if they doubled the expenditure."
Sideline Slacking looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You don't think they can take it?"
"Forget them. Even we would struggle." Seeing the surprise on Sideline Slacking's face, Spring Water Commander paused briefly before continuing in a solemn tone while staring at the blood mist gathering once more over the mountain. "...I can't shake the feeling that what's over there probably isn't one of the Mother Bodies we encountered."
That was basically a mobile mini Hive.
According to the New Alliance biologists' research into the Kingdom of Heaven, such things were essentially Na Fruit Hives modeled after the Clearspring City’s main Hive. Their primary function was to control Na Fruit within their Kingdom of Heaven, induce spore release, and interfere with the will of infected individuals.
Before the Kingdom of Heaven entered its Fourth Stage, destroying the Na Fruit Hive was sufficient to prevent its descent.
The only thing was, the damn thing thing didn't seem like a Na Fruit. After all, in his understanding, mutants could directly resist Na Fruit's influence through their powerful immune systems. They could not serve as breeding grounds for Na Fruit.
In other words, the Ten Peaks Mountains should not possess the conditions necessary for manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven. But if those spores were being produced by a mutant slime mold Mother Nest, then everything suddenly made sense.
Sideline Slacking's expression changed slightly. "You mean... that thing is the real deal?!"
Spring Water Commander nodded and continued silently observing through his binoculars.
Every Hive they had encountered had been different. He had every reason to believe this one was no exception, that it possessed its own understanding of evolution and had chosen a path completely different from the Hive of Clearspring City.
Still, the idea of a Mother Nest coexisting with mutants... those notoriously violent creatures, was simply unbelievable.
How had two equally aggressive entities managed to coexist peacefully?
And if his guess was correct, then the setup of this thing was eerily similar to Little Feather...