Chapter 785.2: Burning Corps Vs Death Coast
Chapter 785.2: Burning Corps Vs Death Coast
Arzu gulped, his voice strained. “What if we first remove the red earth artificially?”
As long as they removed the red earth first and then planted Na Fruit...
“That would be the stupidest thing anyone did this century.” The Chosen One cut him off without hesitation and continued, “That stuff can only be left to slowly disappear on its own. We spent years trying and never found a biological solution.”
In truth, even if they found one now, it would no longer matter. Trying to start over in the Poro Province under the watchful eyes of every major faction might not be any easier than surviving the Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee’s encirclement.
And this wasn’t merely his opinion. The other nine Pathfinders present felt the same way.
Yet after hearing his answer, despair appeared on Arzu’s face.
Noticing the change in his expression, the Chosen One frowned slightly. “What happened?”
Arzu remained silent for quite a while before a bitter expression surfaced on his face. “The New Alliance’s troops are assembling on North Island in the South Sea. I’m worried...”
Before he could finish, the words suddenly stopped in his throat. His entire body seemed to disconnect from the meeting, and even his illusory projection flickered and blurred.
Seeing the sudden change, puzzled expressions appeared on the faces surrounding the conference table. No one knew what had happened.
“Chip malfunction?”
“What the hell is Arzu doing?”
“Couldn’t he find somewhere with a better signal for such an important meeting?”
“This is exactly why I said keeping a physical body in the mortal world is troublesome...”
Murmurs spread around the conference table.
As Arzu failed to reconnect for an increasingly long time, displeasure began to appear on the Pathfinders’ faces.
This fellow was wasting far too much time!
Only the Chosen One, seated at the head of the table, frowned slightly. A faint trace of foreboding appeared in his incorporeal eyes. In theory, he should have been able to sense the existence of every chip. Yet just now, he had suddenly lost all sense of Arzu’s presence!
...
High above Ocean Edge Province, an orange-red streak tore through the sky like a sword. With a sudden explosion, dazzling white light flashed, and a wide-area electromagnetic pulse instantly blanketed more than 10,000 square kilometers below.
“Guh...?”
The blue-skinned Mutant Humans wandering along the coastline stopped what they were doing and raised their ugly heads. Something seemed to have exploded above them, yet it had no effect on them whatsoever.
Confusion appeared across every mutant’s face.
What had happened?
Elsewhere, deep inside an underground facility not far from the coastline, Arzu’s eyes snapped open. Shock and uncertainty appeared in his cloudy pupils.
EMP!
Bionic chips had limited information transmission capacity, and because of the special nature of their materials, wide-area electromagnetic pulses had almost no effect on them. However, the bionic chips were not everything that made up the Sanctuary. There were also signal relays!
Only when the distance was short could chips connect directly to one another in a point-to-point manner to form a distributed network. For example, if all implanted users were inside the same settlement.
Once the physical separation exceeded a dozen kilometers or more, signal relays became necessary to achieve region-to-region connections.
That was simply dictated by physics.
At the same time, communications components that frequently transmitted and received electromagnetic signals were far more vulnerable to EMP than information-processing components. Especially because, when the EMP strike occurred, Arzu had been attending the meeting in the Sanctuary.
To connect all the chips together and minimize information blind spots, nearly every signal relay had been active. That EMP strike had silenced him in a single blow!
And worst of all, he was currently inside an underground facility, meaning he had to rely on signal repeaters to connect with chip clusters outside.
Even though the wired sections remained intact, almost the entire wireless section had been wiped out.
This was probably no longer a tactical weapon. It was a strategic-level strike.
“Damn it... Of all times!” Realizing the severity of the situation, cold sweat poured from Arzu’s forehead. He sprang to his feet, hurried through a long, dark corridor, and rushed into a monitoring room.
The wall-sized display had been divided into more than a hundred screens of varying sizes. Now, more than 90% of them were filled with static.
The staff member sitting beside the terminal looked nervously at Arzu and stuttered, “I... I don’t know what happened! It suddenly became like this.”
Arzu grabbed him by the collar and stared fiercely into his eyes as he barked, “What about before that? Did the surveillance show anything?”
The man whose collar he held stammered for a long time without managing a coherent sentence.
Another staff member sitting nearby hurriedly answered, “I... think I saw a flash of white light. It came from the direction of North Island.”
North Island!
Arzu’s expression changed violently. He immediately plunged his consciousness into the chip inside his mind and connected to every brain within the underground facility that he could still reach.
“Transfer all surface data underground! Sound the physical alarms! Put the beachhead forces on combat alert!”
They’re here! The New Alliance had come!
His shoulders trembled uncontrollably, and a shiver appeared in his cloudy eyes. But it wasn’t entirely fear, part of it was excitement.
Back in Brocade Lake Municipality, he had once cleaned up the mess left by Luo Qian and fought against the New Alliance. Unfortunately, by the time he took over, defeat had already been almost impossible to reverse.
But this time was different. Every arrangement on the Death Coast had been personally made by him. His chance to wash away his previous humiliation was right in front of him!
He should be happy... No, what did “should” mean? He was happy!
“Hehe... you finally came.” Gripping his left wrist tightly with his right hand, Arzu let out a deranged laugh.
The staff members in the monitoring room watched their trembling leader and involuntarily gulped.
The New Alliance is admittedly difficult to deal with, but do you really have to shake like that...?
...
The reason the Dragon missile launched earlier from North Island, carrying a strategic-level EMP warhead, had achieved a perfect hit wasn’t that the players had gotten lucky. Both the timing and coordinates had been calculated precisely to maximize the destruction of enemy communications systems around the Death Coast.
In fact, ever since New Alliance forces landed on North Island, the communications base stations installed there had continuously monitored electromagnetic signals from Ocean Edge Province.
Although the Torch Church’s encryption technology was strong, and even the Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee coalition, with talent gathered from multiple factions, had failed to crack its codes, determining when the Torch Church was holding a meeting inside an otherwise deserted province was absurdly easy.
They simply had to watch for peak electromagnetic activity. Wherever the signals were densest, that was where they struck.
Sure enough, just as everyone had predicted, the EMP strike left the Mutant Humans along the coastline completely stunned. They stood where they were for a long time without moving.
Obviously, with their information nodes destroyed, the frontline forces were no longer receiving signals from their main command.
...
North Island Operations Command Center.
The staff seated before the control terminals exchanged reports with tense excitement.
“EMP successfully detonated! Effects are confirmed!”
“Our air force has reached enemy airspace! Enemy communications facilities and active-illumination radar successfully destroyed!”
“Beautiful!”
“Transmit ground-scan data to the front-line landing force!”
“Synchronizing now!”
At the same time, over a vast blue sea, eight landing ships advanced toward the Death Coast under escort from the Southern Sea New Alliance fleet.
Thick gun barrels stretched forward like the lances of mounted knights, pointing toward the distant coastline.
General Li Minghui, wartime president of the Southern Sea New Alliance, stood on the bridge of the cruiser, Harpoon.
And he wasn’t alone. His mysterious and wealthy old friend, Nihark, was also standing on the bridge.
Although Nihark had volunteered to board the ship and observe the battle, his legs wouldn’t stop shaking beneath him. The easy confidence usually written across his face had vanished entirely, and his lips trembled every so often as they opened and closed.
This... This is the Southern Sea New Alliance fleet?
He unconsciously glanced at Li Minghui beside him. Yet the president who normally acted so polite and courteous now seemed like a completely different person.
No, rather, this was probably what he had always been like.
The man had originally been a general. He had only taken the presidency because extraordinary circumstances demanded it...
How had Nihark managed to forget something so important?!
The eyes beneath Li Minghui’s sharp brows flashed like lightning, staring ahead with an unwavering glare from the bridge.
Nihark swallowed and tried to say something to hide his discomfort, but crushed beneath that imposing presence, he couldn’t get a single word out.
“All ships, hear my command! Prepare naval guns!” The powerful voice suddenly rang out, startling Nihark from his daze. Holding a communicator in his right hand, Li Minghui stared straight ahead and roared, “Dispersed barrage! Eight salvos...”
“... Fire!”
The instant his voice fell, deafening explosions erupted from both sides of the flagship. Long tongues of flame blasted forward as rolling clouds of smoke split apart the waves!
BOOM!
Shells screamed across the battlefield, blossoming into deadly fire across the beaches of the Death Coast!
At the exact same moment, the forward ramps of all eight landing ships opened simultaneously.
An Alligator amphibious armored vehicle after another plunged into the sea like dumplings dropping into boiling water, shoving aside rows of waves as they charged toward the smoke-covered shoreline!
Landing craft descended with them, carrying scattered infantry units aboard.
Steel, fire, and sea merged into a single scene.
Whistling artillery shells and rockets passed endlessly above the players’ heads like the interlude of a pipe organ, raining death across the coastline.
Their blood seemed to burn and the players crouched inside the landing craft tightened their grips on their rifles. Every pair of eyes held the same excitement and soaring fighting spirit!
It’s time to end all of this, time to end the chaos corroding the land!
A thunderous roar erupted across the communications channel, even drowning out the shrieks of the Mutant Humans on shore.
“For the New Alliance!”
“CHARGE!”