Chapter 793: At Least You Have A Brain Left
Chapter 793: At Least You Have A Brain Left
“You’d better calm down.” Looking at the suit of exoframe that had taken a step forward, the Apostle showed no sign of panic. He merely smiled faintly and spoke in a soft voice. “As a precaution, I placed 1.5 tons of metallic hydrogen explosives in this storage room... Any unrecognized biological signature entering the identification zone will trigger the explosives.”
This lunatic...
Ample Time stared at him in astonishment and stopped advancing. He grunted softly, “Are you insane?”
The Apostle replied mildly, “Perhaps from your perspective. But I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Then you should know that what you’re doing is nothing more than meaningless resistance.” Ample Time stared at him without blinking. “Surrender. You’ve already lost.”
As he spoke, Ample Time sent instructions to the squad heading for the security room, ordering them to install the hacking program Little Seven had created into the shelter’s security system and find a way to locate the bombs.
As though he had heard an amusing joke, the Apostle smiled faintly before chuckling softly, “The Kingdom of Heaven in Ocean Edge Province has indeed reached the end of its road. But it’s still far too early to say that we’ve lost.”
Before Ample Time could speak, he continued. “In fact, my soul is already 1.5 million kilometers away from here. The only reason you can see me here is because I wanted to see you one last time.”
“See us?” Ample Time frowned slightly, staring intently at the man putting on airs before him.
What concerned him even more, however, was the other piece of information hidden in the man’s words.
One and a half million kilometers...
A Lagrange point?[1]
Had the upper echelon of the Torch Church uploaded their minds to some satellite or space station at a Lagrange point?
The Apostle had no intention of explaining what he meant. He merely smiled faintly as he continued, “What else did you think? Without my tacit permission, do you really think a mere brain soaking in a tank could slip away right under my nose?”
“So there really is only a brain left...” Karen’s broken voice came over the communications channel. Clearly, the revelation that her entire body had been reduced to nothing more than a brain had devastated her.
Ample Time had no time to comfort her for now. His eyes remained fixed on the Apostle standing behind the rows of tanks.
“And now? I assume your curiosity has been satisfied.”
“Yes.” The Apostle nodded. “After meeting you, many of the questions in my mind finally have answers. You are complete lifeforms in another sense, another possibility I had never previously conceived of... In truth, we could have cooperated. My failure to recognize that was my greatest misjudgment regarding the situation in the wasteland.”
“Now you’re just insulting us.” Ample Time laughed, looking disdainfully at the arrogant man. “No matter what, we’d never sink so low as to cooperate with things like you.”
The Apostle did not become angry. He merely smiled to himself as he continued to speak, as if to himself. “I mean in the technical sense. You cannot deny that such a possibility did indeed exist. Of course, there is little point discussing that now. I suppose I truly shouldn’t have expected remnants of the old world like you to understand our ideals.”
“Your ideals?” Ample Time sighed. “To tell the truth, whether it’s you or Chalas, you people make everything sound wonderful. You can spin theory after theory, but when all is said and done, you don’t even have the courage to step forward, take responsibility, and admit you were wrong. What are you afraid of? If you’re so convinced you’re right, stand in the defendant’s dock and make your case. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even convince us.”
The Apostle stared at him in silence. He seemed at a loss for words, as though he wanted to argue but could not think of a suitable response.
“Say whatever you like. You are the victors, after all...” In the end, he left it at that, abruptly bringing the subject to a close. However, perhaps hoping to salvage some dignity, the Apostle eventually spoke again. “But don’t celebrate too soon. Your victory is only temporary.”
“The Celestials have returned, and they returned a long time ago. No one can resist the final evolution! No one!”
Almost the instant his words fell, the voice of another squad member came through Ample Time’s communications channel. “The program has been installed! The biometric identification system is disabled! The self-destruct mechanism has been neutralized!”
“Copy.”
After standing motionless before the steps for so long, Ample Time finally took another step forward.
Seeing Ample Time walk casually into the biometric identification zone as though nothing had happened, a flash of surprise crossed the Apostle’s face, but only for an instant.
“I see. It appears it’s time for me to make my exit...”
“You talk too damn much!” Ample Time swiftly drew his tranquilizer gun, aimed at the Apostle’s chest, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The next moment, something happened that none of them had expected. The instant the pale blue light struck the Apostle’s chest, his body began swelling like an overinflated balloon. His limbs and facial features twisted into a grotesque mass, as though he had been injected with some unstable genetic-modification agent.
“We’ll meet again...” Leaving those words behind, he burst apart amid a fit of arrogant laughter. Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed across the entire room.
All the players froze and Free Sniper gasped, “Holy shit! The boss blew himself up?”
Prop Master couldn’t help clicking his tongue. “Damn. He didn’t even leave himself an intact corpse.”
That guy is ruthless indeed...
Clearly, just as the Apostle had said, they had already uploaded their minds to some server 1.5 million kilometers away. That was the escape route they had prepared for themselves. As for the bodies they had left behind in the mortal world, those had been dispensable to them from the beginning. It was just that... Ample Time had no idea where that guy got the confidence to keep arrogantly proclaiming that their victory was only temporary even with death staring him in the face.
However, he now had another clue that bothered him.
“Celestials.”
What the hell are those?
“My body...” Broken sobs came intermittently through the communications channel, interrupting his thoughts. Clearly, not everyone regarded the physical body as some disposable burden.
Looking at the devastated Karen, Ample Time offered a few words of consolation. “Look on the bright side. At least your brain is still there.”
Come to think of it, with these people’s biotechnology, creating another body and putting her brain back into it shouldn’t be particularly difficult, right?
He didn’t know much about such specialized matters, but theoretically, it should be possible.
“You don’t understand! I’ve dreamed of leaving this shelter for so long. Those people, they clearly promised me they would keep my body safe!” Karen’s words gradually became incoherent as she continued speaking.
Ample Time glanced at the drone lying on the floor, then at the rows of tanks containing brains. After thinking for a moment, he asked, “Fine, I really don’t understand... By the way, do you know someone named Hyrja?”
“Who?” Karen sounded confused, as though she were hearing the name for the very first time.
It was just as he thought.
Having more or less pieced together what had happened, Ample Time let out a soft sigh.
“It’s nothing.”
If his guess was correct, the blue coats of Shelter 117 had probably uploaded their consciousnesses to that server 1.5 million kilometers away even earlier...
...
At the same time that the squad led by Ample Time successfully secured Shelter 20, a long, shuttle-shaped research vessel sat quietly amid the abandoned city ruins not far from the shelter entrance.
Beside the research vessel stood more than a dozen Prospectors clad in exoskeletons. They remained silent, exchanging only a few brief words over the communications channel.
“I didn’t expect the New Alliance to beat us to it.” One of the Prospectors wore a grave expression, seemingly at a loss over this unexpected development.
The Wislanders weren’t the only ones interested in Project Complete Human. The Academy was equally fascinated by the singularity-level research project.
The Academy had obtained the coordinates of Shelter 20 long ago, and they had come precisely to recover the technical data stored inside the shelter. But clearly, they were one step too late.
“What do we do now?” a younger Prospector asked, looking toward the highest-ranking member of the team.
“Nothing... What else are we supposed to do? Take it from them by force?”
“Actually, there’s no need. It just occurred to me that leaving this headache in the New Alliance’s hands might not be a bad thing.”
“Oh?”
“The Wislanders should have noticed what’s happening here by now. An entire battalion is already advancing toward this area... Heh. Hopefully they won’t start fighting over how to divide the spoils.”
“I doubt it’ll come to that.”
“Whether it does or not, we should leave.”
There was no point in staying any longer. The dozen or so Prospectors returned to the research vessel one after another. Pale blue plasma plumes streamed from its engine nozzles, and the long, shuttle-shaped research vessel silently disappeared into the night, just as quietly as it had arrived.
At the same time that the Academy’s research vessel withdrew from the battlefield, the fighting raging through the abandoned city finally reached a fever pitch. Perhaps sensing the Apostle’s departure, the Holy Knights, who had previously maintained a steady and methodical offensive, suddenly seemed to go insane. They launched an almost suicidal assault against Peepo’s unit.
A knight clad in exoframe suddenly roared and charged out from behind cover. Like a maddened beast, the man completely ignored the hail of bullets hammering toward his face and charged straight into the players’ lines. He then slammed his solid, powerful shoulder plate directly through an entire concrete wall, startling the players taking cover behind it.
“LONG LIVE THE CHOSEN ONE!” The paladin roared as the rifle in his hands thundered repeatedly, streaks of tracer fire lashing toward the exoskeleton-clad players around him like bolts of lightning.
However, the players were hardly pushovers themselves. Especially since everyone present was a veteran player of the Burning Corps. Caught off guard at first, they quickly put some distance between themselves and the rampaging elite enemy.
One player crouched on the ground, expertly pulled out an RPG launcher, and fired a shaped-charge rocket directly into the exoframe’s right shoulder! Flames and thick smoke from the explosion rocked the exoframe backward. However, the blast failed to kill the knight and merely knocked him to the ground.
Seeing that the New Alliance’s defensive line had been breached, soldiers wearing exoskeletons also rushed out from cover, shouting incomprehensible slogans as they charged toward the players’ positions.
It was too dark to see exactly how many there were, but judging by the gunfire alone, there had to be at least a platoon!
Another player crouching nearby did not hesitate. He pulled out an artillery beacon and threw it forward.
“TAKE COVER!” he roared, throwing himself flat onto the ground first.
Just as the knight struggled to his feet, a 155mm bunker-buster shell suddenly smashed through the ceiling with a deafening crash and slammed into the ground right beside him.
BOOM!
Not only was the tottering suit engulfed by the explosion, but so were the 30 or 40 exoskeleton-clad light infantrymen charging up behind him!
The scorching shockwave swept across the entire battlefield, blasting burning dust more than 100 meters away.
One after another, the players who had thrown themselves flat for cover climbed back to their feet. Looking at the battlefield, where wisps of white smoke still curled into the air, many of them wore shaken expressions.
“Holy shit!”
“Have these fucking bastards lost their minds?”
“Even feeding kills isn’t supposed to work like this!”
At first, everyone assumed this had merely been an isolated incident, but they soon discovered that it was anything but. It wasn’t just one Apostle or one Holy Knight who had gone mad. Everyone on the battlefield had!
They seemed to have already accepted that, driven into a dead end, there was no longer any way they could win this war. In their despair, they launched an all-out assault without regard for their own lives, seeking final release through death.
Peepo could feel that the people standing in his way were no longer fighting for some twisted faith or ideal. They were simply looking for a way out.
Although more than half of his men had already been killed or wounded, against an enemy whose morale had completely collapsed, there was still a chance to turn the battle around!
After shooting down a Holy Knight charging straight at him, Peepo quickly swapped the magazine in his rifle and shouted over the communications channel. “Hold the line! Our enemies are already spent! They can’t keep this up much longer!”
Almost the instant his words fell, another thunderous roar sounded in the distance.
Hearing it, Peepo’s heart sank slightly.
Mutant Humans! That was the roar of mutants!
Their opponents had suddenly changed earlier to those bastards in exoframe and exoskeletons, to the point that he had almost forgotten they were actually in Mutant Human territory.
The furious roar seemed to be a declaration of the Flame Cave Tribe’s sovereignty over the ruins.
Apparently realizing that their allied reinforcements were about to lose, a group of greenskins carrying large-caliber rifles was once again closing in on their positions.
The battle took a sudden turn for the worse!
Peepo had already mentally prepared himself to spend the next three days spectating from the official website, but at that moment, a voice as beautiful as a heavenly ballard came through the communications channel.
“This is Old White. Shelter 20 is secure. Sorry about the wait, we’re here now.”
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point ☜