There was a game on Blue Star called Whac-A-Mole. Pegmont suddenly thought of it now—not because he liked the game, but because of his current predicament.
Right now, he was the mole.
"To actually get trapped underground by a bunch of creatures this stupid! Thank god there isn't another human on Mars right now. If the people back on Blue Star found out about this... my joke book would probably get a revised edition! That bastard Makarov would make a bloody fortune off it."
One of the top four super-combatants of humanity, outsmarted by Great Spikes? Pink Peg could never swallow such humiliation.
Holding in his outrage, he quickly dug a horizontal tunnel near the surface, and then along the tunnel opened five shafts straight upward, leaving barely a meter of dirt overhead.
Five openings: four symmetrical and parallel, with only the middle one jutting forward... In the dire straits of this climactic duel of destiny, the Pegmont Legion resolutely flipped the middle finger at the foolish Great Spike army.
At the same time, the mob of Great Spikes on the surface had already taken their positions, guided by the vibrations in the ground.
All five exits were surrounded. That was the advantage of having numbers.
"This human truly is exceedingly stupid." Feeling flushed with their unexpected wit and command genius, the Red Shoulders gradually grew excited.
Of course, their excitement amounted to little more than a few silent jeers; mostly, they were still tense and uneasy. In the eyes of the Great Spike swarm, Pegmont was still invincible. Once this decisive battle fell back into that back-and-forth offensive and defensive slugfest and fighting dragged on, victory would in all likelihood belong to him.
Therefore, to be able to trap Pegmont underground within the inner perimeter like this, concentrating their forces while stalling for time, already left them thoroughly satisfied.
"Is the tractor field finished? Speed it up, move!"
"Watch your surroundings and your feet. Don't miss a single stir, understand? We must pin him underground. We don't have to kill him, as long as we keep forcing him to stay beneath the ground."
Orders within the Red Shoulder host echoed out one after another.
"Here he comes!" a Red Shoulder suddenly bellowed.
Immediately, *boom...* a deluge of pillar swords slammed into the ground.
At the first exit, Pegmont had merely poked the tip of his blade upward before pulling back. Amid the violent tremors of the ground, he dropped to all fours and scrambled rapidly toward another upward shaft.
Dense footsteps and the pulsing swell of source energy thrummed above.
"Try another one."
"Here he comes!"
*Boom...* In an instant, countless more pillar swords crashed down, sending sand, stone, and dirt flying across the entire patch of ground.
"Holy shit, their guard is that tight? Another one, then." Pegmont still refused to believe it. Down on all fours, he crawled swiftly toward yet another exit.
However,
"Here he comes!"
*Boom...*
With a mouthful of grit and sand, forced once again to retreat underground, Pegmont had to confront two problems.
First: the source energy blocks in the metal box on his back were completely exhausted, and he hadn't even caught a glimpse of the tractor field yet. If he kept thrashing around unable to get out, Pegmont would in all likelihood burn through his very last source energy block underground.
Second: Pegmont tried to picture the scene on the surface right now. The inner perimeter of the iron wall had to be packed to the brim with Great Spikes, led by squads of Red Shoulders, all with heads lowered, gripping their weapons, turning slowly... watching vigilantly, waiting for him to pop up.
"Looking at this defensive density, the entire inner perimeter of the iron wall is probably packed solid. So... did every single one of them come inside?"
"Uh... then how the hell am I supposed to get up there?!"
Just as Pegmont was agonizing, a sudden commotion broke out among the Great Spikes on the surface. It was a wave of collective excitement, charged with hope.
"The tractor field is complete!" a Red Shoulder shouted enthusiastically toward the outside as it climbed up from the pit beneath the tractor field.
"Activate it. Immediately." An order swiftly rang out from the Red Shoulders on the battlefield, followed closely by the same voice commanding, "Don't look back! Watch the ground and keep him trapped! Let us hold out to the end with our blood and lives... Someday, the great Miwang shall reap all."
The Great Spike horde promptly executed the order, paying no further heed to the tractor field. With their backs turned to it, gripping their weapons, they stared intently at their feet, waiting for that stupid human's next emergence.
He hadn't made a sound for a little while now.
*Thud!*
The sound came from behind the Great Spike swarm, from the direction of the tractor field, underground.
A very peculiar sound, resembling the trailing hum formed by the confluence of thousands of source energy eruptions.
Yet at the same time, no source energy fluctuations rippled from underground, nor did any tremor occur.
Spatial towing required immense energy. The stronger, more numerous, and larger the scale of the targets being towed, and the greater the distance, the more the energy requirements escalated. To construct this medium tractor field, the Martian remnants of the Great Spikes had expended nearly every source energy metal block they could scavenge.
At this moment, as the base's source energy field activated, all the energy was bound and concentrated. A radiant, blazing blue flame-like light surged and climbed up along the tractor field's nearly kilometer-tall spire structure, ultimately reaching the pinnacle...
*Hum!*
A magnificent radiance shot into the sky in the form of a rippling beam. Just that once, before the light quickly converged until only a dazzling cluster of blue-white gemlike luminescence remained at the spire's tip.
Meanwhile, the flaming blue light of the tractor tower itself remained unextinguished.
"Activation successful."
"Yes."
"Let us guard it."
The Red Shoulders conversed clearly, while the rest of the Great Spikes remained utterly silent, still staring intently at the ground.
This was a medium tractor field. It wasn't as massive as last year's super tractor field at the South Pole, unable to tow a true grand army or a Yanxiu of Puta'er's caliber; at the same time, its towing process would take far less time.
To the Great Spike swarm, success was right before their eyes. Because of this, while excited, the Red Shoulders were also on high alert. With lowered heads, they scrutinized every single stir from the earth even more closely.
Ten thousand Great Spikes stood lined across the entire inner perimeter of the iron wall, yet aside from the occasional faint click of shifting bodies, complete silence reigned.
Beneath the ground was silent as well.
The silence had lasted for a while now, but the Great Spikes dared not slacken in the slightest. Anxious about a sudden attack or an unexpected breach from the earth, they only grew more tense.
Tick,
Tock,
...
Time slipped silently away until one Red Shoulder acting as a commander suddenly snapped its head up upon hearing a warning from the airship in the sky...
"He's over there!" The next second, it roared in a raspy screech, unleashing a burst of source energy as its blue-glowing pillar sword pointed toward the heights.
The very next second, all ten thousand Great Spikes within the iron wall jerked their heads up toward the top of the iron wall.
Just as their gazes converged, a human warrior's figure planted his left hand in a final push, pulling himself entirely onto the summit of one of the iron wall sections.
Even as he vaulted up, his right hand slammed the final tube of concentrated source energy blocks into the metal box on his back with a sharp *clack*, drawing his blade in the same fluid motion.
At this point, between these two bunches of alien creatures who had arrived on Mars together over nine months ago and spent the whole time calling each other morons, the contest of intellect was finally settled.
The great and wise human warrior, Pegmont, won.
............
The reason Pegmont had suddenly appeared on top of the iron wall was simple. Since every single Great Spike was inside the inner perimeter playing Whac-A-Mole, he couldn't get out... So he had quietly tunneled back to the outer perimeter and climbed up.
The battlefield's tableau at this moment:
A towering ring of black iron walls. Inside the ring, ten thousand Great Spikes—Black Armors, blue-sheened Great Spikes, and Red Shoulders—all held their weapons aloft, heads tilted back, staring toward the heights.
High above, upon the summit of the iron wall hundreds of meters in the air, amid Martian moonlight and wind, stood the silhouette of a human warrior. He planted his foot firmly, drawing the dead iron battleblade from behind his shoulder.
Beyond that, there was also a Great Spike tractor field whose spire blazed with brilliant light, down on the ground in the center of the arena.
Chapter 882