The All-Purifying Light

Blinding light eclipsed the afterglow of the setting sun, making it seem as though two suns had appeared within the fiery red evening sky. One hung on the horizon, and the other hung directly overhead. The one directly overhead, in particular, was as glaring as high beams in a pitch-black tunnel. Everyone across the Enlightenment Society’s positions looked up involuntarily toward that blinding brilliance. Yet in that very instant, blood seeped from every pair of eyes in unison, and all vision was lost. "Don't look up! Don't look at it!" A commander's intermittent roar crackled over the comms, and the combatants across the positions hurriedly averted their gaze. However— It was already too late. What that scorching light stole was not merely their sight, but everything they had. It was a neutron ray tens, hundreds, even thousands of times more intense than a solar flare! High-energy particles unleashed at high speeds formed a cascading plume of light like a waterfall in the sky! The lethal beam punched clean through the protection of the geomagnetic field and the atmosphere, descending indiscriminately upon the surface, unfolding an unprecedented aurora across the sky along the equator! The Enlightenment Society soldiers crouched in open-air trenches were the first to suffer. Exposed directly beneath the high-energy neutron plume, they felt only a sudden warmth wash over them, followed by all the cells in their bodies boiling instantly. Their pupils dilated and lost their luster as blood gushed uncontrollably from their noses and mouths, ushering them into eternal death in a heartbeat. Across positions spanning over a hundred kilometers, soldiers in exoskeletons collapsed in droves. Mutants clutching heavy-caliber rifles writhed on the ground, wailing uncontrollably in the face of an invisible adversary. Even genetically modified warriors clad in power armor were forced onto one knee in agonizing pain, ultimately coughing up blood before toppling to the dirt. Unlike an instantaneous nuclear detonation, this continuously irradiating neutron plume was an annihilation in the truest sense—resembling an unending bombardment by hundreds, even thousands of neutron torpedoes! Physical enhancement offered them no immunity against such lethal devastation; at most, it merely prolonged their deaths. This included the cyborg soldiers who had undergone cybernetic modification. Stripping away a portion of their flesh and blood had not truly made them a separate form of life beyond organic beings. Just like the genetically modified soldiers and mutants, those mechanical parts did nothing more than prolong the agony of their demise. "That light... what the hell is that?!" "It itches so bad... something... something is growing out of me..." "Aaagh!" Over the static-filled comm channels, screams and wails rose and fell in a horrific symphony, turning the battlefield into an earthly purgatory. Before long, even those rising and falling shrieks faded into silence. The continuous neutron irradiation gradually obliterated the communication facilities deployed on the surface. At the same time, tens of thousands of Enlightenment Society soldiers and mutant cannon fodder withered away like dust under that blinding radiance, leaving behind only pure machines of war. Beyond the troops out on the surface, the officers sheltered inside concrete fortifications suffered the agonizing onslaught of high-energy particle radiation all the same. Reinforced concrete a dozen meters thick was no match for a shelter's massive alloy blast doors after all. Beneath the pervasive neutron radiation, it was quickly riddled with invisible perforations, rendering it virtually nonexistent. Blood gushing from his mouth and nose, Munger collapsed limply to the floor in his exoskeleton, unable to lift so much as a single finger. The lighting systems had completely failed. The communications, and even the exoskeleton encasing his body, had all broken down just the same. He could only watch helplessly as his blood pooled across the floor, drowning in it amid overwhelming bitterness and regret, finally drawing his last breath in the pitch-dark underground bunker without a sound. It was all over... That light descending from the heavens had wiped out the Enlightenment Society's life's work and decades of accumulation straight off the face of the earth, leaving behind only data backed up on scrap metal. Looking at the officers who had suddenly dropped dead around him, a faint hint of shock surfaced on Tianhong's face. He then tilted his head back toward the ceiling. "Could that be..." Sky Thunder? He had heard of that weapon, but he had never anticipated the Alliance would deploy it here—much less that the space station at the Lagrange point would offer no reaction whatsoever. Unless— At the exact moment the Alliance's ground forces launched their assault against the Enlightenment Society's stronghold, the space station at the Lagrange point had also come under attack! Yet how was that possible?! The guided-missile cruiser *Orion* was clearly still anchored in geosynchronous orbit, and several of its crew members were even conducting a sightseeing tour down on the surface— The instant the thought crossed his mind, Tianhong snapped to realization, the red glow in his optic sensors narrowing slightly. *So that's it.* It was an Alliance diversion! While their attention had been entirely fixated on the *Orion*, Alliance forces had already quietly marched toward the space station at the Lagrange point! A furious surge of current coursed through his sapience plugin. He clenched his fists, forcing down the roaring anger inside him. Through a speaker scorched by neutron radiation, he finally muttered a low curse. "...We got played." ... A blinding aurora saturated hundreds of kilometers of the sky, its magnificent brilliance utterly stealing the sunset's thunder. Across the desolate positions, rivers of blood flowed, and corpses littered the ground. They would not rot. At least not for a while. The scorching neutron plume had not merely extinguished their lives, but had also sterilized every microbe on them, penetrating several kilometers deep into the subterranean soil! Save for the residents sealed within the shelter, not a soul survived! While the punitive "Sky Thunder" continued to bathe this sinful land in its brilliance, crowds were stirring upon the ruins north of the Lavinka Industrial Zone. Pair after pair of bewildered, uncertain eyes turned toward the distant horizon, watching that second sun that had risen from the aurora at some unknown moment. They were all wastelanders dwelling in this region, scavengers who migrated alongside the sandstorms. Confronted by an anomaly they had never before witnessed, their reactions were no more farsighted than those of primitive natives on the planet Gaia. Some stood at a complete loss; others scrambled in terror beneath eaves, while still others prostrated themselves upon the ground, praying devoutly to unknown deities. A disheveled child with a grime-smeared face gazed up at the unprecedented aurora, tugging curiously at his father's sleeve. "Dad... what's that?" The scavenger, his face lined with deep crevices, raised his head. From beneath his hood, his eyes fixed upon that ever-brightening light, a flicker of surprise showing in his murky pupils. Over there— Was that the center of the Great Desert? He had no idea what that blazing light signified; he only felt that the sky carried an indescribable sacredness and majesty. For a long time, countless wastelanders had regarded that place as the epicenter of chaos and a forbidden zone for living things. It was teeming with grotesque alien species, merciless mutants, mysterious armed forces abducting survivors, and machines that attacked living creatures indiscriminately. Consequently, even though it had once been the center of a thriving civilization in the old era, few scavengers ever dared draw near. Who would have thought that even in the deepest depths of hell, there would come a day when a sun rose? Perhaps, just as the local wastelanders passed from mouth to mouth, the wasteland era was truly coming to an end... ... At an outpost in the western Great Desert, an Eastern Empire soldier on duty slung his rifle across his shoulder, staring blankly toward the direction where that second sun had risen, lost in a daze. On a dune not far from the checkpoint, two high-ranking myriarchs stood side by side. To see more clearly, Semes reached up and nudged the brim of his officer's cap, then simply took it off altogether. Watching that boiling sky, it was a long time before he finally murmured to himself, "Is that the power of the 'SOG' system..." Standing beside him, General MacLaren nodded, his expression complicated as he spoke. "Yes." That weapon had originally been in the hands of Boulder City, and had once nearly fallen into his own grasp. For the longest time, the Emperor of the Eastern Empire had tossed and turned at night because of that weapon hanging suspended above their heads. And now that the Alliance had finally unsheathed this great blade, His Majesty and the ministers would only find their sleep even more troubled... Wiping the sweat from his brow, Semes said with a trace of relief, "As expected of a weapon from the Era of Prosperity; even the aftermath of its strike is staggering... Fortunately, it's a single-use weapon, and the Alliance only possesses one." General MacLaren glanced at his colleague, thought for a moment, and suddenly asked, "General Semes, if you were an Alliance commander, how would you have used this weapon?" Semes replied without hesitation, "Use it? I wouldn't use it at all. Leaving it on the launch cradle is its best use." "I thought the same." Adjusting his officer's cap, General MacLaren squinted as he gazed out at the distant aurora, which glowed like morning clouds. "A strategic weapon's deterrent power drops to zero the moment it's fired... especially a weapon with only one bullet in the chamber." Feeling there was something profound behind those words, General Semes frowned. A realization suddenly struck him, and his pupils shrank slightly. "You mean... the Alliance has already acquired a new means of deterrence?" MacLaren did not answer directly. He merely kept his eyes narrowed at the burning sky and offered an ambiguous reply. "Perhaps even more than that." In his view at least, the truly terrifying part was likely not that the Alliance had mastered some new means of deterrence, but that they no longer needed to rely on strategic deterrence to maintain their influence. Unlike those survivor factions still clinging to the glories of the past, they had already walked out from the shadow of the Era of Prosperity. And they were leading everyone else along with them... ... The blinding light lingered in the sky for only fifteen minutes. Yet for the Enlightenment Society, scorched beneath that radiance, those brief fifteen minutes felt as long as an entire century. Having lost any targets to follow, tactical drones lay scattered across the ground in aimless confusion, like headless flies. Three-meter-tall humanoid combat armors rebooted their systems, attempting to take command of trenches that held nothing but corpses. However, standing in infantry trenches, those bulky metal chassis either caught their left legs or jammed their waists, looking awkward no matter how one sliced it. Nor was that all. Without agile infantry to fill the frontline, the previously solid defense perimeter was instantly riddled with holes. Although those combat armors boasted superior firepower and mobility beyond what infantry could achieve, firepower and mobility were not all there was to warfare. No matter how ferocious those hulks' firepower was, there were always blind spots they could not cover. When all was said and done, war had never been a simple calculation of raw combat power values; it was a clash between entire operational systems. The neutron plume falling from the heavens had not merely wiped out tens of thousands of soldiers and cannon fodder; it had directly extinguished the very tactical niche once occupied by infantry. Those vacant positions could not be instantly replaced by smart weapons. While the strategic vision of replacing infantry entirely with autonomous machines was not impossible, it required tactics tailored to match. Otherwise, no matter how many autonomous machines were fed into the meat grinder, they served as nothing more than slightly sturdier cannon fodder. With the conclusion of the strategic strike, the aurora in the sky dissolved alongside the receding sunset, and night slowly drew its veil over the land. At that exact moment, incendiary shells soared into the sky, taking the place of the blood-red sunset to illuminate the corpse-strewn positions. Scorching dust churned along the horizon as the grit kicked up by tank treads and armored wheels formed a sandstorm that seemed to swallow the sun and moon. Noticing the disturbance in the distance, the humanoid combat armors deployed along the first line of defense immediately raised the 20mm heavy autocannons mounted on both sides of their torsos, spitting tongues of fire forward in violent bursts. Thick tracers scraped dazzling sparks across the front armor and turrets of the Alliance's newest Type 4 tanks, yet failed to leave a dent even the size of a fingernail. The only things capable of posing a genuine threat to these armored columns were homing missiles. However, the Alliance had anticipated this long ago. The Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters screening the armored units' flanks were equipped with jammers targeting both infrared tracking and radio guidance systems. And that was not all! Thunderbolt fighters screamed through the sky, dropping a pair of EMP missiles that washed the entire area in an electromagnetic pulse. The missiles erupting from their tubes immediately turned into headless flies, either veering wild into the sky or plunging straight into the sand—far less threatening than unguided recoilless rifles! In just a few breaths, the Alliance's steel torrent had pushed to the edge of the engagement zone. Looking at those lumps of iron stuck like sitting ducks in their "foxhole ruts," Brother Mole, seated inside a Chimera armored vehicle, grabbed his comm and bellowed in high spirits, "Fire—!" The formation of Chimera armored vehicles spearheaded the assault! Thirty-seven-millimeter armor-piercing incendiary shells streaked through the night like rows of burning fiery plumes, blasting the humanoid combat armors attempting to reclaim the trenches into scrap metal in an instant! Simultaneously, the Cloud Dragonfly ornithopters flanking the sides shot upward with a roar. Pulling up their altitude, they unleashed tons of rocket barrages onto the defense lines the Celestials had barely taken over from the Enlightenment Society! As for the armored spearhead formed by the tanks, it thrust toward the Celestial defenses with undiminished momentum! Explosive flames linked together across the Celestial lines. The symphony orchestrated by metal and gunpowder had played for less than fifteen minutes, and already the churning yellow sands were full of burning steel wherever the eye could see! Still— These iron hulks did not simply sit waiting for death. They had no concept of morale, much less any comprehension of death or destruction. Seeing that the collapse of the first line of defense was only a matter of time, Tianhong immediately halted reinforcements to the front. He pulled the remaining humanoid combat armors and ground fire-support vehicles back toward the second line of defense, leaving behind only large swarms of drone hives and anti-aircraft emplacements concealed across the depth between the two perimeters. It was a field littered with reinforced concrete ruins, some belonging to pre-war buildings, others to fallen space stations. Normally, the Enlightenment Society mobilized mutants to salvage alloy materials from these ruins to construct their war machines, and right now, these endless debris fields served as their natural cover! Once the Alliance's armored vehicles and aircraft entered this sector, they would inevitably face suicide drone strikes from all directions! However, the Celestials had ultimately underestimated the psychological pressure they exerted upon the wasteland's survivor factions, as well as the Alliance's resolve to wipe them completely from this land. Just as the Alliance's armored spearhead was on the verge of breaching the first line of defense, two streaks of dazzling fire slashed through the pitch-black night, detonating midair into balls of searing plasma! They were cruise missiles launched by a South Sea Alliance guided-missile cruiser deployed in the western waters! An electromagnetic pulse several times larger than the previous one enveloped the entire area in an instant. Tens of thousands of suicide drones plummeted like raindrops the second they took flight. It was not just the small drones that were devastated. The humanoid combat armors withdrawing from the battlefield were affected to varying degrees as well, turning their orderly retreat increasingly chaotic. And right then, the Alliance's armored spearhead punched through the Celestials' first line of defense. Type 4 tanks pulled to a steady halt on high ridges, elevating the barrels of their vehicle-mounted electromagnetic railguns to begin pinpoint elimination of the retreating humanoid combat armors and self-propelled artillery! Against kinetic energy on the scale of naval guns, even ceramsteel salvaged from space stations was as brittle as paper. Watching the total collapse of his battle line, Tianhong stood in the command center with a stunned expression. These people... Were they truly just wastelanders?! Even with the aid of shelter residents, the combat proficiency they displayed was utterly absurd. Tianqi had previously hailed from the Church of the Torch and might not have been skilled in commanding military operations, but he himself was at least a near-active-duty officer from the regular military of the Human Alliance! These garbage-picking beggars— These bandits fooling around with the heritage of the Era of Prosperity— How could they possibly fight on par with someone who had taken part in the Three-Year War! Furious emotions surged through his sapience plugin. Tianhong, previously expressionless, could no longer rein in the rage inside him. The flexible components of his face warped along with the contortions of his AI algorithms. And just as his fury boiled over, a cavalry unit mounted on Deathclaws had already breached his second line of defense. "Prepare for battle!" Brother Edge roared, leading the charge at the head of his mounted pet and firing a portable rocket at the nearest humanoid armor! In front of those high-tech humanoid mechs, this group of players riding on the backs of lizards and shouldering rocket launchers looked like a joke no matter how one looked at them. Yet across the entire desert, perhaps only the Wilante, who had tasted their capabilities firsthand, would find nothing funny about it. Twenty-millimeter autocannons were ill-suited for close-quarters sweeping fire. Compounded by the clutter of obstacles, even if those humanoid mechs pushed their computing capacity to the limit, they could scarcely track the Deathclaws' tails whipping about like phantoms. What a shame. Across this chaotic battlefield, there was no central processing unit capable of overseeing global battlefield data to provide computing support for these machines, and the combat personnel who could have substituted for a CPU to guide them had been completely wiped out in the earlier strategic strike. By contrast, their opponents—the Deathclaws clad in exoskeletons—were each as fast as lightning. Driven by primal instinct and a thirst for slaughter, these beasts bred for butchery unleashed immense combat prowess and battlefield adaptability. They operated in near-perfect harmony with the riders on their backs, wildly harvesting one war machine after another as the mechs struggled in vain to defend front and rear simultaneously! Before long, the Celestials' third line of defense outside the entrance of Shelter 13 began to teeter as well, while that tightly shut alloy blast door remained completely lifeless, showing no sign of opening. Perhaps that door would never open. Or perhaps the fortress had already fallen from within, leaving no further reason to hold the position. Having taken over command from Morton, Tianhong had gone completely mad. Facing an irrecoverable defeat, he issued the order to "fight to the last," then charged into the fray with Morton's personal guard, staking his final chip on a gamble whose outcome was already decided! In truth, whether he staked it or not made no difference anymore. The Alliance had zero reason and not a one-in-ten-thousand chance of showing them mercy. After all, those bastards had opened the battle by purging every single living human on the battlefield. And as for the rest of them who remained, in the eyes of those wastelanders, they did not even qualify as human. They merely looked like humans. "You are seeking your own destruction! We will never let you off! When the day of our advent arrives, we will slaughter every last one of you! Including you blue moles!" Fighting on the front line in person, Tianhong fired at the advancing Death Corps while bellowing through the few remaining loudspeakers toward the tidal wave of troops. Perhaps his sapience plugin had fried; he had even resorted to using the nickname the Wilante used for shelter residents. Yet he never imagined that his roar, rather than crushing the morale of these organic beings, only made the charging players even more ecstatic. "Brothers! Push harder!" "A boss spawned!" "Awoo!" "Mine! It's all mine!" Every single player who had grown weary from charging was suddenly pumped as if injected with adrenaline. Sensing the increasingly ferocious onslaught, Tianhong wore a look of utter bewilderment, completely thrown off his game. However, that bewilderment did not last long. Soon, an armor-piercing incendiary round tore through his shoulder, ripping his right arm straight from his torso. Electrical sparks flew wildly. Roaring, he reached out with his left hand to grab the gun that had fallen to the ground, only for another flying axe to sever his other arm. Looking at the person who stepped up before him, he ceased his futile struggle, merely sneering as he spat out two final sentences. "...Heh, don't celebrate too soon. The Enlightenment Society... is nothing more than a pawn." "We... will return." Hearing these dying words, Talan, who had previously shown little interest, suddenly had his eyes light up. He instantly seized the axe off the ground and, with a loud *clank*, chopped the android's head clean off, terrified someone else might beat him to it! *Holy crap!* He had assumed it was just an ordinary elite mob, but who knew it actually had two voice lines! This had to be a big fish! Dangling the lump of iron in his hand, Talan immediately opened the comm channel, eager to share his current joy with his good brothers from the Desert Corps. "BOSS! I snagged it!" Without any surprise— The comm channel echoed with the friendly blessings of his brothers. Desert Eagle: "Damn it! That was my boss!" Xiaochuan Chun'yilang: "Motherfucker! How did you get your paws on it, you son of a bitch?!" Talan: "????"