The Meta Strategy Is Selling Gas Masks?!

"Lobby secure!" The three squads breaching the building swiftly brought the ground-floor lobby under control. Squad C established a perimeter outside the elevator banks, gunning down the gnawers drawn by the commotion inside. A newbie running logistics darted in from the front entrance, carrying a backpack packed to the brim with ammunition and explosives. "Ammo delivery!" "Thanks!" Next Door Old Wang grabbed one of the backpacks, unzipped it to inspect the contents, and tossed it to Battlefield Atmosphere Group, who was waiting beside the elevator entrance. "Brother! We're counting on you guys!" "Got it!" Clad in heavy gear, Battlefield Bro shoved the backpack to I'm the Darkest beside him. Then he stepped up to the entrance of the elevator shaft, reached out with both massive hands, and gripped the ajar elevator doors. The Miner Type I exoskeleton cranked its power output to maximum. The rusted metal groaned under the crushing strain, quickly parting just enough to make a narrow passage wide enough for one person to squeeze through. An Agility-type player from Squad B ducked inside, raised his rifle to check the opening above, and flashed an all-clear hand sign. "Shaft is clear!" "Understood—" Battlefield Bro took a deep breath and kept straining with both arms. The elevator doors shuddered violently, rattling the steel plates welded onto his exoskeleton. Seeing that the doors still weren't fully open, Kakarot hurried over, activating his Strength-type talent to lend a hand. Together, the two of them finally ripped the heavy elevator doors off their tracks. "Holy crap! These damn doors were ridiculously sturdy!" Battlefield Atmosphere Group let out a long breath, raising his arm to wipe his forehead. Beside him, I'm the Darkest was still examining the backpack in his hands, unzipping and re-zipping it repeatedly. "What the heck is packed in here?" It was bizarrely heavy! Battlefield Bro chuckled. "Seventeen kilos of high explosives. You better handle that with care." I'm the Darkest froze. "Seventeen kilos... what kind of concept is that?" Kakarot chimed in, "Roughly equivalent to two rounds of 155mm shells." I'm the Darkest stared blankly, clearly having no idea what 155mm implied. A few players with a bit more illicit ballistics knowledge, however, immediately understood. They instinctively took a few steps back, muttering a quiet "holy shit." Wasting no time, Battlefield Atmosphere Group clapped I'm the Darkest on the shoulder to tell him to stop messing around, then led his squad into the elevator shaft. The interior of the shaft was surprisingly spacious. The cab had likely plunged to a lower level, but there was no shortage of footholds. Beside the backup magnetic rails and steel cables, there was an inspection ladder, presumably meant for elevator maintenance technicians. Battlefield Bro hooked a devil-silk survival rope around a steel cable and yanked on the wall-mounted ladder. Satisfied that it could bear the weight of his exoskeleton, he shifted his full center of gravity onto the rungs. "Our mission is simple. Just like Spring LYB said, we climb straight up the shaft to the forty-third floor, then blast our way down!" I'm the Darkest swallowed hard. "We're just going to climb all the way up like this?" Another squad member grinned and slapped his shoulder. "What're you scared of? It's not like you'll get tired! At most, it's just a bit tedious." Saying they wouldn't get tired wasn't entirely accurate. Once lactic acid accumulated in their muscles, players would still feel heavy, sluggish, and drained; the only thing filtered out was the accompanying physical ache. Even so, compared to fighting their way up floor by floor, a vertical breach through the elevator shaft was far less daunting. Due to the spore cloud, gnawers from several nearby streets and even the adjacent subway station had congregated around the skyscraper. The stairwells and hallways leading up to the forty-first floor were precisely where the spore concentration was thickest! Just moments ago, Battlefield Bro had taken a peek into the emergency stairwell behind the elevator shaft. The sight had been sheer carnage, best described as a mountain of corpses and an ocean of bones. It went to show that having a dependable commander really did provide a massive sense of security! Climbing over forty stories by hand took a considerable amount of time. Whenever their stamina gave out halfway up, they suspended themselves from their survival ropes to catch their breath before resuming the climb. By the time Squad A reached the forty-third floor, it was already four in the afternoon. They rested briefly at the shaft entrance. Battlefield Atmosphere Group attached three hundred grams of explosives to the elevator doors, moved the squad up to the forty-sixth floor for safety, and detonated the blasting cap. *Boom!* With an earth-shattering blast, the elevator doors blew outward, the shockwave whipping down the shaft. Squad A's five players rapidly descended, breaching through the blown-open doors onto the forty-third floor. Amid deafening roars, swarms of gnawers surged from both sides of the corridor. "Fire!!" Muzzles spat tongues of flame! Gunfire erupted down the hallway as a storm of bullets swept through, mowing down gnawers like wheat before a scythe. In an instant, flesh and severed limbs flew everywhere! Yet despite the players' ferocious firepower, the tide of gnawers kept charging relentlessly, wave after wave! Right then, a thunderous roar echoed from outside the building. High-explosive shells punched through the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows and detonated in the corridor, instantly clearing out dense clusters of gnawers! "Quick! Move!" Battlefield Atmosphere Group shouted, yanking a grenade and lobbing it toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. With another thunderous blast, even more gnawers went down! Squad A didn't linger to fight. Laying down continuous suppressing fire, they rapidly shifted positions and reached their target room. Rows of graphite-tinted glass doors lined the interior, partitioning the area into various functional zones. This was evidently an open-plan office suite! Raising his rifle to drop an oncoming gnawer, Battlefield Atmosphere Group quickly matched their position to the map. He took the prepared charges from the backpack I'm the Darkest handed over, arranged them in a circle on the floor, and carefully pulled the safety pins. "Three kilos of explosives! That should blow a hole straight down!" "Everyone take cover! Shout when you're set!" The other four players called out spiritedly, "Ready!" Crouching in a corner behind an overturned desk, Battlefield Atmosphere Group took out the detonator and squeezed his hand. *Boom!* With a deafening explosion, a shockwave accompanied by a blistering heat wave swept through the entire office floor! The players rushed to the epicenter of the blast. The concrete and floor tiles had been shattered to rubble, with only a few chunks still clinging to the mangled, downward-bent rebar skeleton. Seeing the scene before him, Battlefield Atmosphere Group felt his heart sink slightly. Although they had successfully blasted an opening downward, the structural damage was far lower than expected. Three kilos of high explosives... Back in the real world, that was enough to level a small house! "Holy crap! Is this building really this sturdy?" I'm the Darkest swallowed dryly. Hitbox Painter Master Cai said, "Blowing down the entire ceiling is going to be tough... Let Squad B haul up the fuel." Battlefield Atmosphere Group nodded grimly. "Agreed." After a brief exchange over the comms, Squad A retreated to the elevator shaft, anchored a winch at the entrance, and lowered a cable down the shaft. The winch whirred to life! Before long, fifty liters of biofuel were hauled up! With the fuel in position, Squad A returned to the breach point and swiftly rappelled down through the shattered ceiling onto the forty-second floor. The scene here was utterly different from the floor above! The sprawling office area was blanketed in brownish and dark-red slime mold. The air hung heavy with a dense haze of spores. The soles of their boots felt sticky, as if they were trudging through a thick bog of moss. Visibility was less than five meters! And directly beneath their feet lay the embryonic broodmother! "...Why do I feel like I've crawled inside an alien mutant's belly?" I'm the Darkest swallowed nervously, sweeping his rifle across every corner of the room. Ever since dropping through the ceiling, a heavy sense of dread had weighed on his chest. Yet this sense of danger pressed in from every direction, making it impossible to tell where the true lethal threat would strike from. Battlefield Atmosphere Group deftly planted charges across the floor and pulled the pins. "Your gut is dead on. If you don't want to end up as broodmother fertilizer, we'd better move fast." A crouching player stowed a test tube. "Sample collected!" Another player called out, "Charges are being set!" The squad divided their labor efficiently, each attending to their duties. Before long, most of the task was complete, with only the last few charges left to place. Just then, a low, hissing growl echoed from a dark corner. The sound sent a shiver down everyone's spines. Weapons snapped toward the direction of the noise instantly. With no time to ponder what it was, Battlefield Atmosphere Group barked an order. "Open fire!" Muzzles erupted with flames! Muzzle flashes illuminated the gloom and mist as bullets poured downrange toward the noise. It was only then that the players realized with mounting dread that the figure looming in the dark was a Tyrant! Nearly four meters tall, its hulking frame resembled a rotting log, yet its obscenely thick chitinous plating provided protection on par with steel armor. Bullets striking the Tyrant were like pebbles tossed into a swamp, kicking up nothing more than tiny ripples. *Roar...!* With an enraged bellow of pain, the Tyrant actually shrugged off the concentrated barrage. Its legs surged forward, and its massive claws swung out with savage fury. Caught completely off guard, I'm the Darkest took a direct hit to the chest. His body armor fractured instantly! With a muffled grunt, Lao Hei was launched into the air, crashing straight through the weathered floor-to-ceiling window and plummeting out of the building. "Aaaaah—" The scream faded into the distance, faintly trailing off with a muffled "fuck!" Squad A was down one man! The surviving players scattered immediately, trying to draw the Tyrant's focus with crossfire to keep it from closing in for another kill. Just then, Commander Spring's shout crackled over the comms. "What's the situation on your end?! Did I just see someone fly out the window?" With his finger locked onto the trigger, Battlefield Atmosphere Group cursed, "We bumped into a Tyrant! That was I'm the Darkest you just saw! Dammit, can you hit it from your side?!" Commander Spring replied, "We have line of sight, but we can't see a damn thing inside! The spore density is too high!" The thick spore cloud hung like a gel, completely obscuring vision from the outside. Firing blindly would only risk killing their own teammates! In the blink of an eye, another player went down. In less than a minute, Squad A had suffered two casualties! Battlefield Atmosphere Group yelled, "Fuck! 7mm rounds can't even penetrate this thing's skin! If this keeps up, we're all getting sent back to the respawn point!" A sudden idea struck Spring. "Quick! Give me a marker!" Battlefield Atmosphere Group barked, "A marker?" "Incendiary! Mark it with an incendiary bottle!" Battlefield Atmosphere Group immediately caught on. Without hesitation, he unclipped a Molotov cocktail from his belt. "Suppress it!" he roared to his teammates. Seizing the opening, he hurled the Molotov straight at the Tyrant. The sudden burst of covering fire briefly restricted the creature's movement, and the bottle shattered squarely against its head. Flames erupted! The Tyrant let out a frenzied roar. Engulfed in fire, it flailed violently to douse the blaze. At that exact moment, four armor-piercing incendiary shells came streaking through the shattered window trailing fire, three of them slamming hard into its shoulder and abdomen. Flames and thick smoke poured outward as the three embedded armor-piercing incendiary shells stuck into the Tyrant's flesh like fiery spikes. Enraged, the creature thrashed through the office suite, trying in vain to put out the fire consuming its body. Meanwhile, the last player handling the explosives finished placing the final charge. On top of that, the fuel drums meant for clearing the slime mold had been rolled to the center of the room. "Time to pull out!" the player yelled, sprinting back to the breach in the ceiling and scrambling up using a desk. "Roger that!" The other two responded immediately, retreating toward the breach. Back on the forty-third floor, the trio sprinted flat-out back toward the elevator shaft. Hooking their survival ropes to the steel cables, Battlefield Atmosphere Group leaped out, descending down the shaft. "Hold on tight, boys!" The moment the words left his mouth, he squeezed the detonator in his grip. *Click.* With an ear-splitting roar, a column of flame blasted upward. The violent shockwave instantly obliterated the concrete floor dividing the forty-second and forty-first floors! Fire and blistering heat raged like a tsunami, swallowing both stories whole, spilling into the corridors, and roaring straight down the elevator shaft! The entire skyscraper seemed to tremble! "Fuck!" "The shaft is shaking!" "Couldn't you wait a damn second before pressing the button?!" The players hanging in the shaft were rattled half to death. If not for the sturdy survival ropes, they would have dropped like dumped dumplings. Battlefield Atmosphere Group, shielded somewhat by his exoskeleton, managed to steady himself and offered an awkward grin. "I was worried we'd lose signal if we dropped any further!" His squadmates snapped back, "*@#%*!" The elevator shaft echoed with colorful expletives. Meanwhile, on the east side of the skyscraper... Binoculars in hand, Commander Spring stood before a shattered floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the forty-first floor as billowing black smoke poured out. A raging inferno burned along the dark red exterior walls, thick black smoke replacing the grayish-green fog. Even from several hundred meters away, the blistering heat was palpable... "A slight deviation from the plan, but that thing is definitely as dead as it gets." Commander Spring lowered his binoculars. Nipping the broodmother in the bud before it could fully mature should weaken the intensity of the upcoming Tide. Still... The spore cloud gathered around the area was unlikely to dissipate anytime soon. Commander Spring glanced north and couldn't help but frown. The endless stretch of clouds looked as if it were brewing a torrential storm. A player prone by the window rolled his eyes upon hearing him. "Can you not raise death flags?" With that, he squeezed the trigger, sending another high-explosive round into the forty-first floor. Commander Spring snapped at him, "Don't use fucking high explosives! Haven't you ever heard of blast extinguishment? Just pop two incendiary rounds to be safe." At this point, firing or not barely made a difference. Against an inferno of this scale, a 20mm incendiary shell was like tossing a match into a raging wildfire—it wouldn't even make a sound. On the ground floor of the building... Squad A regrouped. Battlefield Atmosphere Group and the two surviving players emerged from the open elevator doors alongside rolling clouds of black smoke. All three were covered in soot, looking as if they had just rolled out of a coal pit. Kakarot went up to steady his buddy, asking eagerly, "How'd it go? Did you pull it off?" "Nailed it," Battlefield Atmosphere Group replied. Though he looked battered, his voice was brimming with excitement rather than fatigue. "The broodmother is blown to bits! Damn, coming down that elevator shaft was a total rush!" The two teammates behind him sputtered in outrage. "Bullshit! You've got some nerve saying that!" "Yeah! I almost got shaken loose and fell to my death!" Battlefield Atmosphere Group cleared his throat. "Doesn't matter! We cleared the objective, that's what counts!" Kakarot counted heads. "Why are there only three of you back?" Battlefield Atmosphere Group answered casually, "One took a dive, and one stayed behind." "The guy who fell was I'm the Darkest, right? His ID really checks out—talk about bad luck," Next Door Old Wang clicked his tongue. "Falling from forty-plus stories... the splat zone must've been hideous..." Battlefield Atmosphere Group's interest was piqued. "Where is it? I want to go take a look!" Kakarot gave him a bizarre look. "He's deader than dead, what is there to see? Even his VM shattered." Battlefield Atmosphere Group gave an embarrassed grin, scratching the back of his head. "Mainly because I've never seen someone splat from that high." Kakarot: "..." Next Door Old Wang: "..." The rest of the players: "..." *Is that something a normal human being would say?!* At the same time, outside the skyscraper... Standing on the pedestrian overpass, Chu Guang looked away from the smoke-billowing building and turned to Heya beside him. "Does this count as problem solved?" Heya stared at the building for a moment, then gave a slow nod. "It should be... Mutant slime mold isn't heat-resistant. If the incubation chamber suffered over ninety percent structural damage, it's essentially irreparable." Vannus stared at the mangled corpse and pool of blood smeared across the road not far away, unable to resist speaking up. "I think I saw something fall down earlier." He was certain of it. What had plunged from above had looked like a person. Yet Chu Guang beside him didn't seem bothered at all, merely replying offhandedly, "Minor issue. Doesn't matter." It was just a bit of active substance—only two points even if the player had awakened. Did that even qualify as a problem? Obviously not! Vannus froze. He felt his worldview and understanding of these blue-coats being utterly shattered. And for the second time today, no less... ... [Server Announcement: The New Era Data Building broodmother has been eliminated, weakening the Tide's intensity! Let us give a round of applause to the 20 players who took part in the battle!] On the official forum... The hottest posts over the past two days were either acceptance speeches from newbies or heated discussions about the upcoming Tide. Even though the official countdown still showed ten days remaining, the vast majority of players could already observe the changes taking place across Qingquan City with their own eyes. The grayish-green clouds were spreading outward from the city center. The rotting corpses wandering the streets and alleys had grown noticeably faster and stronger. Crawlers, which previously lurked only in subway tunnels and deep ruins, were appearing on the surface streets with increasing frequency. In just two days, four five-man hunting squads had already been wiped out, every single casualty caused by getting surrounded by swarms of gnawers. Elaina: [Listening to you guys makes it sound so thrilling, I almost want to head back. (Funny)] Ye Shi: [Is Red River Town not thrilling enough for you? (Funny)] Elaina: [It's alright, just too desolate. Doesn't feel as fun as Qingquan City.] Elven King Fugui: [Mainly because there's barely anything good to eat here, if you know what I mean.] Elaina: [Get lost! (`Д'*)9] Makka Pakka: [Hahahaha!] In Red River Town, where a massive contingent of mercenaries had assembled, the war against the Bone Chewer tribe's Snake Clan had ground into a stalemate. Both sides dug trenches, built fortifications, and shelled each other in brutal positional warfare. Word had it that the Snake Clan was waiting for reinforcements from the Fang Clan. However, the Fang Clan's fighting strength was entirely pinned down by the resistance forces in Xizhou City, leaving them completely unable to spare any troops. Not only that, rumors circulated that the marauders' reign of terror had produced so many corpses that a rat plague had erupted in Xizhou City. This rumor was confirmed by Brother Qiangren Suonan. His faction was expanding at a breakneck pace, bordering on spiraling out of his control... Those rats simply bred far too fast! Fang Chang: [Is Xizhou City not experiencing the Tide?] Qiangren Suonan: [Nope. Compared to Qingquan City, Xizhou City feels more like an oversized county town. Probably because it's set in the hills, the buildings aren't very tall, and the density is pretty low. On the flip side, vegetation is really lush. Rats, roaches, and hyenas are the common mutants here, along with burrowing beasts, multi-legged beasts... and some weird critters I've never seen before.] Lao Bai: [Sounds like a satellite town next to a tier-one megacity.] Qiangren Suonan: [Pretty much! (Grin)] Midnight Chicken Slaughter: [We don't have a Tide over here in Yuanxi Town either, just a ton of trees.] Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: [Pfft, what kind of Tide would you guys even get? You don't even have gnawers out there.] Bored Tiger Beater: [I just hope it doesn't mess with my leased farmland. I just planted a fresh crop of green peppers. T.T] Cut the Crap: [And don't mess with my fishing! I don't give a damn about the Tide, I just want to fish!] Yaya: [Sigh, this Tide really came at the worst time... Tengteng and I were shopping in a store. We didn't even get to buy anything before we were forced to drop 40 chips on two gas masks... Chips burn through your pockets way faster than silver coins. _:(´□`」∠):_] Edge Slacker: [Holy crap?! What kind of mask costs that much? 40 chips?!] Tengteng: [Huh? Did we get ripped off? (°ー°〃)] Edge Slacker: [...] Indebted Big Eye: [Brother Edge wants to say that he grabbed a few plastic bottles from the junkyard, slapped together two pieces of gauze and a bit of activated charcoal, and made one that works like a charm. (Grin)] Canyon Escape Mole: [Dammit!! Twenty chips for a single mask?! I want to head back and go into business right now! If we made tens of thousands of gas masks and hauled them to Boulder City, wouldn't we make an absolute killing?!] Kuang Feng: [Rational breakdown: you could probably turn a solid profit. But 20 chips for a single mask... you two definitely got fleeced like fat sheep. (Sweat)] Yaya: [!!!] Tengteng: [Σ(°△°|||)] Giving it even a moment of thought made it obvious: twenty chips was equivalent to a full week's income for an ordinary person. If they were truly that expensive across the board, how could regular folks ever afford them? Five to six chips was likely the reasonable market rate, a price average wastelanders could actually manage. Mole was still lamenting the missed fortune. Right then, WC Really Has Mosquitoes, who had stayed silent the entire time, suddenly popped up on the forum. "Hahahaha!" "Gimme that!"