The Screaming Reaper!

On the front line. The shockwave of the blast dispersed the spore cloud hanging over the mountain of corpses and sea of bones. There, standing majestically on a street heaped with concrete rubble and twisted rebar, was a tank nearly ten meters long and three to five meters wide! Crouched behind a blast shelter, [Scavenger Lv99] widened his eyes in disbelief, rubbing his amber eyes repeatedly with the back of a scaly hand. "Holy crap?!" He wasn't the only one stunned; Jieyan and Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes, crouched nearby, were just as shocked. "A slime mold tank?!" "What the hell is that?!" It was, quite literally, a tank. It had no turret and no tracks. Its jet-black, sharply chiseled chassis had a distinctly sci-fi look, yet the dark-red slime mold crawling all over it, along with the plump tentacles dragging along the ground, made it resemble a centipede carrying a turtle shell on its back. Standing on an upper floor, Chu Guang frowned deeply, his eyes fixed on the monster revealed in the drone feed. The officers around him wore equally astonished expressions. "...Is that a Human Alliance tank?" Vannus swallowed dryly. Clad in power armor, Chu Guang unslung the Gauss rifle from his back and asked offhandedly, "You've seen one?" "...I haven't, but it clearly drove out from the city center." Chu Guang didn't reply. Silently aiming, he pulled the trigger. Arcs of electricity flashed inside the tuning-fork-shaped barrel. A "spike" blasted out like lightning, striking the tank's frontal armor. Yet— The armor remained entirely undamaged; instead, a nearby concrete wall shattered to pieces, exposing the steel frame inside. Failed to penetrate! Chu Guang's brows furrowed. This bizarre outcome gave him the feeling that the "spike," impacting at five times the speed of sound, hadn't even left a scratch on the tank. It was as if the moment it touched the armor, something had deflected it! The "tank's" reaction further supported Chu Guang's suspicion. The tentacles beneath the chassis wriggled slowly, dragging this fusion of flesh and steel forward. Only two hundred meters remained until the front line! Making a snap decision, Chu Guang ordered: "Anti-aircraft battery!" "20mm armor-piercing rounds, target the enemy tank—" "Fire!" At the same time, two quad anti-aircraft guns deployed inside an adjacent building quickly lowered their barrels and unleashed a volley. Eighty 20mm armor-piercing incendiary shells wove two sheets of orange-yellow fiery rain across the air, the ferocious crisscrossing fire instantly engulfing the tank! Clang! Clang! Violent impacts rang out in rapid succession from the front and upper-side armor. The "slime mold tank's" forward momentum visibly faltered, yet the hail-like barrage still proved futile. The shells ricocheted off the heavy plating, flying haphazardly across the battlefield. One ricocheting shell whistled and planted itself right in front of the concrete blast shelter, making Scavenger duck his head in fright. "Holy mother of..." "Isn't this monster's armor way too ridiculous?!" Beside him, Jieyan gaped in silence. "It's probably a pre-war tank!" Kuang Feng said grimly not far away. Ye Shi swallowed hard. "The peak combat power of the background lore..." Although the surface of its armor bore slight marks of weathering after two centuries of wind and rain, it still retained an absolute advantage over contemporary weapons. Forget 20mm autocannons. Even an actual modern tank cannon with 1,000 mm of penetration would probably struggle, let alone the RPG strapped to his back. No. More like it definitely wouldn't cut it! Ye Shi suddenly realized that, according to the world-building of Wasteland OL, the behemoth in front of them was the true "modern tank," wasn't it? Things like the M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 wouldn't even qualify as antiques like Panzer IVs or T-34s compared to it—they'd be like Renaults or Mark I coffins at best. Though it lacked a turret and shield, that didn't impede its effectiveness. The slime mold hidden inside seemed to be using it as a mobile bunker, relying on the armor's innate defensive strength to push toward the players' positions. While he didn't know what would happen if it got close, Ye Shi had zero desire to find out. Those plump tentacles dragging under the chassis provoked a visceral disgust in someone who had seen plenty of "educational materials." "Armor-piercing won't work, we need high-explosives," Lao Bai, who had been silent, suddenly spoke up while staring straight ahead at the battlefield. "Look at its chassis!" Ye Shi reflexively looked toward the slime mold tank. While the armor was unscathed, the tentacles supporting the underside were visibly damaged. Even though it kept moving forward, its speed was nowhere near what it had been. Clearly, the Administrator had noticed this as well. The two quad anti-aircraft guns reloaded and quickly fired a second volley! A dense rain of fire rained down on the slime mold tank's flanks, bursting into thunderous blooms of fire. Though the flying shrapnel couldn't scratch the armor plate, it scraped away most of the slime mold on the surface and tore into the flesh hidden beneath! The tentacles carrying the chassis took heavy damage; many that failed to retract in time were blown clean in half. Losing its balance, the slime mold tank tilted sharply to the left and stalled out on the rubble-strewn battlefield, completely immobilized. Peering out from behind the blast shelter, Ye Shi pumped his fist in excitement and cheered. "Beautiful work!" It seemed that while the broodmother controlling the slime mold was clever, it wasn't omniscient. Though the thick "turtle shell" could deflect shells, once it lost mobility, it was left stranded, staring helplessly across the remaining distance. Yet the creep-covered tank didn't just sit and wait for death. Worm-like clusters of red fungus crawled out from the alleyways, heading toward the armor's chassis where black blood flowed freely, seemingly intending to repair the severed and shredded tentacles. They were trying to "repair the tracks"! At the same time, to cover the stalled "node organism," the Tide launched a fresh wave of attacks without pause. Mutants surged like a tidal wave from intersections, alleys, and storefronts along the street, throwing themselves toward the players' positions. A new wave of assault began. The machine gunners, long resupplied, steadied their water-cooled Maxims and pulled the triggers. Rat-tat-tat-tat—! Tongues of flame spewed from the machine guns as buzzing streams of bullets raked violently into the surging tide. Noticing the worm-like fruiting bodies attempting to repair the slime mold tank, the anti-aircraft guns continued peppering the ground around it with 20mm HE shells. Mortar shells dropped one after another. Every flash of fire swept away countless mutants. Beneath the dense interlocking fire network woven by the coordinating players, the menacing swarms of mutants fell like crops before a combine harvester, row after row. Before absolute firepower, individual strength was as insignificant as a grain of sand. Whether crawlers or gnawers, all were pulverized into tumbling chunks of flesh and mush. A few Tyrants covered in chitinous armor could endure bursts of 7mm bullets, but under concentrated fire from larger-caliber 20mm light cannons or even 37mm heavy cannons, they met only one fate: being ground to pieces by boiling steel. Crouched behind the blast shelter, Scavenger watched with immense envy. His claws lacked the fine coordination of human hands; while everyone else was rat-tat-tatting away at target practice, he could only watch from the sidelines. "Damn it!" "I feel like deleting my account and starting over!" Swapping magazines, Ye Shi took the time to tease him. "Don't do that. Your stats are so beastly, deleting your character would be such a waste." Besides, starting a new account wasn't even an option. Someone had asked Brother Guang before about issues like "Can we prepare spare clones in advance to shorten respawn times?" or "Can we roll alt accounts?", and the replies were invariably the same two lines: [Technical limitations do not permit this] and [I tried, but unfortunately it doesn't work]. For such a massive game, the development team had clearly gone through rigorous and meticulous simulations, weighing every angle before settling on the current system. Judging by how active Brother Guang was on the forums, he had a major say on the dev team; if even he said no, it was definitely off the table. Seeing Ye Shi talk so flippantly, Scavenger rolled his eyes. "What good are beastly stats? If you think it's so great, let's swap!" Ye Shi chuckled. "No way. You're too ugly, and you don't even have a dick. Who in their right mind would swap with you?" "Piss off!" You have one. Not like you're putting it to use anyway! Scavenger was just about to shoot back an insult when an unexpected twist suddenly struck! Dark silhouettes suddenly whistled through the air above the street ahead. With a droning buzz, they cleared the collapsed reinforced concrete debris and the overpass, slamming straight into the floor where the quad anti-aircraft guns were positioned. Explosions echoed overhead one after another. The anti-aircraft cannons pouring out firepower just a second ago went dead in an instant. Scavenger snapped his head up, his amber pupils contracting slightly. "Detonators?!" No— They didn't look like Detonators! They were lantern-sized clumps of fungus, flung over by some unknown mechanism. Some landed on the anti-aircraft positions, while others struck near the front lines. Upon hitting the ground, they wasted no time: their bodies contracted sharply by half, their bellies ballooning as if driven by a rapid chemical reaction, before violently bursting into clouds of grayish-green spores. Though less powerful than Detonators, they were almost impossible to guard against! Caught off guard, many players were wounded, and some were killed on the spot! "Fuck!" Lao Bai instantly raised his barrel and fired a burst skyward. Riddled like sieves by the rifle fire, several fungal lumps dropped to the ground. Beside him, Jieyan immediately hit the dirt, but after waiting a moment without an explosion, he climbed back to his feet. "What the hell are these now?!" "No idea..." Staring at the mass oozing black slime on the ground, Fang Chang looked grim. Looking closely, two half-meter fleshy wings extended from either side of the lantern-like fungal lump, vibrating ceaselessly like dragonfly wings. These thin wings were obviously not enough to lift its two-to-three-kilogram body, but they provided enough control to fine-tune its flight trajectory while gliding on momentum. Realizing this, Fang Chang's expression shifted. These things can correct their trajectory?! At the same time, shouts from the anti-aircraft battery came through the comm channel in the command post. "We're taking enemy counter-battery fire!" Chu Guang asked calmly, "How many of you are left?" "Three... no, he didn't make it either. Just me and one other teammate." Intermittent explosions sounded over the channel as the player gasped for breath, clearly heavily injured. The anti-aircraft battery on the other flank was in the same state. Unexpected long-range fire had caught the players manning the anti-aircraft guns completely flat-footed while they suppressed the slime mold tank. Did that broodmother actually unlock a "fire support doctrine"? After hearing their report, Chu Guang immediately dispatched reinforcements to the battery. At the same time, of the two Hummingbird drones remotely controlled by Xiao Qi, one broke off to trace the source of the long-range bombardment. The camera feed on the monitor panned swiftly. Before long. The source of the enemy's artillery fire was revealed to everyone in the command post! Roughly eight hundred meters from the front line, beside a half-collapsed overpass, four trucks sat parked. Like the tank before them, the four trucks were encrusted with dark-red creep, their corrosion even more extreme than the tank's. Their raised cargo beds were packed with squirming masses of flesh! Those lantern-shaped "flying bugs" were being launched directly from those truck beds! Chu Guang noticed that gnawers and flesh-red worms constantly climbed into the truck beds, sacrificing themselves to provide the organic matter and energy needed to synthesize the organisms. With a shuddering churn of the flesh inside the truck bed and a long, belch-like cry, more than twenty "kamikaze bugs" were launched into the sky, arcing in parabolas toward the players' lines. The flying bugs buzzed their wings mid-flight, hunting for their targets. A flicker of surprise showed in Chu Guang's eyes. Well, damn. Kamikaze drones with automatic trajectory correction?! And they're mass-producing and launching them simultaneously! Watching the four trucks continuously spewing mutants, everyone in the command post turned grim. "This..." "The mutants have artillery?!" Even Vannus, who had seen his share of the world, was equally astonished. Evidently, this was the first time he had witnessed something so absurd. "Those trucks... they should be mobile drone stations from the Era of Prosperity. If I remember correctly, they were used in logistics and delivery." Vannus had learned a bit about the Era of Prosperity during his time at the military academy, though for an officer, it wasn't a required course, and he had only heard bits and pieces. Staring at the screen with knit brows, Chu Guang said in a low voice: "The mutant slime mold controlled by a broodmother possesses exceptional mimicry capabilities. They will copy our tactics... or perhaps someone else's." Heya's earlier research had already confirmed this. What surprised him was that the slime mold didn't just mimic; in an astonishing fashion, it actually "absorbed" and adapted relics of pre-war civilization. From "Plague Knights" to "Plague Tanks," every single one was a product of this "fusion concept." What sent chills down one's spine was that the mutant slime mold had not only formed a highly centralized hive society, but also possessed the capacity to identify problems and solve them. Even if the methods were still somewhat crude! "Artillery Group A, attention. Coordinates... fire five salvos, dense barrage." Six of the twelve 88mm mortars unleashed their fury on the coordinates Chu Guang provided. Some shells were blocked by structures, crashing into buildings or onto the overpass, but plenty landed near the target zone. Though the sudden bombardment didn't cause substantial structural damage to the four trucks, it blew apart swarms of gnawers and flesh-red worms lining up to sacrifice themselves. The launch rate of the kamikaze bugs dwindled, allowing the suppressed anti-aircraft battery to resume fire. Four other players carried two machine guns up to the anti-aircraft positions to establish a new firing point, shifting their mission from suppressing ground targets to intercepting flying kamikaze units. Still, that alone wasn't enough. Even under artillery suppression, vast numbers of gnawers fearlessly surged toward the trucks, converting their own flesh into ammunition. Chu Guang made an immediate decision. "Artillery Groups A and B, adjust coordinates to... rolling barrage toward the southwest, five salvos, clear the obstacles for ground forces!" The moment the order went out, Chu Guang drafted a mission and dispatched it to the front line. Not far below the building. Lao Bai, lying behind the blast shelter locked in fierce combat with the mutants, felt the VM on his arm vibrate gently. A pale-blue pop-up window appeared: [Mission: Advance under cover of barrage and destroy the enemy artillery positions!] "New mission!" "Squad! On me!" Lao Bai bellowed at the top of his lungs, snatched several magazines from an ammo crate, slotted them onto his exoskeleton, and laid down continuous fire while rushing toward the flank of the defensive position. Fang Chang, Scavenger, and the other players followed hot on his heels. Soon, a ten-man squad moved up from the rear to take over their defensive sector. Stepping away from the center of the battlefield, the ambient temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Having switched to a submachine gun, Ye Shi caught up to Lao Bai's pace. "What's the new mission?" Lao Bai answered succinctly: "Destroy the enemy artillery positions!" Jieyan, who had several RPG rockets strapped to his back and was keeping close, blinked in surprise. "Artillery?!" "The mutants have that kind of stuff?!" Fang Chang, Kuang Feng, and the other veteran players weren't particularly surprised; having seen plenty of strange things, there was no reason to make a fuss. Slime mold mutants came in massive numbers and diverse varieties; even gnawers could be categorized into several distinct types based on size, speed, and bioluminescence. According to the mutant slime mold descriptions in the Wasteland OL official lore compendium, fruiting bodies with long-range fire support capabilities were nothing out of the ordinary. Lao Bai didn't stop to answer Jieyan's confusion. Expertly opening the mission briefing on his VM, he shared several aerial photos taken by the drone with the team members. Gazing at the four creep-covered trucks on the screen, Jieyan swallowed hard, taking quite a while before squeezing out a word: "Holy shit..." Scavenger, on the other hand, wasn't nervous in the slightest. Seeing a boss appear, an eager grin broke out across his face. His claws and muscle couldn't do much on the frontline meat grinder, but an ambush was a completely different story. A boss fight! This was his time to shine! "How do we get over there?" Lao Bai: "Take that back alley we scouted earlier!" Having spent the past few days running hunter squad missions, they had already mapped out every traversable route in this sector of the city. Almost the moment he spoke, more than a dozen shells slammed into the street eighty meters ahead to their right. Splintering stones flew into the windows of flanking buildings, some even tumbling around their feet. Lao Bai's expression turned grim. He picked up his pace and gestured for his squad to follow. "Fire support is here!" "Move, fast!" Counting Scavenger, there were ten players in all. Led by Lao Bai, the Ox and Horse Squad represented what was virtually the peak combat power on the server. Setting out from the flank of the front line, the group rapidly infiltrated the rear of the Tide under cover of the rolling barrage, sprinting straight for the enemy artillery position! Meanwhile, on the main front of the battlefield, intense gunfire roared without cease. Wave after wave of mutants surged forward, seemingly hell-bent on tearing the players' defensive lines to shreds tonight. The players naturally had no intention of letting the beasts have their way. Backed by solid logistics, their ferocious firepower showed no sign of slacking. Staring at the tank stalled right in the middle of the battlefield, Edge Slacker lay behind the blast shelter with his brows tightly furrowed. Suddenly, a thought struck him, and he spoke up: "That tank is probably a node organism! We've got to find a way to take it out!" Gunfire around them popped like firecrackers. Barely catching his squad leader's voice, Construction Site Youth and Brick shouted, "What?! What's a node organism?!" Indebted Big Eye answered, "Like a 'Decay Knight'! A specialized evolution that can control other fruiting bodies around it! I saw people discussing it on the official website." Mole on the Run from the Canyon, stationed on the same defensive line, yelled over, "Is that intel reliable?!" Edge Slacker yelled back, "Not reliable! But these mutants are endless! If we don't finish it off... we'll be fighting them until dawn!" Mole shot a glance at Elven King Fugui beside him. The latter readied his RPG, took a deep breath, activated his thermal vision, and aimed into the flashing red glow within the grayish-green fog. He squeezed the trigger. Whoosh! Trailing a plume of white smoke, the shaped-charge rocket shot forward and detonated against the tank's armor! Sparks erupted! Huge swathes of creep sloughed off! Yet the shaped-charge jet failed to pierce the armor plating! Commander Spring shouted from nearby: "Stop wasting ammo! I already tried, it doesn't do shit!" Crouched beside him, Battlefield Guy cursed and added: "This fucking armor is ridiculous!" Five RPG hits and not even a puff of smoke! Even a T-72 wouldn't be this tough, would it?! For a moment, he couldn't tell whether the tank was running cheats or the HEAT rounds were watered down. The battlefield ground to a stalemate. Just as everyone was at their wits' end, a piercing scream suddenly came from overhead. The sound resembled an air raid siren wailing in rapid approach, remarkably like the buzzer fitted onto the "Death Screamer" rockets. A bad premonition welled up inside Edge Slacker. He jerked his head up, his face instantly turning green as he blurted out, "Holy shit." A propeller aircraft with a wingspan of nearly ten meters was diving straight down toward his position from the roof of a nearby skyscraper. Elaina swallowed dryly. "Is that... Mosquito?" That buzzer was undeniably the exact same model used on the "Death Screamer" rockets! Having also spotted the commotion overhead, Indebted Big Eye stared with wide eyes. When he saw the two thick, massive aerial bombs slung under the fuselage, all color drained from his face in pure terror. "What is he doing?!" Amidst the ear-splitting roar, rampant laughter faintly echoed: "Hahahaha!" "Your Grandpa Mosquito is here!" "Fuck—pull up, damn it!" The plane hurtled steeply downward, the control stick pulled all the way back against his thighs. Sitting in the cockpit, Mosquito gripped the stick with both hands, gritted his teeth, and prayed with every ounce of strength he could muster. Perhaps the "Machine Spirit" heard his piety. The fuselage and wings shuddered violently, and the nose plunging into freefall miraculously began to rise. Mosquito felt a surge of joy, the blood across his entire body boiling. Not just from the G-forces! It was the triumphant roar welling from deep within his soul! He had conquered the sky! Suppressing the shuddering of the airframe and ignoring the bloodshot veins spreading across his eyes, Mosquito mustered all his will to stay conscious. Gripping the stick, he watched the crosshairs drawn onto the windshield creep closer and closer to the silhouette in the thick fog. "The kill—" "—is mine!" The second the crosshairs aligned, he slammed the release button. Two 100-kilogram aerial bombs packed with explosives plunged from the sky, striking the stalled tank like thunderbolts! Flames and billows of smoke erupted skyward, blowing the thick fog apart and even tossing his plane several meters higher into the air. Finally stabilizing the aircraft, Mosquito felt the crushing sensation of the G-forces gradually recede. Stealing a glance in his rearview mirror at the street engulfed in boiling flames, Mosquito let out a long sigh of relief, still gripping the stick. "...Thank fuck I chose the Agility tree!" The propeller throttled up. It carried his glider toward wider, open airspace. On the front line. Scalding stones rained down behind the blast shelters. The explosion's shockwave hurled rocks, sand, and even mangled corpses across the area, nearly burying everyone on the front line alive. Coughing dryly, Mole on the Run from the Canyon scrambled up from the ground, retrieved his rifle from under a pile of concrete debris, and shook off the dust. "Fuck..." Edge Slacker spat out a mouthful of sand and shook his woozy head. "I thought I was being sacrificed." Outside the blast shelter, thick smoke rolled across the ruins. Before pure destructive power and sheer yield, even the most advanced armor was useless—especially when the blast centered directly upon its vulnerable roof. The blast wave blew the slime mold inside the armor along with mutants across half the street into shredded remnants. Even those surviving mutants became noticeably sluggish and disorganized after losing the commands of their "node organism." Gazing at the devastated battlefield and the disorganized mutants, I'm the Darkest swallowed unconsciously. "...Is it over?" Battlefield Guy nodded numbly. "Should be..." Even if the armor could take it. No living creature could survive a blast like that... In the distance, explosions echoed through the grayish-green fog; judging by the direction, it was likely the enemy's "artillery position." The kamikaze bugs that had relentlessly harassed the front line and anti-aircraft guns finally ceased, indicating that Lao Bai and the others who infiltrated the rear had done their work. Edge Slacker could sense that the broodmother had shared their train of thought, picking today for the decisive battle, which was why it had thrown its trump cards and a fight-to-the-death determination into the fray right from the start. Yet clearly, the sheer intensity of the players' defensive firepower had far exceeded its expectations... The Tide was receding. Tonight's offensive seemed destined to end in a whimper. However— Would the Administrator let them off that easily? The charge whistle sounded as expected. Edge Slacker glanced at the VM on his arm, and seeing the blinking quest pop-up, felt a thrill of delight. Here it comes! The final battle! [Mission: Decisive Hour!] [Objective: Destroy the broodmother on 65th Street!]