Fall of the Broodmother!

65th Street. Beneath the slime-covered clock tower. Standing in the center of the creep, the Empress let out a dry, raspy roar. Feelings of panic and fury swelled like a tsunami, sending restless ripples coursing through its tentacle-like hair. The surrounding mutants shrieked and squawked. Behind it, the broodmother continued to spawn without pause, yet those frail "newborns" brought it no sense of security whatsoever. In particular, the successive deaths of its node organisms had severed its control over the front line, leaving its children to suffer pointless casualties... Its scarlet pupils were filled with bafflement. The intense, unrelenting assault had raged for nearly ten nights. Through the murky gray-green mist, it could watch life withering away. Yet it could not understand. Those humans... Why couldn't they be wiped out? Even after enduring so many days of attrition, they still had the strength to launch an offensive of their own. What puzzled it most was that through the gray-green fog, it had actually sensed a sequence of strangely familiar "ripples." It defied all comprehension. Hadn't that band of insects resisting evolution... already died once before? ... Beneath the collapsed overpass. The slime-covered truck was slowly backing away as swarms of gnawers surged forth, charging straight toward Lao Bai's team holed up inside the building. Before the truck could retreat to the far end of the street, a rocket trailing a fiery plume caught up with it, slamming dead-center into the cab. The warhead detonated with a thunderous blast. Sparks showered through the cab as a jet of molten metal punched right through it. The cab was its weak point. More precisely, the driver's seat. With the fungal mass inside the cab destroyed, the truck broke down on the spot. The growth in the cargo bed ceased its squirming, and the gnawers that had clambered inside tumbled out in droves. "Nice!" shouted Ye Shi excitedly, his gun propped on the second-floor windowsill. "Enemy artillery position destroyed!" Standing at another window, Lao Bai calmly stowed the smoking launcher, glanced down at the VM strapped to his arm, and grinned. [Quest: Decisive Moment!] It's here! The counteroffensive has begun! Beside them, Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes kept his finger locked on the trigger of his LD light machine gun, using the licking tongues of flame from the barrel to shred the gnawers tumbling off the truck into pieces. With the node organism destroyed, the gnawers broke free of their control and swarmed toward the base of the building in an endless stream, with several Crawlers mixed among their ranks! Yet the lizard standing guard at the entrance stood like a guardian god, refusing to let the surging mutants advance even half a step! Every sweep of his sharp claws whipped up a whirlwind of blood and gore. Ripping a lunging Crawler in two, the amber pupils gleaming in the darkness burned with excitement and bloodlust. As if that weren't enough, Scavenger had gone completely berserk. As he reaped lives like wildfire, he couldn't keep his mouth shut, howling at the top of his lungs. "Total madness!" The violent instincts buried deep within his bloodline were unleashed in full force, and he could feel a burning thirst coursing through his veins. The unread sequences in his DNA— were awakening! Beside him, Fang Chang drew his bow and released an arrow, piercing another Crawler's skull with pinpoint precision before the explosive fragmentation blew half its head away. His movements in nocking and drawing the bow were as swift as a gust of wind! Next to him, Kuang Feng braced a light machine gun against his right shoulder, raking the charging gnawers with steady bursts of fire. While the raw combat power of an unassisted mechanical arm was hard to leverage, pairing it with the KV-1 exoskeleton to control recoil made it rock-steady! To adapt to close-quarters urban combat, he had swapped out the bipod beneath his barrel for a bayonet, turning himself into a full-fledged frontline brawler! Corpses piled into mounds. The gnawers around the artillery position had been cleared, and almost everything charging at them now was mutants surging in from other sectors. The Tide seemed to be falling back. Yet the mutants retreating from the front line happened to crash straight into their faces. Watching the mutant horde pouring around the street corner, Jieyan's face shifted slightly as he crouched by the second-floor window changing magazines. He had only two magazines left! "Lao Bai, the mission is done... When are we pulling out?" "Pull out? Not happening!" Lao Bai shouted back in high spirits. "Hold the line, boys! The horn for the counteroffensive has sounded! Our reinforcements will be here any second!" Ye Shi turned his head in surprise. "Reinforcements?" He hadn't expected reinforcements for this mission. They were already deep behind enemy lines; just a few more steps forward lay the 65th Street clock tower. You could say the broodmother was right under their noses! "Friendly forces on the front line smashed the Tide! They're en route right now!" The moment Lao Bai's words fell, a piercing shriek rang out from the sky. "Take cover!" Thinking a rocket was inbound, Lao Bai shouted and ducked on reflex. The others behind the second-floor barricades followed suit, only to quickly realize it wasn't a rocket at all—it was the Mosquito glider, something far more terrifying than a rocket. The rat-tat-tat of fire roared like a cloth-tearing machine as a downpour of bullets from the sky carved two deadly arcs across the street. The gnawers jammed at the street corner were mowed down like wheat. Staring at the silhouette screaming overhead and the fleeting glimpse of "WX-1" painted on its side, Ye Shi's face was a portrait of utter bewilderment. "Holy crap?! What the hell is that?" "Mosquito's glider..." Lao Bai swallowed hard, eyes equally wide with shock. Evidently, he hadn't expected that pile of wooden parts to actually get off the ground. He had assumed Mosquito was joking! "Hahahahaha, this feels so damn good!" Inside the glider's cockpit, Mosquito gripped the flight stick with both hands, his flushed face brimming with thrills and exhilaration, adrenaline pumping through his system. Spent casings cascaded from the cabin, and the roar of the machine guns shook his legs numb. Too bad 7mm was a bit on the small side! A Maxim stripped of its water jacket had zero splash damage; if he could swap it for an A-10's 30mm rotary cannon, he could flip the entire street upside down! A single dive took out swathes of gnawers. Mosquito hauled back on the stick. The shrieking glider skimmed past the half-collapsed overpass, banked hard, and shaved past a listing skyscraper, threading the needle between the ruins. As his racing heartbeat gradually slowed, Mosquito took a deep, steady breath, leveled the wings, and climbed. This plane was still tricky to handle. Without a gyroscope, he had to rely on pure feel to judge whether the airframe was level. "Damn it... I really need to build a gyroscope and a pitot tube. Flying without those two is practically betting with my life!" Muttering under his breath, Mosquito spared a glance at the battlefield below. The full-scale counteroffensive was underway. Company A, formed of 120 players, served as the spearhead and was the first to strike. Companies B, C, and D stood by behind Company A, while Companies E and F deployed along the flanks, clearly aiming to infiltrate the sides of 65th Street and coordinate a pincer movement with Companies A through D on the main front. Beyond that, a four-hundred-man reserve waited in the rear, ready to plug any gaps the moment heavy casualties arose ahead. Though the urban sector looked vast, in reality only a few roads were passable, making it difficult to fully deploy over a thousand men. Pushing forward in hundred-man units was already the limit of what the front's width could accommodate. And to infiltrate the complex ruins behind the broodmother, they would have to break down even further, advancing in squads of ten or even fireteams of three to five. Yet that was precisely the players' greatest strength. Even when fighting isolated and cut off, players who took up a quest maintained sky-high morale, willing to sacrifice themselves without hesitation for the collective win. If these were mercenaries or Boulder City militiamen, dispersing them into the rubble to infiltrate deep into mutant territory would be no different from sending them to their deaths. Adjusting his heading, Mosquito quickly lined up a second airstrike. He had strapped his VM to his thigh to use as radar. By tracking the positions of other players and the muzzle flashes lighting up the streets, he could roughly tell where the fighting was thickest and where the mutants were clustering. Then he just had to dive in and let 'er rip! By the time Mosquito began his third strafing run, the players had fully secured 67th Street and linked up with the Ox and Horse Squad beneath the overpass. More than twenty heavily modified KV-1 exoskeletons led the charge, striding forward with heavy thuds, their machine guns spitting tongues of fire. They were spearheads of firepower, mobile ammo depots, and walking steel ramparts all at once! Groups of five or six players trailed behind them, some carrying rifles, others shouldering Panzerfaust rocket launchers, and others toting Light and Heavy Lances to suppress heavily armored targets. Backed by artillery, armor, and air support, Company A's advance was unstoppable! A ten-man squad of flamethrower troops followed close behind Company A. Clad in heavy protective suits and gas masks, they carried Mosquito's own masterpiece on their backs—the "Hellfire 1.0"! These flamethrower soldiers hadn't joined the frontline clashes, however. A burning gnawer was only more dangerous. When facing dense clusters of mutants, incendiary shells were a fine choice, but Molotovs and flamethrowers definitely were not. The thirty-odd liters of fuel on their backs were meant for clearing static targets. Like the broodmother! Robbed of their node organisms' guidance, the gnawers on the street devolved into a disorganized rabble. Their sheer numbers became a hindrance as they stumbled over one another in a tangled mess. The street was dyed black with scorched corpses and sticky slime. The intermittent thud of 88mm shells pushed forward in lockstep with Company A's momentum, swiftly retaking the vast expanse between 68th and 65th Streets. A portion of the mutants retreated toward the 65th Street clock tower at the broodmother's summon, but far more stayed where they were, lunging by animal instinct toward the nearest players. Their movements were as vicious as ever. Yet anyone could see they were down to their last gasps! 65th Street. The creep blanketing the concrete ground was quickly charred to cinders under the baptism of fire. The incubation chambers hidden within the storefronts along the street were demolished one by one, their pulsating rows of eggs shattered by Molotovs and flamethrowers. Soon, nearly four hundred players across three companies had locked down the main thoroughfare of 65th Street, the churning smoke and blazing fire drowning out the ominous gray-green clouds. Standing at the frontline in his azure power armor, Chu Guang held his Nitrogen Power Hammer and surveyed the devastated battlefield around him. The full-circulation system was active. Forget spores; not even a speck of dust could slip inside his armor. A Crawler came bounding toward him, but before it could even reach him, it was riddled with holes by a volley of rifle fire from a squad of awakened players. Looking down at the beast writhing on the ground, Chu Guang casually drew the Silver Snake revolver at his waist and put an end to its life with a single headshot. It was almost nostalgic. He remembered half a year ago, when he was just Level 5, leading Ye Shi and Fang Chang—both greener than greenhorns—out to Brown Farm to barter. A single Crawler had nearly wiped the three of them out. As for now... He didn't even need to lift a finger. Holstering his revolver, Chu Guang looked toward the building with the giant clock face not far away. Dark-red creep had crawled up to the third floor, its thigh-thick hyphae clinging to neighboring buildings, while the pitch-black window frames glowed with an eerie scarlet light. That was likely the broodmother... Though compared to its kin in the downtown core, it was still young, even infant-like. It was hard to imagine. In less than two weeks, it had grown into something like this. If it had been given a few more weeks, heaven only knew what it would have become. Chu Guang waved his hand, signaling Company A at the foot of the building to attack. Strength-type players lined up, over a dozen mounted 20mm Light Lances opening fire in rotation. In a single minute, they poured nearly a hundred high-explosive and armor-piercing incendiary shells into the building, blasting the six Tyrants guarding the entrance—along with the surrounding creep and concrete walls—into smithereens. A vast expanse of rebar was laid bare before the players. Chu Guang issued another order, and the eager flamethrower troops sparked the igniters on their nozzles, stepping forward under the cover of their comrades. Glancing at the bodies on the ground, Brother Mole muttered to himself. "Just as I thought..." Hearing him mutter, Brother Edge glanced over. "Just as you thought what?" Brother Mole said, "The broodmother's dominion over the slime mold isn't through direct control, but indirectly through node organisms. So as long as we kill the node organisms, the Tide naturally weakens... until it finally dies out." Brother Edge: "...Isn't that what I said?" Brother Mole cleared his throat. "I summarized it for you." "..." Summarized it, sure. Brother Edge was struck speechless, turning his gaze back toward the clock tower ahead. That had to be the command tower of the Tide—the broodmother that bred the slime mold and spread the spores. A ten-man squad had already escorted the flamethrower troops inside. Before long, the entire street would reek of roasted mushrooms. It was over— Or was it? Just as the thought crossed his mind, an explosion suddenly roared from within the clock tower, and a tongue of flame over ten meters long erupted out the entrance. Burning chunks of concrete flew outward one after another, and through the billowing smoke emerged a figure several meters tall. Fleshy, reddish masses of fungus hung to the ground like a skirt, while tentacles trailed behind its head like writhing vipers. When enemies meet, fury flares. Spotting the silhouette emerging from the smoke, Commander Spring's eyes widened, and he pointed at it with an excited shout. "That's it! That's the Empress!" "Heavy infantry, with me! Shield wall! Strength types, mount up and load armor-piercing rounds! On my mark—" This time he wore Heavy Cavalry exoskeleton armor, fully outfitted with rigid plating from head to toe. There was no way he was going down for free again. The Empress let out a shrill roar. From behind its towering frame, over a dozen tentacles shot out like lightning, stabbing toward the players outside the tower. Twenty KV-1 exoskeletons took a collective step forward, raising their steel plates to shield their teammates behind them. The whiplike tentacles lashed against the shields, ringing out with deep, heavy thuds! Several players swayed slightly, their feet pushed back an inch, but none suffered real damage from the strike. Standing on the front line, Commander Spring paused, a flicker of doubt crossing his mind. Why does it feel... a bit weak? Just then, a piercing shriek tore through the sky, followed by a dense hail of fire. The strafing glider dove in, its spitting guns raking a path of bullets from the steps straight over the Empress's head. While the 7mm rounds couldn't punch through the Empress's chitinous shell, they tore the tentacles extending from its back to shreds. Mists of blood and dust erupted in sequence! The ten-meter-long tentacles severed inch by inch, writhing on the ground like chopped earthworms. Black blood welled from the stumps like geysers, drenching the cracked steps in an instant. The players preparing for a grueling boss fight were dumbfounded. Holy crap?! This thing is this weak? Not only Commander Spring and the frontline players were caught off guard; even Chu Guang, who had just leveled his Gauss rifle, was taken aback. He had assumed that since the creature had ventured out on its own, it had some hidden trump card. Who knew it was merely its dying struggle? Its weak point heavily battered, the Empress let out an agonized howl and began to back away. The creep clinging to the building writhed frantically, dropping scarlet eggs onto the steps, from which half-formed fruiting bodies scrambled out. Some lacked arms, some lacked legs, and some had no lower body at all, reduced to heads and mouths hanging from stumps of necks. They howled as they charged toward the players. It was their final charge. "Open fire!" Commander Spring swung his right arm forward. Scores of rifles and light machine guns unleashed their fury at once, ripping the partially hatched gnawers to pieces in an instant. Players shouldering Light and Heavy Lances were about to charge up the corpse-strewn steps to pursue the Empress retreating into her nest. Yet at that moment, that piercing shriek beat them to the punch. Faintly— Battlefield Atmosphere Group, leading the charge, heard a familiar, lunatic cackle. "Hahahahaha!" "The kill! It's mine!" The diving glider plunged straight into the clock tower's main entrance, its whirling propeller chewing ahead as the nose slammed square into the Empress's chest. The massive momentum crushed the towering figure to the floor and dragged it several meters forward. The Empress let out an agonizing roar as the propeller tore into its chest. Yet moments later, a colossal fireball swallowed the glider and the fallen Empress whole. The blast wave blew heat into their faces. A flying shard of wood struck his helmet with a clatter. Clad in his KV-1, I'm the Darkest finally recovered his wits and swallowed hard. "Aren't solid-state hydrogen batteries supposed to be safe...?" He had heard that the solid-state hydrogen batteries in the lore didn't use pure solid hydrogen, but incorporated intermediate compounds to make them less prone to exploding. Because of that, while solid hydrogen had slightly less energy density than metallic hydrogen, it saw far wider use. Stopping in his tracks, Battlefield Atmosphere Group fell silent for a moment before offering an uncertain guess. "...Maybe he stuck a blasting cap into the battery?" Or maybe he had packed timed explosives in the cockpit. Battlefield Atmosphere Group didn't find it all that surprising, but I'm the Darkest's eyes went round with disbelief. "Holy shit... Was that really necessary?!" Even if it was made of wood, that plane couldn't have been cheap, could it? Those two Maxim machine guns alone were worth a fortune—he'd seen them in the NPC shop for over a thousand silver coins apiece! Commander Spring, encased in his Heavy Cavalry exoskeleton, walked over from behind and peered into the smoke-filled hall. "Dead?" Battlefield Atmosphere Group nodded. "Should be." "Let's head in and make sure, just to be safe." Commander Spring grinned and clapped him on the arm. "Over to you." Battlefield Atmosphere Group rolled his eyes, but didn't argue. A Miner Type I reinforced with welded steel plates wasn't weak in defense—it was only a tiny bit behind the Human Alliance's Type 6 Heavy Cavalry. Watching his two teammates confer so nonchalantly, I'm the Darkest couldn't help but speak up. "Wait, why aren't you two surprised at all?" Commander Spring and Brother Edge exchanged subtle glances. "It's Mosquito, after all..." "Yeah... if the plane only had useful features, that's when I'd be worried." I'm the Darkest: "..." ... [Server-Wide Announcement: The "Empress" has been slain for the first time by "WC Really Has Mosquitoes"!] [As the player chose to make this public, this achievement will be recorded in the Hall of Fame!] [Quest: Decisive Moment (Completed)] [We have defeated the Tide; victory belongs to us!] Whether online or offline, every player saw the series of notifications pop up on their VMs and the official website at the same time. With the "Stage Boss" defeated, this fledgling broodmother lost the final shield protecting it, left completely bare before the players. The horizon in the distance was already paling with the first light of dawn. Barrel after barrel of fuel was hauled into the clock tower. Fire broke out soon after. Blistering flames boiled through the broodmother's innards, their scalding smoke engulfing the pulsating egg sacs across the creep, along with every tentacle funneling nutrients and organic matter. Amid the scorch and fury, large sheets of creep peeled away and dropped from the clock tower walls. Even if the remaining fuel wasn't enough to burn away the thick creep entirely, deprived of nourishment, it would soon wither and die. Or degenerate into "harmless" fungal plaques. Beneath the clock tower, cheers of victory erupted from the players. Since the launch of Wasteland OL, this was the very first battle on the scale of a thousand players. Many stood before the blazing clock tower taking commemorative photos with their comrades, passing around headsets equipped with cameras. On the street bathed in morning glow, Chu Guang watched the burning clock tower, the awe stirring within him far deeper than what the players felt. They had overcome the Tide! Nothing in this city could threaten their survival any longer, which meant they had truly secured a firm foothold in the northern suburbs of Qingquan City. Boulder City on the West Third Ring might pose a potential threat, but for now, they had shown no open hostility. Perhaps their core interests lay to the south. Chu Guang looked northward, a surge of emotion swelling in his chest. If neither Boulder City nor the Great Rift Valley had any intention of ending the turmoil in River Valley Province, then this mission was destined to fall upon his shoulders. At that moment, a pale-blue window drifted into Chu Guang's vision. [The Tide will conclude within 7 days.] [Congratulations, young Administrator...]